by Lexy Timms
“Enough!” Coach Anderson warned. “Be on time. James has all your lifting workouts. First week of school, we will start baseline testing on the track and in the weight room. Be ready.” He clapped his hands. “Coach Maves has pens for everyone. Please read the Code of Conduct and sign it. Then you are free to go. See you tomorrow back here at two-thirty. I will have your weekly workout sheets ready. Tomorrow is hills again.” He turned to Maves. “Coach Maves, do you have anything to add?”
Maves waved the pens in her hand. “We have the annual two-point five-mile fun run fundraiser in a month. It may seem like a long way off, but it’ll be here before you know it. Everyone is expected to run, no matter what event you do.” She glanced meaningfully at the throwers. “That’s it.”
Jani jumped up and grabbed a pen. She signed the paper and handed Aileen the pen. “Nice move on mentioning the party. That was perfect!”
Sean jumped over and borrowed the pen after Chrissy signed hers. “What time on Friday? Tiki theme? I love it!”
“Eight-thirty?” Jani looked at Aileen and Chrissy. “Sound good?”
“Sure,” Chrissy said. “Then everyone will start showing up around nine and we can still head out to Campus Corner if we want to for last call.”
Aileen nodded, not having a clue.
“We going costume shopping tomorrow?” Jani asked.
“I have a meeting with the academic advisor at one.” They had lifting in the morning, and then practice at two-thirty.
“If I can wake up early, we can go after lifting and be back before your meeting.” Jani yawned. “Might be tight. Can you wake me up, say at seven?”
Aileen was about to answer when a large, warm hand touched her shoulder. She glanced behind, her eyes meeting with a pair of bluish-green colored ones.
“Hello ladies,” Tyler said, dropping his long slender fingers down Aileen’s back and into his pocket. He did it so smoothly no one else noticed.
“Tyler!” Coach Anderson called out.
“Welcome to Gatica, Aileen Nessa. Glad to see you signed with us.” He headed back over to the coach.
“I wonder if he’s coming to the party.” Chrissy sighed.
“Don’t count on it,” Jani said. “Football season. He’s got the season opener, home game, next Friday. Their coach probably won’t let them leave their house except to train, and maybe go to class.”
Aileen touched her back where Tyler’s fingers had last touched. She couldn’t believe he barely said hello to her. Welcome? Glad you signed with us? He sounded so… so… casual.
Chapter 6
Aileen woke Jani up at quarter to eight. They debated on jogging to the weight room and then decided it would be too far to jog there and then back again. They hopped into Jani’s little Focus and drove to the Lord Warriors building.
James, the coach Aileen had met on her recruiting trip, held the door open as they trudged into the lifting rooms. “Morning, ladies.”
“Hey James,” Jani mumbled, still looking half asleep.
“Hi!” Aileen scanned the room, hoping she might see Tyler but knowing it was a long shot he would be there. There were only track athletes working out. She pushed the image of him out of her head. She needed to focus on track. That was the most important thing.
James smiled at Aileen. “Glad to see you joined the Red Coats!” He walked over to a cabinet and pulled out two file folders. “Put your names on the top right tab and go weigh in, over there.” He pointed to an old fashion looking brass scale. “Jani, you know the drill. Weigh in once a week and just add it to your chart inside your folder. I will go get your workouts so you can get started.” He turned and headed into his office with the glass windows that overlooked the room.
Jani yawned. “I hate mornings.”
Aileen grinned. “By the end of this year, I’ll make you love them.”
“Doubt it.” She led Aileen to the antique scale. “Here we go.” She stepped on and the large black arm inside the face rotated and hovered just under the one thirty mark. “Your turn.” Jani grabbed a pencil and wrote in her folder.
Aileen slipped her shoes off. She cringed as she stepped on the scale, worried the handle would hover over a mark that would make James comment about it to Coach Anderson. It seemed a bit harsh to have to step on the scale every week to weigh in. Why did it matter? She kept her mouth shut and let the breath out she didn’t know she had been holding as she checked the weight. Pretty much the same as Jani’s. What Jani had in height, Aileen had in muscle. She grinned. She was okay with that.
