open||fire and ice

[Gabriella Tamara Preston]

"point, flex, point, flex." gabby's feet felt like they were on fire. for most of today's lesson they had been doing exercises to strengthen their feet and make their performances more smooth. the dance teacher had insisted on making them point and flex alternately on both feet for the past half hour. her left foot was cramping and had that painful sharp feeling, but she knew if she stopped, she would feel like an idiot. her knees were buckling and she, for once, wanted to go back to her hotel room and sleep.

after another ten minutes of that madness, the teacher declared that foot exercises were done for the day. the rest of the lesson was a breeze for gabby. sashays, turns, leaps, it was all old news to her. it came to her easily. it bored her. that's not something one should say when you're in a school especially for dancing. gabby herself had never been fond of dancing, it was her mother that forced her into it as soon as she turned three. she got drilled extra hard because her mother was the dance instructor. her love for it slowly died as her mother pushed her harder and harder. it was never for fun for gabriella, it was "you will live up to your mother's expectations. you will be her perfect little girl. you will dance perfectly, get perfect grades and look perfect. you will be in a famous ballet like your mother." those and other things had been drilled into her mind after many long years.

sie wird perfekt sein. machen mich stolz. is what her mother always said to her. those words repeated in her head for awhile, and she stood in the corner of the gymnasium while all the other giggling girls left. she wished she could be like them. they weren't serious about the dancing as she was, and they didn't have to live up to their strict mother's expectations. gabby wanted to run away from the school half the time. when her teacher finally left, and she was alone, just how she liked it, and she threw her dance bag down.

her leotard was loose on her, and would have exposed her undies if she hadn't worn little shorts over it. gabby assumed they had stretched out, but she didn't have time recently to get a new one. anyhow, she picked up the closest basketball, it felt heavy in her arms, and chucked it at the basket with all of her might. it bounced off the glass and ricocheted across the room. this made her more agitated. she went across the room and got it again.

this time, instead of throwing it at the basket, she threw it at the wall, picked it up when it bounced back to her, and threw it again. she was close to crying for no reason at all. this time when she threw the ball, it bounced off too hard and flew behind her. gabby thought she heard a voice say "ouch."

notes:kinda rambled, sorry if it doesn't make sense.

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[jeremy]

Jem's day had been terrible. It really had, in every way possible. He had woken up late, causing him to be late to his first class. In trying unsuccessfully to make it to that first class on time, he had forgotten his notebook, among many other things. Being unprepared all day wasn't the most enjoyable experience of his life. He would be the one to get cruddy luck. He always was. The most irritating part of that was that he did it to himself. If he could just stop and think about things for a moment, he could prevent much of the bad luck he had on a daily basis. That was just it, though. He couldn't think. He couldn't think about anything. Nothing made sense to him, nothing had a black or white answer. Nothing but his saxophone.

Not even band class had gone right that day. First, his reed had cracked. Sure, that happened all the time, but it could've been better happening on any other afternoon. As he walked around wetting his new reed, his foot got caught in his neck strap which caused him to fall over, nearly choking himself with the reed that had almost lodged his throat. Yea, completely unlikely, right? That could only happen to Jem. All he could think about that moment was how pissed off he'd be if he had ruined his sax. Luckily, it hadn't been attached to the strap at the time. Those things weren't cheap to fix.

Finally, the day began to turn around when he could go relax in his dorm. He had gotten halfway to his room when he remembered that he couldn't go yet. Crap.. he needed to go pick up his clothes from his gym locker so they could be washed. He didn't even know why he had left the clothes there at all. There wasn't much point to it, living in the building and all..but nobody wanted to walk around with sweaty clothes in his arms.

He sluggishly dragged his feet toward the gym , barely paying any attention to where he was going. His eyes were glued to his feet and the floor which had been entertaining him since he had gotten into the tiled floor. He had been sure not to step on a crack, it was a habbit of his. When he reached the gym, he kept his head low for the first few steps, until his peripheral vision caught an incoming basketball.

Quickly and without thinking, as he did most things, he ducked to avoid the ball but ended up getting hit in the shoulder. Ouch.. You duck if the ball's above you, genius.. he thought to himself before catching the still moving ball in his hands. He looked up to see a girl younger than he was who didn't look too happy. He had picked the perfect time to enter a gym with a potentially aggressive basketball player. Great. She didn't look much like a basketball player. It was always the least likely ones..

He tossed the ball back to her and cleared his throat. I think that shot missed.. he said with a slight grin trying to ease the tension before taking a few more steps toward the locker room with no intentions of carrying on anymore dialogue.

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