Stacey's pov

Ahhh basketball, by far our favorite sport. My cousin and I both made the freshmen girls' team and we're having a blast. Thanks to our coach Mr. Ryder, we're also getting in shape very quickly. Coach Ryder loves using conditioning exercises as negative reinforcement.

Right now we're fifteen minutes into wall sits (with your back against the wall and knees bent at a ninety degree angle you basically pretend you're sitting on an invisible chair). Coach Ryder has us doing wall sits until every girl on the team can make in consecutive order, a right and left handed lay-up. As soon as someone misses, we start all over again. After you do your lay-up you return to the end of the wall sit line. After forty minutes without successfully completing this drill, Coach Ryder finally takes mercy on us and we move on to the next drill.

Well, I wouldn't call it mercy because now he has us running laps based on how many free-throws we miss. We each take turns shooting ten free-throws and then we run two full laps around the court for each one we miss. Next, we're back to wall sits during our water break. We all line up against the wall and do wall sits until it's our turn at the water fountain and then it's back to the end of the line until everyone's had their turn. You quickly begin to loathe your teammates for taking more than a quick sip.

Anyway, back to Coach Ryder. I can describe his physical appearance but there's no way in Hell I can even touch the surface of his personality. He's 6'2", thin, has short dark brown hair, a wispy mustache and always wears dorky, round lens glasses. He kind of has a nerdy professor thing going on with his wardrobe. He actually wears tweed jackets with elbow patches but he's only like twenty-seven years old. The man is definitely a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, encased in a fortune cookie, trapped inside an enigma when it comes to his personality and demeanor. I don't know what it is about him that makes you want his approval so badly that you're willing to work your ass off for the man but by the same accord, you want nothing more than to piss him off.

He never yells, I mean never. Even when he's angry, he never raises his voice. Don't get me wrong, he's scary as fuck when he's mad and you'll know without a shadow of a doubt when he is but it's so weird that he never loses his temper. He always has that eerie calm facade akin to a serial killer. He's the guy whose next door neighbor is being interviewed on the six o'clock news when he finally gets caught with like fifty body parts in his basement freezer and the neighbor is like, "We would never have thought he could do such a thing. He kept to himself, he was so quiet and polite. He always gave me a curt nod when we'd see each other getting the morning paper."

Possibly the strangest thing about Coach Ryder is that he brings his two-year-old son Nathan to practice like ninety percent of the time but he never talks to the kid. We didn't even know it was his kid for like the first two weeks because he never even acknowledged him, let alone interacted with him. Usually one of the girls on the team will babysit him during practice because we feel sorry for him. Sometimes Coach Ryder's wife will sit in the bleachers while we practice but she never talks to the kid either or Coach Ryder, for that matter. How bizarre.

My cousin and I love to try to get a rise out of Coach Ryder but he has yet to yell at us. He does enjoy punishing us by making us run ladders (suicides) though. The easiest way to piss him off is by being late to practice and God knows, with the amount of detentions my cousin and I accumulate, it's a pretty common occurrence.

He'll just look at you and say, "You're late. Start running." In fact, he said those very words to my cousin just the other day when she showed up late to practice after serving a detention. When he does say it, you sure as Hell better keep your mouth shut and start running. Don't ask questions, just run. He'll let you know when you can stop. He even makes us do push-ups if he's really annoyed. I guess you could say basketball is a good mental and physical workout for us.

Coach Ryder always brings his briefcase to practice. He teaches social studies and presumably the briefcase contains his teaching materials for class. When he brings it to practice it's always locked. Well, one day Julie watched him open it, thereby learning the combination. So at the next practice, we had one of our teammates use Ryder's son Nathan as a diversion so we could get our hands on his briefcase.

We opened his briefcase and put a phony love letter in it that we signed with the sophomore girls' basketball coach's name, making it look like she had a secret crush on Coach Ryder. Stupid? Yes. Immature? Yes. But hey, we're fourteen year-old girls and we thought it was funny. Actually it was my cousin's idea but I had a better idea when I saw he had a copy of the final for his social studies class in his briefcase. I thought it'd be a good prank to take it. He wasn't our social studies teacher so I didn't consider it cheating but I knew the final for our class would be very similar so it couldn't hurt to have a little home court advantage, if you know what I mean.

