12 - June 2011

Chapter 1: The Meeting at the Meet

It was February 12, the date of the yearly swimming meet, where all of the girls over the age of 6 and under the age of 18 would come. Everyone came because every single girl from every single town in The Border had to participate. If they didn’t, well, no one really knows what happens to them. So all of the girls practice swimming all the time. In the competition, there was one girl, Lynn, who has been one of the best swimmers in the competition since she started when she was 6, which is surprising because she is so young. Lynn is 12 years old. When she first started, she came in tenth place. Tenth place out of about 2,000,000th place, in other words, she is really, very good.
The towns in The Border are separated into different towns depending on what your “talent” is. There is one town called Theroy. Everyone in Theroy “stretches”. If you take a… Let’s see. If you take a random girl from Theroy by the arm, you can walk exactly a mile, and her arm, but only her arm, not her body will come with you. Other towns morph their voices; write any type of handwriting or calligraphy; have insane strength; make random parts of their bodies blow up in size- things like that. Our young Lynn lives in a town called Plome. Every girl in Plome has to do the yearly swimming competitions every year until they are eighteen years old. But, notice how I said all the girls had to compete. I didn’t say that all the boys have to. No boy is expected to compete. They are supposed to be able to fight, and really, you can’t fight by swimming. You can fight by hitting, you can fight with kicking, and you can blow parts of yourself up, and bounce your enemy away.