Arlington (Book One)

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

My hands hit the beam as I do a layout. The motion of being upside down makes me dizzy and I try to orient myself. I practice doing back pikes across the beam a few times before doing a standing Arabian into a back pike. I never have problems with this set before, but my foot misses the beam and I try to do a balance check but end up falling smashing into the mats on the floor. My whole-body flares with pain and I look up to the ceiling disoriented. Everything is blurry and overbearingly bright as I gaze at a few faces above me. Voices echo around me and I hear it, laughter. They are laughing at me for falling and hurting myself. The laughter continues to echo and multiply until I jolt awake and the entire left side of my body is throbbing.

Grabbing my glasses and looking at the clock on my bedside table, I see that it is barely five in the morning. Rubbing my eyes frustrated, I stand up and try to walk off the pain from the dream. Rather than trying to go back to bed I get up, I know there is no point in trying to sleep again, I am always wide awake after that nightmare. Instead, I opt to get ready for work.

"What are you doing up so early pumpkin?" My dad asks me as I pour myself a bowl of cereal. I see his glass of tea on the table and I toss him his morning orange.

"I had a bad dream and decided to just get up and get ready," I say through my bites of cereal.

"What was the dream about?" He asks worriedly.

"I just fell off the beam again," I say.

This wasn't the first time I have had this dream. It's a reoccurring nightmare that happens when my stress levels spike. Even though I didn't actually fall off the beam during that routine, my brain seems to amplify the scenario exponentially. I wash my dishes and kiss my dad on the cheek before heading out to work.

I arrive at the office over an hour before I am due to be there. I make my way up to the fifth floor and walk into our lab and pull the whiteboard to the middle of the room. I lay out all of our notes and start crunching the numbers that we didn't get too yesterday. I run through quite a few equations before I get to one that works. I transfer it to a different whiteboard and start working on the dimensions the staff should be and how much metal we will need. In the handgrips of the staff would be all of the wirings so that would need to be hallowed out.

I start drawing up a diagram of what kind of wiring we would need when someone clears their throat behind me. I spin around surprised; I didn't hear anyone enter! Turning my attention towards the door, I see Alexander standing there looking sharp in a dark blue suit and vibrant grey tie.

"Is something wrong?" I ask him, glancing at my watch. It is ten of eight.

"What are you doing here so early Aviva? The logs said that you swiped in over an hour again which means you were here before seven o'clock," Alexander says.

"Science never sleeps," I say with a coy smile before turning back around.

"That is an interesting diagram you have going, but we both know that it is flawed," Alexander says.

"It's the first one of many to be flawed. The wiring does not have enough room to exist or stretch without getting caught on anything else in the expansion of the metal," I say.

"But you have to start somewhere, correct?" Alexander asks looking at all my work.

"Exactly, Camila is also an electrical engineering major, so she can help me try to figure this out as the boys start working on the dimensions for the shield and how it will fold," I say.