“Alrighty, girls.” James handed each of them a thick piece of paper with lines and blocks on it. “Warm up and then start with cleans.” He smiled at Aileen. “Have you done any Olympic lifting before?”
She shrugged. “A bit.”
“Not to worry. I’ll have you throwing weights around like an expert before indoor season.” He followed them to the stationary bikes. “Always do your Olympic lifts before the rest of your workout. You want fresh muscles for those.”
“Okay.” It sounded easy enough.
“I’ll get you girls set up on the stages to lift.”
Aileen looked over her workout as she biked. High numbered reps. Lots of them. She leaned over and looked at Jani’s. “We doing the same stuff?”
“For now. Coach is big on cleans, snatches, and squats. I have a feeling you’ll be doing a lot of power related lifts similar to mine.”
“I’ll just need more weight.” Aileen pointed at Jani’s long legs.
Jani slapped her hand away. “Don’t dog the sticks. They may look thin and fragile, but they are bombs of disaster waiting to happen.”
Aileen laughed. “Not sure that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, it is. It is.”
Fifteen minutes later Aileen stood by James, weight support belt on and listening to him instruct her on the safety and proper technique.
“Do not jerk the weight from the floor. It’s one fluid motion. Rise steadily and then accelerate. When the bar reaches your knees, jerk your shoulders up so you can let it hit off your thighs and drop under it.” He showed her the motion using just the bar, no weights. “Now you try.”
Aileen repeated as he had shown. Minutes later, she was going through the full action and lifting the same weight as Jani.
They continued with the lifting cycle shown on the back of the thick paper sheets, following the high reps and low weights. Aileen copied Jani as she wrote down the weights of each rep she did. They moved on to squats, something Aileen was very familiar with. She ignored the tired feeling in her legs from yesterday’s hills. It usually took days with most people she knew for the lactic acid and soreness to hit their muscles and ligaments. It always showed up the next day for her. The benefit was that it cleared sooner than the other athletes she knew.
“I might need an ice bath after this.” Jani groaned as she set the squat bar back on the rack and began removing the weights. James had come over to make sure she knew how to squat correctly. It was one of the lifts she did know so he headed back to his office.
“Ice bath?” Aileen scrunched her nose. “Sounds too cold for me.”
“The athletic therapy room is down the hall from the track. We share it with the volleyball players. There are two ice bath tubs there. We aren’t allowed to use the football’s therapy room.”
“Because we might taint it?” The idea, of sitting in an ice bath with a couple of huge defensive football players, didn’t sound very appealing.
“Sacred ground.” Jani rolled her eyes. She leaned in and whispered. “Don’t let them hear us dog them. They believe they are the end all be all of the school. Nothing is done here without their help. The alumni helped build this weight room. We borrow it to train. Nothing here is ours, or basketball’s, or hockey’s, or anyone’s.”
“Sounds silly.” Aileen shrugged. Weren’t all sports just as important as the others?
Jani lifted her hand, then raised it up a bit and then a bit more
. “There’s a hierarchy here. Don’t mess or you’ll be treated like crap.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It doesn’t matter. Most of these guys will spend five years living the dream of football. A few will move on to the NFL, maybe a couple off to where I’m from to play in the CFL. The others are done. Their glory days revolve around the five years of being treated like kings.”
“Does Gatica have a lot of NFL potential players?” They moved on to bench press and took turns.
“A couple. We have a defensive line that is nearly unstoppable. In particular a Jim Thorpe recipient.
Tyler. Sigh, there was no getting away from him. “I’m not much into football.”
“Neither was I – till I came here. There’s something about college football…” Jani shook her head. “Wait till the home game opener. When you’re inside the stadium, you’ll feel it.”
