9. Anna

Anna

" W hen I was a girl in Russia, my mother got her hands on a VCR and some tapes through the black market."

Nadia and I exchanged confused looks. VCR? Was that something that hadn't translated well from Russian?

Nadia raised her hand up in the air like she was the brown noser who reminded the teacher that she was supposed to give the class a quiz.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. What does VCR mean in English?"

Ekaterina raised a hand to her forehead like Nadia's question caused her physical pain. "A VCR was a device where we could watch movies. It is what we used before we had streaming and the internet. It means ‘video cassette recorder' because you recorded movies on video cassette tapes."

Nadia looked as confused as I was, but we both remained silent. No sense irritating Ekaterina even more.

"One of the movies my mother loved was called The Parent Trap. "

"Oh yeah, with Lindsey Lohan?" Nadia gave her one of those sunshine smiles that always irritated me.

Ekaterina blew out a long sigh. "No, The Parent Trap is an old movie with Hayley Mills. Hayley plays twins who get into trouble at camp, and they must be isolated so they can learn to get along. And then they find out that they are twins who were separated as babies, but that's not the relevant part."

"That's what happens in the Lindsey Lohan movie. They pull pranks on each other at camp," Nadia replied, obviously still fixated on the movie.

I, however, was beginning to catch onto why Ekaterina was bringing up old movies. A sinking feeling made my stomach churn.

"Coach?"

Her gaze swung to mine and she gave me what I think was supposed to be a smile. It looked painful. And evil.

"Yes. Your punishment is the same as The Parent Trap. "

She sent a stern look in Nadia's direction. "Both versions."

"I don't understand," Nadia said.

"From now until our final competition, you two must do everything together. If you leave, you leave together. You will sleep, eat, and practice together. You will be less than six feet away from each other at all times. When you are not with the team, you will be alone with each other, learning to get along, no flirting with basketball players or going for runs with someone else. If I see or hear about you being more than a few feet apart from each other, you are both off the team. No questions, no excuses, just a plane trip back to disgrace and a lifetime of menial labor in the U.S. Do you understand me?"

"What if we have to go to the bathroom?" Nadia asked.

"You go together."

Nadia's mouth dropped and a look of alarm crossed her face. I wasn't sure why, All the bathrooms had side by side stalls, it wasn't like we needed to stand next to the toilet.

"But Coach, I can't…," Nadia lowered her voice to a whisper, "I get performance anxiety. In the bathroom I mean. I need privacy to do…some things."

"When you have to go bad enough, you will get over it," Ekaterina said dismissively. "Now either become friends, or kill each other, I don't care. And remember, I have spies everywhere. I will know if you disobey me. This is your last warning."

Without another word, she stormed out of our room, leaving us staring after her.

Nadia plopped on her bed with a dejected sigh, then bounced back up like a deranged jack-in-the-box when she heard my stomach growl loudly.

"I guess it's a good thing I brought us food," she said.

She pulled open the bag she'd brought, taking the top box out, then sliding the bag in my direction.

"You'd better eat," Nadia said bossily. "We have another practice this afternoon and then we have to go to the Opening Ceremonies. It's our chance to shine, so we need to look and feel our best."

I sighed at her overly cheerful tone. "Fine, let's eat."

***

Two days later…

"Come on, Princess. It's time for practice."

Nadia groaned, holding her belly. I knew it was because she hadn't been able to poop since we were ordered to be attached at the hip. No matter what we tried, she just couldn't get over her weird fear of people hearing her take care of her body's natural needs. We'd even tried playing music in the bathroom to drown out the sound, but she couldn't do it.

Apparently she usually hunted for solo restrooms when she needed to do something besides pee, otherwise she waited in a stall for however long it took for the communal restrooms to be empty.

Other than that little problem, things had been going surprisingly well. We'd mostly been getting along. We still snarked at each other, but we'd only got into one actual argument since Coach Ekaterina stormed out of our room two days ago. Considering how much time we were spending trapped in this tiny room, that was impressive.

For me the bigger problem was that being so close to her was making me have a lot of confusing thoughts. Like this morning, I found myself watching her sleep and thinking about how cute she looked curled into a tiny ball and snoring softly.

Much to my horror, I was developing a crush on my annoying roommate, and I didn't know what to do about it.

"I need to stop at the bathroom again," she said quietly as she gathered her bag.

She looked miserable, and she'd had a bad practice this morning because of her increasing discomfort from not pooping.

"I've found a solution for your problem," I told her.

She eyed me suspiciously. "Really?"

I nodded. "Come with me."

I'd done some googling this morning and located the floor plans for this building. Nodding at her to follow me, I led Nadia down two flights of stairs to the building's basement. The area was filled with storage, a commercial laundry facility, the HVAC system, and in the far corner, a small single person staff bathroom.

"You take care of what you need to," I said, squatting against the wall just outside the door and putting in my earbuds. "We'll still be within six feet of each other, and I won't be able to hear a thing. But you can run the sink if you want to be sure."

Nadia rushed into the room, and I listened to some music until she finally came back out about ten minutes later, looking more relaxed than I'd seen her in days.

"Mission accomplished," she said as I stood to greet her.

Her sunshine smile was back. I was surprised to realize that I'd missed it.

"You pooped?" I clarified. "Congratulations."

I was tempted to make a joke about how much weight she'd just lost in the bathroom, but I didn't want her to feel worse about her phobia than she already did. We all had our irrational fears. I didn't want her tormenting me with spiders if she found out mine.

"You, Anna Parker, are a freaking genius."

To my shock, she pulled me into a hug.