A New Reflection

1. Swing Your Arms

~Part 1: High School~

"Nati, swing your arms!" three of my volleyball teammates yell out to me across the gym, their faces aglow with bewilderment.

What? I think inwardly, horrified at the fact they are drawing attention to me in the middle of practice.

Seeing my confused expression, they repeat their demands.

"Swing your arms!" giggles Kelsey. "You're jogging with your arms by your sides like this," she explains in amusement, holding her hands stiffly against her body as she waddles across the gym floor, apparently mimicking how I look. I'm mortified.

I don't know how to respond, so no words escape my mouth. Physically, I'm also paralyzed. I can't keep running how I was supposedly running previously—like a duck with it's wings glued down. But now I imagine everyone on my team is observing me and will be evaluating the precise angle, rotation and speed of my arm motions.

Shoving the mortification deep inside, I chase hard after the ball, snatch it up and return to the serve line. I pretend the little scene never happened, that my face isn't the literal shade of a tomato from the combination of exercise and shame.

With deep concentration, I toss the ball in the air, pull back my arm exactly as they have taught me, and swing with every ounce of my strength. The ball floats weakly through the air, barely clearing the net. Just as it does every time I serve, no matter how hard I slam the ball or how superb my form. I rarely hit one into the net though; they always clear.

The girls around me shriek and giggle and leap around, pounding their serves with strong palms. Their balls shoot like daggers over the net, striking the opposing side of the floor as would a crackling ray of lightning.

After a few minutes, our coach blows the whistle and has us gather on the serve line. He looks displeased.

"I've been observing everyone serve for the past five minutes," Steve begins. "You know who hasn't missed one single serve?"

There's a brief pause.

"Natalia," he states, answering his own question. Everyone knows I have the worst serve of anyone on the team, so the comment feels backhandedly complimentary. My cheeks burn.

"Consistency. Focus," Steve says, listing characteristics that describe me both in the previous five minutes of serving practice as well as in other areas of life, such as school.

"Take a two-minute water break, then we'll practice the new formation we learned yesterday."

As we jog to the sidelines to grab our water bottles, Steve completes a flying jump serve, sailing through the air as if denying the presence of gravity. The smack of his hand against the feathery white ball reverberates through the gym, and I wonder why, being the tallest girl on the team, my arm muscles are so weak.

Alex, our assistant coach, gives me a fist bump and crooked smile as I move towards my gym bag.

"Nice job, Nati."

Something about the way he pronounces my nickname sends a tiny jolt through my stomach.

"Your form is flawless," he tells me, stepping closer as I attempt to drink water in the most normal way possible. Simple physical tasks come unnaturally to me when in the presence of other human beings—case in point being the fact that I've apparently lost the ability to run normally. I contemplate how, after four years of playing high school volleyball, I could have spontaneously forgotten how to swing my arms.

"Now we just have to get you to put some power behind it," adds Alex. "I know you've got it in you." He playfully taps my shoulder with his fist.

What he doesn't know is that I'm swinging at the ball as hard as I possibly can, every time.

I fall into a good groove during the next segment of practice, flowing through the different positions in the drill and making several solid hits and digs. By the time we break again, we're all heaving in breaths of air and grasping our knees. In fact, I'm breathing harder than I ever have in a volleyball training; this is a level of exhaustion I've only ever felt after sprinting lines in basketball practice.

"Great work, girls!" Alex calls out. He joined the coaching team this year for the first time. Steve has been my coach for the past three years—for JV and Varsity. While Steve rarely doles out compliments, Alex tends to encourage us more. Both of them are tough on us and can be intense at times, especially when we make careless errors.

As practice winds down, Steve has us gather on the serve line and jogs over with a box of navy blue shirts. He rips open one of the plastic bags and removes a garment.

"Here they are," he says, holding it up so the back is displayed to us. "This is Kathy's design."

It's an intricate image of a girl spiking the ball in mid air, her pony tail swinging. The detail of the net is incredible. Kathy smiles subtly next to me as several teammates clap her on the back and compliment her.

Though we never talk (I don't really talk to anyone on my team), Kathy is probably one of my favorites of all the girls. She's kind and humble and doesn't go around with a snarky attitude like some of the others.

"Let's see the front!" Alex calls out, and Steve flips the shirt around. Written across the front in attractive bold font is one word: "Genius."

This is Alex's catchphrase, which he says at least a half-dozen times each practice, whenever someone makes a particularly excellent move on the court.

Everyone goes crazy over the design with animated comments and laughter. I love the shirts, too, but I just stand there.

Our coaches pass out a shirt to each one of us. I've ordered a medium, and I can tell when I hold it up that it will fit me perfectly. It's long sleeved, and the cotton fabric is soft; I can't wait to wear it to school tomorrow.

"Why so serious?" Alex jokes. It takes me a second longer than it should to register he's talking to me, so I immediately blush when I notice his eyes are focused my direction. Because I blush at everything, literally everything.

I don't answer.

"This shirt basically describes Nati in a word!" exclaims Kelsey, butting into our non-conversation.

"Yeah, right!" adds Beck, smiling big as her bright-red ringlets bob along with her carefree motions. "This is like, Nati's personalized shirt."

Again, I'm dying as several sets of eyes digging into me burn like fire, but there's a part of me that's smiling on the inside. I can't hold a normal teenage conversation, but I'm good at school, and I secretly enjoy the fact that everyone knows I'm super smart.

"Why is this Nati's shirt?" Alex inquires.

"This girl has, like, a 5.0 GPA," blurts out Beck, her dimple popping adorably. Everyone on my team is so gorgeous, even after two hours of grueling training. I know my pony tail is falling out with awkward wisps hanging around my ears, and I'm certain my face is glowing triply red right now. My palms are literally dripping sweat.

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me at all," comments Alex, and he gives me this little look that I can't decipher. But it makes my stomach jump.

"You're an idiot, there's no 5.0 GPA!" Ariya shrieks at Beck. The girls break into giggles and friendly banter, arguing over the grade point average system at our high school. I know how it works, and it's simple enough to understand, but I say nothing.

Clutching my new navy shirt, I gather up my gym bag, school backpack and water bottle, lugging all the stuff towards the parking lot to look for my mom. I know she'll have been there waiting for at least ten minutes by now; she's always early to pick me up.

"See ya, Nati!" Kathy calls to me as I walk towards my car, acutely aware of the fact that my arms are rigid by my sides like the Tin Man before he's oiled. I attempt to move them back and forth in rhythm to my long strides, feeling like a huge moron. Genius.

I respond to Kathy in my head: "See ya." In my imagination, the phrase rolls off my tongue like creamy caramel.

"Goodbye," I manage to return, my voice squeaky and unnatural. Jesus Christ. I'm the only person on planet earth who says "goodbye." I long to be able to say "see ya" in that breezy way that everyone else seems to pull off so effortlessly.