Borrowed Time

Chapter Sixty Five

Practice was fucking brutal ever since Juliette had refused to give her coach actual names of who'd been saying shit to her. It was almost like she was trying to punish all of them since she couldn't just punish two... Either way, Juliette was almost sure that she'd never run this much in her entire life. It felt like her heart was going to pound out of her chest and she tasted blood in her throat, but she had to keep going. Only a few more laps.

Her coach clapped loudly, blowing her whistle in a way that made Juliette wince as her skin crawled. She'd never liked how whistles sounded, they were always just a little too shrill for her to make peace with.

"Come on, ladies! Pick up the pace, you can't slack off just because we're inside. Let's go!" She called, and Juliette grimaced and gritted her teeth, forcing more breath into her burning lungs... She was better off than Becky was beside her, she'd started wheezing two laps ago but had refused to go get her inhaler because she was 'fine' and 'everyone feels like they're breathing through a straw when they do cardio'... Ridiculous.

"God, has she gotten harsher over the last couple days?" Becky gasped, and Juliette glanced over to look at her, grimacing at her... She looked faint, a little paler than usual with an unusual amount of sweat on her face, she'd only ever seen her look like this when she'd fainted at a summer practice. Juliette felt terrible, because there was really no one to blame but her. It was her fault that Becky looked like she was going to pass out.

"That might be my fault." Juliette admitted, and Becky looked at her with confusion, tripping over the ground. She grabbed her forearm to keep her from falling and steadied her as they rounded the corner. Well, at least it was keeping her engaged, right? Becky was less likely to faint that way... Probably. Juliette had no way of fact checking that medically, there wasn't an ounce of proper medical knowledge in her brain.

"What? What do you mean?" Well, I skipped practice and revealed shit to her and then refused to tell her everything and now she's mad. My bad, dude... No. She didn't want to say that. That felt like it'd be a lot of words to say while trying to keep her pace the same. Coach had already warned them that if they slowed down too much that they'd be stuck doing core circuits for the rest of practice when the run was over.

"I talked to her about the fact that two of the girls on the team called me a faggot and a dyke and she didn't take it too well." The noise that Becky let out of her throat sounded inhuman... And Juliette could understand. If people were going around and saying shit like that, it wasn't just her that it would affect. It'd affect Becky too. But she'd do anything to keep that from happening.

"Who the hell called you that?" Becky asked, sounding like she could breathe astoundingly well compared to a few minutes ago... Huh. An off label use for rage was treating athletically induced asthma... That sounded right. But also, there was no way that Juliette was talking about this right now. She grimaced and shook her head, looking down at her feet.

"Oh, come on... Not you too." She groaned, feeling herself panic after letting out too much air. Breathe, breathe, breathe... There was no way in hell she was going to faint while they did this, that'd be horrifying, she'd probably never hear the end of it.

"Yeah, me too." Becky cleared her throat, letting out a harsh cough as she wheezed in a breath. Ah. Rage side effects wore off. Shame. "Who called you that?" Juliette grimaced and shook her head. She wasn't doing this right now. Running was torture enough without talking about the shit that happened to her.

"Don't worry about it." For some reason, that wasn't good enough... Juliette would've thought it was enough...

Well, no she wouldn't have, but sometimes it paid to be a hypocrite. This was one of those times.