She didn’t know much about the game, except what she had learned in high school flag football. Maybe she needed to start reading up on it or google the rules… or something.
They finished the rest of the lifts on their papers and filled the necessary stuff in with their pencils. Jani showed Aileen where to file them when they were done and headed to the fountain by the entrance. As Aileen bent down to drink the cool refreshing liquid, she remembered Tyler grabbing her water from the football fridge.
The glass entrance doors opened and loud, deep voices rumbled into the room. The floor by her feet shook slightly, as did the stream of fountain water.
Aileen straightened when someone whistled in their direction. She turned at the sound ready to send a scowl of disrespect the perpetrator’s way. She hesitated and blinked several times. These boys were massive. As big as refrigerators. Except for one at the front of the pack. The defense line.
He didn’t even bother acknowledging Aileen or Jani. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She was not going to google over Tyler Jensen. Those days were done. “Let’s go.” She ignored Jani’s request to wait and walked purposely up the ramp to the glass doors and exited without even looking back. Thankfully Jani followed after her.
“Why the rush?” Jani asked as they stepped out into the humid, warm air.
“I thought you wanted to shop for the party? I have the academic meeting after lunch.”
“I do. But it doesn’t hurt to say hi to the football players. They have this amazing snack fridge. Best apples in town!” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t get one.”
“A football player or an apple?” Aileen winked as she waited by the passenger door for Jani to unlock it. “I’ll buy you a big bag at the grocery store.”
“They won’t taste as good.” Jani started her car. “Something about the crisper in the fridge or what. They are so cold, plus juicy and yummy. Gala apples. Red delicious.” She licked her lips.
“You can run back in and grab one.” Aileen now felt bad for fleeing the scene. Maybe he hadn’t noticed them. He could have been talking to someone or reading. She had been bent over the water fountain and hadn’t seen him. In hindsight now, she maybe shouldn’t have rushed out of the weight room so fast. However, there was no way she was walking back in there to try and appear cool about it.
Jani waved her hand. “Nah, I’ll be okay. I’m ready for a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin with sausage.”
Aileen shook her head, half at Jani, the other half at herself. It was Tyler who hadn’t said hello, right? She shouldn’t have had to walk across the room to greet him, right? That was his job, wasn’t it?
“We also can pick our scholarship checks today. Coach Maves told me yesterday that they were ready.”
“What are the checks for?” Aileen remembered Coach Anderson saying something about them after she had signed and told him she would be moving in with Jani. However, she couldn’t remember what they were for.
“We get a stipend to cover living expenses. If you were in the dorms, you wouldn’t get one. It helps to cover your rent, food, and bills. We have cheap rent so it’s great.” Jani pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed in the opposite direction of home. “How about we hit the golden armpits and then grab some stuff for the party? Unless you want to go home and change first?”
Aileen glanced down. Gray jogging sweats and pink t-shirt? She was good to go! “I’m good. I’ll shower before I go see Laurie.”
Jani pulled the car into the parking lot by the basketball coliseum. Sports were definitely the king of the castle at this school. She led Aileen inside to a large u-shaped front desk where a small lady, with glasses hanging off the end of her nose, sat.
“Jani! How did summer school go?”
“I passed.” Jani smiled, looking kind of embarrassed. “One last class to take this semester.”
“Great.” The little lady slid her glasses onto the top of her head. “And you must be a new athlete on the team?”
“I’m Aileen Nessa.”
“Oh, yes!” She scurried around the big desk and gave Aileen a tight hug.
Jani laughed. “This is Mrs. Peters.”
“Hi, Mrs. Peters.” Aileen patted the woman’s back, wondering if she was going to let go of Aileen.
“If you ever need anything, you make sure you come and talk to me. None of my athletes need to have to worry about anything.” She gave Aileen a tight squeeze before letting her go and hurried back around the desk. She slipped her glasses back to the end of her nose. “Here to pick up your checks?”
