The Scholarship Between Us

Nora's POV

The gym is supposed to be locked at six.

It isn't, because Manny on the night crew likes me better than he likes the rulebook, and because I bought him a coffee every morning for three weeks straight back in April until he finally just gave me the code.

"You know if Coach finds out I let you in here off-season, he's gonna have my head," Manny says, propping the side door open with his hip while I duck under his arm with a duffel bag and a ball cart I definitely should not be pushing by myself.

"Coach isn't going to find out."

"Coach finds out everything. It's unnatural."

"Then I guess you should've locked the door properly." I flash him a grin over my shoulder. "See you at seven."

"It's not even six-thirty, Vance."

"Exactly. Plenty of time."

The gym at this hour belongs to nobody. That's the thing I love about it, no squeaking shoes but mine, no coach barking rotations, no scoreboard keeping track of anything. Just me, forty-two volleyballs, and the particular kind of quiet that only exists before the sun's fully up.

I set my phone against the ball cart and hit play on the same warm-up playlist I've used since sophomore year. Then I start serving.

Thwack. Deep corner, in.

Thwack. Line shot, just out.

Thwack. Deep corner again, in.

By the time I've gone through the cart twice, my shoulder's loose and my brain's finally quiet, which is really the whole point. I'm not out here at six in the morning because I think I need extra reps nobody else is getting okay, that's part of it, I'm out here because this is the only hour of the day where nobody's watching me and expecting something.

"You're going to blow out your shoulder before September."

I nearly drop the ball I'm holding. Priya's leaning in the doorway in sweatpants and one shoe, the other dangling from her hand like she got dressed on the way over.

"You scared the hell out of me."

"You scare easy for someone who wakes up at five-thirty on purpose." She drops her shoe, sits down to put it on properly. "Manny texted me. Said you conned your way in again."

"I didn't con anybody. I have a system."

"Your system is bribery."

"My system is incentives." I toss her a ball. "Set for me."

She groans but gets up, jogging out to the net anyway, because Priya complains about everything and shows up for all of it, which is basically her whole personality and also why she's been my best friend since we were nineteen and terrified freshmen at the same tryout.

"So," she says, once we've got a rhythm going her setting, me hammering it down the line. "Why the six a.m. special today specifically? Season doesn't start for two weeks."

"Can't a person just want to get better?"

"A person can. You specifically get up at dawn when you're stressed about something." She sets me another one, watches me put it away. "Is it the scholarship thing?"

I don't answer right away, which is answer enough, and she knows it, because she doesn't push, just keeps setting.

"Coach Reyes from the advising office wants to see me Thursday," I finally say.

"Okay. That doesn't sound catastrophic."

"It's about my GPA."

Priya catches the next ball instead of setting it, holds it against her hip. "Your GPA is fine."

"My GPA is a 2.9, which is fine for staying enrolled and not fine for keeping the merit portion of my scholarship, which is the part that actually matters, because the athletic portion doesn't cover housing." I say it fast, like ripping off a bandage, because if I say it slow I start doing the math again and the math never gets less scary no matter how many times I run it.

"Since when is this a problem? You've never told me this is a problem."

"Since I decided telling people makes it real." I serve another ball, harder than I mean to, and it clips the tape and drops dead on our side. "It's fine. I have a plan."

"What's the plan?"

"Study more. Play better. Get a partial upgrade to full ride if I have a big enough season, because apparently that's a thing that happens if scouts notice you, according to literally one email Coach Marsh forwarded me in March that I have read probably forty times."

Priya sets down her ball completely now, hands on her hips, giving me the look. The one she's had since freshman year, the one that means I love you and you're about to get a lecture.

"Nora. You cannot single-handedly outplay a bad GPA."

"Watch me."

"I'm serious"

"So am I." I collect three balls off the floor, stack them against my hip. "I've got two weeks before real practice starts. I'm not spending them worrying. I'm spending them getting good enough that worrying stops mattering."

