"STRETCH YOUR LEGS or I'll flatten them by myself!"
That lovely scream was Ramira's –Frigg Evans artistic swimming teacher. Of course. Frigg Evans didn't know how exactly they hired artistic swimming coaches, but she was now certain that one of the requirements was being able to yell loud enough to shatter any mirror or window.
Frigg had always been what was popularly recognised as a 'nerd', but if there was something she liked even more than reading, it was swimming. It helped her a lot. There was something out of this world with being submerged by water, it felt like an alien dimension altogether.
Everyone knows that dream, when suddenly you're weightless, you have no importance at all, you're just this light bubble of happiness and peace, and you fly through the air with no worries at all. Then, of course, you would suddenly start waking up, wishing your eyes could just stay closed forever.
Frigg was now a hundred percent positive that the only target in life was to find that feeling of flying in the real, awaken, world. For now, swimming was the closest she had come.
"Can we choose the music for the team routine now?" Bellary whined. She hated theory practises –unfortunately for her, those were the only ones they had in the beginning of the school year, since they hadn't yet started a routine.
"No," Ramira sighed heavily. "I said we weren't doing it today."
Annie joined Bellary's protestations and Frigg couldn't help but smile. The two girls still didn't get the fact that artistic swimming lessons weren't democratic. Ramira gave them a pointed look, which here means she gave them the silent message that if they weren't working on the new figure, they wouldn't even make it until the routine's music.
Artistic swimming had often made the news for having abusive coaches, that force you until your body snaps, and some other terrifying stories. It wasn't the case with Ramira. Sure, she was scary and could be persistent. Some of her trainings –here meaning all of them– were draining and exhausting. But she always knew when to stop, and she was actually nice when you listened to her and did your best.
In addition, it was a good exhausting. The kind that makes you feel like your muscles have disappeared, and that you'll never move again, and yet. It makes you feel like you're alive for the first time. You feel something between pride for managing all of that, and some kind of inner power that wakes every cell of your brain until all you can be is simply, and utterly happy.
So ignoring the sore muscles and closing off the pain, Frigg did the leg boost again, closing her body in a V underwater, her feet grazing the surface, before she flattened her upper body, pushing with her arms, her legs and hips raising over the water. She had just the time to do a split, and close her legs in a twirl.
"Good," smiled Ramira. "Just try to be more energetic. It has to go POW," she explained, mimicking an explosion.
Frigg nodded and did it again a couple times. She knew it would never be perfect. Nothing was ever perfect in her sport. She'd been doing this for ten or eleven years now. It was her own way of relaxing and getting some energy at the same time. Quite paradoxically, nothing exhausted her and revived her more than three hours in this pool.
Since she'd been swimming for so long, the team often changed. Artistic swimming was very demanding. The older and the better you got, the more time and energy it took. She'd known many who just had to stop, for school, or for other reasons. What she knew was that she could never quit. Swimming had become her life.
Right now, her team had been the same for a good two years, actually. There was Bellary and Annie, her two absolute best friends. Rebecca, and two Dellas (one of them they called Della, the other Ella). It was a good thing that they'd been swimming with each other for some time now, the more like a team you felt, the more like a team you swam.
At the very beginning, when she was just an infant, there were some other girls, two boys, Annie, the Dellas and Vi– someone else.
Frigg swam to the border of the pool and began to stretch her legs, both for a break, and to relax her tensed leg muscles. She saw Ramira walk to the swimming teacher, Robert. She looked at them as they talked, both glancing in her direction.
Were they talking about her? What if the whole lessons thing was a lie and they actually were aliens trying to judge her to see if she was worth becoming one of them?
Maybe they'd just realised she wasn't and were thinking 'Well damn, now we have to actually keep training those kids.' And Ramira probably went all 'That was your plan, you imbecile. Solve it yourself.'
Probably not... Frigg cursed her imagination and ability to go on for hours with those 'what if....'s, she actually blamed reading on that one.
Though it was strange that Robert was here tonight. None of his teams trained at same time as them on Mondays. If he'd come, it must have been to talk with Ramira. But why? They were friends, sure, but nothing really that deep. Maybe there really was something important they discussed about?
Maybe, they were trying to think of a drawing to put on those ugly white mosaic walls. Like, Robert said 'I see flowers there!' and then Ramira replied 'Flowers? Skulls would be cooler!' And then the guy went all 'But we're supposed to send a good happy message to those kids.' so she answered with an 'Alright then. Skulls with heart-shaped eyes.'
Then they would probably make some kind of deal to have neither flowers nor heart eyed skulls. They would probably put a whale or something water related. A whale was actually a good idea. Maybe she should go tell them? Nah. Ramira would kill her if she even dared to put a foot out of the pool.
Thinking about whales, she really needed to re-watch Attorney Woo...
"Focus," Frigg whispered to herself when she noticed she'd managed to ramble in her own thoughts. It was one of her flaws: once her brain was on to something, nothing could stop it. She could stand there and think for a full ten hours without blinking if she wanted to. While it was great to fight off boredom, it did complicate things when it came to being focused, attentive or even simply observant.
"Gods I should've stretched during the holiday. Now it hurts like a bitch," Bellary yelped beside her as she tried to hit her legs a little to relax her muscles.
"Watch your language, there are children here" Rebecca pointed at Annie. Annie really wasn't a child to be protected, but she acted so nicely and innocently that they all couldn't help but treat her as such. It became an inside job that Annie was their baby.
