"Katrina, let's be partners, please!" Said Jennifer excitedly as she turned to her friend. For a moment the other girl just frowned, but then she nodded her head, sighing.
"Okay. At least with you I might not feel quite so bad." She gave a half smile.
Jennifer didn't quite understand that comment, but she returned the smile anyway before trotting off to get a jump rope. Soon, the two friends had found an empty patch of floor near the middle of the room and Katrina was ready to take the first turn. Jennifer sat cross legged nearby, ready to start counting once Ms Carroll started the timer. Both girls looked expectantly at their teacher.
At the side of the room, Ms Carroll stood looking at her watch, enjoying what few elementary school teachers ever achieved from a class; complete, anticipatory silence. She brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her collar,then looked up at the twelve girls in the gym hall.
"Go!" She shouted suddenly, and a moment later the room was filled with the excited shouting and counting of children as they all threw themselves enthusiastically into the activity with the careless energy only youth can bring.
Well- all of them but one.
"Come on Katty! You're not even trying!" Jennifer yelled over the noise in the room. Katrina glared at her, but the moment she looked up the rope tangled itself around her ankles, causing her to wobble unstably.
"I am trying!" She snapped, kicking her feet free and flicking it back behind her again. "How many am I on?"
"Uh, about four." Jennifer guessed; with all the excitement, she'd forgotten all about counting.
Katrina just groaned and began skipping again, jumping clumsily over the rope twice before tripping yet again. She was breathing hard already, half from unfitness, half from anger.
"Six." Said Jenny, watching her friend close her eyes and breathe deeply, trying to keep her temper.
"Half way," shouted Ms Carroll over the racket, "Only thirty seconds left!"
Katrina opened her eyes again and began skipping again, much better than before now. Impressed, Jennifer watched as her friend passed twenty, then thirty skips.
"And that's time!" Their teacher yelled from the side. "Everyone, swap over."
Immediately, Katrina shoved the rope into Jennifer's hands and collapsed onto the floor in a heap, gasping and wheezing. Her friend looked down at her, worried.
"You okay, Katty?" She asked.
From the floor, Katrina nodded, round face red as a fire truck. Her parents owned a gym, but it was obvious their daughter had never visited.
"Good. Remember to count my skips! You got thirty-two."
She stepped away from the exhausted girl and got ready to begin skipping. She was actually looking forward to this; it had been ages since she'd last tried jump rope, but she remembered being rather good at it. Unbeknownst to her, when she'd last been skipping she'd been carrying about fifteen pounds less fat around her midsection, and had been a lot fitter.
"Off you go!" The call came, and they began again. Jennifer flicked the rope round and jumped over it, feeling her belly rise into the air with her, then come bouncing down on landing. Still, she kept going, her chubby body jiggling like jelly with the motion. After only a few skips, she was starting to feel sick; she'd eaten a large breakfast that morning, and her shorts were cutting painfully into her soft stomach. Worse, she was quickly out of breath, the air feeling arid in her lungs as her heart rate increased past resting for the first time that month.
She began to lose time, and due to her large stomach she couldn't quite see her feet. Suddenly, the rope snagged on her toes and she tripped, almost falling. She sank to her hands and knees, the air rattling in her lungs, head pounding.
"Thirty seconds!" She needed to keep going!
Her shirt had ridden up to just below her flabby chest as she skipped, and now she pulled it back down again, wishing distractedly it would just stay in place. She pushed herself back to her feet, knees and ankles twinging with pain at the unaccustomed abuse they were being put through. She slid a finger beneath her waistband, tugging it and relieving the pain for a second, but then she let it snap back into place. She flicked the rope back behind her again, and began skipping again.
She didn't even remember what happened. Presumably, the rope had caught around her ankles after a late jump. All she knew, however, was that one moment she was jumping rope, and the next minute the ground wasn't where it was meant to be and she was falling. She landed flat on her front, the impact forcing all the air in her lungs out in a great gasp. A millisecond later, her knee cracked down on the wooden tiling with a loud, solid clunk.
"Stop! Stop!" She heard Ms Carroll yell as she lay dazed on the floor. There was a buzzing in her ears, and everything looked a bit out of focus. It all looked a bit like ice cream, it occurred to her stunned mind. She watched as a vanilla ice cream in a dark chocolate cone hurried over to her.
"Jennifer! Are you alright?" Said the dairy product. She blinked twice, and suddenly the ice cream coalesced into the far less appetising form of Ms Carroll. And along with the recognition, like a scruffy guest who turned up uninvited to a dinner party, came the pain.
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