Underlying Passion

I couldn’t believe it, finally, my graduation day. We all woke up earlier than usual to get ready for today. The girls, including me, we're going to the hairstylist, where we will get our hair ready, we then go back home to get our makeup done and ready, then we dressed up and we were ready to go.

I was wearing some running shorts and an oversized, navy blue hoodie to go to the hairstylist. I didn’t care, that morning was all booked for us, and I didn’t feel like dressing up cute to then take it off to put something off fancy again.

My hair looked amazing, it was half down half up, half of it was a beautiful thick braid as a low crown and my loose hair was wavy. It looked amazing, once I was done I went to get my make up done.

Once I was finished, I took a nice look at what I had done. It looked really good and Amber’s advice of using peachy colours on my eyelids to accentuate my green eyes helped me out. My brows looked nice, I naturally had a nice set of brows, so I just added a bit of definition to make them perfect. I put on some nude lip gloss on and I was done.

It was time for my jumpsuit, it was white and very elegant, it also cost me a fortune but luckily I’ll use it somewhat often. It was off the shoulder, with a big flounce. The upper part was very fitted, cinching my waist and then becoming loose from my hips downwards. It looked really nice and gave me a beautiful hourglass silhouette.

“Are you ready?” I ask her as I sit down on the bed, putting my high heels on.

“And... done!” She announces.

“Wow,” I say as she enters the room, her two-piece looked nice on her, her black hair looked slick and shiny and her makeup was on point.

“No, you wow,” she says as I get up once I’m finished putting my shoes.

“Nah, I’m okay, but you... Seriously everyone is going to be looking at you,” I affirm, she looked gorgeous.

“Ughh, shut up, you’re going to make me blush,” she says and grabs our gowns and hats, “catch,” she says as she throws them I catch them and we leave the place.

I grab my phone to check where James and the rest of my friends are. We finally meet and we start comparing and judging outfits. The guys looked all the same, so there wasn’t a lot to discuss there and as a big part of our friends were guys, the complimenting outfits part with them was over with quite quickly.

“Jessica, you look amazing,” I compliment her red mid-length dress.

“Thanks, you look great too,” she said as she looked me up and down, at that moment I felt a bit body-conscious, but luckily the life of the party, also known as James came through.

“Ladies, gentlemen, whatever you are,” he said referring to me.

I smiled at him unimpressed, “you can’t insult me looking like that.”

“I can, and I just did,” he snapped.

I shook my head playfully and I changed my focus into the group. “So, what were we talking about before James rudely interrupted us?”

“Umm, about your jumpsuit looking gorgeous on you,” Jessica said with a wink and I smiled proudly at her comment.

“Now that’s called exaggerating,” he points out.

“You’re jealous because we can’t say the same thing about you,” I responded.

“As if I care about your lame opinions,” he said sarcastically.

“Olivia!” Someone called me, I look back already anticipating who is it.

“Girls!” I greet them as I go running towards them to hug them.

“You know, we needed to give our last goodbye with our captain,” they say and I laugh.

“Don’t you have drills to do?” I ask jokingly.

“Nah, Coach is too busy crying in the bathroom trying to figure out how to win next year without you,” Caroline, an attacker like me said.

“I told you girls a million times, this is a team sport and one person leaving won’t change anything because we still have 11 amazing players out there,” I say. “Every time we win is because we played like winners, not because I happen to have the ball and I end up scoring.”

“Still, your speeches are always the best, you motivate us and care for us, who is going to be our captain now?” Caroline asks.

“I already talked to Coach about it, and he’s on board with it, so you’ll know who then, and trust me, she’s going to be far better than I ever was,” I tell them. “Shout?” I ask.

They don’t respond, we just make a circle and we do our shout.

“I have to go now,” I say and we all hug.

“Bye,” they say as they begin to leave.

“The tough life of being a student-athlete,” James says mockingly.

“The jealousy, didn’t you try out for the lacrosse team?” I ask.

“I did and so did you,” he said.

“Yeah, but I got in,” I respond.

“Hey, I nearly got in,” he replies.

“Keyword: nearly,” I answer.

“We should get going,” Jessica said.

We all nodded and began to walk there.

“I still don’t find lacrosse appealing,” Amber commented as we walked.

“And I still don’t get why,” I responded.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad game but first it’s too much action, I’ve seen you playing, you’re all the time sprinting from one place to another, you make me nervous,” Amber confessed.

“You could be the goalie,” I answer.

“I prefer flirting with the lacrosse guys in the stands, watching you play,” Amber confesses.

I sigh.

“Whatever,” I comment, “by the way, James, is your brother coming at the end?” I ask him.

“He is actually” he replies.

“That’s great, your whole family is here,” I say. “Everyone in your family is also coming, right?” I ask Amber.

