Cheerleading Can Be Murder (Horror High #1)

by Carissa Ann Lynch

  Coach Davis strolled across the court boldly, cutting straight through the ongoing game, and heated words were exchanged between her and Coach Purnell. He looked almost intimidated. I couldn’t contain a small snort of laughter. After their exchange, Coach Purnell and the boys moved to one side of the court, giving us plenty of room to practice on the other side.

  Yesterday we learned six new cheers, and today we learned five more. The cheers were short and simple to learn. The halftime cheer, however, was more complex and involved me doing a standing back tuck, and being lifted into an extension prep.

  After learning the sideline chants, it was time to practice the stunt. “Don’t you dare drop me on purpose,” I snarled at Brittani.

  “I won’t!” she squeaked, looking surprised by my concern. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done it before, right? I rolled my eyes at her and got in position to step into the lift.

  “One, two, down, up,” the bases called out in unison, dipping down as I stepped onto their hands. The next thing I knew their arms were fully extended and I was up in the air.

  My arms and legs felt shaky. “Remember to pretend there’s a penny in your butt cheeks! Keep your butt and legs tight!” Coach Davis shouted. I did as she commanded.

  “And smile up there!” I smiled out at the non-existent crowd.

  However, even though there were no fans in the stands, there was a crowd watching me. Most of the boys had stopped what they were doing and they were staring at our stunt. Andy stared at me longingly, bracing a ball on his hip. I also saw Ronnie staring at me strangely.

  “One, two, down, up,” they said again, performing a basket toss to let me down from the lift safely.

  “Great job, girls! You were terrific, Dakota,” Coach Davis praised. I was absolutely exhilarated. Not only did I love being a flyer, but I was good at it too! I couldn’t wait for game night, and the “sociopath” was the farthest thing from my mind…

  Chapter

  Forty-Four

  I was still flying high from yesterday’s practice when I saw that the sociopath had struck again. There were dozens of white paper fliers stuck to the doors of lockers and strung out all along the hallway. There had to be hundreds of them.

  As I got closer, I saw that the flier contained a black and white picture of Amanda, pasted next to a mug shot of a man. I didn’t understand the meaning of them, but I knew the fliers contained something bad about my friend. I hastily walked up to the first one and started yanking them down furiously.

  “It’s no use. They’re everywhere.” Amanda stood quietly behind me. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.

  “The sociopath?” She nodded grimly.

  We walked from locker to locker, taking fliers down on each side of the hall. But people were picking them up off the floor and staring at the ones that were still hanging. “Sounds to me like your dad got what he deserved.” Tasha held up one of the papers defiantly.

  Amanda tried to lunge at her, but I grabbed her around the waist and held her back with as much strength as I could muster. “You bitch! I know you did this! You’re the one doing all of this!” Amanda fought against my arms.

  “I wish I could take credit for it.” Tasha giggled, running off down the hallway with an armful of fliers.

  The bell rang and students cleared out of the hallway slowly. I didn’t care about getting to class on time, or at all. I had to fix this somehow. I let go of Amanda, who was calmer now that Tasha was gone, and I bent down to pick up more fliers from the floor. That’s when I really looked at the paper for the first time.

  The mugshot belonged to Terrance Loxx, convicted of armed robbery and murder. Under the photos of him and Amanda was a copy of a newspaper article. I skimmed as much of it as I could, as speedily as possible, so that it wasn’t obvious to Amanda that I was reading it. The article was about a man who was in a standoff with police officers. He had been shot and killed, but not before committing a murder. The man in the article was Amanda’s father.

  Below Amanda’s picture was a question:

  Like father, like daughter?

  I winced. The sociopath had stooped to a new low with this act.

  “This is pointless. The fliers are in the other hallways too! We can’t get them all.” Amanda threw up her hands in exasperation.

  “What’s going on?” asked a female voice from one of the classrooms. I recognized the woman as one of the sophomore math teachers.

  “Can you use your walkie talkie to call for Principal Barlow? We need help getting all of these fliers removed as quickly as possible,” I said, taking charge of the situation.

  “It’ll be okay,” I told Amanda, but I wasn’t so sure myself. The devastated look on her face was heartbreaking and I felt terrible for my friend.

  With our arms wrapped around each other’s waists, we waited for Principal Barlow to come help us.

  Chapter

  Forty-Five

  It took Principal Barlow and the janitor until almost lunchtime to track down all of the fliers and discard them. I’m sure there were still a few floating around…

  Amanda was sullen as we sat at the lunch table with our Caesar salads and fruit bowls. There were several of our classmates sitting around us, but they got up and moved.

  I noticed that people were staring at us. Well, not us per se, but Amanda. I returned their ugly stares with a few pretty ugly looks myself. I also heard a lot of whispering. Even if Amanda’s dad was a criminal, that had nothing to do with her. If anything, people should feel sorry for her because of it, I thought crossly. My classmates’ childishness was deeply upsetting.

  “Hey, guys.” Andy set down his tray, taking a seat across me.

  “Hi,” I replied, smiling at him sincerely. The fact that he doesn’t care what people think about him for sitting with us is another trait I love about him, I realized. I suddenly didn’t feel like staying mad at him any longer.

