The Knowledge Of Us

IX

Chapter 9 - Just between us

"Come on Ashley I got your boss to let you have the day off so we could practice." Kimmy yells at me as I kneel breathing hard. That was just the warm up.

"It's hard to practice a duet alone." I mumble out, praying she wouldn't hear me.

"Get up! We need to practice the stunt in the routine. After watching you go through the routine just once I know we will need to practice that for the rest of the day." I groan, she's going to murder me. I walk over to the far end of the room, taking a deep breath and started the cartwheel, though as I land with the first foot, I could feel my body shift. As soon as my second foot landed it was sideways. When my body straightened it was unbalanced and had to adjust my footing before I did the kick, and down into the split. Standing back up Kimmy stops the music. "No. Wrong. It has to be smooth, fluid. Your footing was all wrong. Your starting was all wrong. Your landing was wrong. And is that really how high you can kick?" I groan as she starts grilling me. "Again!" She shouts. Playing the music and clapping to the beat. "One! Two! Three!" She shouts. Trying again, but as I lift off of my last foot, my knee gave out. Half way through the cartwheel I fall into the ground. I lay on the ground for a few minutes as Kimmy stomps out of the room. Maybe she's giving up on me after all. Trying to figure what keeps going wrong, I lay there. Trying to get my breath back. I heard a lot of yelling and things being knocked over outside the door, but I was too tired to even try and move to go check it out. And it turns out I didn't have to. Kimmy comes barging in, tossing a Taehyung in the room with her. She slams the door and blocks it from him.

"¡Ya! Ashley! Encontré nuestro sub por el momento. Pídale que nos ayude un poco.*" I could only imagine what she meant by a little bit. We'd both be here for the whole day.

"Kimmy! ¡No puedes forzar a alguien contra su voluntad a ayudarnos! **" I lecture, but she only shrugs her shoulders and points to him. Sighing I turn to Taehyung and try and ask him in English. "Taehyung, would you mind helping us?" He stares at me, before slowly nodding. I think he realized he didn't have much of a choice. Kimmy yells and pulls him to the center of the room. Trying to explain it to him in a way he could understand. She pauses though and turns to me.

"Hey, what's rueda de carro in English? Like what's the English word for that? Is there an English word for that?" I couldn't help but laugh.

"Cartwheel." She sighs and slaps her forehead. She continues to explain it to him, until he finally nods. A confirmation that he understands. Kimmy yells at me to get into position. She plays the music. I look to Taehyung and he looks nervous. I mentally prepare myself to be dropped a lot today. And I run to him, jumping and putting my hands on his shoulders. His hands go into the wrong place so instead of me cartwheeling off of his shoulders his left arm gives out and I'm dropped. Taehyung immediately drops to the ground to make sure im okay. I stand up and wave off his worry. Kimmy has him stand and had me put my hands on his shoulders. She then shows him where his hands need to be. We try the stunt slowly at first. Until he got the right idea down. And then we did it full speed. I cartwheel over him, he let me land softly and correctly so I was able to do my kick and then down into the splits. I stayed in the splits as Kimmy explained to him the next part. He had to grab underneath my arms and basically drag me back a little bit. Once he got that down we tried to put it all together at full speed. I ended up kicking him in the face a few times, and he's dropped me twice, and half dropped me another three times. But we were smiling and laughing at our mistakes. Once we went through the stunt a few times almost flawlessly Kimmy let us have the rest of the day off. Taehyung ran off, and as I was gathering my stuff Kimmy started complaining.