A Time of Healing

“Take your mark,” Silence filters through the deck like a giant pause in time. “Go!”

Eight bodies fly off their respective blocks and burst out from under the surface of the water in a flurry of white water and limbs. People yell and cheer and clap from the stands and coaches jump and whistle furiously as their swimmers face off in a 100 free. Everyone seems so excited save for one lone girl. Avery Mason balances beside her coach on a set of crutches with a frown on her face. In her mind she’s replaying a conversation between the two of them over and over again.

“It’s a slow meet, you’ll final easily”

“Are you sure?”

“Unless you lose a limb you should place top 8 in a majority of things.”

Lose a limb. Funny. She should’ve knocked on wood or something. A week later the usual dull, manageable pain in her right knee flared into an inferno of white-hot torture that put her mostly out of commission. Typical injury.

“Maria!” Her coach claps his hands together as her friend and usual cohort Maria Benson walks up panting and dripping.

Avery shifts on her crutches as the two start to converse and she looks up in time to see the A final of the 200 backstroke walking out. That should be her up there.

“Ave!” Maria comes over and puts a hand on her friend’s back with a smile as her other hand moves up to her head to pull off her cap and goggles in one fell swoop.

“Hi Maria.” Avery responds in a melancholy manner. She still can’t get over the intense mixture of feelings coursing through her at the moment.

“How are you feeling?”

Avery just shrugs and bites her bottom lip wishing the other would leave her alone to her sulking. She shouldn’t have come here, it’s done nothing but make her feel worse.

“Come on let’s go sit.”

Still shaky with the crutches under her arms and with the deck being so full and slick it takes Avery a moment to make it back to their little team’s seats, and by then she’s immensely more flustered then before. Everything seems to be mounting into one grossly huge finale.

“Ave, what are you doing after the meet?” That’s Pat, one of her guy friends.

Avery just holds up one of her crutches in response “obviously not very much.”

“Well…” He looks at Maria who nods at their other friend Robert and they all smile back at Avery.

“We felt bad about you having to come all the way out here and not swim, so, you want to go out to dinner or something?’

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, it’ll be a nice change from you sulking around the deck.” Pat’s comment makes Avery blush, she didn’t think she’d been that obvious with her foul mood.

“Sure I guess, I mean I don’t have any money since ma just dropped me off here to watch.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll pay.”

For the past three days of the meet Avery has been wallowing in misery and self-pity thinking her friends didn’t notice their pain. Turns out they aren’t quite as blind to her as she originally thought.