" Alright, now split up into two groups and start jogging, I'm giving you guys 15 minutes to warm up"

Instead of following Coach Horry's instructions, I yawned and rubbed my eyes.

The 10-12 teenagers standing in a loose circle with me in one corner of the huge school ground did the same thing.

It was Tuesday morning, and like every sincere person in our boxing team, I'd woken up at 5:30 and dragged my ass to the school 5 minutes before 6:30 for our usual training session.

Some wise part of me was telling me that staying up watching Star Wars till 1 in the morning can cause sleepiness, which in turn causes symptoms like yawning, which results in Coach Horry getting worked up and ranting about 'the lack of commitment in teenagers these days'.

But honestly, I was too sleepy to pay any heed to that wise part.

Finally, one of us, a girl 3 years my junior took off and started jogging.

Almost instantly, the rest of us (the girls) fell in line, following her in a group.

The second group contained only boys, who formed their own group and started jogging behind us a moment later, following a kid from 7th grade.

Our school's boxing team had one girl and one boy from every grade, starting from 7th grade and up.

The youngest pair from the team would be only 13, while the oldest pair would be 17 or turning 18 soon, like me.

Needless to say, I was the oldest girl in the team, only seconded by Victor, my male counterpart, who was in 12th with me and a few months older to me.

Although our team had kids of varying ages, we all trained at the same time. We even practiced at the same time.

Since Victor and I were the oldest in the team, Coach Horry always expected us to take the lead and set an example for the other kids.

It never went that way though, because 15 year old Cheryl from 9th grade and 14 year old Frederick from 8th grade were normally the ones who took the initiative to follow Coach Horry's instructions while Victor and I just hung around lazily, either too sleepy or too busy talking with others.

I was, with no doubt, the only person in the team that coach hated (Coach insisted he wasn't capable hating his students).

He didn't hate Victor only because Victor was the fittest in the team and also because he had managed to beat most of our school's competition, and those weren't the only assets Victor had, his father was the mayor and his mother was a model.

So, basically, he had a pretty face, a hot body and a powerful family, which was enough to attract the entire female population to him.

Except me, Victor and I shared a mutual dislike towards each other.

Unlike him, most of my performances were dependant on my mood.

If I was in my zone, I could give anyone a beating they'd remember their entire life, if not, I was more than capable of receiving a beating from little Cheryl.

Lengthening my strides, I increased my pace and soon caught up with Cheryl, who was in the front of the group. Once I was level with her, she slowed down, falling back and letting me lead the warm-up routine.

Almost instantly, the girls behind me fell in line according to their ages, setting Coach Horry's mind at peace.

If given the choice, Coach Horry and Coach Preston (the boxing Coach) would have kicked me and Shirley, a girl from 10th who also happened to be my closest friend in school, out of the team for our tardiness, lack of discipline and mood swings, but, there weren't many girls willing to take our place and the ones who were, only wanted to flirt with Victor.

Speaking of Shirley, she was late again, she had just arrived and judging by Horry's wild hand expressions which I could barely make out from across the ground, he wasn't happy.

When we had finally finished jogging one lap, we reached the corner of the ground in the Coach and Shirley were standing.

Completely ignoring Coach's antagonistic rant, she ran towards us, joining me at the front of the group, even though she was supposed to be running after the girls behind me.

"You're late again". I reminded her.

" You would have been too, if you had longer hair". She defended her tardiness.

Shirley and I were so similar, she might have as well been my sister, or even my twin.

We were identical from our curly blonde hair, slightly tanned complexion, our green eyes to our love for movies, our laziness, our hate for the girl running right behind us  and Ofcourse, our love for food.

She was like a sister from another mother (and father)!

There were a few dissimilarities though- while Shirley was tall and skinny enough to be a runway model, I was more on the shorter, bulkier side.

Oh. And she also had long hair that reached her waist while mine didn't go beyond my shoulders.

Shirley always insisted that the reason for her tardiness was the amount of time required to groom and control her hair, especially in the mornings and not because she stayed up late watching movies.

We were nerds like that.

"So, what did you watch last night?" I asked her.

"I tried to read 50 Shades Of Gr-"

My head whipped around so fast, I felt my neck give a painful click.

"You did what!?". I practically yelled. While I wasn't the biggest fan of that particular series, I didn't mind people reading it. Everyone loves porn. But Shirley's parents being devout Christians wouldn't have appreciated her choice of entertainment last night.

She giggled. "You didn't let me finish my sentence"

"Maybe you should finish this one in front of your parents and see how they react". I advised her.

She giggled again. "I'm not stupid Em, do you know how many great lengths I had to go to just to sneak the book into the house?"

"No, can't say I have. You see, I was never curious enough to try that"

"I didn't really read it, I only wanted to count how many times the main character trips in the book".