Julie didn't know I took the test until later that night when she saw it on my bed. When I told her I took it out of his briefcase, she freaked out.

"Are you crazy, Stacey? We could get expelled for this. What the Hell were you thinking? You have to put that test back in his briefcase tomorrow at practice and hope to God he doesn't notice it's missing before then."

Well, of course that didn't work out because when Coach Ryder saw the phony love letter in his briefcase he obviously knew one of us had put it there so he searched the contents and of course noticed the copy of the final was missing. Before practice he sat us all down on the bleachers and demanded to know who broke into his briefcase. Knowing we could be suspended or worse, we weren't willing to confess. Unfortunately, the one pain in the ass on the team, Belinda, saw our friend use Nathan as a diversion so she told Coach Ryder and he threatened to have our friend suspended if the guilty party didn't come forward, so my cousin and I confessed.

Coach Ryder had the rest of the team running passing drills while he escorted my cousin and I to his office. I explained to him that I took the test without Julie knowing but he wasn't buying it 'cause Julie admitted to putting the phony love letter in his briefcase, which he did not find funny by the way. He said that could have damaged the Sophomore coach's reputation and hurt other innocent people in the process. I think he believed me when I told him I didn't take the test to try and cheat but he said the entire social studies department would have to create a new final exam on short notice and that would be a huge inconvenience, requiring a lot of work.

Coach Ryder informed us we would need to tell our guardians what we did. He also had Julie and I running ladders, running laps, and doing push ups and wall sits for the remainder of practice. It was obvious he wasn't happy with the two of us but he never raised his voice and he didn't threaten to bench us either.

Of course, Julie and I had no intention of telling Shane or Mike what we did and since Coach Ryder was going to let us play in the next game, we figured they would never find out, but if Robert Burns and John Steinbeck have taught me anything, it's that the best laid plans of mice and men...

Thursday

After the game

Stacey's pov

We were walking out of the locker room when we saw Coach Ryder speaking to Mike and Shane. Oh shit! Based on the enormous amount of tension and negative energy in the hallway, it was quite clear my cousin and I had been busted. Coach Ryder politely excused himself, leaving us to go home with our two extremely disappointed and furious guardians.

"Did you forget to tell Shane and I something very important after practice yesterday, ladies?" Mike stood with his arms crossed, chastising my cousin and I loudly and embarrassing us in front of our teammates and their parents.

"Can we please talk about this at home, Mike?" I whined, hoping to avoid the scene he was making outside the locker room.

"What's the matter, Stacey? Are you ashamed you and Julie were caught in a lie or just mortified having to face the consequences of your immature antics?" Mike is not amused and he couldn't care less if everyone in a fifty foot radius knows just how upset he is at this moment.

"Let's just go please." I try to walk past Mike and Shane but Mike grabs my right arm, stopping me in my tracks.

"Do not attempt to walk away from me when I'm speaking to you, Stacey Marie." Mike is pissed but I'm way too embarrassed to care.

"Oh my God, you can't even be serious right now." I really don't want to get into this here. I'd like to move things along, like out of the building and away from the people I have to see everyday at school.

Mike has other plans though.

He smacks me hard on my bottom twice, saying, "We will, without a doubt, finish this at home. The two of you have no idea how furious I am with the both of you right now. Let's go!"

Mike pulls me along to the car, having never broken his grip on my arm. Shane leads my cousin out with a gentle squeeze to the back of her neck.

Once we're back at the NJC, I try explaining to Mike how our prank went wrong. Julie takes responsibility for the note and I admit culpability for the final exam questions. Even though I think Mike believes me about not intending to cheat, he's still beyond incensed at our idiotic decision-making process.

"How could the two of you possibly think any of this was a good idea? You cannot be that dense, or short-sighted, for that matter."

