Alright, hey y'all. -holds up pillow to protect against angry readers- I'll be honest, this was definitely going to go out during thanksgiving break but asdlgkh; APUSH. -sigh-

Well here it is- the long awaited Girls basketball game, and next chapter- DA PARTAY 3

Also- this switches POV's pretty rapidly- Sorry if that kind confuses you/ pisses your off. I felt it'd be the best way to capture the essense of the game.

And I just want to say thank all of y'all reviewers who have stuck with me even though I'm such a crappy updater. I feel REALLY bad about it and seriously. NOT EVEN KIDDING if I take too long to update please feel free to bombard me with PM's/ reviews about how I'm a horrible person and need to update.

Seriously- I'm easy to guilt xD

And, lastly, this chapter is very heavy with basketball technicality. It should still be pretty easy to follow but just for those of you who don't play/ don't know here's a basic run through

layup- a high scoring shot, scored while under the basket.

one and one- after a team gets 7 fouls during a half, after every defensive foul caused after that the opposing team gets to shoot free throws. You are only guarenteed one and if you miss that one the ball goes into play, but if you make it you get another.

free throw- you get to shoot two from the free throw line if you get fouled while shooting or during a one and one as aforementioned

paint- the area under the basket and up to the free throw line that's colored a different color that the rest of the court. The offensive team is only allowed to stand in the paint for three seconds at a time and 'working the paint' is when the post player moves back and forth across it, trying to post up to get open

posts- the usually taller and stronger players who tend to play under the basket, trying to 'post up' or pin their defender so they can get an easy layup or jump shot

guards- the other type of player, usually quicker and better ball handlers, they also tend to take more outside shots.

also- a player can commit five fouls before they foul out and are taken out of the game.

alright, I think that's about it. if you still don't understand something, feel free to leave it in a review or PM me.

Happy Readin' xD


Max POV

"Do you think Coach will notice if I wear bright pink spandex under our uniforms?" Priyanka popped out from behind her duffle bag holding up a pair, "I can't find my black ones."

"Probably not." Gillian was tying her hair up into a bun in the mirror on the opposite end of the locker room.

"Damn…" she flung the pink spandex behind her and continued to search through her bag.

I sighed and leaned back against the mirror, my legs dangling against the counter I sat on. I was blasting my warm up music, earphones in one ear. We were situated in part of the Westlake girl's locker room, their team through the wall behind me. The JV game was at half time and we were going on in about 30 minutes. There were those little butterflies flitting around my stomach that made me nervous and excited and just the slightest bit agitated. I just wanted to get onto the court and play, partially to get it over with, but partially to just to feel the ball in my hands.

"AH HAH!" Priyanka emerged victoriously with a pair of black spandex and slipped them on quickly. Then slowly, all of the Varsity team calmed down. We stopped goofing off and got into our pregame rituals. We became serious, one mind and one motivation.

Fang POV

When Jace and I enter the gym it's already packed, the JV girl's game in the fourth quarter going back and forth. We join our teammates on the first row as the game finally ends, us winning by two points, and the girls varsity basketball teams finally jog onto the court.

I spot Rue first, her long hair pulled back into a high pony tail, a gold 13 stitched on her back. Having already stretched she's shooting threes with Jessica, dodging and weaving between the rest of the Varsity doing lay ups.

Jace elbows me sharply in the side, "Dude, your girlfriend is waving at you." I shove him roughly and turn to the court where, of course, Lissa is standing in the middle of a drill, waving furiously at me, the rest of her team mates shooting her dirty looks and skirting around her. Gingerly, I wave back.

"Dude," Beck elbows me sharply in the other side, "Check out Westwood."

Across the gym Westwood enters to cheers erupting from the Visitor's side. They jog in, some of them laughing, others smiling into the crowd, but there's on in front who doesn't look up into the stands or crack a joke. Her face is serious, and stoic. She's intent and set and focused and I can't help but stare. Even as she starts to warm up her lithe athleticism fascinated me in the oddest way.

"Damn, now I wish I went to Westwood." Beck grinned, wolf whistling as a tall tan skinned girl jogged by us on the way to the ball cart, her mass of curls hanging low on her back. She didn't even glance at us, only flashing us the bird and continuing on her way.

Max POV

"Alright, bring it in y'all" I call to the rest of the team as warm up time nears to two minutes. By the bench Priyanka and Coach Batchelder were arguing about when she had flipped off a guy in the audience.

