Twelve

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I follow the stretches being demonstrated, the cold morning air making a hill shudder through my body

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I follow the stretches being demonstrated, the cold morning air making a hill shudder through my body. The track team for the highschool was meeting early today and I was ready for my second practice. It was a Friday, and all fifty kids on the team met for practice at six on a Friday morning. The ages ranged from about fourteen to eighteen so I was right in the middle.

The only person from the family that was also in the track team was Madison and she had surprisingly been very helpful. She had taken me under her wing and introduced me to everyone and helped me get into the events I wanted to participate in.

This was surprising because Madi was best friends with Emmeline, and Emmeline wasn't the fondest of me. Another contributing factor was that she hadn't really made an effort to talk to me in the few days we've been here.

Not that I've made an effort either, I don't have the excess energy to waste my time on someone who isn't giving me the same back.

"How are you so flexible?" Madison groans as she struggles to do a stretch I easily manage. "It's so unfair."

"I've been a dancer since I was seven, and stretch everyday." I explain reaching a little father so I feel the stretch. "If you try doing it every day then it gets easier and easier. If you want I can join you for accountability the first few times you do it and then when you get into the swing of it then you can do it yourself."

She pauses and looks at me. "You know when you first got here I thought you were going to be a bitch."

"Tell me how you really feel, why don't you?" I laugh, not taking it as an insult.

Her face reddens. "I don't know, you got here and you have this really posh accent, and you're obviously really smart and really really rich. I was kind of waiting for you to be a stuck-up rich kid."

"There are some snobby rich kids, Madison, don't get me wrong. But a lot of us act out because the world acts like our problems aren't valid just because we have a high bank balance. Do you know how many of my friends have negligent parents, that the only time they show up is for their reputation? It's definitely more than half. They all have this immense pressure on them to be better than their friends in academics and sports, to have the newest stuff, the best holidays. We might not struggle with money but we for sure struggle with other things."

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"Hey Everleigh." I lift my head up from my phone and smile at the girl heading towards me. Juliette was in my ballet class and was really sweet.

"Hi Juliette." I scoot over on the bench I was sitting on. "You want to sit?"

"If I'm not interrupting you, you look very concentrated." She joked, her dark skin glowing in the sunlight.

I huff. "Just work stuff, it turns out it isn't easy trying to do a job from across an ocean even if everything is remote." I sigh, it was the hours that were killer. "And I'm just waiting for my boyfriends to finish football practice."

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