the fluorescent lighting casts her world into sickly yellow relief she taps her foot consciously keeping an uneasy rhythm with the POUNDING of the ball on the shellacked floors
and twenty sneakers squeak tauntingly echoing in her roaring ears and the sound of the crowd blends effortlessly with the rush of blood to her face she is blushing and she doesn’t know why maybe because her school is watching and she is stuck and she wants to go out there and play but she is chained to the metal bench and energy is building as her abductors and quadriceps prepare for her legs to leap and her brachia contract for that effortless shot and the swish of the basket is the ultimate reward it is a high better than morphine or heroin and she is jonesing for her next fix but she can’t escape from her confinement and she shouts internally that she wants to run to jump to dribble to shoot and adrenaline is churning in her delicate veins and she fears they will burst and the players with slip and slide in her blood but they don’t and that sadistic hormone courses throughout her and all she can do is tap Tap TAP her foot in time with the ball and she sees the game as a way to prove herself, some sick coming of age ceremony to show once and for all that Ellie Durling isn’t just brains and books and but passes and baskets too but when coach says “SUBS!” she isn’t one of the mystic five to voyage onto the court and defend their honor and with every spring of the ball and with every shove of the opposition and with every swish of the basket she wants to scream.

All this unseen from the world, but a relentless battle rages within her, while she sits so sedately, upon the Bench