Chapter 6 Remember to Not Think
“Eleanore? Do you understand?” Sierra asks for what could very well be the thirteenth time in the past ten minutes.
She’s been trying to further explain some of the basics of beach volleyball to me, and though she’s certainly a good teacher, showing me exactly what I need to do with my hands to gain control over the ball, I still have no idea what I’m doing whenever she lets go of me.
Sierra sighs at the sight of my blank face.
“Right. Okay,” she says. “Maybe we should just play and go from there.” She throws the beach volleyball she was holding at me, and I manage to catch it before it can hit me in the face.
Nice reflexes, the voice in my head compliments me, but a second later Sierra murmurs something to herself and tells me, “You’re not supposed to catch the ball. Just…pass it back to me, and we’ll try to keep it up in the air for as long as possible.”
I do as she says, throwing the ball upward, then quickly making a cup out of my hands and holding them above my head.
My fingers aren’t too relaxed but aren’t too tense, either.
It’s all about finding the perfect balance between those two, apparently.
When the ball nears my face, I push it toward Sierra, and unlike yesterday, I don’t feel like I’ve broken multiple bones in the process, which is progress, I guess.
It doesn’t take long for the ball to hit the sand, though. But we try again. Again, again, again.
“Keep going,” Sierra says after a while.
By this point I’ve definitely broken my personal record.
I’m a little out of breath already, my forehead covered in sweat even though I haven’t been running around nearly as much as my partner.
Sierra, however, doesn’t seem tired yet, because right when I start to feel like I could become good at this, she announces, “Let’s make this a little harder. ”
Just like that, she puts some more distance between us, taking quite a few big steps away from me before finally coming to a stop. For the first time in the history of ever, dropping headfirst into the sand is really tempting.
But the ball goes back up in the air, and somehow I find motivation to keep going.
I stretch my arms out, bringing them together and angling them until they form a flat-enough surface to be able to guide the ball back to Sierra.
It makes its way over to her in a close-to-perfect arc, giving her all the time in the world to pass it back to me in an easy way.
Instead, she spikes the ball, and I have to throw myself into the sand to save it from facing the same horrible fate.
Right as the ball hits me, I realize my arms are going to be unbelievably red by the end of this. Not from sunburn—I applied lots of sunscreen, thank you very much—but from this girl’s ability to smack a ball like it personally attacked her innocent grandma.
We go on like that for a long time, just passing the ball to each other over and over again, until Sierra dives into the sand in hopes of getting to my exceptionally badly played ball in time.
Somehow, against all odds, she manages to keep it up in the air, but she does inhale a whole lot of sand in the process.
I rush to her side, leaving the ball to its own fate.
“Okay, okay,” Sierra says through her coughs. I try patting her on the back, but she immediately waves me away. “We should probably take a little break.”
“Or,” I propose as we sit down on a bench, “we could just, you know, stop for today.”
Sierra takes a long, long sip of water, and I almost dare to get hopeful. Almost. But of course, all she says to that is “Good joke.”
“Anyway,” she continues, looking right at me yet still ignoring my over-the-top pleading expression, “I was thinking that, to save time and all, we could use these breaks to work on that first goal of yours? So, for the next”—she glances at the time on her phone—“fifteen minutes, we can play a game that’ll make you overthink less and say what’s on your mind more. Sound good?”
Once I’ve nodded in defeat, she quickly explains the rules to me. “It basically goes like this: I ask a question, we discuss our answers, then it’s your turn to ask something, and so on. Got it?”
“Loud and clear, boss,” I tell her, “but isn’t this game of yours just…having a two-sided conversation?”
“Last time I checked, I’m the teacher here,” she reminds me. She takes another sip of water, this time a quick one, before she starts. “First question: Who is your favorite person in the world?”
I don’t have to think about this too much. Even after everything—the distance and the hurtful comments—it will always be Noah. “Definitely my brother,” I tell Sierra.
She waits for a second, and another, and another. For a moment, I wonder if, to an only child, it’s weird to be close to your siblings, but then she finally asks, “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
I avoid her brown eyes as she arches an eyebrow at me. “You promised not to judge me, Sierra,” I say.
