Chapter 3: The Volleyball Trap
I stared at the beer bottle in my hand, the glass sweating in the heat, a tiny anchor to my old self. It was useless. Mark’s invitation—no, his command—to play volleyball hung in the air like a threat.
“Come on, Sabrina!” Cheryl called again, beckoning from the pool’s edge. “We need a sixth!”
My feet, those small, manicured things with their ridiculous pink polish, felt glued to the warm teak. I shot a desperate look across the pool deck at Sabrina. She was poking at a blackening burger with my spatula, her shoulders—my shoulders—hunched with tension. She met my gaze and gave a minute, frantic shake of my head. Don’t.
But Mark was already beside me again, his presence a wall of heat and expectation. “Time to earn that beer,” he said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to travel straight up my spine. He plucked the bottle from my unresisting fingers, his hand brushing mine. A fresh jolt. His touch was everywhere today, claiming territory. “You’ll be on my team. Don’t worry, I’ll cover you.”
There was no refusing. Any hesitation would seem bizarre, out of character for a girl trying to fit in at a neighbor’s party. I forced a nod, my long blonde hair swaying against my bare back, a sensation that was still startlingly external, like being trailed by a silken curtain.
Walking to the makeshift court was its own torture. The gentle slope of the deck became a treacherous hill. My hips, those wide, swaying things, dictated a rolling gait I couldn’t control. Each step sent a secondary, echoing motion through my chest. The bounce wasn’t just visual; it was a deep, internal tugging on ligaments I could feel but not name, a fleshy, independent weight that shifted and trembled with a life of its own. The flimsy triangles of the bikini top strained. The strings cut into my neck and back.
“Alright, newcomers serve!” someone shouted.
The world condensed to the white sphere of the volleyball. It was lighter than I remembered, but my arms were different. Slender, with less inherent strength, the muscles unfamiliar wires under soft skin. I served. It was a weak, arcing thing.
“I got it!” Mark barked, lunging past me. His movement was a blur of tan skin and athletic grace. He returned the shot with a loud, satisfying thwack. The game began in earnest.
It was a symphony of humiliations. Every jump was a calculation. As I left the ground, a profound, unsupported heave lifted in my chest, a painful and vulnerable sensation. Landing was a sharp, jarring impact that traveled through my knees—smaller joints, less padding—and reverberated upwards, making everything shake. When I stretched sideways to reach a shot, my torso elongated, and I felt a distinct, cool waft of air across the strip of bare stomach, followed by the immediate, clingy warmth of the fabric snapping back.
“Dig it, Sabrina!” Mark yelled.
The ball rocketed toward me, low and fast. Instinct took over. I dropped, diving forward onto the sun-warmed concrete. The world tilted. My breasts, unsupported in the dive, crushed painfully against the inside of the bikini top for an instant before my body hit. My knees took the brunt. A hot, stinging scrape erupted across the delicate skin of my right kneecap. The pain was bright and sharp, but deeper was the shock of impact—my smaller, lighter frame absorbed force differently, more wholly. The air left my lungs in a high, feminine gasp.
Before I could even register the sting of gravel, large hands were on me. Mark hauled me up with effortless strength. One hand was splayed across the small of my back, his fingers spanning nearly the entire width. The other gripped my upper arm. He pulled me close, steadying me against his solid frame. I was flush against him for a second, from thigh to chest. The entire, hard, muscular length of him pressed into the softness of this body. My head only came up to his collarbone. The smell of him—salt, chlorine, male sweat—filled my nose, my mouth.
“Whoa, easy there, tiger,” he laughed, but his eyes were dark, focused. His gaze dipped to my chest, which was heaving against him, the tops of my breasts visibly trembling from the adrenaline and the impact. He didn’t let go. “You okay? That was a hell of a dive.”
His thumb moved, a small, deliberate circle on the naked skin of my back, just above the string of the bikini bottom. The touch burned. A fresh, aching heat pooled between my legs, a visceral, biological response that had nothing to do with Justin Zygurski and everything to do with the nerve endings packed into this new flesh. I was wet, unmistakably so, a slick, embarrassing awareness that made my face burn.
“I’m fine,” I squeaked, pulling back. My voice was breathy, wrong. The scrape on my knee was beading with blood, a vivid red against the porcelain skin. The pain anchored me, a welcome clarity.
He finally released me, but his hand trailed down my arm. “Tough kid. I like that.” He turned to the others. “Time out! Medic!”
It was Sabrina who arrived first, shoving through with a damp paper towel in my big, hairy hand. Her eyes in my face were wide with a shared, internal screaming. She knelt before me, her movements in my body still awkward and gangly.
“Here,” she muttered, her voice my old voice but tight with strain. She pressed the cool towel to my knee. Our eyes met. In that glance, I saw my own horror reflected, compounded by her guilt. She had lived in this body. She knew exactly what every sensation felt like, what it meant.
“Thanks, Justin,” I said, the name tasting like a lie.
“No problem,” she grumbled, standing up quickly. She couldn’t look at Mark.
“So,” Mark said, popping the top on a fresh beer and handing it to me, ignoring Sabrina completely. “You’re a scrappy one. Most girls would be crying over a scratch like that.”
I took the beer, sipped. The taste was still bitter, alien. My new tongue mapped the hops differently. “It’s just skin,” I said, trying for nonchalance.
He leaned in, his voice dropping so only I could hear. The party noise—the splash of the pool, the stereo, the laughter—faded into a muffled roar. “It’s very nice skin, Sabrina. Smooth. Soft. I bet it marks up easy.”
The implication was a cold trickle down my spine. Before I could form a response, his hand was on my hip, his fingers slipping just under the string of the bikini bottom, resting on the crest of my pelvis. The intimacy of it stole my breath. This wasn’t a friendly pat. This was possession. He owned the space he touched.
“The game’s waiting,” he said, his thumb stroking once, a promise and a warning, before he turned and swaggered back to his position.
I stood there, frozen, the paper towel falling from my bleeding knee. The throb of the scrape was nothing. The real ache was deeper, a confused, shameful pulse radiating from the core of this borrowed body, a direct, traitorous answer to his touch. My skin felt too tight, too sensitive, humming with a map of nerves I’d never asked for.
Across the net, Mark smiled at me, all white teeth and confidence. He served the ball, a vicious, winning shot that nobody returned. His eyes never left mine.
The music from my old stereo shifted again, dipping into a slower, darker bassline that seemed to vibrate up through the concrete and into the hollows of my bones. The sun was lower, casting long, distorted shadows across the deck. The party was moving into a different phase, and I was trapped at its center, in a body that was learning to want things its mind screamed against. The game was far from over.