Might As Well Forfeit: The Girls On The Other Volleyball Team All Have Matching French Braids

Oh, fuck. Don’t even bother lacing up your shoes, because we don’t stand a fucking chance in this game and the best course of action would be to wave a white flag right now. The girls on the other volleyball team just walked into our gymnasium and they all have matching French braids.

We might as well forfeit. We’re doomed.

From the moment they strutted off their fancy fucking charter bus with their perfect braids all tied with matching light blue ribbons looking like the goddamn Russian Olympics team instead of just a bunch of high schoolers in the middle of Pennsylvania, it’s been clear that these girls are absolute monsters when it comes to volleyball. This is 100% going to be a losing battle for us, and frankly, we’d be better off avoiding it altogether.

Playing this game would be a waste of everyone’s time ­when there’s no way in hell we’d ever beat the team that’s wearing sleek black warm-up pants with matching zip-up jackets that have their names embroidered on them. They’re straight-up wearing actual volleyball sneakers, not just whatever gym shoes they’ve been using for the past couple years. They probably ordered them from some fucking volleyball catalog, fuck.

Wait, what the hell? One of those girls is like, 6-foot-3. At least. How the hell are we going to hit anything past her? She’s as tall as the fucking net. Christ. This game is over before it’s even begun.

If you thought there was even a slight possibility that these girls weren’t going to play as good as they look like they can, you can forget that glimmer of hope right now, because they’re now doing stretches that look like they’re straight out of some European volleyball bootcamp. Oh, goddammit. Now they’re zig-zagging all over their half of the court doing warm-up bumps and sets with more precision and synchronicity than we’ve ever achieved even on our best day. We’re warming up, too, but for us that’s just kind of sitting on the floor half-stretching while looking at our phones. It’s amazing the ref hasn’t just sent everyone home already.

God, they’re going to hit the ball so hard at us. It’s going to hurt so bad. Do you think if we all pretended to be sick that Coach would let us cancel the game? There’s no way he doesn’t realize we’re about to get fucking killed—the other team is putting that weird blue sports tape all over their arms and legs, presumably to make them even stronger? We don’t even know what the tape does. That’s how fucking far out of their league we are.

There should be some rule that prevents teams like that from playing teams like us—our team is really just a hang-out thing and these girls are the kind who all think about volleyball all the time and go to the kinds of tournaments where they play schools from other states and get big trophies made of actual metal and stuff. What’s the point in playing them? They’re just going to win and we’re just going to feel like total jackasses, diving after balls we stood never stood a chance of hitting.

Ah, you’ve got to be fucking kidding. They just took off their warm-ups to reveal these brand-new Nike uniforms in a gorgeous light blue that perfectly matches their ribbons. Fuck. Of course the ribbons match the fucking uniforms. We’re all wearing the same faded uniforms that our school’s had around since before we were born, and duh, we look like absolute shit! These girls are going to demolish us and they’re going to look great doing it.

Fingers crossed that the fire alarm goes off or there’s a tornado warning or something so this whole thing gets canceled and we don’t have to play the most humiliating game of our lives. Thank God no one ever comes to our games, because they’d be seriously disappointed by what they were about to see. Fuck. The ref just fucking blew the whistle to start the game. Alright, let’s all just fake sick or some shit and end this now.