“Yes, please.” Jani picked up a white binder off Mrs. Peters desk. She flipped to a page and grabbed a pen to sign her name. She handed the pen to Aileen. “Just sign your name to say you picked up your check. No one can pick it up for you.”
“Okay.” Aileen signed her name and accepted the envelope from Mrs. Peters. “Thank you.”
“Thanks, Mrs. P! Have a great day.” Jani headed back outside, holding the door open for Aileen. As they walked to the car, Jani opened her envelope. “I’m going to assume you’re on a full scholarship?”
Aileen nodded. “Are you?”
“You better believe it!” Jani laughed. “Do you have a bank account in New York already?”
“My dad set one up for me. It’s at the Meridian.”
“That’s where I bank! Perfect!” Jani rubbed her shoulder against Aileen’s. “We were so meant to be soul sisters.”
Inside the car, Aileen opened the check. “Fifteen hundred dollars?” That was more money than in her bank account right now. “I get that every month?”
“Uh-huh.” Jani grinned. “I remember my first check when I moved off campus. I thought I was loaded. Till I paid rent, utilities, food and whatever else I had. It didn’t last long. I took summer school this year so I got checks in the summer, too.”
It seemed crazy to be getting money to pay for living expenses. However, Jani was right, if she lived in the dorms, it would be paid for and she’d have a food plan that she would never eat from. She was glad she chose to move in with Jani. They were going to be soul sisters.
Chapter 7
Track athletes crowded together, laughing and talking, inside the living room by the tiki bar and also outside in the backyard. Jani had dragged the antique tin tub out of the garage, hosed it off and filled it with ice to keep drinks cool in it.
Friday’s workout had been a killer one as if Coach Anderson knew they were going to need something to tire them out. He gave them Saturday off. The only Saturday they would have off until indoor track season started, and then it would be track meets instead of workouts.
It looked like most of the team had shown up by nine o’clock. Chrissy stood behind the tiki bar making and serving drinks to anyone who wanted something. Sean offered to help continuously and Aileen laughed at how Chrissy smoothly told him to get lost every time.
She stuck to drinking the homemade lemonade she had made earlier. They had found a large punch bowl at the charity shop and filled it with lemonade. Chrissy had then gone and poured a bottle of v
odka into it and labeled it “alcoholic.” She set two tall thermos containers on the side of the punch bowl table and marked them “drivers” and “the responsible.” Everyone was told to put their keys into a fish bowl by the door, with their nametags added to the keys. When someone wanted to leave, Aileen was in charge of making sure they were all right to drive.
It was the perfect job for at the beginning of the evening because she got to greet everyone who came into the house and learn a few more names. She doubted she would remember half of them, but having the excuse of writing their names on the tags they had made up helped a lot. By nine-thirty, she decided the trickle of the newcomers had slowed and she was free to move about.
She carried the fish bowl to Jani’s room and closed the door behind her. Jani’s place had been hit by a tornado. A lazy bones tornado. Clothes lay on the floor, on the bed and hanging on the chair of her desk. Aileen had cleaned her room in case someone walked in. It hadn’t taken long, she liked things tidy and organized. Just being in Jani’s room gave her the itch to start picking things up and folding them, but she had no clue what was actually clean or dirty. She set the fish bowl full of keys on the desk and turned to go. She paused and grabbed a shirt off the floor, tossing it overtop so no one would notice if they came into her room. Maybe the mess was to discourage anything from happening in her room.
She slipped out, closing the door behind her.
“Aileen!” Sean hurdled over a lawn chair sitting in the living room and grinned. “Not bad for a distance runner, hey? Think I should change events?”
She laughed. “Hmm… think you should stick to the running thing.” She made a tiny measurement with her thumb and finger. “A little too high. It looked more like a deer leap than an actual hurdle.”
He leaned back and grabbed his chest. “That breaks my heart, kid! Maybe you could teach me?”
She shook her head. “If Coach Anderson refuses, then I am going to have to side with him.”