Free Three Hundred Words by Adelaide Cross

enough to win. We had two weeks and then we’d be playing. Practise
would be every other day.
     
    I wasn’t sure I
could stand to be around my teammates for that much time.
     
    They still didn’t
say anything straight to my face, but their expressions said it all. Sneers
every time I dared raise my gaze from the floor and a constant flood of
whispers about what a bitch I was. They weren’t overly quiet whispers.
     
    Warming up was
fine, but I would have killed for some headphones as we jogged up and down the
sports hall. I could have just ran and blocked everything out – I’d always
found it relatively soothing and decided that, if I ever got a decently paying
job, I’d invest in a treadmill.
     
    Today I just felt
nervous. The urge to just jog straight out the door and hole myself up in bed
for the rest of my life was almost overwhelming. But, I kept my feet moving in
the straight line of the sports hall, my breathing as steady as it could be.
     
    I could do this.
It wasn’t like anyone really cared about me or what I’d done. They just
liked to gossip. And I didn’t care about them, I never had done and I shouldn’t
know. It shouldn’t have mattered what they had to say about me, but it did.
     
    When we set up for
drills, my hands felt numb. People were slamming the shuttlecock towards me
with outrageous speed, and I was more uncoordinated than normal, too. It was a
disaster in the making. “There’s no way we’re going to be winning anything if
that’s the best you can do,” my partner for this drill grumbled.
     
    It was no surprise
they felt bad about having to play with me, I really was just average and
everyone else was above the bar. We were a standard school, but one of the
younger kids’ mum was a professional coach and so our performance level had
shot right up. Well, the people with natural talent had shot through the roof,
I was still scraping behind and had been enjoying the casual practises and
getting to play a few matches.
     
    The competitive
setting wasn’t my kind of thing at all.
     
    In game, we
practised against the team of the year below us, and they smashed. I missed
almost every serve and when I dropped my racket, even the girls I was against
couldn’t hold in their sniggers.
     
    I couldn’t deal
with pressure and right now it was being heaped onto my shoulders. The wiping
of my tears was subtle and no one noticed them, but I was beyond glad when
practise was finally over.
     
    I scampered out of
the room before anyone else had even stood up and ignored my coach’s request
for me to stay behind and talk to her.
     
    There was no way I
could play in this tournament. I was average at the best of times, but with all
this shit piling up around me I was playing abysmally. I’d cost them games and
I couldn’t face their angry stares when that happened.
     
    I swiped at my
tears without care, now, sniffling in the most unattractive manner. I’d email
the coach tomorrow and tell her I couldn’t play. They could find someone else,
someone better who they didn’t hate, hopefully. And if not, at least there
would be no real life embarrassment for me. It was the same conclusion whether
I played or didn’t. We’d no doubt lose.
     
    “Lily,” the voice
cut through the silence and I wished I’d got my headphones even more now.
“Wait, I need to talk to you.”
     
    “About what?” I
stopped, even though I longed to do anything but, and prayed that none of the
other girls walked this way. I didn’t want to see their reactions if they saw
me talking to Luke now.
     
    “I have to
apologise,” he scratched the back of his head and took in my tear stained face.
Why he thought he had anything to be sorry about was beyond me – that just
showed how much of a better person he was than me, I supposed. “I only told one
person and it just spread. I thought it was implied that I didn’t want him to
tell anyone, but I’m just so sorry it’s all happened.”
     
    “It’s not