Chapter 1: The Humiliating Selection
The heat coming off the cracked concrete court was a physical thing, a wall of shimmering air that smelled of hot sand, cheap sunscreen, and stale beer. The economics department’s annual beach tournament was less a sporting event and more a public spectacle of humiliation, dressed up in volleyball shorts and bikinis.
I was just trying to get to the water.
A hand shot out from the crowd gathered around the warped net, fingers digging into my forearm with desperate strength. I looked down into the wide, panic-stricken blue eyes of Dasha Petrova. Her long blonde hair was piled in a messy knot, strands already plastered to her neck with sweat. She wore a royal blue bikini that showed off a curvy, athletic frame built more for a gym than this sun-baked concrete purgatory.
“You,” she breathed, her voice trembling. “You have to be my partner.”
The crowd around us, a mix of economics majors and drunk spectators on the half-collapsed bleachers, let out a collective jeer. Someone wolf-whistled. Dasha flinched, her grip tightening.
“They just called my name,” she hissed, leaning close. The scent of her panic was sharp, cutting through the coconut oil and sweat. “It’s a mandatory participation thing for the department social. I didn’t know. I thought I could just watch.”
“So watch,” I said, trying to gently pry her fingers loose. Her skin was hot, almost feverish.
“No. You don’t understand.” Her gaze darted toward the other side of the net, where two guys from the senior econ class were stretching with smug, lazy grins. They were good. Everyone knew they were good. “If you lose… the winners get to pick the punishment. For the whole next department social. It’s tradition.”
The tradition was infamous. Last year’s losers had to serve the winners dressed as butlers and maids while being pelted with grapes. The year before that, it was a karaoke apology song written by the victors. It was juvenile, brutal, and the entire department lived for it.
“Dasha, I’m not even in econ. I’m poli-sci. This isn’t my fight.”
“Please.” The word was stripped of all her usual pride. I knew her by reputation—a fierce, competitive law student who argued mock trials like a gladiator. Seeing her like this, reduced to a trembling figure in a bikini on this stupid court, was wrong. “I can’t play with any of them.” She gestured vaguely at the leering crowd. “They’ll try to… I don’t know. They’ll get in my head. You’re quiet. You just watch. You see the game.”
It was true. I’d been standing at the fringe, observing the mechanics of the social hierarchy play out in real time. It was more interesting than the volleyball.
The professor with the clipboard, his face red and shining, bellowed over the pulsing music from a portable speaker. “Dasha Petrova! Need a partner in ten seconds or you forfeit! Automatic loss!”
A forfeit loss would be worse. More humiliating. The punishment would be especially creative.
Her eyes locked on mine. All the frantic energy condensed into a single, clear point of sheer will. “I will never ask you for anything again. Ever. Just… stand there. Try to get the ball back to me. I’ll do the rest.”
The two seniors on the other side started clapping slowly, sarcastically. “Clock’s ticking, Petrova! Maybe you should’ve spent less time in the library and more time on the beach!”
That did it. A flash of pure fury cut through her panic. Her spine straightened.
“Fine,” I said.
I didn’t say it loud, but she heard it. The relief that washed over her face was instant, and it was followed immediately by a mask of fierce concentration. She dragged me onto the court. The sand was hot and gritty under my bare feet, clinging between my toes.
“What are the rules?” I muttered as we took our positions. She was taking the back, clearly planning to cover most of the court.
“First to fifteen. Winners’ serves. No rotation. Just don’t let the ball hit the ground on our side.” She shot a glance at me over her shoulder. “And for god’s sake, if you’re going to bump it, aim for me. Not the parking lot.”
The serve came fast and high, a vicious arc aimed directly at the gap between us. Dasha moved like lightning, a blur of tanned skin and blue fabric. She was already there, arms connecting with a solid thump that sent the ball rocketing back in a clean, straight line. It hit the concrete between the two guys before they could even react.
The small crowd oohed.
Point to us. 1-0.
The smug grins on the other side faded. The next serve was more strategic, aimed hard at me. I saw it coming, felt the entire crowd lean forward. My arms came up, hands clasped together awkwardly. The impact stung my forearms, but the ball popped up, too high and too far back.
Dasha was already moving. She sprinted, launched herself sideways, and got a fingertip on it, just enough to keep it in play. It sailed wildly toward the sagging net. I scrambled forward, leaping as the other team moved in for the kill. I barely grazed it, a pathetic little tap that sent it skimming the net tape.
It trickled over.
2-0.
Dasha got to her feet, brushing sand from her knees. She looked at me, really looked, and gave me a single, sharp nod. It was the smallest acknowledgment, but it felt like a bolt of electricity. This was no longer just her humiliation to avoid. It was a game. A stupid, high-stakes, potentially deeply embarrassing game.
