Synchronized Swimming

Chapter 33: The Sleepover

North

I tear apart a big piece of lettuce with my teeth. You would think that a place with such expensive food could take the time to actually cut their produce, but apparently not! Beyond the atrocious lettuce sizes, my salad is perfect with just a hint of dressing. I've never understood people who take a perfectly healthy salad and ruin it by smearing a bucketful of fat on it.

Everybody around me munches happily on their salad. Once the Guppies arrived, we all ordered and pushed several tables together so that we could sit together. Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green are stuck sitting with Coach Laura, but from their animated conversation it seems like they found something to talk about. Raven went back to his team for the rest of the day, so it's just the three of them.

Madeleine somehow managed to maneuver herself into sitting next to Gabe. The poor dude looks like he's going to fall off of his chair as he tries to lean as far away from her as possible without making it obvious what he's doing. When she reaches to touch his hand, I decide to take action.

"Hey Gabe, how's Amanda doing? I saw that she just got back from her vacation in Florida." I ask him. He looks confused for a second before recognition sets in.

"Ah, she's fine. Got one hell of a sunburn though." he replies. Madeleine looks at Gabe with borderline despair.

"Who's Amanda?" she asks. Gabe waves a hand nonchalantly.

"My girlfriend. Our one year anniversary is coming up." he says proudly. Madeleine deflates as she realizes that Gabe is off the market.

"Merde!" she mutters.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sang crumple a bit in her seat. Is she too tired? Maybe falling off the lift hurt her more than she let on. I try to catch her eye, but she stares resolutely at her plate. I'll have to get Doc to talk with her later.

Once Kota has finished half of his food he starts talking casually. "Man, this is so much better than the hotel breakfast. That whole place was a dump!" he says. Sang looks confused as to why he brought up the hotel breakfast since we didn't eat it, but thankfully she remains quiet.

"Yeah, my sheets had all sorts of weird stains on them." Silas adds.

"Y'all can stay at my place if you want!" Addie offers. I blanche- it's not her house we need to be at, but it would look awfully weird if we declined her offer and then tried to go to Tasia's house!

"Erm..." Kota stalls.

"Addie, your house is under renovation right now! We don't want them inhaling paint fumes all night." Madeleine says with exasperation. Addie blushes.

"Whoops, forgot about that!" she murmurs. Tasia rolls her eyes.

"You guys can stay at my house. It's plenty big enough for all of you- even your coaches if they want to come." she says. I breathe out a sigh of relief. I don't know what we would have done if we couldn't get into her house! I guess Luke would have broken in, but I never like him being put in more danger than necessary.

"That sounds great!" Kota accepts. Mr. Blackbourne glances in our direction and I subtly give him a positive hand sign. He nods, returning back to his conversation.

After everyone finishes eating we head back to the pool for a few hours. Sang still looks down, which starts to seriously worry me. I walk over to Silas- surely he will have also noticed Sang's problem.

"Hey Silas, does Sang seem alright to you?" I ask him. He shrugs.

"Yeah, a bit quiet, but then she always is. Why? Is she not feeling well?" he asks with growing concern.