by Kieran Scott
“You know,” Tara said, scrutinizing me. “You really should think about dyeing your hair.”
Whitney cracked up laughing and pulled Tara away, protesting. “What? It’s just a suggestion!”
“This place is insane!” Mindy said, appearing through the crowd with Sage and Autumn in tow. “I’ve never seen so much eyeliner in my life.”
“What did they do to you?” Sage asked, snorting a laugh.
“They tried to make me one of you,” I said.
“Valiant effort,” Sage replied.
I wasn’t sure if that was a dig, but I let it slide. Our truce was delicate enough as it was and now was not the time to test its strength. I would not be responsible for another pyramid takedown.
“Oh, Goddess,” Autumn said. “Look who’s here.”
My heart thumped hard. The West Wind High cheerleaders, in all their green-and-white glory, filed through the front doors. Their hair was curled up into high ponytails atop their heads and they were all wearing green glitter eye shadow that made them look like Halloween witches. They didn’t even wait for the spirit cheer to hit them. They fired the first shot.
“We got spirit, yes we do! We got spirit, how ’bout you!?”
I was so glad they didn’t point at us. Our squad was all over the place just then and the four of us trying to answer would have been pathetic. The girls in red and white answered the cheer, and then the West Wind squad moved through the lobby, right toward us. My pulse pounded in my ears. It was like I was ready for a rumble.
They almost walked right by, but then a particularly tall, powerful-looking girl saw us huddled there and paused.
“Hey! Look who it is!” she said with a smile. “I hope you have the timing of your routine down right. Wouldn’t want the clock to run out on ya.”
Her squad laughed and a couple of them slapped hands.
“Look! It’s the AA girl,” another West Winder chimed in, looking at Sage with glee. “Did you bring your flask?”
I felt my face burn in sympathy for Sage. I was about to say something when Sage stepped up between me and Mindy and crossed her arms over her chest. Her face was all attitude.
“Well, at least I have to be drunk to suck,” she said with a little tilt of her head.
A burst of a laugh escaped from my lips. A couple of our rivals’ mouths dropped open, but no one said a word. It was classic. So that was what Mindy was talking about. Sage on your side was good!
“Come on, ladies,” Sage said.
We all followed her toward the gym where the rest of the squad was gathering, leaving the West Wind High Dolphins behind to stew over their lack of a comeback.
“This school is totally substandard,” a black-and-gold cheerleader said to her squad as we all gathered outside the gym to wait our turn. “They don’t even have a staging area.”
“This competition should’ve never been allowed to happen here,” someone replied.
I looked at Phoebe. “Um, what’s a staging area?” I asked.
“Like an extra gym or something where we would all wait to go on,” Phoebe said. “You don’t usually have to stand in a lobby like this.”
“We have a practice gym, but it’s kind of condemned at the moment?” a girl in dark blue and white said to us. “Some other school thought it would be fun to let off about fifty stink bombs in there.” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the black-and-gold cheerleaders.
“Prank war?” I said, catching on.
“Oh, yeah,” one of her friends replied.
“Trust me, we feel your pain,” I said.
Spectators were still streaming in through the front door, and I looked past the girl’s shoulder, stunned. I was not really seeing Bethany Goow right then, was I?
“Bethany!” I shouted, louder than was strictly necessary.
She took one look at me and her face clenched like she was sucking one of those Listerine Strips.
“What’d they do to you?” she asked, turning me around to see my pathetic pony.
“Forget that. What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“Well, if I’m gonna be a good friend, I figured I had to at least try to understand this cult of yours,” she said. Then she leaned in and lowered her voice. “Besides, the better I know their tactics, the easier it’ll be for me to extricate you when things get dicey.”
I laughed and hugged her. “Thanks for coming.”
“No prob,” she said, actually blushing a bit. “Somebody has to heckle the other squads, right?” She smiled and walked into the gym, looking the West Wind cheerleaders up and down as she went. “What’re you guys supposed to be, leprechauns?”
