Criminal Activity

Chapter Three

 Twenty-three minutes have passed since the bell rang. I only have one more assignment to do, but it will take longer than seven minutes, so I pack my things and will just do it when I get home.

Grabbing my bag, I start walking over to the gym. I decided I would put my shin guards on later because if we do the cardio portion of tryouts today, I definitely don't want to have to deal with sweaty shins since I have to tape my shin guards on with athlete's tape.

I arrive at the gym. There are so many girls trying out, but at least there's some competition. I head over to the coach and ask her if she has my name down on the list and explain to her that I am a new student. She checks my name off and tells me we are heading out to the track to do the cardio portion and I get excited. I've always been a great runner. Every year since seventh grade, the track coaches from middle school and high school tried to recruit me, but I politely declined because soccer is my life and nothing can change that.

After everyone gets their running gear on, before we head out to the track. We start by racing each other in pairs of two starting with a four-hundred meter sprint. I beat everyone I ran against and all the coaches were impressed. When it came to the mile run I noticed a figure sitting in the bleachers. It happened to be Tom. How long has he been sitting there?

Before the mile run starts everyone has a few minutes to get ready. I use my time to stretch and clear my head. My last mile time was 5:38, I put the thought in my head that I can do better than that.

"Everyone get ready!" one of the coaches yell. I prepare myself by jumping around a little bit and shaking out my arms. "Ready! Set! Go!" she finishes and off we go sprinting around the track. The coaches told us that four laps around this track equals one mile. They yell times at us as we pass them. I pass multiple people and end up in the front of the line. My legs burn, but while everyone else hates this feeling, I love it because it means that I will get a new mile time. I sprint faster coming up to the line on my last lap and when I cross it the coaches gasp and check their clocks to write my mile time.

"Congrats, Veronica. You have earned your spot on the fastest mile board in the gym. Your mile time was 5:19. You are in the number one slot," one of the coaches said with an impressed look on her face. "Would you like to join the track team as well? All practices are from 4:30-6:30 every other day after school. You should join."

"That would be great and all, but I was actually looking at stunt cheer as my second sport. Thanks though." With that I walk off to the locker rooms to change and get going.

When I exit the locker rooms, Tom is standing there. I blush and walk over to him. He holds his arms out and I walk to him letting him fold his arms around me.

"Good job, Sprint. You've got yourself the top spot on the leaderboard," he said smiling down at me.

"Sprint?" I chuckled. "Why'd you call me that? Also, I'm supposed to be blending in, but obviously I am not doing a very good job with that."

"Everyone is already calling you Sprint. You should have heard the other girls. They are all jealous and wanting to be best buds with the top athlete of Westview High."

"Should I tone down a bit? You know, on my talent? I want to make varsity, but I'm not being very discrete about my presence."

"No, you should be fine. I'll let you know when to tone down your awesomeness," he said with a cute smirk. With that, we walked to the car hand in hand and headed home.