On Sturdy Legs

Except It Hurts

When I woke up the next morning, my entire body hurt. Of course, that had to be an exaggeration since there were certain body parts that did not hurt; however, enough of the major ones hurt for me to say that and exclaim something along the lines of "fuck" when I woke up. That occurred much later than usual since I didn't get back home until too late and being in pain could completely justify sleeping in. I had slept so late that even Izzy was up and going off the mess of her closet and lack of a pair of certain shoes which I couldn't quite name, she was probably already out for the day.

I would have liked to stay in bed but that felt like that would be admitting defeat. If I could run twenty six point two miles and not die or feel this sore, then I wasn't about to let some dancing keep me in bed all day. I forced myself out of bed to find that my ankles hurt like hell--the exact kind of hell that I was not quite used to past my first few weeks of training that gave me shin splints. The bottoms of my feet were also sore since dancing didn't but really should require foot protection and my shoulders were sore too. How rarely did that happen. I got dressed with minimal flinching and cursing in a pair of basketball shorts, a random colored sports bra, an even more random race T-shirt and the first socks I grabbed--they happened to have watermelon on them. I shook my hair out of my face and into some resemblance of order as I walked down the stairs.

It was my increasing luck that Molly didn't have a social club going and both she and Tom were out. I really didn't care where and headed straight to the kitchen. I made myself a bowl of cereal-- if made could be the right term for pouring two separate substances into a bowl, which I guess was the appeal for me--and went to sit on the couch in front of the TV. The news had been on and I turned it up then immediately regretted it. I turned it down. Imagine that, one bald white guy said it was another bald white guy's fault and a made up news anchor narrated the whole thing, as if the audience didn't already hear the old white guys say just that. I watched the rest of the segment on half mute until I finished my cereal and went to put it in the dishwasher. For lack of any better activities to do, I stretched out across the couch on my stomach and laid there since at that moment, nothing felt nicer.

Izzy came bouncing into the room a quarter of an hour later with her heard of friends in tow. "Are you okay, Ari?" She asked me when she came over, apparently the girls had a DVD or watch or something.

"Not dead," I replied to her without moving, "but I'm not moving, just so we're clear."

Izzy looked for a second like this was the biggest barrier in the entire world; she quickly got over that, "so be it." She snickered and instead sat right on top of me. I had to laugh as her friends followed suit, sitting on top of me. Izzy was sitting on my lower back, three friends were sitting across my legs, and the last girl decided not to sit on me and instead sat on the floor near my feet.

"This doesn't hurt, does it?" Charlotte asked from my legs; she had to lean down to see my face when I turned to answer her.

"Not at all," I replied; of course not, they were all too tiny to weigh much at all, "you guys are pretty light."

"I'll cue it up," the girl on the floor volunteered.

She took the DVD from Izzy and danced in her feather light sort of way to the TV to turn on the DVD player and change the settings so it would play. I decided not to mention how often the girls must be over here if they already knew how to do that; I certainly didn't, yet. Back on base, I could barely figure out how to get Netflix to play on the TV and that was with Allison's highly amused commentary. The girl at the TV hit play and a title spanned across the screen, The Spectacular Now. This was met with loud squeals. I decided not to make a comment, one that would probably end up coming out a bit rude and cynical and instead adjusted my head on my arms and watched the scene open with the kind of music these movies typically had.