My face immediately went a bright shade of crimson and I ran into the hall, the echoes of the hot guy’s laughter still echoing in my ears.
Tears threatened to fill my eyes, but I forced them back. How could I have been so stupid? Of course no guy like that would have been interested in someone like me. He was sexy, he probably came from some rich family, it must have been obvious that I wasn’t nearly good enough for him.
I felt ashamed for having had those feelings when I looked at him. He obviously didn’t feel the same way about me. Of course not. I was a plain-looking, slightly on the chubby side fourteen year old. I wasn’t going to be the girl hanging off the arm of a guy who could have passed for a Greek god.
My heart plummeting towards the ground, I made my way up the stairs and found the math class. I knew I shouldn’t have let it bother me, but that sexy guy had just completely ruined my first day at Moreton Academy.
Chapter Four
The next day I saw a poster on the community notice board by the front of the school. Track and field team tryouts were on Wednesday. I was never going to be a runner, that was for sure. Not with my shape. I wondered how serious you had to be about sports here. I liked throwing the shot put when I was in elementary school, and also the long jump was fun, though I wasn’t any good at it.
Maybe the school had a volleyball team. I was pretty good at that. Still, I decided I was going to try out for the track team and I’d see what happened.
After the final bell went on Wednesday, where I made sure to sit at the same spot in science class and waited for everyone else to leave before I did, so I wouldn’t run into that guy, I went to the gym change room then headed outside. I took one look at the group waiting for the track stuff to start and wanted to turn back and pretend I’d never wanted to do this. I was the shortest girl by at least three inches. Every single one of them were rack thin, with the ultimate runner’s bodies, and I was pretty sure if they pulled up their shirts a good chunk of them would have six packs. This was a huge mistake. Of course I shouldn’t be here.
I was about to turn back when I heard a whistle behind me.
“Good, you’re all here,” boomed a loud voice. I turned to see a tiny Asian lady, definitely no taller than five feet, coming towards us with a clipboard, dressed in black and red shorts and a polo shirt emblazoned with the school logo.
“Welcome to the track and field team here at Moreton Academy. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mrs. Chang. I’ll be your coach.”
She had a surprisingly strong voice for such a tiny body. I’d have been surprised if she weighed even ninety pounds.
“Now, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m not here to mess around. You’re all welcome to be on the team, you’re all welcome to train. But this is an academy of excellence, and if I don’t think you’re putting any effort in, if your grades begin to slip or if you’re simply not up to scratch, you’re not going to competitions. However, it’s my job as coach to help you get there, and by the end of the year I want each and every one of you to have gone to at least one competition event. Now, when I point to you, I want you to tell me your name, and the sport – or sports – you want to do.”
There was no denying it, Mrs. Chang was efficient. She immediately pointed to one of the girls to her left.
“Um, I’m Marcie. I’d like to do long distance running.”
“Good. You,” Mrs. Chang continued, pointing to the guy next to her as she scribbled Marcie’s name and sport down on her clipboard.
“John. Long and high jump.”
Eventually she got to me.
“Tina, and shot put please,” I squeaked, my face going red even as I said it.
“Good. So we have… six runners, four jumpers, and two throwing sport athletes,” she noted, going through her list. “I’ll be putting you into groups and organizing separate training regimes for those of you in different sports. If I had my way, we’d have three separate coaches, but apparently the lacrosse and field hockey teams here are considered more important than us. Anyway, today, we start by training together. I want you to start by running two laps of the field to warm up,” the coach finished, motioning to the football field behind us. The lacrosse team were out practicing, the twenty-odd fit men all decked out in their gear and tossing the little rubber ball around like it was nothing.
I had never been much of a runner, but I hadn’t expected to be left behind just as much as I was when everyone else suddenly took off.