Naomi

[FEB 10, 2015]

Naomi opened the door to her kickboxing gym and was immediately greeted with the familiar smell of sweaty mats and the sounds of flesh and gloves colliding with punching bags. She rested her duffel bag on a bench and took a seat next to it to wrap her hands in preparation for her lesson.

Other students from her class started to file into the moderately sized gym and took the bench space around her to prepare, most of them were boys and all of them were at least fifteen, which made her the youngest by at least a year. While she waited, Naomi replied to a text from her dad and exchanged greetings with some friends. When she looked up she noticed a lot of people looking out the window to the street, she looked too. An unusually large group of people were gathered outside the public library across the street, waiting in line to get in. People around her kept mentioning a simulator, in fact it was the only thing people seemed to talk about for the last few days since it was announced, and it was starting to annoy her. Video games had never interested Naomi, and she didn't plan on starting now.

Naomi was good at kickboxing, handily keeping up with the people in her class when it came to running drills and sparring. During her lesson she watched the queue across the street fluctuate in size as people went in and out of the library doors with no sign of slowing down. Near the end of the session the instructor paired the students up and had them spar, Naomi paired up with one of the boys and they started their mock fight. They exchanged hits and blocks for a while, and it was clear they were pretty evenly matched.

The two fighters went on sparring, continuing to trade blows in a good rhythm. As the session was drawing to a close Naomi went to deliver one last kick, she picked up her right foot and went for a side kick. But just as she got her foot above her core she felt an uncomfortable pop in her left knee, her eyes went wide as it suddenly became very painful to put weight on her left leg. Her sparring partner noticed was something wrong

"Woah are you okay??"

Naomi dropped to the ground to get all the weight off her leg, her heart sank as she realized what had just happened.

She looked up to her partner with a weak defeated smile and told him what had happened:

"I just tore my ACL"