“I’m not judging,” she tells me, holding her hands up in the air as if claiming her innocence. She’s quiet. Then she sighs. “Okay, I see. Now, why don’t you ask a question next?”
I press my lips together for a second. “Okay. Um,” I say as I’m thinking of what to ask. Eventually, I offer, “What’s your favorite color?”
Immediately, Sierra raises an eyebrow at me. Again. “What is this? Get to Know Each Other: Kindergarten Edition?”
“Hey! Stop judging! Simple questions can lead to meaningful conversations, too,” I argue. “Maybe there’s a really sentimental reason why you like a color, or maybe it just really matches your vibe. Who knows if you don’t ask?”
“Sure,” she says, stretching out the sound in a way that lets me know she absolutely does not agree with me. “I just like green because I like green, though. Nothing more to it than that.”
I smile at her, knowing exactly how to corner her here. “Which tells me you’re a very no-nonsense type of person.”
She rolls her eyes at me but decides not to discuss this further—I assume because deep down she knows she’s lost. I’m a second away from flashing her a victorious smile when Sierra sighs and says, “Just tell me the oh-so-deep meaning behind your love for your favorite color.”
She looks at me as I let a silence fill the air between us for one, two, three seconds. Then longer and longer and longer until, after a while, she breaks it to say, “You can’t seriously be overthinking what your favorite color is…”
“I’m not!” I assure her, an unnecessary blush warming my cheeks. “I’m overthinking what to say about my favorite color. Which is red, by the way.”
“I know. You make that abundantly clear with your outfits,” she says dryly, even though I miraculously haven’t worn anything red at camp yet. Huh.
She takes me in for a moment, her eyes scanning me from my face to my shoulders to my hands, which I’m nervously playing with. She’s concentrating so hard that I can’t help but wonder what Sierra sees when she looks at me.
Am I that girl from back home, the one she remembers passing in the hallways at school?
Am I a person she’ll get to know better now, someone who could eventually become a friend, even though she’s not looking for one?
Or am I just a burden to her, too? The girl who’s making her summer at beach volleyball camp harder than it should be?
I look at her, trying to read what’s on her mind. But I don’t even know what I see when I look at Sierra, let alone what she thinks when she sees me.
Suddenly she gets up, and I tear my gaze away from her, scared I’ve made her uncomfortable with my accidental staring. “Break is over,” she lets me know.
I stay put, my eyes widening. “Um, I was promised fifteen whole minutes—not seconds.”
For the first time, I see something close to a smile on Sierra’s face. Not necessarily because of her lips but because of the spark in her eyes. Glad to see my misery is so amusing, I almost tell her, but before I can open my mouth, she shakes her head.
“Just get up, Eleanore.”
And even though every single muscle in my body protests, I do.
She passes the ball to me, and our game picks up right where we left it. Only this time, Sierra doesn’t stay silent as we play. “So,” she starts, “it’s my turn to ask a question now. Tell me: What’s something that makes you feel totally at ease?”
I stay quiet, partly because I’m confused about what exactly it is that she’s doing and partly because I’m busy chasing a ball.
She’ll have to wait for my answer until I have more room to breathe, I decide, but then Sierra yells, “You have three seconds to speak, or I’ll spike without even a hint of mercy! ”
She starts counting down, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but hearing Sierra Levine scream the word spike at me is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. Normally when looking death in the eye, I freeze, but right now?
I pass the ball back to her again and quickly say, without thinking it over properly, “I GUESS I FEEL MOST AT EASE WHEN WRITING IN MY NOTEBOOK.”
The ball returns to me in a nice arc. I let out the breath I was completely aware I was holding, thinking for one peaceful moment that the coast is clear, but then Sierra demands, “Tell me more. What do you write?”
I’m just about to quickly shout the first answer that comes to mind again when she adds, “And please don’t scream this time. I can still feel your last words echoing in my ears.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to stay focused on the ball while also talking in a calm and collected manner.
“Well, I like planning. And making lists. And—I don’t know—even just writing myself vague notes I won’t know the meaning of two days later.
It might be weird”—I hit the ball—“but looking at my own life on paper makes me feel like I’m in control of it. Even when I’m not.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Sierra nod. “Things are always less complicated in theory.”