Scene 1

“Hey, Natalie. You got a minute?”

She certainly doesn’t. It’s Tuesday afternoon, time for their unofficial weekly school-intern beach volleyball match. The professional all-female team against some of their male classmates. It’s always fun and almost fair.

“I’m a bit occupied right now,” she says. It’s strange since Steve told her he’d pass this week’s game. Why is he even here?

“Just five minutes, you’ll be back for the game.”

Natalie sights, “I’m setter. I can’t just leave and it’s not like I don’t need to warm up myself.” She hopes that explanation would deal with him but Steve doesn’t give in so easily.

“Julia! Do you mind filling in for Natalie for a second?”

Natalie rolls her eyes as Julia looks at her confused.

“I got to talk to her, it won’t take long. Can you fill in for her during the warm-up?” Steve adds.

“Sure,” Julia answers a bit hesitant.

Natalie focuses on Steve. “Is this really necessary?” she asks.

“Come on, I insist.”

Steve signs Natalie to come with him so they can have their conversation in peace.

Steve’s eyes find Daniel, his new friend. He is the one that jumped in for him in this week’s match. They both nod at each other. There’s no time for more since Daniel is next in line for the attack warm-up.

“What do you want?” Natalie asks with her hands stemmed onto her hips. She’s pissed that Steve has taken her out of the game. This better is important.

“Did anything happen between you and my sister?” She isn’t the only one that is pissed. But in contrast to Natalie who openly shows it, Steve has himself under control.

“You want to talk with me about your sister?” On Nat’s face he can see a short glimpse of confusion, then worry, and finally anger.

Steve only nods.

“Nothing happened,” she rolls her eyes, “are we done?”

Daniel looks over to his friend talking to Natalie. He realizes, that Steve’s hands are squeezed into fists. Quickly he gets into his head and doesn’t like what he finds. “Oh, boy,” he thinks and gives his ball to the next in line. That’s definitely a situation he should intervene or the other part of the dream team might do something he regrets.

“Well, that’s a lie.” Steve gets more and more annoyed by his step-sister’s best friend. “She is not this upset from nothing. So, what is it? Did you two have a fight?”

Natalie looks shocked. Again, only for a moment but Steve notices it. Then it’s like she puts her facade back on. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Listen, I got to warm up. You won’t make me lose the game for this bullshit.”

As Natalie tries to walk back to the field Steve grabs her arm, “We’re not done yet.”

Daniel jumps in, “The game is about to start. Natalie, your team wants their setter back they complain about not being able to warm up properly. I’d say that’s bullshit. Julia does a pretty good job but we don’t want you guys to have something to blame your upcoming loss on.”

Steve lets go of her arm and looks at his friend confused. What was that about? Yeah, the girls probably bitch about not having their usual setter but the way Daniel said that sounded an awful lot like an excuse to intervene. Probably for the best, if he thinks about it. Who knows where this conversation would have gone otherwise? When it comes to the people he cares about, Steve’s pretty short-tempered.

“You should talk to your sister, “Daniel says and winks at his friend, “if you feel like confronting Natalie afterward, tell me first, I’ll make popcorn and bring a camping chair.” He laughs but Steve isn’t in the mood.

“Trust me,” Daniel adds and leaves his friend on the sideline.

As Steve’s about to walk back to his car, he sees a man with a baseball cap and sunglasses. It looks like he was watching the conversation. He is too old to be a student and Steve knows all the teachers. Maybe just a creep, he thinks. Steve brushes the thought away and continues his way home. There are other things for him to worry about.



Scene 2

Steve knocks on the doorframe as he enters his step-sister’s room. “You’re hungry?”

Jenny is laying face down on her bed, probably crying into her pillow. It seems like she didn’t even hear her brother’s question.

Steve gently puts his hand on her back and Jenny shrugs together. She rolls to her side and looks as if he scared the living shit out of her. “How did you get in here?” She asks, now more confused than afraid. Her face got softer when she realized that it’s just her brother.

Steve hands her a bar of chocolate and sits down on the edge of her bed. “Well, the door was unlocked,” he explains.

“I must have forgotten …,” Jenny thinks aloud but stops mid-sentence.

Steve raises an eyebrow. He’s got this ‘give me more information, I don’t understand’ face that he perfected over the years.

“I must have forgotten to lock the door after I went to the toilet,” Jenny adds sheepishly.

Steve gives her a warm and comforting smile. He’s still sitting on the edge of her bed and Jenny slowly moves to sit right next to him. She opens the bar he gave her and begins to eat. After a while she asks, “You want some?”

Steve nods and takes a rip. “You want to talk about why it needed chocolate to make you stop crying?”

She does, but she also doesn’t. Jenny leans her head against his shoulder and begins to explain, “It’s about Natalie.”

That much, he already knew but it’s not the time nor the place to bring that up. Instead, he listens in silent reassurance.

“She … She …” his sister stumbles as she tries to get out the sentence, “She asked if I wanted to go to prom with her.”

That’s why she’s crying, Steve thinks? For a second he can’t control himself and lets out a little laugh. Quickly, he goes back to a straight face as he realizes what a fool, he made out of himself earlier and why Daniel intervened.

“Hey, I’m serious.”

Steve apologizes. “And you’re crying because you said no even though you wanted to say yes?” He’s just guessing there. Give her something so she can get her story out.

Jenny is surprised. With widened eyes, she responds, “You think I wanted to say yes?”

“So, you don’t want to go to prom with Natalie?” Steve figures.

Jenny looks a little bit like a dear in the headlights. A tear runs down her cheek. “No … yes … I don’t know.”

Well, that’s not helpful, Steve thinks and specifies his question, “What did you say to her, Jenny?”

“I didn’t say anything!” She sniffs.

“I see,” Steve responds. In his head, he goes through all the possible reasons why Jenny wouldn’t want to go to prom with her best friend. Well, his sister is obviously bisexual, that much he knows but maybe she doesn’t want to admit that. To herself or to the public, it would be a big step, that’s for sure …

Jenny rips his thoughts apart, “No, you don’t see!” she screams, “I don’t even know if she’s been serious about it.”

Steve raises his eyebrows.

“Well, she asked me casually. You know how she is. Maybe she only thought that it would be funny since we both don’t have a date and all.”

“Maybe she really wants you to be her date,” Steve adds.

Jenny lets herself fall back onto her bed and grunts in frustration.

“Would you want her to be serious about it?” Steve asks.

Before Jenny gets to answer the doorbell rings. Saved by the bell.

Steve wants to take it but a silent “Fuck” holds him back. He looks at his sister and finds a shocked face.

“That’s Natalie,” she says and looks to her brother for help.

“How do you know?”

“Well, she texted me and maybe I ghosted her because I didn’t know what to say, and then she wrote that she’d come to our house after the match.”

Steve checks the time on his phone. There is no way that the match is over yet.

“Tell her, I’m not here,” Jenny pleads.

Steve raises an eyebrow, “You want me to lie to your friend? Also, I’m pretty sure she won’t believe me anyway.”

Jenny looks like she doesn’t have an answer for her brother.

Steve sights. “I’m going to take care of it.”



Scene 3

It takes Natalie a second to realize that it’s Steve and not Jenny that opened the door.