Chapter One

“Twenty-five to seven”

That’s all I say to my mom as I sit madly in the car.

“Twenty-five to seven”

There is a silence that is softly followed by my mom’s reassuring voice that doesn’t reassure me anymore.

“You guys played well. You played against St. Pat’s “Green” team. That’s better than their “A” team.”

I didn’t care if it was an Olympic volleyball team that we lost against. We won only seven points. I was pissed. I think you deserve a little background, though. My name is Kimberly Grant. I’m an eighth grader at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic School. Yes, a catholic school. Uniforms included. It’s my last year here, and I wanted it to be memorable. Memorable. How ironic. The volleyball team I was on sucks. In all honesty, our team sucks. A team needs six players, and we have six. If one of us is out for grades (which happens a lot), we need to bring up a little kid. By little, I mean a sixth or seventh grader. Our coach, Emily’s mom (I’ll explain later) is somewhat of an amateur. She was our coach last year, but this year she doesn’t have much improvement. Sarah, Emily, Erica, and I are all setters. We’re only supposed to have two. Emily, being the coach’s daughter and all, is a setter. Sarah plays on a real volleyball team, Top Flight, so I can see how she is setter. I was the second original setter, but I missed two games because of a wedding I had to go to. Erica was the replacement for that. So there you go. My team. Me, Anna, Erica, Amy, Emily, Sarah. We could have had two more girls, Theresa and Annie Jo, but they couldn’t play this year. Annie wasn’t that good anyway, and Theresa has some bronta-sumething and if she doesn’t have her inhaler, she can die. Yea.

I stared out the window, angry as hell, all the way home. By home, I mean the pit of mutated siblings I have to deal with 24/7. Lynnette, my oldest sister, doesn’t really do much. She is really involved in sports and stuff so she’s never really home. She’s a senior. My other sister, Deanna, is a sophomore. She’s actually pretty preppy, though she’ll never admit it. My little brother, Steven, is a demon. He gangs up with Deanna against me, pretty much.

I walk through the front door, and my brother turns his head to look at me. “Did you win?” he asks, completely oblivious.

“Well, let’s see. It was St. Pats. Their best team. What do you think?” I snap.

He shrugs and goes back to playing his video game. I grunt, dropping my volleyball bag onto the chair in my kitchen. I know my mom will yell at me to pick it up later so I grab my homework and run up to my room. I look up the stairwell, the place where I constantly practiced my overhand serve. During practice, I got two overhand serves over. I was so happy. However, Emily had to ruin the moment, as always, and say “All the way from the back line?” in her annoying tone that always indicated disbelief. “Uh-huh.” I can tell that she still doesn’t believe me, but I don’t care. Anna saw me make the serves. My mom saw one of them. I was ecstatic. That was, until we were massacred.

I look at the clock once my homework is finished. 10:12. I still need to shower. I let all my books fall to the floor as I walk into the hallway and into the bathroom. As the warm water runs over my head, I let the frustration melt away like snow. By the time I get back into my room, all clean now, it’s about 11:30. I turn off my light and fall into bed, positive that tomorrow would be a new day.