Playlist:
Twin Skeleton's (Hotel In NYC)- Fall Out Boy
I Write Songs Not Tragedies- Panic! At the Disco
Favorite Record- Fall Out Boy
***Lauren's POV***
"Okay ladies welcome to Melbourne." Coach Dougherty greeted Ivy, Grace, Madison, Cleo and I as the five of us sat in the center of the gymnastics gym floor mat. He stood with Brendan and the other girls' coaches as well since they were going to be our personal trainers too.
"This is where we we'll be working out, practicing and everything else you can think of." Coach Doc (that's our nickname for him) told us.
All of us are from different parts of Australia; Grace is from Adelaide, I'm from Sydney, Ivy is from Melbourne, Madison is from Brisbane and Cleo is from Perth. We all came to tryout in Sydney, but because the training gym is located in Melbourne we all had to move here with the exception of Ivy since she already lives here. It's not like our whole families had to move here, just us.
"I have a question." Grace said raising her hand in the air and Coach Doc nodded his head indicating for her to speak. "Well we all had to move out here, where are we going to live?" she asked.
"That was the next thing I was going to say." Coach Doc told her. "Follow me, we're taking a field trip."
***
Driving up in front of an old warehouse, Coach instructed all of us to get out we started following him towards the building.
"Okay so I could understand they wanted us to pack everything up and move out here, but they're going to make us live in an abandoned warehouse?" Cleo said thinking she said it loud enough for only the five of to hear and we all chuckled, but then Doc said,
"Who said anything about it being abandoned?" He pointed out as he pulled open the big sliding loading dock door.
"Oh my god!" we all gasped walking into the warehouse. The whole place was completely renovated! It was huge!
There was a woman standing in the fully equipped kitchen preparing food and when we walked in she cleaned off her hands and walked over to us.
"Hello!" she greeted us. "You must be the new Olympic team, Congratulations!" she said giving us really big hugs. "I'm Nicole all of your health nutritionist so I'll be making all of the food and helping you stay on a diet." She introduced herself.
"She's also my wife." Doc laughed.
"Yeah that too." She said and we all laughed. "Well don't be shy come in! This is your new home!" she smiled, I've only meet all these people an hour ago and I'm still meeting people and I already feel so welcomed.
"How many floors are there?" Madison asked as the five of us stood in the living room in awe.
"Two." Coach Doc answered.
"How many bedrooms?" Ivy questioned.
"Twelve, so everyone gets their own room, there's three full bathrooms, two regular bathrooms, kitchen, dining room and an empty loft."
"Why so many rooms?" Grace asked.
"For your trainers too, they need to live somewhere as well." Doc laughed as he took a baby carrot off the counter that was covered in different fruit and vegetable snacks. "They just had to do a few things at the gym first, they'll be here later."
"So we get to live here?" I asked in disbelief, it was to go to be true.
"Yep." Mrs. Dougherty answered as smacked Doc's hand away from the food; I guess she wasn't done cooking yet.
"Well I would get started unpacking, because you're only going to get today and tomorrow to do it, because after that training starts." Doc instructed us and we all quickly ran up the stairs to the second floor to pick out our rooms.
I ran to the end of the hallway and opened the last door that was in the back of the warehouse. This was the second time I was going to be having my own room. As I opened the door I found a pretty decent size corner room, with the two back walls that made the corner of the warehouse that were covered with windows not only letting in a crap top of light but amazing views of the Melbourne coast line. It never even occurred to me how close the warehouse was to the coast.
The wall the door to the room was on was all made out of brick and hard wood floor that extended into the hallway and the other rooms. The room was so big it felt empty even though there was a black patterned rug on the floor, a bed that was placed in the center of the brick wall so it was facing the windows and had built in shelves into the headboard with bedside tables on either side, a dresser that was placed against the wall adjacent to the door and then a simple table and rolling chair that I'm assuming is supposed to be a deck against the windows.
Standing in my new room I thought about how my life was going to be completely different. Now having to spend every waking moment in the gym, I was now a school drop out like Michael and the guys, well except Luke. My dream was finally coming true and in a year and a half I was going to be in the 2016 Olympics. This is when my nickname, the American Reject, finally felt real. I had to move to a new country to make a name for myself. Back home I was just Lauren Jacobs, here I was the American Reject who just landed herself a spot on the Australian Olympic Gymnastics team and I am going to make it far. I've come to far not to win.
As I got lost in thought, I almost didn't notice that there was a knock on the door,
"Lauren lunch is going to be ready in a few minutes." Coach Dougherty said to me and I was snapped out of my thoughts, causing me to jump. "You okay?" He asked looking at me concerned.
"Yeah you just startled me that's all."
"Oh." He chuckled. "So you picked this room huh?" He asked.
