Trust No Bitch: Part 3

Gemma Akintola

"Participants 1115, 1139, 1147, 1180, 1209, 1220, 1242, and 1299, will you please take your places on the track."

Well, this is it.

The next 2 minutes or so, the next 400m Gemma was to run, were very important. The kind of 2 minutes that would dictate whether the last year's worth of training she'd done, all the 6AM starts, the stretches, the hours spent on the St.Edmund's gym's rickety, obsolescent treadmill, the 1,000 calorie breakfast she'd had to force down that morning, would all be for (as her dad liked to say) "diddly-squat". Reaching her spot, she looked down to the number on her chest, 1115, and straightened it before raising her head and inhaling fervently. Everyone was there, she was reminded, eyes sweeping over the audience and landing on her family. She first noticed her brother, Sonny; his trial was on the 2nd of January. Only 2 days away. Yes, Gemma thought to herself, waving up at him and smiling weakly. Momentous decisions all round. Just with his, the decision won't be his to make. Yours should be easy; you've worked hard enough to win this race so it all comes down to whether or not you're ready to do that. And you are.

You are.

It wasn't just her family that was there; Ellie and Georgie stood on the other side of them, both whooping and cheering her name. She had asked Alice, Clara and Lilly, but each one of them had prior commitments; how many of those were genuine she didn't know. For one, she was pretty sure that Clara's claims of a quiet night at home were bullshit, as were Lilly's of some flash sale on Oxford Street. She hadn't pestered Lilly though, supposing that she probably didn't feel much like leaving the house. Gemma had made multitudinous phone calls but had yet to actually speak with her since she'd shown up at the cafe, declared she had lied about having a modelling contract, but then gone on to announce that after those 2 years of deception, she'd decided to actually become one. A model, that was. It was hard not to be perturbed by her behaviour, with that perturbation only being compounded by her prolonged silence. It wasn't the time or place, however, for Gemma to be worrying about Lilly and she knew that, though it didn't stop her from surveying the crowd one last time. It was not Lilly, nor her family that this time caught her eye, however. There, stood several rows behind her family, grinning that signature roguish grin and clapping his hands above his head, was Josh Young. Seeing that Gemma had noticed him, he began to laugh and blew her a sardonic kiss to counter the middle finger she raised at him. That dick! She thought to herself. You told him not to come! And yet he's brazenly standing right there and doing exactly what you told him not to. Shaking her head, and trying to pretend she had not just seen Josh in the crowd, Gemma knelt down on the track, replicating the posture of the other 7 women preparing to run next to her. Despite recognising almost every one of them from the entry list she had read the night before, and knowing that each one ran with faultless technique, Gemma could only see two things now: her body, the veins jutting out of her arms and the scarred skin which had for the most part healed, and the tarmac beneath it, sunset orange yet freezing cold to the touch.

"Foot." Called the officiator over the loudspeaker, backs raising into the air, Gemma resting her weight onto her fingertips. She was just waiting for that gunshot, that one, tumultuous...

Bang.

And they were off.

Springing from one foot to another, Gemma tuned out the noise of the spectators, who had began to cheer before the gunshot had even sounded.

The first 100M, 15 seconds or so, are always about power; you've got to get as quick as you can as quickly as you can. That was the part that Gemma had always beaten Cleo at. She was smooth, moving like a car down an empty motorway whereas Cleo had always been like the same model speeding down a busy high street away from police, fast but erratic. That would be what caused the first couple of women to fall behind ever so slightly; straight away, Gemma was one of 3 that was quite distinctly ahead of the other 5. It was nothing to get cocky about, however. Gemma knew that with the 400m, a runner's best performance usually came within the backstretch, between the 100 and 200m mark. It was as they entered that point of the race that she was proved right; whilst one of the women who had started off in the top 3 had fallen behind, another had promptly taken her place and her steps were right in time with Gemma's, the two of them almost close enough to link arms like a pair of primary school best friends. Emotion couldn't come into it, no inhibition or diffidence. Confidence was the oil that fuelled the machine, allowing Gemma to take 2 steps where the woman that had been level with her had taken 1. At that stage though, a permanent leader hadn't yet emerged. It was Gemma, 1180, and 1147, but of those 3, there was nobody who dominated. The likelihood of victory was wavering far too violently for anybody to tell whose hands it would fall into, Gemma going into her penultimate gear. The last one would be saved for the final 100m, which was swiftly approaching, just as she felt her push off weakening. That, however, was no excuse. The failure of the body to conserve her speed left room for her mind to take over. And this was where she was stronger, delirium launching her like a bomb from a cannon, the others only bullets from pistols. The agony of the lactic acid building up in her legs, as hard as it tried, easily subjugated to her elation which told the pain that it did not fucking care. She had felt far worse. And she was running and running, everything she had always wanted actually physically there in front of her. Running and running and then, the piercing screech of a whistle being blown.

"Stop!" Came the voice of the officiator over the loudspeaker. "All participants, stop what you are doing! Everyone, stop what you are doing! All participants stop and be still!"

Gemma didn't listen to it.

"Participant number 1115! Stop!"

One foot down, in front of the other, the air leaving her nose and mouth as loud as the blustering wind outside.

"1115!"

She was mere metres away from the finish, metres, still sprinting and still smiling, like she'd just received the best news she'd heard all year.

"Participant number 1115! Gemma Akintola! Stop!"

She couldn't have known. Couldn't have known that, in reality, she was about to receive the worst.