Chapter Text
“Oh hey do you guys wanna look at old photos of me and Marcy from when we went to the mall that one time!”
“Omg that was so funny, remember you fell in the fountain!”
“Yeah! Honestly, I was surprised that it wasn’t you who fell down!”
Anne grabbed her phone out of her backpack as she talked. She scrolled through her phone to find the pictures from quite a few months ago.
“Ah, here it is! Found ‘em!”
Sprig and Polly got up to sit by Anne. Polly sat on top of Annes curly hair, while Sprig sat on her shoulder.
As she scrolled, they saw Anne all wet and Marcy laughing their face off.
“This one was right before security came to ask if I was okay, now that was funny! Oh sorry ignore this. Oh and this. Wait are those all the pictures of us I took? Awe man, I thought I took more.”
As she finished scrolling, two pictures of Anne with her Tennis thingy or whatever popped up.
“What are you doing in those pictures Anne?”
“Oh uh, that was right after my Tennis Tournament! I won so.”
“Woah you won? Thats cool! By the way, what is tennis? You talk about it quite a bit”
“Marcy you should probably explain, cause if I explain then I’m gonna end up going on a full rant about it and I don’t really think anybody cares that much about somebody tossing a ball with a racket.”
“I mean, I don’t mind you ranting! But if Sprig and Polly want me tooo..”
“Oh, we don’t mind Anne!” Sprig and Polly said in unison.
“Are you sure? Like, sure sure?”
“Yeah! I’m kinda interested since you talk about it so much! I gotta know what your talking about to get what your talking about am I right!”
“Yeah your right.” Anne chuckled. Sprig was smart for a- wait how old is Sprig? 10? 11? Eh, she’ll ask him later.
“Okay so tennis is a ‘racket sport’ that can be played individually against one other person, or between two teams of two players. Basically, you use a tennis racket to hit a ball over a net.”
“Ohhh, thats why your so good at hitting stuff with your racket thingy!” Sprig said enthusiastically.
“Mhm! So in tennis theres a game, a set, and a match.”
“Okay so how do you win?” Polly questioned.
“To win a game you have to score 4 points. Not like the 1, 2, 3, 4 kinda points though. The points are 15, 30, 40, and game. Then to win a set, you have to win 6 games. Then to win a match you have to win 2 sets and-”
“Wait how do score points?” Polly interrupted.
“Oh right! So there are 5 different ways someone can score a point! First way is that your opponent misses two serves in a row, either at the net or outside of the box. This would be called a double fault. The next way is that the opponent misses at the net during a rally, called error. Another way could be that your opponent hits a shot over the net, but outside your court, which is also called error-“
“Wait wait wait, they have 2 separate things called error? Thats just stupid.” Polly argued.
“Yeah, I never understood that one myself.” Anne laughed.
“Anywho, the fourth way is to hit a shot that goes past your opponent. Thats called a winner. And the last way is to hit a shot that bounces twice on your opponent’s court before that person can hit it, which is called double bounce!”
“Huh, thats actually really cool Anne! Do you know more stuff about it? Oo oo, maybe I can learn how to play too!”
“You’d want to learn how to play Sprig? I mean, yeah I’ll teach you if you really want me to but you don’t have to if you don’t want to-“
“Of course I wanna learn! It makes you happy, and it seems super fun!”
Anne thought about it for a minute. This was the first time anybody had wanted to put actual effort into something that she enjoys! Sure, Marcy and Sasha would listen to her rant about it, but they’d never wanted to play it. But Sprig seemed genuinely interested!
“Okay! Also, yeah I have so much more stuff i can tell you! But it might have to wait.”
“What? Whyyyyyyy!”
“Because Marcy here seems to be about to fall asleep.”
“Hey! No I am not!” Marcy complained.
“Oh reallyyyyyy?” Anne teased.
“You stupid-head! C’mon lets just think of more fun things to do!”
“Pfft, alright Mar Mar.”