Frigg stopped listening as they argued. Ramira and Robert pointed at some of them. Maybe they were doing small teams for an exercise? Or, they were really pointing at the walls behind them to chose where the whale was going. Probably the team theory, but, there still was some tiny odds for the whale thing.
Frigg kept her eyes on them. Could she trust them? She thought back at the three hours training, the 200 butterfly, the fifteen minutes egg-beat... So probably not.
She felt their eyes on her and they grinned. Uh-oh. That was scary. What was would to happen now? Would someone kidnap her? Kill her? Make her watch those Barbie films her cousin Ben was crazy about (for some reason)?
Robert turned around and talked to someone that was apparently behind the door leading to the changing rooms. Suddenly, Frigg wasn't so sure that it was indeed Monday. But what other day would it be? They never really shared the pool with the swimming class: artistic swimming used quite a lot of space.
"I think the swimming team starts like in a few minutes," the red-headed Della –who they called simply Della– whispered.
Ok, what memo didn't I get, now again? She somehow always missed those memos. Like, was there a club or something you could join to be sure you'd get them, or-?
"Really?" Asked the other Della –the one they called Ella. "I thought they usually swam on Thursdays. Not on Mondays. You know so we can have some space."
Precisely!
Bellary shook her head. "Didn't you read the E-Mail? It said that the our team and theirs will have to share the pool on Mondays but they start later than what we do."
Oh, so the memo was disguised as an E-Mail... That explained it. Frigg didn't have an E-Mail address. She was aware that she maybe should have one, but it took way too much effort, and she wasn't ready for that. Her parents had told she could just ask them to get one, but she never really had. It wasn't as if it was that important nowadays. She just wondered why her mother hadn't told her about the E-Mail. She probably hadn't read it yet.
"Which team is that?" Frigg asked. There were swimming teams of all ages and levels, all named differently. Aiden Jackson –Frigg's sworn nemesis– had been in team A for as long as she had been synchro swimming. She knew because a few years back, she started warming up when he finished his training.
"The new one –the G– you know the smaller one, I heard they just swim once a week..."
"It's kinda funny how we haven't met or seen everyone in the club," Annie commented quietly. Annie always spoke very quietly. She'd been reserved and discreet for as long as Frigg could remember, but it got worse when... that happened.
"That's true, we have a weird club atmosphere. Like us synchros stick together, and we never talk or hang with the swimmers," Rebecca agreed. "I heard that some clubs organised camps for them together, or at least a dinner once a year, or something..."
Frigg shrugged. "I don't see why we need to get to know them."
"I just feel like it could be fun to get to know some of them too, you know," she defended her opinion, and Annie and the Dellas agreed.
Before they could continue the debate, Ramira was walking back to them, a strange smile on her face. "Right girls, we had a fun idea for the club," she said, motioning for them to get out of the pool. "We are gonna train with the team G for the rest of the year on Mondays!"
"The entire training?" Ella inquired.
Ramira shook her head. "The last hour. I thought you could swim together, and Robert wanted to see some of his boys trying out synchro –mostly out of sadism, I believe. But I liked the idea –with the same motivation, of course."
Frigg looked behind her coach as she spoke to Bellary about the routine, trying to glance at the team G in question. At least it wasn't Aiden's, she thought. That was good.
She couldn't help but feel like if Viv was still there, they would've had the time of their life, coaching Aiden into synchro swimming. But unfortunately, that wasn't possible anymore.
"Are they just five? That's not a lot," Della commented. "Oh, I know the twins, they were at a party at my school once, both absolutely bonkers."
"Like we aren't," Frigg laughed.
"Wait, aren't those our twins," Bellary let out, surprise all over her face as she narrowed her eyes at the two dark skinned boys. "Yes! That's them! John and Lucas!"
"And there's Reece and Jai too," Annie added. "And-" she stopped mid-sentence, turning her head to look at Frigg. "And Aiden Jackson..."
"Forking hell," Frigg swore under her breath, staring at the golden eyed and haired boy who was walking out, a black water bottle in his hands.
"Wait..." Rebecca looked back, "THE Aiden Jackson? The boy who dyed your hair bright pink last year? That one?"
"Unfortunately, yes," she sighed. "He's haunting me."
"He's better looking than I'd pictured," she whistled. "I mean, tall, blond, built, and you've known each other since childhood... You really never dated, why?"
"He's a pain in the ash, that's why," Frigg retorted, although she had to admit he wasn't bad on the eyes. But she'd beat him in arm wrestling anytime, she decided bitterly, as she stared at his biceps, and then at her own.
"I thought he swam in the A team," Annie said, confused.
"He's probably on both," Ella shrugged. "One more training doesn't change much, I guess. He must've wanted to swim with his friends too."
"Or he's stalking me and this is his new prank," Frigg thought out loud, something she'd learned she shouldn't do (for her own dignity) but still did all the time.
Well, there wasn't much thinking going on, mostly saying the stupidest stuff out loud, the stuff you usually keep to yourself for very good reasons.
"Well this is going to be fun," Bellary chipped happily, watching the boys walk to them, adjusting her cap.
"You're just saying that because you love drama," Frigg rolled her eyes at her friend, who stuck out very maturely her tongue at her.
"I do love drama..."
AN:
And this is a leg boost :)