  “That lift you guys did at practice yesterday was awesome. So, how heavy does Dakota’s big butt feel when you have to raise her up like that?” he asked Amanda, winking at me. She smiled back at him.

  “She feels like a ton of bricks when I have to lift her over my head.” Amanda nudged me, grinning.

  “Hey, now!” I laughed, smiling at them both.

  “Are you guys going to do that lift at halftime?” he asked. Amanda nodded.

  “We’re doing a routine and then the lift is at the very end,” she explained, popping a grape into her mouth.

  I mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to Andy. I was so grateful he had gotten Amanda’s mind off the incident with the fliers. I watched him as he made her laugh, and had to admit that even though he hurt me, I wanted to forgive him and give him another shot.

  Chapter

  Forty-Six

  “How does someone become a sociopath, Mom?”

  We were eating fettuccini Alfredo and crisp asparagus spears for dinner. My dad had gotten off early from work. When I asked the question, he looked from me to my mom, and then put his head back down toward his food.

  My mom smiled at me. She was feeding little bits of noodle and asparagus to Vincent, who was sitting in his highchair happily. “There are lots of different theories, honey. There is rarely one simple cause that makes people the way they are. It’s usually much more complex than that, a combination of factors…”

  “Well, what do you think could possibly be some of the reasons?” I asked. She chewed her food thoughtfully.

  “People who develop sociopathic tendencies usually come from abusive homes. Not always, but more times than not. One of the main theories is that they don’t form healthy relationships with their parents at an early age, and because of that, they never learn normal empathic skills. They often come from broken homes with parents who have drug problems, or problems with the law. In other words, sociopaths often have sociopathic parents. When I told you that the other day, about how maybe you’re dealing with a sociopath, I was wrong to say that. Kids your age are too y
oung for that sort of diagnosis, honey. But you could be dealing with someone that has those sorts of traits. Does that make sense?” I nodded. It sort of did.

  “So, are you ready for the big game Tuesday?” I could tell she was trying to change the subject to a more pleasant topic.

  “Yes! I think we’re going to do well. Coach Davis said that my uniform will be delivered on Monday. Just in time for the opening game!”

  “That’s great, honey,” Mom said.

  “I have to work, but I’ll try to come to at least one of your games this season,” my dad chimed in, finally joining the conversation.

  “I understand, Dad. I hope you can come to one, but if not, I’ll understand.” I finished my last bite of noodles.

  I put my plate in the sink, heading upstairs for a shower. Even though I wanted to focus on the upcoming game, my thoughts kept drifting back to my mom’s words and all of the evil things that happened to us this week. Somebody obviously had it out for the cheerleaders.

  If I could only figure out who was doing it, I might be able to stop it. Before he or she did something even worse. Whoever it was, they had to be smart. They had to sneak the cat into Brittani’s bag and break into my locker without anyone seeing them do it. They had to slit Monika and Tally’s tires out in the parking lot without being seen as well. They also had to research all of that information about Amanda and her father.

  I thought about the possible suspects. Tasha was mean as hell, but not very smart. I couldn’t see her masterminding the whole thing. Sydney was smart. Scary smart. But her mom and dad were the most perfect parents ever, and when I thought about my mom’s profile, of someone from a dysfunctional family, she definitely didn’t fit.

  A thought was taking shape in my mind, but I couldn’t grasp it yet. What was it that my mom said exactly? Sociopaths often come from broken homes, with parents who have drug problems or criminal problems…and then it hit me. I only had one friend who fit that profile, and she fit it perfectly. Amanda.

  Chapter

  Forty-Seven

  I tossed and turned all night, my nightmares filled with images of dead kittens and bloody pompoms. When I opened my eyes, it was only a quarter past midnight. It felt like I’d been dreaming for hours. I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep, but kept thinking about Amanda.

  It was an absurd idea. If she were the one doing all of this, then that meant she would have also been the person who hung up her own fliers. Why would she do that? It made no sense whatsoever.

  But her dad was crazy, obviously. He had killed someone, according to the flier. I thought about the question on the flier. Like father, like daughter? Even if it was her, what would be her motivation? I couldn’t think of any reasons for her to do it. She made the cheerleading team and she got the guy she wanted…why would she sabotage all that?

  But then again, maybe she was trying to get back at us for that little prank—the egging and the note to Grandma Mimi…

  I decided it was time to do a little research of my own. I got out of bed and turned on the lamp beside my desk. My laptop was on from earlier when I’d been working on my Joan of Arc project. I pulled up the Google search menu and typed in the search words ‘Terrance Loxx’ and ‘murder.’’ The screen immediately filled with relevant articles about Amanda’s father. I skimmed through one of them and moved on to the next. I read several more after that.

  Basically, Terrance Loxx was a bad apple. He grew up on the rough side of Chicago. His mother had a drug problem, and he left home as a preteen. He begged and stole for money. He was in and out of juvenile detention as a youth for petty theft charges. He graduated to the Big Leagues of crime after the age of eighteen, and served a year in Maxwell Prison for theft. At age nineteen, he went back to prison for theft. He apparently had a drug problem too, because he racked up multiple drug felonies.

