“They’ve been practicing a lot, and their fingers are faster than ever.” They all look at me in surprise. I guess they weren’texpecting me to stand up for them. But Stephen is pissing me off. I’m not sure who he is, but there’s no way I’m letting him be mean to my friends.
“And didn’t you just have two DNFs at your last local competition?” asks Lukas.
“No,” Sebastian corrects him before Stephen can respond. “It was one DNF and a flipped equator.”
Stephen’s face grows red. At any moment, steam might start flowing out of his ears, he’s so mad.
A woman appears next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to wait in line again with your friends, or are you joining your father and I for breakfast?”
Stephen gives his mom a practiced, choir boy smile. “Breakfast sounds great.”
The sneer he shoots us behind her back as he turns and walks off is so over the top I can’t help but snicker at it.
“Have your parents come say hi to me later,” says the woman to the guys, nodding formally before following her son into the crowd.
“Well, now we definitely have to win and prove him wrong,” says Felix.
“He doesn’t deserve to be a national champion,” Sebastian agrees.
“We can’t take that title from him,” says Lukas, “so we just won’t let him become World champion.”
I’m barely listening. Stephen’s mother’s words replay in my head.Have your parents come say hi to me.
They would have told me if their parents are coming, right?
“Are you parents here?” My eyes search the room as we move up the line. As if I’d recognize them if I saw them. I’ve never even seen a picture of them.
“Of course,” says Elliot, sounding surprised that I didn’t already know this. “Why wouldn’t they come?”
“Well, they weren’t at the last one.” I can feel my breath coming faster. Is the room tilting a little?
“That was a small one-day competition, so there wasn’t a point in them flying out just for that,” says Sebastian.
“You should have told me.” I smooth my hair, suddenly self-conscious about looking frizzy when I meet their parents.
Oh my god, I’m going to have to meet their parents. This is not okay. That’s a girlfriend activity, not a whatever-we-are one. My palms begin to sweat and I fear I may be having a mild panic attack.
Felix frowns. “You didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t know I needed to,” I hiss as we reach the front of the line. “I’d have thought you guys would have given me a heads up on something like that.”
The conversation is put on pause as the guys get checked in for their individual events and their group relay. They’re given their own folders and lanyards, and I’m also given a lanyard, in a different color. This must be the guest one versus the competitor one. I slip it around my neck, my hands still shaking with nerves and irritation. I don’t know if I’m angry or nervous or both, but I’m definitely not happy.
But the guys probably have no idea why it’s a big deal, and may not even register that I’m upset. I don’t share their “Of course our parents are here, why is that a surprise?” attitude, but I know them well enough to understand why they don’t see an issue. The problem is that if I don’t explain my feelings to them, they probably won’t ever see my side of it, and now that the conversation has been interrupted by registration, they may think it’s done.
“I’m still upset that you didn’t tell me your parents were coming,” I say as we walk away from the registration table. I grab the nearest sleeve, which happens to belong to Felix, and lead him over to a quieter spot by the wall, trusting that the otherswill follow us. Which, of course, they do. “Them being here might seem like a no-brainer to you, but from my perspective, they weren’t at the other one, so I assumed it was normal for them not to come.”
“But we explained to you why they weren’t at that one,” Elliot says, clearly not following what I’m getting at.
“I know. But not until after I found out they were coming to this one. So do you see how I’d be surprised to find out they’re going to be here this weekend?”
They all think about it for a moment, then begin to nod. “I guess that does make sense,” says Sebastian.
“But we weren’t intentionally keeping a secret from you,” Lukas tells me. “We didn’t realize you wouldn’t know. That was just a miscommunication.”
“And we’re sorry that we didn’t communicate,” Elliot assures me. “Next time we’ll make sure to tell you ahead of time if our parents will be there.”
“I appreciate that,” I say. “But you guys don’t understand why I’m upset that you didn’t tell me I’d be meeting your parents, do you?” I recognize that they are trying to make amends for what they think has me upset. But I’m not upset that they didn’t tell me so much as I’m upset that it didn’t occur to them that I would want to know.