"He was wolf whistling at me Coach! I mean, I was feeling sexually threatened, I was going to get raped." She said with such a dramatic fury that he just sighed and dropped it.

"Well don't do it again." He muttered and turned to the rest of the team. "Captains get up there."

I meet Gillian's eye over the Zoe's head and we jog out to center court.

I recognized one of Westlake's captains. Natalie was a senior and I have to admit, had an amazing fake and jump shot. The other one I didn't recognize. She was younger and about an inch shorter than me, still making her a good 5' 9". Her eyes had a sharp glint as we shook hands an amused smile crossed her lips.

"Alright ladies, that's about it." The Ref had finished going over the basic same colored head bands, no hard hair items, blah blah, "Oh, and make sure any dunking get up and get down, don't hang."

Gillian snorted, "I don't think that'll be a problem."

"Speak for yourself." The younger captain from Westwood grinned. She caught out expressions, "You heard me."

On our way back to the bench Gillian leaned close, "You don't think she can actually dunk, do you?"

Fang POV

Girls' basketball was fundamentally different from boys. First of all it was generally lower scoring, though not because boys were necessarily more talented than girls. Boys' basketball tended to lean more towards show boating- just offensive up and down the court. Not many teams put up a stand still defense that could completely cripple a decent team.

Girls' basketball on the other hand, to me more closely resembled football than the basketball I played, especially this game. It seemed like every five seconds someone was on the floor, or someone had been elbowed in the face. The refs for some unknown reason weren't calling anything, leaving open the bevy of body checks and personal fouls running wild. Rue already had a purpling bruise under her left eye and a splatter of marks up and down her arms, which I could see from in the stands twenty feet away, and a pissed expression.

We were up by three points with a good 90 seconds left in play and both teams were going at it hard, and by going at it I really mean going at it. It's Westwood's ball and they're weaving fast, skirting back and forth across the three point line while a post worked the paint and another ran baseline. The point guard pulls it out. And brings it up top, the others working into a new play.

Max POV

Four isn't working, they're playing too tight of man defense for us to get any shots up and we can't drive because their help is phenomenal. Though I hate to admit it, Westlake has gotten better, much better. I pull back up top and the rest of the team follows sync, Audrey and Gillian falling back to the sidelines, cutting a screening, trying to help Priyanka down in the paint get an open look, Zoe leaving the baseline to now weave through everyone, full sprint, looking for an open cut. It's a hectic play, from the sidelines it looks like a confused mess, but every player on the court knows exactly where the other is moving and how to move to adjust it. We're all in sync, and that's why we're a good team.

For a split second Pri's eyes light up and her hand it open and I tense, getting ready to pass it to her before the player guarding her is back in position, leaving Priyanka covered once more. But I hesitated too long, and left the ball open for a split second, a second that my defender had taken advantage of. She was the younger captain, and though it had been proven that she couldn't dunk (though had a pretty fantastic vertical) she was quick and lithe and agile with speed that could give torpedo Zoe a run for her money though also had this fierce look in her eyes that surprisingly reminded me a little bit of myself.

She knocks the ball from my hands and it bounces out of both of our fighting grasps. She dives after it a moment before mine, causing me to fall over her, my knees cracking into her side and both of us go flying, the ball rolling slowly down court in our absence.

Fang POV

When Rue picks herself off the ground after her latest fall I know there's something seriously wrong with her. It's the way she bites her inner lip. She gnaws at it hard in her pain as she tries to not show that anything's bothering her, but I can see it in the tiny pinch of her cheeks and the hollow expression of her eyes which slowly turns to shock then to outrage as she notices the ref standing before the table motioning 'trip, defense number 13. Black ball. One and one" and the table holding up five fingers in return.

By the bench the girl's coach is going crazy, jumping up and down and as soon as everyone slowly catches on our side of the bleachers erupts into outrage stomping our feet and jeering. Rue's fouled out in possibly the most dramatic fashion this season. Leave it to her to have the worst timing.

Her jaw sets and she limps over to the other coach, shaking his hand lighting, while not making eye contact and crashes herself down on the bench, refusing the water a manager tried to hand her and grudgingly accepting the pat on the back Coach gives her. Coach Nelson sighs while glancing at the rest of his team. He needs a sub for Rue and the only other players who haven't fouled out yet are both posts and he knows that if he puts them in there'd be a mismatch with speed which Westwood would surely take advantage of. The other two guards are out with injuries which then leave Lisa.

