Sekhra, thank you so so so so much. You have no idea how much I love your reviews. I am planning on revising this sooner or later, and ALL of your suggestions will be taken into account because they're brilliant. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is sort of... self motivation, if you want an explanation for the randomness.

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I am standing on the bleachers. The bleachers are standing around the track, gleaming a blinding silver beneath the sultry gaze of the afternoon sun. Strips of plastic sparkle like tiny explosions as each foot hits the stairs one by one -- the sound of pounding footfalls echo around the empty school grounds like the cadence of a steel drum; ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.

It's like a symphony of silver sounds and images -- the metal of a pony tail holder here, the white of somebody's eye darkened by the shade of their sweaty hair. Beads of perspiration hang like morning dew on wilted flowers, pearly streaks against flushed skin. The drum line of racing feet is now accompanied by the fleeting sound of breath and syncopated panting, woodwind, melody, flowing over me until it's my turn, and my own feet start to move to a song that is beating through my veins. Every one of the forty-two pairs of feet are slamming against the lustrous metal simultaneously, and the sound is deafening.

I sway, my world is either tilting or I'm about to faint, but either way my lungs are screaming and my mind is shouting I can't I can't I can't I can't and the throbbing of my blister-ridden feet are agreeing wholeheartedly and my back hurts and there's so much way left to go and almost there but I don't know if I can make it any further, but the music, the song, the notes are infused into my system and I am no longer just me. Me is no longer a word. I is lost in translation as the world shifts slightly to the side.

We continue to make our discordant music, our legs are a blur of red and white and black and peach and brown, our footsteps are thunderous, like a storm breaking through the summertime sky. The song is wild and our feet are just as feral. We feel nothing but pain and we focus on it until it's just a pinprick compared to this all consuming power, this blood-pounding, pulse-racing sense of we.

Team, we find, is not an ideal. It is a living, breathing thing born of diversity and communication and shared ambition and dedication and determination and chemistry -- potassium and water; apart we are bland but together we are explosive -- and unity. It needs to be created, not found, not forced.

And here, on our playing field of shining silver and sterling flares, we have created it.

It starts as a low mumble, hardly able to be heard -- the tiny sound of a violin's string against the power of a symphony -- and then it grows and it catches. We are one, and nothing is alone for long. Two words. That's all it is. Two simple words that mean everything and nothing, two words shouted at the top of everybody's searing lungs, in between clapping hands and pounding feet and sweating temples and squinting eyes -- our mantra, our cadence. The lyrics to our aria.

Stand strong.

Our motto. Our team's motto. It rolls in and explodes like the waves after a storm, crashing into the beach, the rough sands of weariness and agony with the soothing sound of millions upon millions of threads of water pulling together to create a single wave. We are each a tiny wave. We are all a large ocean, and out feet are the white crests, crashing against the beach of resplendent metal over and over and over.

We no longer need air.

Stand strong.

We no longer seek rest.

Stand strong.

We are the essence of team.

Stand strong.

We are victory.

Stand strong.

We are a team.