I was still laughing when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find Daniel standing there with a smile. But before I could say anything, Sage flew in out of nowhere.
“Danny! I’m so glad you came!” she said, hugging him. “I wasn’t even sure I could go on without you here.”
Daniel looked at me over her shoulder and raised his eyebrows. “Yeah,” he said when Sage released him. “Break a leg.”
He knocked her on the arm, then leaned down and gave me a lingering kiss on the lips. My knees almost went out from under me. What was I going to do out there without my knees?
“Remember the lessons of the pogo ball,” he said quietly.
Then he swept by me into the gym, leaving me hovering about ten feet off the ground.
“Did I just see what I think I just saw?” Sage asked, stunned.
I blinked as I came back down to earth. Sage was visibly paling. I took an instinctive step back, just in case her head decided to actually explode.
“You win some, you lose some,” Whitney said, hooking her arm around her sister and leading her away before she could scratch my eyes out. “The only thing you can do now, little sis, is take it out on your performance. . . .”
Whitney turned and winked at me as she walked off and I relaxed against the wall, still feeling the tingle of Daniel’s kiss on my lips.
This was it. We had picked the tenth spot in the lineup. Clearwater High was just finishing up their routine in ninth. We were on deck. It was time. I could barely catch my breath.
“Okay, girls, you can do this,” Coach Holmes said, standing between Tara and Whitney in the huddle. “Stick those landings, hit your moves and, for God’s sake, let’s see the same enthusiasm out there that I got from you last night.” She looked each of us in the eye as the roar of the crowd sounded from the gymnasium, indicating that Clearwater was done. “Now go out there, have fun, kick a little ass and make me proud.”
“And now, from Sand Dune High School in Sand Dune, Florida,” the announcer said inside, tripling my heart rate to dangerous levels. We all put our hands in the middle of the huddle, clasping them on top of one another. I, for some reason, looked Tara Timothy right in the eye. She smiled. “The mighty Sand Dune Fighting Crabs!”
“Whaddup, Sand Dune!” we all shouted. We flung our hands into the air, and burst through the doors into the gym.
Screams and cheers reverberated off the walls. Blue, white and yellow pom-poms shook throughout the crowd. I threw my arm in the air with a fist and cheered, expending some of my nervous energy as I took my opening position. I had already located my parents in the crowd earlier and I looked right at them and Gabe. My dad winked, my mom shot a picture, my brother pointed at his chest. His white T-shirt read THIS IS WHAT A CHEERLEADER LOOKS LIKE.
I laughed and bent at the waist, bowing my head and slapping my arms down at my sides. I, along with five of the other girls, opened with the back handspring back tuck. If I stick this, everything will be fine, I thought. If I stick this, we’re gold.
The music started. This was it. It was actually happening. I flung myself into the tumble and the whole world went upside down. Seconds later, my feet came down in precise unison with the rest of the tumblers. My grin widened.
Game on!
Sage went up in her basket toss and caught so muc
h air, I thought she would brain herself on a ceiling beam. I was too busy dancing to watch her come down, but the whole crowd burst into psychotic cheers, so I knew she’d done something spectacular. Thank you, Daniel. It looked like Sage was taking it out on her performance.
Everything was a blur. I hit my scorpion, came down, moved through the next sequence and was up again, spinning through my second basket toss. I grinned as the audience went wild. We were dominating. We had them in the palm of our hands.
I fell back from the last pyramid, walked around and hit my mark. The stunts were up behind me and no one was wavering. The music crashed to a stop and we were still up, still strong. The roar of the crowd was deafening.
“The mighty . . . fighting . . . Sand Dune Crabs!” the announcer shouted. You could tell in his voice that even he was impressed.
Everyone dismounted and we cheered and shouted as we ran off the mats. Mindy’s arms crushed me as she hugged me out the door. We couldn’t stop screaming and jumping up and down. We’d hit everything. We’d given our best performance yet. Phoebe was crying and so were Autumn and Maureen—a mess of eyeliner and mascara, but who cared? It was a moment to remember.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Coach Holmes shouted, walking over and slapping our hands. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
We all laughed and turned our attention to her as the next squad was announced.
