This Just In [ON HOLD]

8. Rough { Lauren }

Lauren's POV

The next afternoon, I changed into my swimsuit, slipped on a tank top and some shorts, grabbed my things from my dorm and headed off for swim practise.

A friend that I had made the first session, Rayna, smiled at me when I entered the locker room. I smiled back and opened the locker next to her, dropping my flip flops on the floor. She was a nice girl who always tried empathising with you whenever she could. Sadly, not many people knew about this and just ranked her at the bottom of the social ladder because she wasn't one of the best on our team.

"How was Biology today?" She asked. I had my first official Biology experiment today.

"Matt's a decent lab partner. I write the reports, he executes it. It's cool. I mean, as long as I don't have to do the experiment..." I said, taking my goggles and swimming cap out of my bag. "And U-Dylan never bothered me today."

Rayna nodded. "That's good!"

"Except when he poured a whole test tube full of sodium hydroxide on my head."

"What?"

"Just kidding."

Rayna hit me on the shoulder, her blonde curls falling over her shoulders. "You almost had me there! This is a serious matter. You can't just joke about it."

"Sorry." Messing with her was always fun.

"Sorry won't cover anything. Also, are you coming for Saturday's?"

I paused from unlacing my sneakers. "What's on Saturday?"

"Our swim meet."

Uh oh. "Our...our swim meet? That's this week?"

"Yeah. We really need you on our team. You coming?"

Why, of all days, was the swim meet this week? On Saturday? Why did this have to be happening? Why, why, why?

"Oh...Rayna, I can't go!"

"What? Why? This isn't funny, Lauren."

"I'm sorry. I really want to go, but...I'm booked. It's a newspaper club thing. We have to write our first article and Saturday is the only day I'm free to write mine!" I bit my lip. I don't cry, except for the things that I love. And swim meets were something I really loved.

"Lauren! Oh no."

I sat miserably on my bench. Stupid newspaper club. I never wanted to be in it anyway-I just wrote my name on some random column because I was too busy wondering what Uhu was doing in the room. So that technically meant that all this was his fault. But who was I kidding; in my life, he was a fault.

Remind me to get him back for it.

Coach poked her head round the corner blew her whistle. "Come on, girls. Chop chop." Everyone began filing out of the room.

Rayna patted my shoulder. "We'd better go."

We slipped into our flip flops and headed out.

I ended up swimming eight laps in total for the whole practise, mainly just letting out steam. For two whole hours, my problems left me and I was finally relaxed. As my arms streamed across the water, my leg muscles working to move gracefully during the eighth lap, I felt that all the pain and soreness inside me were the struggles I had faced earlier this week. Studies, my room mates, Uhu, the newspaper club...they were all being let out to the water around me. I pushed myself up from the pool and stood with the rest of my soaking wet team mates, all of us dripping and panting, getting ready for our debrief before we called it a day.