He sighs again and gestures for her to go into the game. She blinks once in surprise and then flounces up, her (now admittedly more pinkish) hair bouncing as she makes her way back onto the court.

Max POV

"You've got to be kidding me." I mutter to Gillian as the sub skips her way onto the court, and no, believe me, she literally was skipping.

"Is her hair… pink?" she mutters back, fingering her own classily done faded pink tips. Gillian's pink tips made her look like some sort of roughish supermodel while this girls' made her look like some sort of 90's wannabe grudge groupie.

But as the ref called us over to our basket to line up for the one and one I brought my focus back. I knew you should never judge your opponent just based on their looks, because that leads to underestimation- but I had a pretty killer hunch that this chick just might be our saving grace.

I easily sink my two free throws, leaving us down by one points with a little under 90 seconds to go. It's now black ball and we're in a frenzy as they make it down court, pulling it back. We all know they're trying to play keep away, as any person with two brain cells would. They pass the ball rapidly between themselves, no one holding the ball for even half a second. I notice they're all deliberately not passing to my man, the girl with the pink hair and it seems that my hunch is true. She's not a good player, and I hope to god that I have a chance in the rapidly winding down time to take advantage of that.

Their center gets stuck with the ball and has lost her dribble. She's pivoting wildly, attempting to find someone to pass too while the refs is counting down possession seconds. But Priyanka is staying tight on her, leaving little room for her to see and Gillian, Zoe and Audrey are all sticking to their men like glue. And that's when I take my chance. I lag off my girl for the slightest second, making it seem like she's got the better of me. I can hear Coach Batchelder screaming his head off in my direction and the center pivots, catching sight of the girl with pink hair, and with no one open and her time running out she sends a good hard pass straight to her arms.

With a newfound burst of adrenaline I sprint the last two steps, placing myself between the ball and my defender, catching it neatly in my hands and making my way down court. I'm sprinting as fast as I can, the wind whooshing past my ears and the dull, faded roar of the crowd aching through my bones. I go in for the layup when suddenly a girl whips in front of me, planting her feet and I go crashing into her, both of us tumbling.

Fang POV

"That has got to be the worst one all game," Beck whispers into my ear as a hush fills the stadium. The Westwood girl has picked herself up off the floor and was quietly conversing with her coach. I notice her as the serious one from before the game and I can't help but now notice, as her body glistened with sweat under the yellowy gym lights, the toned definition of the muscles in her arms and the nice way her body filled out her uniform: muscled and athletic, but definitely feminine.

On the floor, back under the basket Natalie is picking herself up, with help from Coach Nelson and two trainers. As she begins to limp back to the bench the gym fills with applause. That was one hell of a charge she took, and a wonder she even got there in time to set her feet for it to be a charge. That Westwood chick was going fast.

Jessica, Rue's red headed friend, takes her free throws for her. She misses one, but that's alright, we're still up by two and there's only ten seconds left in the game.

Max POV

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I mutter to myself as I position myself for the press break. If only I had made that layup, or gone faster, I wouldn't have had that charge. I grit my teeth and glance up at the clock. I catch Zoe's eye as she takes the ball out, it's alive and burning with determination in that fiery Zoe way and I feel an insurgent rush of hope fill my body with a newfound sort of energy. We could still do it.

Zoe calls break as soon as she's handed the ball and we're off, all five of us hustling like our lives were at stake. Gillian gets the inbounds, due to a brilliant screen by Priyanka and Zoe comes up the middle to retrieve the ball. She passes it to the other side of the court to Audrey who gets trapped and has to reverse it back to Zoe who passes it to Gillian. There's three seconds left when Gillian push passes it up to me right behind the half court line. I know Priyanka is down court, but there are two defenders between me and her. I know I could most probably get it to her no problem, but there's so little time, who knows if it would get there fast enough. And on top of that, even if it did get there in time, she probably wouldn't have the time to pull a move to go up for a layup anyways with two girls on her. So I make, probably the riskiest decision of my life. I take a dribble to gain momentum and I chuck the ball into the air with as much accuracy as I can.

And right after the buzzer goes off, the ball swishes in.


Oooooh juicy right? xD. Party next chapter, and I've already started to write it.

And again thank y'all so so soooooo much for sticking with me xD. It means a lot. 3 3 3