She's quiet for a second, studying me the way she does when she's deciding whether to keep arguing or let it go.

"Does Coach Marsh know? About the GPA thing?"

"God, no. Why would I tell him?"

"Because he's your coach, Nora. Literally his job."

"His job is winning games. My grades are my business." I bounce the ball twice, more out of habit than focus. "Besides, he's got enough going on. His kid's transferring in this fall, apparently, so he's been weird and distracted for weeks."

"Wait, Coach has a kid?"

"Apparently. Never met him. Nobody has. Marsh doesn't exactly do personal life small talk."

"Huh." Priya files that away with the specific interest she reserves for gossip, then seems to remember she was in the middle of losing an argument. "Anyway. Don't change the subject."

"I'm not changing the subject, I'm ending it. There's a difference."

She lets it go, which is one of the many reasons I love her.

"Fine. Then let's actually work instead of you doing therapy-serves at an empty net." She jogs back to position. "Six sets, then I want your slide approach, because it was garbage in the spring."

"It was not garbage."

"Nora. It was structurally concerning."

"That's rude and also probably fair." I get into position, bounce twice, toss the ball high. "One more thing."

"What."

"Don't tell anyone about the GPA thing. Not even the team."

"Obviously." She sets, waits. "You know eventually you're gonna have to let people help you carry stuff, right? Not just show up at dawn and grind it out alone every time something scares you."

"I'm not scared."

"You're up at six a.m. hitting balls into an empty gym, Vance."

"That's not fear. That's a Tuesday." I hit the approach actually clean this time, weight forward, wrist snapping over the top the way it's supposed to and the ball rockets down the line and dies in the corner before she can even react.

"Okay," Priya says, grudging. "That one was good."

"Told you."

"Don't get smug, it's one hit."

"It's one perfect hit. There's a difference."

"You're insufferable before seven a.m., you know that?"

"I'm insufferable after seven a.m. too. Six is just when you're unlucky enough to witness it." I toss her the ball back and roll my shoulder, testing it. "Again."

"You said six sets. That was four."

"I can count, Priya."

"Could've fooled me, with the way you're doing math on your scholarship at dawn instead of sleeping like a normal twenty-one-year-old." She sets it high, deliberately soft, the kind of set she gives freshmen. "Approach again. Slower this time. Show me the footwork, not just the finish."

"You're such a setter. Always worried about the boring part."

"The boring part is the part that keeps you from blowing your knee out in November." She claps twice, impatient. "Go."

I go. Three steps, plant, arm back and this time I actually listen, actually slow it down the way she's asking, and the difference is obvious even to me. Cleaner. Less like I'm fighting the ball and more like I'm just finishing a sentence it already started.

"There," she says. "That's the one Marsh is gonna want to see."

"Marsh doesn't need to see anything. He already knows what I can do."

"Marsh knows what you did last year. This is a different year." She tosses me the last ball in her hand, thoughtful now instead of teasing. "You know that's allowed too, right? Being a different, better version of yourself. Doesn't have to be about survival every single time."

I don't really have an answer for that, so I hit the ball instead, and it's not my cleanest one of the morning, which feels like some kind of small, annoying proof that she's right.

"You told me nothing, you deflected an entire conversation with a kill shot."

"It worked, didn't it?"

She laughs despite herself, tosses me another ball, and for a while neither of us says anything else that matters just serve, set, hit, the particular music of a gym that's supposed to be empty and isn't, sunlight starting to come sideways through the high windows while somewhere outside, the rest of campus is only just waking up.

This is the part nobody sees. Not the games, not the crowd, not whatever happens in September when real stakes show up wearing a jersey. Just this, me, one friend willing to get up early for me, and a net that doesn't care what my GPA is, only whether I can put the ball where I say I will.

I can. I have to be able to. There isn't really a version of this where I can't.

"Six more sets," Priya calls, already tossing.

I get into position and don't think about Thursday at all.