And we were winning.
For now.
The other team called a time-out, huddling together, their voices low and serious. One of them, a guy named Mark with a perpetual sneer, kept looking at Dasha, then at me, then back at Dasha. He was calculating.
Dasha came over, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her breathing was even, controlled. “They’re going to change tactics. They’ll start aiming everything at you. They’ll try to fluster me by making me watch you fail.”
“Charming.”
“Just keep your arms firm. Don’t try to be fancy. Just a platform.” She leaned in, her voice dropping. “And don’t listen to anything they say.”
The game resumed. Mark served. It was a soft, loopy serve, a total change from his earlier power. It drifted right to me. An easy pass. Too easy.
As I moved to receive it, Mark’s voice cut through the focused silence. “Careful, Dasha. Your ringer looks a little shaky. You sure he knows which way the net is?”
I bumped the ball. It went straight to Dasha’s waiting hands. She set it perfectly for herself and jumped, spiking it directly at Mark’s chest. He barely got his arms up in time to block it out of bounds.
3-0.
Dasha landed, her eyes blazing. She didn’t look at me.
But Mark’s tactic was working on a different level. The pressure was shifting. Every serve now came to me. Soft, hard, short, deep. They were testing, probing. My passes weren’t pretty, but most of them found Dasha. We scored two more points on her kills.
5-0.
The crowd was getting into it, the jeers turning to shouts of genuine surprise. The underdog story.
Then Mark served another soft one. I moved, but my foot slipped on a patch of loose sand. The ball hit my wrists and flew backward, toward the rusty chain-link fence. A complete shank.
Dasha dove, a full-extension sprawl that sent her skidding across the concrete. She saved it, but the pop-up was a free gift for the other team. Their other player, a lanky guy named Troy, smashed it into the empty space where Dasha had just been.
Point to them. 5-1.
Dasha got up slowly. A long, red scrape bloomed on her hip and thigh. Sand was ground into the raw skin.
“Time,” I called, walking toward her.
“We don’t have time-outs,” she said through gritted teeth, not looking at the wound.
“We do now.” I stood between her and the other team. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. They’re targeting me to get to you. It’s working.”
She finally looked at me, the law student sharpness returning to her eyes. “So what’s your legal argument, poli-sci? What’s the strategy?”
I looked past her at Mark and Troy, who were sharing a water bottle and laughing. “They think this is a foregone conclusion. They think I’m the weakness. So we use that.”
“How?”
“They’re sending every serve to me, right? So we stop trying to give you perfect sets from my passes. We’ll give them exactly what they expect—weak, high passes from me right near the net. And you be ready.”
Understanding dawned on her face, then a slow, dangerous smile. “A decoy pass. They’ll both go up for the block, thinking I’m going to spike.”
“And you tip it right over their heads, into the dead spot behind them.”
She held my gaze for a long second. The fear was gone, burned away by the heat of competition and the promise of a good trick. “You’re not just a quiet watcher, are you?”
“Let’s just win this,” I said.
The game restarted. Mark served to me, again. I shuffled my feet, making my movement look clumsy and rushed. I bumped the ball. It went high, too close to the net, just like we planned. It was a sitter.
As predicted, both Mark and Troy leaped, hands reaching high to form a solid wall, already cheering their anticipated block.
Dasha didn’t jump. She stayed planted, cocked her wrist, and with a delicate, almost dismissive touch, used the tips of her fingers to redirect the ball. It arced softly over the outstretched hands of the blockers and dropped, with a faint puff of sand, into the empty center of their court.
Silence for a heartbeat.
Then our side of the bleachers erupted.
6-1.
Dasha turned to me, the dusky gold of her skin flushed with triumph and the afternoon sun. The scrape on her leg looked like a war paint. The look she gave me wasn’t just gratitude. It was recognition. A pact forged in the stupid, high-stakes sand of a rigged game.
Mark’s sneer had vanished. He stared at us, his eyes narrowed not with humor, but with a cold, calculating anger. He’d been made a fool of.
He served again, hard and angry now. The ball rocketed toward the back corner. Dasha called “Mine!” and took it, but her pass was off. It sent me running toward the sideline, with no angle and the net right in front of me. I had one option. I jumped, not to spike, but to just get it over.
As I hung in the air, I saw Mark’s eyes. They weren’t on the ball. They were fixed on Dasha, moving into position for a potential set. And his smile was back. A cruel, knowing thing.
He wasn’t playing for the point anymore. He was playing for the punishment. The game had just changed again.