Chapter 1 (1,209 words)

There was an obsessive side of Lexi’s personality that just barely escaped being certifiable.

Case in point, that time after she had finished the fifth Harry Potter book at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night, and subsequently spent two hours driving around Rayette, checking every gas station convenience store in town, motivated by the slim chance that in one of them she might find, nestled between the racks of Doritos and the stale doughnuts in the glass Tim Horton’s cabinet, not only a book section, but a book section that conveniently boasted a copy of book number six. Hopefully on sale. Nevermind that “The Half-Blood Prince” had been released 18 months previous and had about as good a chance of being on the racks of a Shell convenience store as Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.”

Then there was the time she filled out the online forms for all eight Ivy League schools, requesting graduate course calendars and application forms, because she had taken a recent interest in astrophysics and thought it would be fun to learn more, despite having not one, but two framed undergraduate diplomas already hanging on her wall. Neither of which were in astrophysics. Or any other type of physics for that matter.

Not that Lexi wasn’t smart. She probably would have gotten into one of those Ivy League schools, on scholarship to boot, had she been at home filling out the application forms, and not out driving around town looking for Harry Potter books on a Sunday night. Or making lists of every time she had ever flown on a commercial airline and calculating the number of flight hours she had as a passenger. Or organizing her t-shirts on matching hangers in order of the colours of the rainbow, all with the fronts facing left. Or sorting the fonts on her computer into groups of typographically similar styles.
Suffice it to say, Lexi was also easily distracted; which is probably the thing that kept family and friends from checking her in to the nearest psych ward. Sure, Lexi became more absorbed in day-to-day activities than the average human, but she was about as consistent as the weather. It might be raining Harry Potter today, but give it a week and the sun will be shining as Lexi starts teaching herself Latin, followed by a month of snow and oil painting.

Now that’s not to say that Lexi was wishy-washy or undetermined or incapable of seeing something through to its end. God have mercy on the poor soul who got in the way of a project that Lexi had decided was a worthy one. When she actually made up her mind about a given undertaking, Lexi was as focused and determined as Michael Scott in a campaign to raise rabies awareness.

The trouble for friends and family was figuring out which projects were the real ones, the ones that would propel Lexi, if not to fame and fortune, at least to fulfilling her potential, and which were the decoys. And there had been some impressive decoys.

In high school she had been a varsity swimmer, recruited by several Division 1 universities. But in the summer before grade 12, she was lifeguarding at the local pool in Port Castle, the small town on Lake Huron where she grew up, when she met Ava, a university student who was training for her eighth Ironman triathlon. So Lexi started swimming and running and biking with Ava who, by the end of the summer had convinced her to fly out to Penticton to compete in Ironman Canada. Not that Lexi really needed that much convincing. The promise of a free dri-fit t-shirt was reason enough for her to go.

So out to British Columbia she went with Ava, and completed her very first Ironman in 14 hours, 28 minutes and 13 seconds, puking only three times along the way and finishing a respectable 17th in her age group.

The next day, Lexi returned to Port Castle, declined scholarship offers from McGill, Ohio State and Auburn, and promptly began applying to universities in Australia. Eleven months later she was headed to the University of Queensland to study nutrition and art (the oil painting had apparently lasted a little longer than a snowy December) and maybe minor in philosophy, while representing her school on the swim team and in the annual Australian University Triathlon Championships.

And so, friends and family thought Lexi was headed the way of a professional triathlete with a penchant for painting. They had good reason to think so, too. Lexi kept her focus long enough to graduate with two degrees, win one inter-college national championship in the 500m freestyle and finish top ten in the Triathlon Championships four years consecutively.

Then in her final year, during the juried art show she was putting on to complete her BFA, she met Gordon, a flamboyantly gay local painter who liked her work and invited her to do an internship in his gallery. Which of course she consented to, because, well, why not? That and because he was going to let Lexi have her own exhibit, which tickled her pink.

Then when she was at the gallery one weekend, a month before graduation, she met Evan, a graduate assistant at the Rhode Island School of Design, who suggested that her work was probably good enough to earn her a scholarship for a graduate degree at the prestigious art school. He said it was certainly better than his, and he had managed to get a tuition waiver.

Never one who walks past an open door, Lexi jumped at the opportunity. Indeed, four months later – after a particularly grueling application process, especially so late in the current school year – she found herself on a plane headed to Providence, Rhode Island with a teaching assistantship and a President’s Scholar scholarship waiting for her.

And so, friends and family thought Lexi was headed the way of a professional artist with a penchant for triathlons.

But alas, another decoy.

One day, after several hours in the studio working on a painting that was boring her, Lexi headed down to the student centre to grab a bite to eat. As always she passed the endless walls of billboards covered in flyers, notices and advertisements. Rarely a day went by when Lexi didn’t get distracted by some colourful leaflet announcing a new club on campus or some fundraiser going on. Today was no different. Except that today Lexi didn’t get distracted from her distraction, which, ironically, is the only thing that generally kept her heading in a given direction for any substantial amount of time.

And so the next direction change came in the form of a bright purple flyer with loud orange lettering broadcasting the creation of a comedy improv club on campus. Now Lexi had never acted in her life, but she loved to laugh and she was game for a new adventure, to liven up the day to day drudgery that graduate art school turned out to be.

Two days later, flyer in hand, Lexi showed up at the first meeting of the newly formed “Richochet Theater Sports Club” and a few hours later Lexi knew this was it. This was what she born to do.

Chapter 2 (461 words)

Ava was born to be an athlete. One could even suppose that she was born to be a triathlete. She took to water like most children take to candy and spent every waking moment of summer days in the local outdoor pool. From as early as she could remember, she and here older sisters would bike to the pool after breakfast, where they would spend the entire day, rain or shine, swimming and diving and racing underwater, until their father, on his way home from work, called them home for dinner. The only thing that kept Ava from feeling too disappointed about the day’s end was the bike ride home, which she enjoyed almost as much as the water: the feeling of the wind in her face, drying her sun-bleached; the speed of the hills; the smooth pavement rushing by beneath her frantically peddling feet as she worked to keep up with her sisters. And while they spent the entire 15-minute ride complaining incessantly, Ava often got lost in the pleasure and more than once biked straight past her house and on for another few blocks before she realized that her sisters were not only no longer arguing, they were no longer anywhere to around.

The only things that made the cold, snowy winters of eastern Ontario bearable for Ava were swimming lessons, swim team and free swim at the indoor rec centre pool. But always hanging over her headboard was a calendar with the number of days counting down until May 1st of every year, the first day that the outdoor pool could possibly open, weather dependent, and then first day that she was allowed to get her bike out of the shed, regardless of the amount of snow on the ground.

One bleak winter day while laying in front of the TV, silently cursing a broken rec centre pool pump, eight-year-old Ava’s Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted by a swimming race broadcast from Australia. There was no urge to change the channel as she watched dozens of swimmers getting ready to compete. If she couldn’t be in the water, Ava thought, she would at least get to watch others have the satisfaction. She lay there for a solid half hour, watching jealously as swimmers headed out into open waters, and swam uninhibited by lanes and walls.

But, imagine Ava’s sheer delight when, as swimmers finished up the race and climbed out of the water, they ran straight for bicycles, stripping off wet suits and pulling on bike shorts and shoes in the process. It was the first triathlon she had ever seen, and at that point didn’t even know it had a name, but at that moment, at eight years old, Ava knew what she was born to do.