Let's Go To The Mountains

Chapter 4

Sarah

I had practice after school and I was not looking forward to it. For some stupid reason, I joined the Track team. Track. Who joins track? Who enjoys running? Not me. Not at all. One would think I would have learned my lesson by now; I've tried the sport a total of five times. It's crazy that I thought people would learn how to run different. It's crazy to think that some people consider it fun.

The only reason I go to a sport at every school is so that I won't have to get a gym membership. Those things are tricky. I could always workout on my own, but that's boring, too. At least this way I get some socialization. I don't typically submit physicals, medical documents, insurance,  or any of those pesky documents. Usually coaches are pretty cool, so I just ask one to let me on the team. I don't ask to be put into meets, or games depending on the sport. I just get bored easily.

Right now, though, I'm really regretting my decision to stay in shape. We had practice every other day this week. My legs were dead. Wednesday was a long run, too, and yesterday we did sprints, so my legs are nonexistent at this point.

I'm also running late for practice. I had to make up an assignment because someone decided to change the way that you are supposed to write an essay and I failed. I practically helped invent the modern English language and grammar (not really, but you get the point). I don't understand how it's possible to even fail assignments at this point. I've been learning the same things for centuries.

They just want people to be smarter these days, I guess. Some of the things that I'm learning now weren't even taught until grad school before. . . they weren't even taught at all if you go back far enough. It's annoying. Somehow, it keeps getting more stressful. I didn't even know I could be stressed at this point. Well, here I am.

I practically sprinted from my English teacher's class and into the nearest bathroom to change. The place was disgusting, but I liked to avoid the locker rooms at all costs. They'd be locked at this point anyway. Thirty minutes lat to practice. Seriously? Essays aren't that important.

God. Now I'm thirty eight minutes late. Great. My bag was bouncing awkwardly on my back as I tried to walk-run out of the building and down to the track. Okay, so, technically I wasn't late if I made it to the track in the next two minutes. I can't properly run without my bag trying to fling me into the middle of the street, which at this point I'm not totally opposed to, so I'm basically lunging my way down to the tack. I look like an ostrich.

When I finally made it down to the track, I didn't even bother trying to find the gate that a civilized person would take to get around the fence. I threw my bag onto the pile of other student's stuff and hopped over the fence. It took me two tries, but I got it. I quickly checked to make sure my computer and phone weren't shattered and sprinting into line as we began dynamic warm ups. I made it just in time to fill in one of the empty spots in the last row. Maybe Coach didn't notice.

"Suicides after practice, Reed," he called, not turning from where he was observing the field sports warm up on the opposite side of the track. He's got super vision or something. I'm immortal so, like, it could be possible.

"Damn," I muttered starting to skip across the track. 

Skipping. Another thing from my childhood which has been ruined by this sport. I detest skipping now. Apparently, you can get that wrong, too. Once, Coach made us skip the entire track just to make sure we had our mechanics correct. We did lunges around the track after that. Three different lunges. Three different times. Forward lunges. Backward lunges. Jumping lunges. A quarter mile each. I couldn't walk the next day.

"Where were you?" one of the older girls whispered to me. She was probably hoping that I was hooking up with someone just so she could gossip about it.