Chapter 2: A Friend

"What was school like, pumpkin?"

Taz forced a big smile at her father. "Oh you know, big red and grey building. Hardwood flooring. Classes. Teachers. Students. That sort of thing."

"I didn't ask what school was, Taryn."

"Well technically you did," she responded, edging hopefully towards the stairs.

"Ok, I'll rephrase. How did you get on? How did you fit in?"

"How did I get on?" She sighed. She couldn't lie to her Dad. "I got on like Posh Spice at a United Nations Convention."

He frowned at her. "Who's Posh Spice?"

"I got on like a drunk at an AA meeting." She added. Still no sign of comprehension. "I got on like a cripple at the Olympics for normal people!" She spat out.

"Taryn, I don't—"

"It's Taz, Dad. Taz."

"Taz, then," he conceded. "You're not a cripple—and I don't like that word. You're perfectly normal." He reached for her hand.

"No I'm not," she protested. "They all laughed at me."

"You are perfectly normal," he reiterated. "Although you will insist on dying your hair. The average sixteen year old does not have purple hair, let alone purple eyes."

"Dad, don't you get it?" She let the tears fall again, sick of the lump in her throat and the pain in her head from fighting them. "If I dye my hair they should pick on that and not my limp."

He pulled her onto his lap for a hug, despite the fact that she was too old and too big to be hugged like that now.

"Kids are cruel, Taz. Just don't sink to their level."

"But why don't they laugh at my hair instead of my limp?" she asked. "I can't help my limp, so why don't they pick on something I chose to do?"

He stroked her hair and let her cry, not knowing how to answer the question.

Taz squared her shoulders and held her head high as she entered the school building. It was going to be hell, sure, but she wasn't going to slip up this time. No-one else was going to see her cry.

If all they cared about was perfection and trophies then she was too good for this school.

She marched up to her locker and began sorting through her books, searching for her Math text book.

"Um, hi."

She looked up and saw the boy from yesterday. She sighed in exasperation. "I'm not going to cry again, so you might as well go away and save your breath."

"Believe it or not, I don't want to see you cry," he replied with a half-smile.

"You're a jock, I can't even run, hell, some days I can barely walk. So, we have nothing in common. Thanks for the chat." She turned her attention back to her locker.

"Are you always this aggressive?" he asked.

"I'm aggressive? Can you blame me?"

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Ok, you make a fair point. What say we start this conversation again? I'm Fulton Reed, and you are?"

"Taryn McDonald, Taz."

"See, that wasn't so bad was it?" He smiled at her.

"Could have been worse," she admitted.

"I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch with me and my friends today." He offered.

"I don't get it." She said. "Why? What's the point? You're a jock and—"

"You're not," he replied gently. "So what? My team might kill me for saying this, but there's more to life than hockey. You can't do some sport, that's ok. I like a load of other stuff besides hockey, like trashy horror movies, and loud music and a million other things."

She finally smiled at him. "Ok, you win. Lunch."

"I'll meet you in the quad."

Fulton smiled at Taz as she approached. She tentatively smiled back at him.

"How was class?" He asked.

"The usual. Mind numbingly boring," she replied, with a slight edge to her voice. "You?"

He wondered if she'd ever relax at school. "The same. Of course, there's also the abject terror that I'll flunk a class and be suspended from the team."

"Then you'd be a loser like me." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"Why do you do that?" He asked.

"Do what?"

"Assume that people will think you're lower than dirt because you can't play sport."

"I don't," she replied quickly. He raised his eyebrows at her pointedly. She rolled her eyes. "Ok, maybe I do a little. But it's only so I can beat you to the punchline."

"Give it up," he said. "I'm not going to laugh at you."

"Wait 'til you see me in gym," she replied.

He rolled his eyes at her. "There you go again. Like I said before, there's more to life than hockey."

She smiled reluctantly. "Sorry."

"So what do you like? I take it that you're not a big hockey fan." He led her over to a bench and sat down.

She took a seat. "I like art, I also love trashy horror movies. Horse riding is also fun."

He stared at her. "Horse riding?"

She almost got up and walked away again, but decided that he might have a point about her aggressive nature. "Yeah, when my hip's not playing up I can do it. It's mainly a summer thing for me."

"You hip? Is that…"

"Yeah. CHD. Big fun."

"What's CHD?" He asked.

"CHD stands for Congenital Hip Dysplasia. I was born with deformed hips, they were dislocated." She flipped some hair out of her eyes. "You know the hip bone is a ball and socket joint?" She made her right hand into a fist and then cupped it with her left hand to demonstrate. "This is what a normal hip looks like, kinda, and this—" She smiled at him, then straightened her left hand and moved her right hand, still balled up in a fist, down to about wrist level. "—this is what my hip looks like."

"So is that why you limp?" he ventured, knowing this was an iffy subject for her.

"Yeah, because of my dodgy hips one of my legs is about an inch or two shorter than the other."

"Does it hurt?"

She shrugged. "Yes and no. Yes if I'm made to do cross country running, or spend too much time horse riding or walking. But a lot of the time it doesn't bother me. It seems to bother plenty of other people though." The last statement was offhand, as if it didn't matter to her, but they both knew otherwise.

"This school doesn't like what's different," he told her. "The first year my team came here we didn't get on with anyone."

That caught her attention. "Yeah? You didn't like it here?"

"Yeah, the school thought we were here on a free ride and didn't like it much."

"Why?"

"After the Junior Goodwill Games we got awarded scholarships—"

"Wait a minute!" she interrupted. "The Junior Goodwill Games? As in the teenage Olympics?"

"Um, yeah." He expected her to get up and walk away, so he was pleasantly surprised to see her laugh. More so that she laughed so hard that tears started leaking from her eyes.

"What?" He asked, slightly bemused.

She just laughed harder. When she finally calmed herself she managed to answer him. "It's just that I was so worried about fitting in." She started laughing again.

"That's it?"

"And Eden Hall turned its nose up at a team that played at Olympic level." She laughed so hard that she almost turned the same color as her hair.

Fulton smiled at her, noticing how pretty she looked when she laughed.