First Day of My Life

Chapter 28

Half a year passed in a haze. I traveled around the world, practicing my skills with everybody else on the Canadian and USA teams. There were many competitions, a lot of snow and friends, but even though I was sick half of the time and crying because of missing someone very far away from me the other half, I was still living my dream. I still couldn't thank FP enough for making me take a hobby that he had always wanted to do. I was on the top of the world and after everything I had gone through, I still couldn't believe how my life had turned out to be.

In December, I had another week of competitions with my team, but not in Europe or Canada. It was in Saratoga where all of this started for me. Dad and Jug and Charles all promised to come and my friends from other countries were competing in the junior categories, which meant I was going to see everybody.

My team had eleven cars in total in which we had already driven around Canada, and this time it was going to be from near Ottawa to the place I once called my home. It was a five-hour drive. Since I owned a car, I was the one driving. I had four of my teammates with me, the trunk full of equipment, and the ones on the back seat were struggling because of the skis that hadn't fit anywhere else and they had to be holding.

"You know this neighborhood pretty well," Elisa told me, looking confused.

"I lived here before the accident."

"Oh, that's your club we're at?" Emilia asked from the back seat, a smile on her face.

"Yep," I smiled while turning to the right small road between the woods. "My mom used to drive me here every day since when I was six."

"But you lived near here?" Olivia, a woman who was a backup for our team, asked.

"Yeah, about twenty minutes away. It's a small town."

"Are you going to visit it?"

I chuckled. "No. Too many bad memories."

They all knew what I meant, so they just changed the topic as I took a shortcut through the woods. We all knew each other's stories, good or bad, didn't matter.

The next day, we started practicing at 10 am for the first sprint competitions at night. I was excited because all my best friends were already there, practicing with their teams, and I was going to see dad, Olive, Charles and Jughead. Though when I missed a shot because of that, I calmed myself down and kept shooting.

"Betty!" Matt called me over. I skied to him with a sigh.

"I'm so sorry, I'm just really excited to see my family today."

"That's alright, just try to stay relaxed. Also. Can you show me your speed-shooting? The word is that Russia has really improved in everything, so I want to make sure you're good to go."

"Right now?"

"Yeah, here."

He gave me the bullets that needed to be entered and I smiled as I skied back to my position when everybody else kept practicing their speed. "Standing up!" he shouted when I was about to go to the other position. I looked over at him in confusion. "Speed-shooting standing up."

I shuddered. That was the only shooting style that I knew I could have mistakes in. I took my position and shot all the five targets with three seconds, missing only the last one. He jogged to me, probably wanting to train me on that one individually now. So much of spending some time with my family before the race.

At 1 pm, after a three-hour training, we were free to go and eat before testing the final skis for tonight. As soon as I had taken my equipment to the workstation, I hurried to the parking lot. Charles had sent me a message that he was there already. "Broooo," I said loudly when walking to him with a smirk on my face.