“Mhm,” she nods.

“This may sound stupid but I’m nervous about who I’m sitting with at the dinner,” I confess.

“I would be too, to be honest,” Amber responds.

“Hopefully, you don’t get stuck with an Asian family that doesn’t speak English,” James says.

“True, I just hope they’re Hispanic, so I can impress them with my Spanish,” I wink.

“You should talk more Spanish, to some extent it’s like your mother’s language,” James points out, “plus, Spanish is hot.”

“You wish, I’m not playing a role in one of your twisted sex fantasies,” I respond and they laugh.

“It was worth giving a try,” he responds.

“That’s the spirit,” Amber says as they high five inches away from my face.

“I don’t know how I always end up in between you two idiots,” I say.

“See, that’s where you go wrong, you’re the idiot and well, maybe Amber from time to time,” he responds.

“Hey!” Amber replies as we laugh.

“And we’re here,” Noah announces.

We take a quick glimpse of the place, ‘nice’ I think. We walk to the place where we are supposed to sit down. Me in between Amber and James.

The graduation was a bit slow for my liking, I got my diploma, I read out my speech about achievement and success and everything about work ethic and how that turned a no one like me into a graduate in Yale, captain and MVP of Yale’s lacrosse team. I liked my speech, the jokes were good as they were balanced out really well, so the speech still had that seriousness and motivation about it. Everyone applauds, content with my speech and I left the stage. Everyone then got up to talk with their families and I felt a bit lost.

I walked around the place, greeting friends on the way, a simple “hi,” was generally more than enough. Suddenly, I hear someone call my name and I turn around to see James with his parents.

“Olivia! You look stunning,” Evelyn says as she hugs me.

“Thank you, so do you,” I respond. “How did you find the graduation?” I ask.

“It was great, we really enjoyed your speech, you should be very proud of yourself, a shame that our eldest son had to take a call and couldn’t listen to it,” Evelyn replies.

“He didn’t miss a thing, but I’m very happy you enjoyed it, I bet you were the only one laughing at my jokes,” I pause, “out of pity but you laughed and that’s what counts,” I finished, earning a few laughs.

“So, do you know who you’re sitting with?” She asks.

“No, I still don’t know sadly, if I knew I would be talking with them to make dinner a bit less uncomfortable,” I reply.

“Aren’t you used to it?” William asked.

“I am, I started from such a young age, it’s just normal, to be honest, you learn about different family dynamics and how each react to a stranger, and generally it goes great but- and I’m sorry if I’m talking too much- this one time, we had a lacrosse team event and I sat down with the family of an Asian girl, who mainly played for the sake of writing it in her review for university and it was clear and more me being the captain and knowing all the girls, that she didn’t have a passion for the sport, and she,” and I say this with a strained face, “kinda hated it, so she wasn’t the easiest to get along with. Well, the thing is that” I say when I notice I’m getting a bit off-topic, “I sat down and all her family only spoke Chinese and I knew, you know, the typical three words, ‘ni hao’, ‘xièxie’ and the one which is the weirdest, ‘pútáo’ which is grape and I only remember it because ‘puta’ in Spanish means, ” I look up trying to think of a way to say it, “female dog,” I end up saying.

“I see,” Evelyn says, I let out a bit of an uncomfortable chuckle.

“Yep,” I say.

“And have you ever been insulted?” William asked, it was normal for my friends' parents to ask questions about my experiences as a foster kid, it has gotten to a point where I no longer have to think about what to answer.

“I- I mean I have, but I don’t really care like I’m not going to be hurt by something that isn’t really my fault, that I haven’t really done anything or have anything to do with it.”

“No, really Olivia, you have nothing to do with it,” William says, and it’s clear that he is powerful and assertive, it was clear he has an authority about him because I quickly nod and comply to what he’s saying.

“Yes, sir,” I respond, “and either way, I was a jock,” I say mockingly, “and somewhat popular so if I ever got insulted I had my friends to back me up and it was mainly just jealousy, or perhaps someone making an insensible joke but you do learn how to laugh about it, you normalise it or at least I did,” I explain.

“Moments like this makes me realise why they put you up there to give the speech,” Evelyn says.

“Oh, thank you,” I reply, “but I actually thought that James was going to give the speech and would’ve probably been really good, with his sarcasm and natural charm it would’ve been a great speech, less motivational but for sure, entertaining.”

“I know, right?” James says cockily and we laugh.

“I need to go now, bon appétit!” I say and I leave.

I look around and I find Amber with her sister, Hazel, Amber normally makes a lot of jokes about her names as they are both eye colours. Hazel is very similar to Amber, however, her face expressions resemble more her dad whilst Amber is more like her mother. I go up to them with a smile and I talk about life in general and then I leave to go sit at my table to find myself with a very polite and friendly family.