Passing Starbrigid
I hate the sound of a whistle. It's sharp and grating and stupid. It signals a foul that there's gonna be a penalty for, or some obscure violation, or just a set play or throw-in or something that breaks the flow of the game in any case. Even the way a whistle announces a goal makes me want to rip the sound's originator out of the ref's hand and pocket it, because it's not like everybody didn't already know.
You're whistling as we walk along the street together, some tune I don't even recognize. I like music, but I hate popular crap, and someone so soccer-obsessed as you wouldn't have the time to hear anything else. You probably hear those catchy lines of shit in your school's weight room, the radio blaring as you and ten thousand other nobodies pant their way through their own special treadmill programs, you the first to get on and the last to come off. You need endurance, so you'll be running, and that seems like the kind of place you'd go for it, full of happy people baring their ugly bodies, as if coating them with sweat makes them any less pathetic. You would like somewhere like that, like it just as much as I hate it, the way I hated it the one and only time I ever went, people screaming to friends over pounding heartbeat and pounding rap beat, the most annoying sound in the world except for your whistling.
Whistle. Even the word sucks. It's just- I dunno, I hate that it's so much like you, so sprightly, though that's not the word for it, I guess. It's so cheerful, innocent, confident in its lack of confidence, and the skip in your step is a little like one of your fakes, so that's what's making me stare at your feet. I think about your feet in different shoes, those shoes in different feet, feet of one-eleventh of the winning World Cup team in two-thousand-something, pounding towards the goal just one more time for the victory, and if something doesn't happen, that determination will put you at the top. And when you reach that place, you'll still have the goddamn nerve to congratulate your opponents, and worry about their feelings, because even then, I bet you still won't get it.
"Will you stop that?" I snap. I'm a giant compared to you, but you don't even care about that, are unafraid of the way my shadow swallows yours completely, of the half-jog you've had to lapse into to not fall behind me and my longer legs. You're not afraid of me, and with me blocking you from the sunlight, your hands don't have to lift up and shade your eyes from the glare, can swing at your sides instead.
You stop whistling, looking embarrassed but not the least bit frightened, and I'm glad, but then you start shooting your mouth instead. Says, like, you're so happy I agreed to play with you, how excited you are, how much you admires me, but that you still won't lose!
"Maybe," you say hesitantly, voice as piercing and abrasive as the triple-blast signaling a game's end. "Maybe," you say, "In return, I can teach you how to pass."
You asshole. I resolve not to see you anymore after this, because you make me feel so goddamn stupid.