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We wove in and out of equipment before he led me into a stairwell with pristine wallpaper and a gleaming guardrail.
When the stairs spit us out into the basement, I wasn’t sure what exactly I had been expecting, but it wasn’t the enormous trackwith a pool in the middle.
“Are you wearing shoes you can run in?” Antonio asked.
I looked up at him. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Run for fifteen laps, and then meet me back upstairs.”
A weight lifted off my chest. “So, you won’t be waiting for me down here?”
The look Antonio gave me was disgusted enough to be insulting. “What?”
Even I heard how pathetic I sounded. “Is it safe for me to be alone?”
My mentor rolled his eyes. “Of course it is. Now get started.”
I huffed a pained laugh, trying to play off my offense. As soon as I stepped onto the flexible synthetic material covering the track I heard the doors open and shut.
Chapter23
You Again
Iglanced up to confirm that Antonio was gone, and then I started stretching.
He hadn’t told me to do that, which was foolish. I’d been involved in dance long enough to know how hazardous a torn muscle or snapped tendon could be. I stretched and pulled on my arms and legs, limbering them up before I took off.
At first, the movement was exhilarating. Feeling my legs pumping reminded me of dance. My breathing fell into a familiar rhythm with my legs.
Inhala.
Exhala.
More tears pricked my eyes as I heard Maestra Cecelia’s voice call back to me from my past. I glided across the starting line, and my body continued to act on muscle memory. Though dance was passionate, exhilarating, beautiful, there were moments in my routines where I was required to be in total control. Control of my breath, my movements, and my emotions.
Breathing into pain was effective.
In these moments, I achieved total clarity. Which allowed me to analyze my life piece by piece. The serrated knives surfaced in my mind first. My lungs froze. It was instinct. I did not train my body to be a weapon of destruction.
I made myself into living art, and I could not cast my nature off like one of the steel machines created to pamper the Élites.
As I passed the fourth lap, my breath grew more ragged. I disliked the monotony of running in a circle. It was merely moving forward. Sure, my heartbeat picked up pace, but the passion was gone. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and strands of curly hair stuck to my skin.
I made a mental note to remember to tie it back tomorrow. Or whenever we were returning.
The endorphins that came after the hard push helped with the fear I felt, but by the ninth lap, I was tired and outraged. For a second, I considered escaping.
But… what if there were hidden cameras recording my every move? I had a greater chance of winning the tournament than I did outrunning Javier and Manuel.
Thus, paranoia was the only thing that kept one foot pounding in front of the other.
To combat the anger, I hummed a breathless tune which was loosely based on a popular song called La Serenata. It was a simple melody I sang to the children I took care of in the orphanage. The words were tender, written from the perspective of a new grandmother. The unnamed woman’s worn, aged wisdom served as a guide for the newborn babe. Two cycles of life being connected.
The story helped. The humming helped, too. It soothed me like an old friend.
Several laps passed in the blink of an eye.
Suddenly, I faced my second to last lap, and irritation prickled under my skin. Undoubtedly, I would be here for several more hours, but the last thing I wanted to do was continue invariant, high-intensity workouts.
