Typical Day
Allie Powers wakes with a start. She had that bizarre recurring dream again last night.
It begins inauspiciously enough: just Allie and an anthropomorphic toad named Sven baking cookies.
So far, so good. But then Sven gets upset and challenges Allie to a volleyball match, which she naturally accepts. The weird stuff doesn't happen until Allie gets to the locker room. She's doing her usual pre-game routine: suiting up, stretching, and getting totally psyched. Nothing out of the ordinary. That's when she sees him: a giant, living volleyball with a red face. It's trying to talk to her.
And that's how it ends, every time. For the life of her, she can't figure out what it means. Luckily for Allie, this dream always seems to wake her up exactly at 5:00AM, leaving her with just enough time to make it to morning workouts at 6:00AM.
Yay?
One coffee and half an orange-mango smoothie later, she arrives at the gym. It's a typical day at the office: she focuses on upper body strength, ab workouts, and agility exercises. As usual, these intense sessions are interspersed with impromptu dance breaks, which are (as usual) summarily squashed by Coach Spike.
Now that the team's thoroughly exhausted, it's time to…nap? Play some Destiny? Sunbathe? Ha, no way. After finishing in the weight room, the team gathers on the court for some open gym time. Allie plays a few scrimmages and does a few floor exercises before collapsing with exhaustion (only on the inside, of course) and breaking for the day.
Sweet freedom. Allie hustles home and collapses on her bed, dying for the sweet embrace of a midday nap. Unfortunately, she's too hyped from practice to sleep for more than a few minutes. So she lies in bed and plays with her phone instead, where she watches the new Kendrick Lamar music video, checks Facebook, gets deep into some Instagram-stalking...
A class, she suddenly remembers, that she's now five minutes late for.
Allie sprints across campus, a half-frozen, not-so-hot pocket in her hand. "I can't believe I completely forgot about class," she thinks to herself, now starting to sweat into the same stinky workout clothes she started the day in. She can only hope that nobody she knows will be sitting near her.
Class has already started, so Allie doesn't have any time to scope things out. Luckily, she manages to slip in unnoticed as Professor Murbles drones on in his usual monotone.
"...and if you listen, I believe, to the eminent thinkers of history—to the truly great men—then you'd be forced to admit, in actuality, that you might be making an unfair presumption and…"
Allie is asleep before he finishes his sentence.
The rest of the day is a blur. Although she can make split-second calculations about the amount of force needed to expertly spike a volleyball, Allie has trouble applying that theoretical knowledge to her physics pop quiz.
On the other hand, she actually enjoys her ancient mythology class today, which focuses on the legendary Volleyballas Tribe of South America and their chief god, Wilson. Despite that, she's still dead tired by the time she makes the trek home.
Allie lugs her exhausted self through her front door. Before she collapses (literally this time) into a pool of her own sweat and disillusionment, she sees that her teammates/roommates are already cooking dinner. Allie begins to chat with her friends, slowly beginning to feel whole again after that brutal day.
They touch on team gossip (word is that Sam gave that freshman a dome-shot on purpose) and typical college nonsense (Kafka is, like, so weird).
Allie munches on steamed veggies and sautéed chicken breast and finally feels at ease.
After watching a few episodes of The Bachelor, Allie decides it's time to call it a night. It's only 10:00PM, but such is life for a college volleyball player. She still has homework to do for Professor Murbles, but she can't muster the energy right now. She'll have to spend a couple hours in study hall tomorrow. She lies in bed, exhausted, drifting slowly into sleep...
"I've been waiting for you," a deep voice intones. It's him: Wilson, the talking volleyball that's been haunting Allie's dreams.
"You are the One: the greatest volleyball player of all time," he says. "Your spikes are legendary and I totally dig your digs. Listen to me, my child...follow the way of the Volleyballas…"
Or something like that: she's forgotten most of the dream by the time she wakes up. At 5:00AM the next morning, when her alarm buzzes her awake, all she knows is that she's somehow still stoked to get up and do it all again.