Sparks Will Fly

Prologue

“Congrats, man! Welcome to the team!” Those words, spoken somewhere to my right, are my signal to vacate the immediate vicinity.

Given today’s events, my attendance at this party seems questionable at best. Who goes to a house party after having their hopes and dreams crushed on a Friday afternoon?

Me, I guess. The latest in a string of questionable and unenthusiastic decisions: broke up with my girlfriend, took my sister to a roller rink and sprained my ankle, took a job that’s already crushing my soul, fooled myself into thinking I could get on a heavyweight team, and applied for his heavyweight team. Way to go, Mari. Classic.

It’s not that I’m bitter. I’m disappointed.

Okay, and maybe a little bitter.

The house is packed, the air thick with the heat of too many bodies and smelling of alcohol. I maneuver my body through the gaps in the crowd, eager to be out of this house, at least for a moment.

The night air is blissfully cool as I push through the kitchen door onto the back porch. It’s dark, and the music and voices fade as the door closes behind me with a dull thump. It’s the break I need.

I replay the events in my head as I slump onto a bench. I’ve worked so hard. My beetleweight and featherweight bots are good. My engineering is solid. But it isn’t good enough. Over and over, I’m not good enough.

And then there’s the guy who is good enough. Good enough to win. Good enough to be on Circuit Smack. Good enough to have his own team. Jacob Moore. Too good for me now, it seems.

I hoped now that he’s back, we could pick up where we left off as friends when he moved for college.

We both have time for friends now that we’re both semi-stable adults and done with the rigors of grad school.

Maybe I’d even work up the nerve to act on the crush I’ve been harboring since I was practically a child.

But that crush is gone, along with my dignity. I take a large drink of the cheap alcohol sloshing around in my cup.

“You’ll never be a good fit for this team.”

The words echo in my head, a kaleidoscope of disappointment and anger. The world spins around me. My eyes close as I beg it to stop.

Garbled voices float through the kitchen window, becoming clearer as they near.

“Dude, come on. You didn’t have to be so mean. She was crushed,” a man’s voice says.

“Then she won’t apply again,” a second voice replies. The same one that eviscerated me mere hours ago.

“Jacob.”

“The risk of working with Mari is too high. It’d be a disaster. The lack of impulse control and focus would be explosive. Might as well never plan on winning if she’s on the team.”

The world has stopped spinning, and twirling stars have been replaced with a thick curtain of red. The continued conversation is inaudible beneath the waterfall of rage crashing through my body as I stomp across the porch and back through the kitchen door.

It occurs to me, as drops of my drink splash off Jacob and land on me, that maybe he is right. Maybe my lack of impulse control is something to work on. But I leave those thoughts behind with the empty cup and the soaking Jacob as I push through the party to leave.