  At some point, in his mid-twenties, he met Bethany Alsworth. They had a baby girl together. They named her Amanda.

  Her dad apparently tried to straighten up his act for a while by getting clean. But five years ago, he’d relapsed and resorted to stealing again. On a cold winter day, Terrance Loxx walked into a bank with a gun. When he realized that the teller had hit an emergency alert sensor, he shot her and five other people who were standing nearby. Two of those people were a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son. He ran from the scene but was found a few hours later, at his girlfriend’s house, clutching his ten-year-old daughter, Amanda.

  He had a standoff with the police and lost. They shot him dead in the yard with his girlfriend and daughter watching.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Amanda’s dad was a bad dude. No doubt about that. Perhaps Genevieve was right when she said he got what he deserved. But my heart ached for my friend. I couldn’t imagine seeing someone I loved get shot down like that, especially if that someone was my father. And witnessing something like that at such a young age…

  Experiencing a trauma of that magnitude was bound to cause some mental problems. But would it cause Amanda to torture a cat or do those other crazy things? I wasn’t sure. I certainly hoped I was wrong about this…

  Suddenly, there was a loud tap at my window. I spun around in my computer chair, frozen with fear. There it was again. Tap. Tap. Tap. My bedroom window was on the second floor, so no one could possibly be standing near the window sill.

  Tap. Tap. Tap. I turned on my bedroom light just as a small rock hit the pane of glass, revealing it as the tapping culprit. I rushed over to the window and looked down. Amanda stood on the ground below my window, a navy blue hoodie tucked down low over her ears. I slid the window open.

  “What on earth are you doing down there?” The look on her face was odd, ashen and scared.

  “We need to talk. Now. Come down here,” she insisted.

  Chapter

  Forty-Eight

  I’ll be the first to admit—I was scared to go out there. After my suspicions about Amanda and reading about her father, I really didn’t want to go outside with her in the dark. I didn’t want to be in the dark period, not with a crazy sociopath wreaking havoc in Harrow Hill.

  But Amanda was my friend, and I needed to know what was going on. Was she going to confess? I wondered wildly. I crept downstairs slowly, afraid of waking my parents. They would be livid if they knew I was sneaking outside at one o’clock in the morning on a school night.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and tiptoed over to the front door. I opened it slowly, cringing as it made a loud creaking noise. I froze, waiting for my mom or dad to come running out of their bedroom to catch me. But that didn’t happen.

  I slipped out the door, and left it ajar so I could slip back in easily. Amanda was pacing back and forth at the side of the house. “What’s going on?” I tried to keep my voice at a whisper.

  “I know who did it,” she said, looking at me with a serious expression on her face.

  “Who?” I asked, flabbergasted.

  “How many girls are on the cheerleading team?” She was pacing back and forth rashly. I looked at her blankly. “Just humor me, Dakota.”

  “Okay. There are six of us.” I shrugged. “So what?”

  “Tell me the names of everyone the sociopath has targeted,” she said.

  “Well, me and you.” She held up two fingers.

  “Monika and Tally,” I added, remembering the slashed tires. She held up two more fingers. “And Brittani, with the cat.”

  She was holding up five fingers total. I still didn’t get it.

  “Six cheerleaders, five victims…there’s only one who hasn’t been targeted.”

  Suddenly, my mind was spinning.

  “Genevieve,” we both said in unison.

  “She egged my grandma’s house. Why wouldn’t she be doing all of those other things too? And why is she the only cheerleader on the squad who hasn’t had any incidents involving the sociopath? She has a lot of reasons to be pissed off. Me…dating Ronnie. You beating out her friends on t
he squad…” Amanda moved her hands wildly as she talked.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t realize this already. She’s the only one…” I said breathlessly.

  “Precisely,” Amanda said, finally standing still.

  We stood there, staring at each other, wondering if our theory was correct.

  Chapter

  Forty-Nine

  For the third day in a row, Amanda was standing at the bus stop. “How come you’re not riding to school with Ronnie anymore?” I asked. Even though I used to really like Ronnie and I wasn’t crazy about them dating, I was still worried about my friend. I also felt terrible for suspecting that it was her doing all of those terrible things just because of her family history. I felt like a jerk, and was going to do my best to be a supportive friend from here on out.

  “Ronnie hasn’t spoken to me ever since…the fliers,” she said, rubbing her hands together nervously. “Screw him. I didn’t like him that much anyway.” But I could tell she was lying to cover up her feelings.

  Amanda shifted her backpack back and forth. “What the heck do you have in that thing? That’s the biggest backpack I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, just stuff I need for class,” Amanda remarked.

  We found an empty seat near the back of the bus.

  “What do you think we should do about Genevieve? Do you think we should confront her? Tell her we know it’s her?” she asked, switching topics. I honestly had no clue what to do about it.

  “If we could prove it was her, then we could go to Principal Barlow. But we can’t…” I said, my thoughts running away from me. We both sat there quietly, pondering what we should do.