Sister City

Chapter Six

“Trish and Oli sitting in a tree,” I said in a singsong voice, ducking to avoid the pillow she lobbed at me. “I can have Luka introduce you tomorrow.”

“No,” she shouted. “He can’t know.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Goodnight, Rin.”

She turned off her lamp.

“Night, Trisha.”

I turned off mine. In the dark, I could hear her softly finishing the song I had started. I drifted off to sleep thinking about how nice it must be to like someone; especially if they liked you back.

The next day, I was awake an hour early. I was dressed and ready to leave before Trisha’s alarm had gone off and I was waiting in the parking lot when Sebastian’s mom parked outside our dorm.

“You’re early this morning,” she remarked drowsily, the Starbucks cup steaming in her hand.

“I wanted to apologize for yesterday, Mrs. Stuart.”

“For heaven’s sake, Rin. I’ve told you a hundred times; call me Polly. I haven’t been Mrs. Stuart since Sebastian’s father and I divorced twelve years ago. And, don’t worry about yesterday. No harm, no foul. Besides, you seem to have learned your lesson; you’re on time this morning.”

I had known Mrs. Stuart for over a year and I still couldn’t bring myself to call her Polly; no matter how many times she asked. It just didn’t seem respectful.

Practice was easy; I wasn’t working on routines today, just drills to increase my strength and before I knew it I was back at camp eating lunch with Leena and a group of girls from her dorm she’d gotten to know.

Trisha and I checked in to our nature class after lunch. We were given a pencil and composition book to record our findings and sent on our way. We found a flat grassy area, abandoned none the less, near the soccer field and hastily jotted down a few nature-type things we had seen on our short walk from the Commons.

“Do they actually read these?” Trisha asked as she described the markings on a bug.

“I don’t know. Don’t think so.” I was busy describing a beautiful flower. I wrote it down under the flower section, but I’m pretty sure it was a weed. I might have taken some liberties in my description. “Okay. I’ve got five. You got five? That’s all we need.” I sat down on the grass to stretch, setting my pencil and notebook out of the way.

She finished writing, snapped her composition book closed with a flourish and tossed it on top of mine. She stuck the pencil in her ponytail and sat down near me to stretch.

“That’s a bad idea.”

“What?”

“We’re going to be tumbling. You don’t want the pencil to get stuck somewhere.”

“Oh. Right. Mom would kill me if I came home with my neck pierced.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. She sounded so defiant, as if she might leave it in just so her neck would get pierced and she could show her mom. I noticed that she removed it, reluctantly, just before we started some warm up passes.

After we were both limber, I showed her the skill she was trying to learn. Then, I spotted her a few times while she worked on getting more height off her handspring. When her rebound seemed high enough, I helped her throw a back tuck.

“I did it,” she crowed before doing several cartwheels away from me.

“You landed on your feet and not on your butt,” I hollered after her. “That’s something. Your landing was a bit shaky, but that will go away after a while. You have really good form.”