My cousin and I are sitting on Mike's bed as he paces before us ranting. Shane is less than pleased with our disrespectful behavior but he's remained silent as he sits in a chair next to the bed. He'll probably have a go at us when Mike's finished.

"I'm waiting for an explanation, ladies." Mike is growing impatient with our unwillingness to embrace the gravity of our transgressions. He continues to pace restlessly as he takes exaggerated breaths.

"It was just a prank gone wrong, Mike, nothing more. I don't see why you're trying to make this into something it's not." I'm already over this conversation. My cousin has nothing to say as she's been on thin ice with both Mike and Shane regarding her and Lisa's science teacher Mr. Kemp.

"You both lied to us and you see nothing wrong with that, Stacey? You were directed by your coach to tell us what you did, yet both of you chose to hide it from us instead. Do you really see nothing wrong with your actions and decisions in the past two days? You could have gotten yourselves suspended or expelled for chrissake." Mike's nearing his breaking point quickly.

"We get it. We screwed up, okay. What's done is done. Geez!" I don't know why Mike insists on belaboring everything.

"No, Stacey, it's not done. You still have yet to answer to me and Shane for your dishonesty and insolence." Mike gave us a chilling glare. "Let's remedy that. Shall we?" He withdrew his belt and had it ready to strike in a heartbeat. "Stand and bend over the bed, NOW!" Mike snapped his belt right in front of us.

My cousin quickly assumed the desired position as I hesitated to comply with Mike's order.

"Stacey, you have fifteen seconds to do as you're told before I take you into Shane's room and discipline you privately and much more severely. Do you really want to test me right now?" Mike raised his left eyebrow as he stared into my eyes and gripped his belt even tighter.

As much as I wanted to remain stubborn and continue to give Mike a difficult time, I decided to cut my losses, so I bent over the bed.

"You're both getting twenty strokes for your dishonest behavior, the fake love letter, stealing the final exam, and letting your coach think you had told us what happened. Stacey, you're getting another five for arguing with me and having a defiant attitude."

Mike brought the belt down hard on our backsides five times before directing us to lower our sweatpants. He then proceeded to strike our behinds fifteen more times, concentrating most strokes right across the upper thighs, where our skin was exposed underneath the elastic of our underwear. By stroke eight, we both had tears in our eyes and by number thirteen we were full on crying. Mike was clearly annoyed with our juvenile behavior and he wasted no time punishing us with harder than usual strokes with his wicked brown leather belt.

After stroke twenty, he told Julie to stand and pull up her pants while he continued to lay down five welt inducing strokes that striped my bottom an angry red color across the curve of my buttocks. He certainly put more force behind those five penalty spanks to prove a point.

"The next time I tell you to do something, Stacey Marie, you best do it the first time I tell you. Is that clear?"

I heard Mike buckle his belt as I said, "Yes sir, it's clear."

After Mike instructed me to stand and pull my pants up, Shane said, "Oh, and you're both grounded for a week for disrespecting your coach and the sophomore coach. I want you each to give me your phones, including your burner phones."

"We don't have burner phones, Shane," I lied. How the hell does Shane know we have burner phones? How does he even know what a burner phone is? I thought to myself. Julie had an extremely surprised look on her face as well.

"If the two of you don't have both your regular cell and burner phones in my hand in the next three minutes, I will get my Admiral's belt out of the closet and finish what Mike started on your bare behinds, so don't even consider insulting me by lying to me again, Stacey."

Shane's tone sent a chill right through me. I knew by his inflection he was 100% certain we each had a burner phone. How he knew, however, I had no idea.

"You'll also have no access to electronic devices of any kind, including tv. You will leave this building only for school and church. You'll be writing apology letters to both coaches as well." Shane crossed his arms over his chest and said, "Bring me those phones, now!"

After we rushed to our room and delivered the phones to Shane, he spanked us both hard enough to elicit a yelp.

"If I ever catch either of you with a burner phone again, I can promise you won't be able to sit for a month. Am I understood?"

My cousin's face paled and I audibly gulped, knowing Shane wouldn't hesitate to make good on his promise.

We both humbly replied, "Yes sir," as we rubbed our sore bottoms.