"That's weird, you know that?"

"Yeah, that's the reason I'm telling you"

I laughed. "How many times does she trip then?"

"No idea, I fell asleep half way through the book and forgot to set the alarm".

"Don't tell me you gave coach this excuse for coming late".

"Nah. I gave him the usual".

"What? The long-hair-takes-a-long-time-to-groom one?"

She grinned."Maybe"

I rolled my eyes. "The least you can do is come up with more original excuses, you've been giving him the same one for the past 2 years"

" And my hair keeps growing". She said, matter-of-factly. "So, unlike most excuses, everytime I give this one, it only gets more meaningful".

"Hey, shouldn't Shirley be jogging behind me? Why's she in the front of the group?" An annoying voice asked us. I already mentioned I hated the girl behind us, didn't I?

I recognized her voice a little too well. Hannah Wills. She was as close to being a Queen Bee as she could while throwing punches on a boxing rink like us.

She would've been a perfect cheerleader if not for her height. Her head barely reached Shirley's shoulders, and Shirley was still growing, some people are just blessed with tallness, I guess.

Going back to Hannah, since she wasn't tall enough to be a cheerleader, she opted the first next thing that could contain her overbearing attitude.

Boxing. Trust me, if you like hurting people, boxing is the best way to do it without being judged.

And Hannah loved it like she loved flirting with Victor.

I'd joined the team two years ago and the moment I'd stepped in, she did her level best to kick me out. In the beginning I didn't understand that attitude, I mean I was no competition to her.

Boxing is an individual sport and selfishness is the most common thing found in individual sports, and even though we trained as a team, everyone of us had our own fights according to our age and Hannah was a year younger to me, so we didn't even fall in the same age category.

Until I realized that once I get kicked out of the team, there would be no one from 12th in the team, which would mean Hannah could lead the team everyday.

Thankfully, soon enough it clicked in her head that kicking me out of the team would be impossible on the account that Coach Preston rather liked having a complete team, and she gave up.

She was still bitter.

That didn't mean she wasn't right, though. By Coach Horry's rules, Shirley should, essentially be behind Hannah and not trotting beside me, something Hannah loved reminding us everyday.

We ignored her as usual.

"- do you think they'll do that?" Shirley's voice pulled me out of my reverie.

" What?" I asked her distractedly.

"What time did you sleep last night?"

" Doesn't matter, I was busy studying".

I knew that was a lie, she knew that was a lie but she let it go. " I said do you think Coach Horry'll kick is out now?"

I frowned, speeding up. Were we going too slow? "No why? I thought we already established that I can't be kicked out of team if there's no one to replace me".

"Yes". She agreed. " But I don't think he's going to be happy if you mess up his warm-up routine".

Our ' warm-up routine' as we called it, included 5 laps around the ground, a few short sprints and a bunch of light exercises. I didn't see how I could mess it up, and if I did, Horry'd have my head.

" I'm not messing it up".

" This is the sixth lap Em"

As my eyes widened in contemplation as what Horry would do with my delicate head for muffing up his precious routine hit me, I heard a him shout fr- " WILSON! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO TALK WHILE RUNNING? ALL OF YOU GET HERE RIGHT NOW!"

Survival instincts took over me and I practically flew towards Horry, now so red in the face that even his bald patch had a volcanic glow to it.

Someone behind me laughed, most probably Shirley, but she smothered it the moment she got close enough to see Horry's bald patch glowing red.

We were so dead.

When I'd said that we were dead, I'd meant it. Horry had us do a hundred sprints around the 400 metre ground for ' not focusing on the most essential part of training'.

Us as in Shirley and me, the rest of them got off without even one.

My legs had felt so awfully sore throughout the school hours that I decided to skip practice and go to the cafe to meet Ethan directly after school. Also, I didn't want to risk an injury by overexerting myself, my ankle felt kinda wobbly.

Ethan had told me to meet him after 4, hadn't he?

Maybe I'll even go home and study after this.

Yeah right.

I was in a crappy mood, and when I'm in a crappy mood, the only way out of my crappiness was by pissing someone else off.

And who better than dear Ethan, who was so gullibly and innocently sitting inside Little Hearts with his back to the door?

Some corner of my mind noted how he didn't look any happier than yesterday and how pulling out his chair from under him and throwing him on his butt might make him angrier than he was yesterday.

Ignoring that smarter part of me, I quickly and cautiously slipped inside the cafe.

He continued blowing smoke rings from his mouth.

My smile broadened and I got closer to him, my bad mood already gone.

On reaching him, or rather his chair, I gave it the hardest pull I could, laughing like a hyena, already celebrating my first victory of the day as a prankster.

Author's note- Hey, thanks for reading, please comment and let me know what you think because I'd love to have some feedback on this book:)

Thanks

Cyan