The Lie by S. Syed, G. Klein (reading well TXT) 📕

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Leanna looked down in horror. Half the strings on her brand new racquet had broken all at once.

She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t noticed before, but as she inspected her racquet more closely, she saw that the remaining strings had little grooves carved into them near the frame, as if someone had used a file to weaken them. The sneer on Kelsey’s face two courts over was enough to tell Leanna what she already knew—Kelsey had messed with her strings on purpose.

Worse yet, she hadn’t thought to bring her old racquet with her. Leanna’s heart dropped into her stomach. Jenny warned me about this, she thought, mentally kicking herself. I should never have doubted her.

Borrowing another racquet would be easy enough, but at this point Leanna wasn’t sure she could win her match anyway with so much on her mind. She felt awful for not believing Jenny and even worse knowing that one of her teammates—even if it was Kelsey—had betrayed her. As she walked over to the sidelines to borrow a racquet from one of her teammates, she considered forfeiting. That’s when she saw Jenny standing in the crowd. Their eyes met, and suddenly Leanna’s heart soared. Jenny actually came to watch me play! But then Leanna noticed something else. Jenny had her own tennis racquet slung over her shoulder.

“Jenny!” Leanna shouted, running toward her. “You were right about everything. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry too, Lee,” Jenny said. “I thought about what you said about Kelsey giving you a racquet and realized that must be what the other girls were talking about. I couldn’t just leave you out here without a backup. Here.” She held out her racquet with a smile and Leanna took it from her. The grip was worn down from the long hours Jenny had spent playing with her, and it felt good in Leanna’s hands.

“Thanks, Jen,” she said with a smile.

Jenny grinned back at her. “You’ve got a match to finish. Go get ’em, Lee.”

Leanna jogged back to the court, where her opponent was waiting for her. Kelsey had tried to throw her off, but now Leanna was even more determined to bring home a win for Kramer. She took a fresh ball out of her skirt and bounced it off the court’s surface, preparing to serve. With all eyes on her, she tossed the ball into the air. This one’s for you, Jen, she thought. Jenny’s racquet struck the ball clean, and she knew even before the ball had crossed the net that she had just fired off an ace. Everyone cheered, but one voice stood out from the rest—Jenny, her friend until the end, shouting, “Bring home the win!”

Publication Date: 03-09-2020

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Dedication:
Glasko Klein is a financial researcher who holds an MFA in fiction from Long Island University Brooklyn. He resides in New York City with his fiancée and his bilingual cat, Umlaut.