Lost and its characters belong to those crazy people at Bad Robot who want to make us all crazy just like them. Kate remembers when she learned to play golf. (I suck at summaries, don't I. That's SO tantalizing!)

Lost – Golf Club
By Mystic
March 30th 2006
She snuck out onto the golf course when no one else was looking. When they thought she was out in the jungle picking fruit, or off on some hike, or hunting boar, or staring at the ocean. She joked about the course, even refused to play when Jack asked, and he asked a lot the first week it was there. He teased her, told her she probably couldn't hit the ball. If only he knew. She smiled, holding the long club tightly between her fingers.

Kate learned the game from her father. She'd spotted a cute boy playing with his father on a public golf course one summer and asked her dad if he knew how to play. She begged him, even when he laughed at her and told her it wasn't a sport she'd really like. That really only made her want to do it more. She didn't even know he knew how to play. They never found the cute boy on the course, but she found her swing.

She remembered the first time she saw her father put the ball down on the tee and pull up the long sleeves of his shirt. He stood straight, but loose, and he locked his pinky with his forefinger, the rest of his fingers falling gently into place along the handle and he stared out on the green. It was the greenest grass Kate had ever seen. She was used to dusty fields and brownish grass that stuck in your hair and got caught in your shoelaces.

Kate narrowed her eyes, finding some spot in the distance. She stared down at the ball and wondered what her dad would think of her swing now. She brought the club up and back down, hearing the smack of the metal against the small white ball that went sailing into the air. Shaking her head, she smiled, grabbing a second ball and placing it down on the tee.

Wayne had broken the only golf club she owned. Her father bought it for her, told her to practice in the field. He gave her a small tube with four yellow golf balls inside. "Don't break any windows, Katie," he'd teased when he dropped her off in front of the large old house with the oversized tree out front.

"I won't," she responded with a roll of her eyes.

She hit cows instead. They liked to graze away from the house, so she set her tee just outside the back porch in that time between when she got home from school and when her mom got home from her first shift. Sometimes Tom would come over and tell her she looked so feminine. She'd push him in the dirt and they'd wrestle until they were filthy and then she'd stick her tongue out at him and whack the ball, listening to the cow moo loudly in the distance.

But when Wayne found her, one of those days they let everyone off early from work, he'd asked her where she'd gotten that club. He'd told her no daughter of his would play that wus sport. Kate remembered shoving him, hard, screaming at him that she wasn't his daughter.

"Your daddy bought you this club, didn't he girl." Wayne never asked questions when she was younger. She never took them as questions anyways. He said things and she stayed quiet. So she nodded her head and he held the club in his hands, gripping it like a baseball bat. "You gonna show me this game?"

"You're holding the club wrong," Kate said softly, coming up to move his fingers around, feeling them rough against her soft small hands. "Like this," she pressed his pinky down, pushing until he locked it with his forefinger. "Loosen your grip," she said, swallowing hard.

Wayne nodded, his hair flopping gently in the wind. "That all?"

"Stand straight."

"I am straight," he spat.

"Ok," Kate agreed with a short nod. She took a step back. "Now swing."

She watched him swing and spin and her eyes found the yellow ball still sitting where she'd put it. Kate laughed, then hiccupped and her eyes widened as he stiffened where he stood, his back to her. He raised the club slightly, looked it over and brought it down against the railing of the porch stairs, bending it in half. "It's a stupid game, and you need to take a shower before your ma gets home," he ordered.

Kate shook her head, shook away the memory and held onto the club in her hand now. Her palms felt sweaty and she couldn't focus on the ball. She kept hearing his voice in her head. It's a stupid game. It wasn't a stupid game, she countered. Her father showed her how to play. The club came up and then down hard, hitting the ground and sending a shock wave up her arms. Kate shouted, jumping back slightly and dropped the club, her fingers stinging.

"That wasn't a very good swing," Hurley offered, standing in a space not far from her.

Nodding, Kate picked up the club and examined it. "I'm rusty."

"Looked like you weren't focused." He laughed. "Looked like you were pissed off."

She bit her lip and dropped the club back into the bag with the rest. "I was thinking about something."

"Man, I hope it wasn't me," he teased.

She managed to laugh and shake her head. "First swing was better."

"Musta missed that one," Hurley shrugged, looking genuinely sorry. "What were you thinking about the first time?"

"My dad."

"Good memories?"

"Yeah," she paused. "Mostly."

"And the second swing? The one you messed up?"

"My dad," she shook her head. "Step-dad." She watched Hurley frown and she laughed. "It's no big deal, just, don't like my step-dad."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, your hand ok?"

She was still flexing it slowly. Kate forced herself to stop. "I really didn't like my step-dad."

"There's a name for that, isn't there?"

Kate raised an eyebrow, "Hate?"

He laughed. "No, no, I mean, when you, you know, think of someone you don't really like and, well, you mess up your golf game and…" he stepped closer, looking at the ground where she'd been a moment before, "take a four inch hole out of the ground. Dude, you really hated him."

"Yeah," Kate began walking out into the field to look for the golf ball she'd hit. Jack would notice if there was one missing. He'd want to know who hit it. He'd want to know why. He'd act like getting her to tell the truth was some game in itself.

"So why don't you play with Jack?" Hurley asked quickly, struggling to catch up. "Where are we going?"

She looked over, watching him step gently over a fallen tree branch. "Find the missing ball, and I don't want to play with Jack."

"I think if you played with Jack, you'd play really well."

Her head snapped up and her lips puckered slightly. "Why's that?"

Hurley stopped. "For the same reason you put a four inch hole in the ground."

Kate walked on and found the ball, picked it up and turned slowly, twisting it slowly in her right hand. She glanced up at Hurley, who watched her in the moonlight. He sniffled and waited as she made her way back to him and put the ball in his hand. "It's called transference, I think," she told him softly, her fingers sliding off his as she left him on the golf course.

Finis