Table for 6

Part 4

At 7:30 on Monday morning, I arrived at the school track in my Under Armour blue tank top, and UA black running shorts. At 7:30:14 Kathy arrived, (yes, number of seconds matters to me) in her Lululemon running shorts and tank top, with her Nike gym bag on her shoulder. I could tell she was ready to train.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be, I guess." She answered. She looked a little excited but I could feel that she felt apprehensive and scared.

"Let's go then. We'll start with some easy warm ups." I lead Kathy through rounds of butt kicks, high knees, druken dinosaurs, sumos and kareokes. Then we did a light jog around the track, and finally, we did 100m sprints. I could not believe how fast Kathy was.

"You should really try out for the track team." I told her.

"Thanks. But I think that maybe I would like to try a team sport too. I don't want all the pressure to be on me. I really don't want to let anyone down." She answered, looking a little upset.

"You won't let anyone down. You would do great, but we can try to teach you a team sport if you really want to." She looked a little happier. So I proceeded to teach her how to play soccer.

I could not believe how uncoordinated she was. Not only was she tripping over the ball, but she was tripping over her own two feet as well. I finally taught her how to kick the ball in front of her and chase after it, and since she was so good at running, the system worked perfectly. When we began shooting in front of the net at the 18 yard line, I played net, while she tried to score on me. She had pretty good aim, and her shot had a lot of umph on it. Not only could she hit the top and bottom corners, but she could quite regularly do a bar down shot.

Within 30 minutes, I had determined all of Kathy's strong skills, and her weaknesses. "That was really amazing Kathy. How come you have never played soccer like that before?" I asked.

"Well, I guess I just never had the drive to do it before. Now that someone is finally encouraging me to do something, I am able to do it really well." With that she packed up her shoes and put her Nike bag over her shoulder. "I am going to go into the showers before school starts. We still have half an hour, but I don't want anyone to see me in the shower." Se added.

"Okay well, I didn't really get that sweaty, so I'm not going to shower. I have to go to my locker to grab my history book, but I'll see you in class." I said turning to walk away.

"Catrina?" She asked.

"Ya?"

"Thank you." And with that she walked away.

I turned around with a smile on my face. The school is not normally open very early on Monday mornings, but I had my connections to get into the school. To get to my locker, I had to walk down numerous hallways and pass the cafeteria and gymnasium. As I was passing the gym, I heard yelling.

"Come on Aisha! You can do better than that!" Mr. Chanes screamed at Aisha. It might seem weird that a teacher would yell like that at a student, but Mr. Chanes is her dad.

"I can't." Whimpered Aisha. I leaned into the door peering brought the window. I could see sweat pouri down her face and huge red marks on her arms.

Then I watched as Mr. Chanes threw a ball t Aisha's chest.

Hard.

She stumbled back but took the basketball and did a perfect layup.

"Try again. You didn't have perfect position!" Mr. Chanes said.

"I can't though. I'm too tired." Aisha said, sounding defeated.

"You can and you will. You will be good at basketball no matter what I need to do." Replied Mr. Chanes.

With that he hurled four more basketballs at Aisha's arms, legs, face and chest. I watched as each ball hit her like a load of bricks. And I watched her cry out in pain, but she was strong. She did not shed a tear. That is, until I looked really close to what Mr. Chanes was doing.

He walked rigt up to Aisha, and slapped her across the face, as hard as he could. And judging from the sound of the slap, it was hard. Then he knocked her back by kicking her in the stomach. As she lay motionless on the ground, all I could her was her whimpering and crying softly.

But I could also hear Mr. Chanes laughing.

That's when I ran straight to my locker, and I didn't look back. I forgot about the fact that I had set my water bottle from my training session, at the gym doors.