"Yeah, it's so nice!" I remarked. "I've never had so many nice things before I move to Australia." I commented. "It just gets a bit overwhelming sometimes because if I still lived back in America I wouldn't be here experiencing all this or receiving all these amazing things." I added.
"Lauren, you know I read your file right? I know about your mom and your dad, your siblings and why you had to come here." Doc told me.
"Yeah I expected you would have." I said quietly.
"There is one thing I wanted to say about it though."
"What's that?" I asked confused.
"I have to give you major props for what you went through. I mean from everything you dealt with and what your dad did and you still managed to pull through. . . That's amazing, anyone else would have handled that so differently and not be here, but you pushed through." Coach said amazed.
"Yeah well gymnastics, my brother and sister, and my best friend got me through it." I told him.
"Well it's incredible." He commented. "And even though I still have a lot to learn about you and everyone else and we don't know each other that well, I am really happy and proud that you were able to get through all of that."
I thought about what he was saying. I have never been complimented for getting through all that, it never even occurred to me that it should be looked at as an accomplishment. My whole life, when ever people found out about what my dad did to me all I ever got was sympathy, but they never understood. They could say they were sorry as many times as they wanted but they could never fully understand how it all felt. And honestly the people who showed me sympathy I never really hung out with or I ended up pushing them away. I really just stuck around with the people who believed in me. I was taken back by this compliment, but also shocked that someone could turn my terrible tragedy into something good.
"Thank you." I said, taking what he said to heart.
***
After lunch I had brought in my boxes and suit cases and started decorating my room. Of course I brought my mom's folded American flag and jacket, I brought my pillows and comforter for my bed (which was extremely comfortable might I add) and then a lot of pictures, posters and other small decorations as well.
I was currently in the process of hanging up pictures of my family and friends, so yes Michael and the guys as well, all around my bed, while I was listening to my music.
"Heeeey!" Grace sang as she and my teammates walked into my room.
"Oh my god! I have the same view from my room too! My rooms actually the same way as yours just at the other end of the hallway." Madison said excitedly causing us all to laugh.
We all started talking, getting to know each other more. Cleo was the fun, wise-cracking ginger in the group, Grace was the silly, random dark haired brunette (when I say random, I just mean she's all over the place, like she just points stuff out and changes the topic a lot), Ivy was the mellow, but also weird light brown haired one in the group who did a lot of crazy, funny things and Madison was more of the responsible, but also laid back dirty blonde in the group, she made the right choices, but still knew how to have fun, while I was the dedicated and quiet one who liked to dye her hair a lot.
"What do you want to do with this stuff?" Ivy asked as they stared helping me unpack since I was far behind everyone else.
I looked through the box to find the stuff my family gave me before I left. Andrew and Uncle Tom gave me a mug for my coffee that said family forever never apart maybe by distance but never by heart. Emily gave me a necklace the said big and she had a matching one that said little as in big sister and little sister, which was perfect and I loved it. My aunt gave me all these printed out pictures of everyone form her camera, my phone, and anywhere else she could find them; half were of my family and then the other half were of my friends: Michael, the guys, Geordie and Dominique.
"What's this?" Cleo asked as she opened the box that was full of the letters Michael wrote for me to open when needed too.
"Oh Michael gave this to me when he left for LA." I said.
"Oh my god that's right! I can't believe I forgot! You're the Lauren everyone's talking about who's dating Michael." Madison asked as she looked at the pictures of the guys I had already hung up on the wall.
"I was." I said quietly as I put down the box of letters and went back to continue hanging and decorating my room. Oh yeah, I'm teammates with girls who all love 5 Seconds of Summer too.
"What do you mean were?" Ivy asked and all the girls became quiet putting all their attention on me, waiting for my answer.
"Yeah were, as in not anymore." I said.
"But why? You guys were so cute together from the pictures in the media." Grace said.
"He lied to me and I was tired of people lying and hurting me." I told them.
"What did he lie about?" Cleo asked.
"Yeah and whose hurt you in the past?" Madison questioned.
"Look guys it's a long story, and to fully understand it all it would take a while." I warned them.
"We have time, we're teammates now Lauren, we're going to be spending a lot of time together so we might as well talk and tell each other the more personal stuff." Grace suggested. I thought about it, I was going to have to tell them eventually so I might as well tell them.
"You guys trust fast." I commented.
"Well I feel that I can trust you guys, right?" Grace asked and we all agreed.
"Well it's like my whole life story I'm trusting you guys to respect, and I've never had a lot of friends before moving to Australia."
"Well now you have four new ones." Madison smiled.
We closed the door and all squeezed on my bed sharing our personal thoughts and secrets. Once they heard my story they all gave me big hugs and reassured me that they were here for me to rant if I was upset or frustrated and were there to listen. I have never trusted so many people as quickly as I did with these girls who I actually having things in common with and I can now call my friends.