“You really did it, ladies,” she said. “I don’t know how, but you really did it. Win or lose, you all came together, and I’ve never been so proud of a squad in my life.”
Whitney wrapped her arm around my shoulder and hugged me toward her. Mindy was still clasping my hand. I thought my face would break from all the smiling.
Coach was right. We’d done it. This squad had survived losing two members, last-minute tryouts, the fighting, the pressure of learning the whole routine and getting it together in just a few short weeks. We’d survived it all . . . and we were only stronger for it.
But I’ll be honest here, we wanted to win. We wanted to win so badly that I think we could all feel the trophy in our hands. As we stood along the back wall of the gym half an hour later, flanked by the other squads, everyone was salivating for that towering first-place prize.
Mindy clasped one of my hands, Whitney the other. I couldn’t tell whose fingers were whose anymore and there was no circulation left, but who cared? All I could do was stare across the gym at West Wind. They each had their fingers crossed and their heads bent together as the regional director of the competition took the mic to announce the winners.
I held my breath. West Wind had performed last and we’d watched them through the tiny windows in the doors. From what little I could see through my itty-bitty corner, they had stuck everything as well. But—and I may have been biased here—their routine didn’t seem to be as intricate as ours. And their tosses were just unimpressive. Still, they’d snorted at us smugly as they’d traipsed out of the gym, acting for all the world like the whole thing was a lock.
It was quite possible that I wanted them to lose even more than I wanted us to win. That whole school-rivalry thing? It just ain’t pretty.
“First of all, I’d like to thank every squad here for treating us to the finest competition I’ve witnessed in a good many years,” the director said, earning an uproarious response from the crowd. “Unfortunately, only three teams can place here today, and it was a difficult decision.”
Mindy’s grasp on my hand tightened. Behind me, Tara’s breathing picked up the pace.
“Without further ado, let’s announce the winners, although I think we can all agree that we’re all winners here today.”
More applause.
“Enough with the schmaltz,” Tara said, earning nervous, shaking giggles from the rest of the squad and a few others around us.
The director looked down at the index card in her hand. My brain was completely deprived of oxygen. Was I hoping to place here, or hoping to win?
“In third place, the Palm River High Sharks!”
Relief and dread simultaneously filled my chest as the Palm River squad jumped up and down and raced to the center of the mat to claim their trophy. The captain clutched the prize and hugged her teammates, and I smiled. It looked like even third place felt good.
“In second place . . . our champions from last year, the West Wind High Dolphins!”
“Yes!” Tara Timothy said through her teeth.
The crowd cheered, but there was a brief pause before the West Wind squad got their enthusiasm up and headed for center stage. They put up a good front of cheering and screaming as they accepted their trophy, but I could tell they were stunned. They were only in second . . .
And there was only one trophy left.
“Congratulations, West Wind,” the director said. “And now, I take great pleasure in introducing to you the new district champions of Southern Florida, the squad that will be heading to nationals next month to represent our region . . .”
Oh, God, just say it. Say it! I thought, gasping for breath. The Sand Dune Fighting Crabs, the Sand Dune Fighting Crabs, the—
“The Sand Dune High School Fighting Crabs!”
I launched myself into the air as at least five people tried to simultaneously hug me. I was knocked over, tripped up, and screaming the whole way. By the time I found my footing again, Tara and Phoebe were already hoisting the trophy high above their heads. We all crowded around, clutching each other, laughing, crying. Daniel was on his feet, cheering at the top of his lungs. My dad beamed with pride and my mom held her hand over her mouth to keep from crying. My brother had taken over the camera, crawling over a dozen people to get to the bottom of the stands for a better shot. Even Bethany got into the spirit, leaning into her brother, Bobby, in the stands as they both raised their arms in the air.
Suddenly, in the face of all those screaming Sand Dune fans, it started to really sink in. We had done it! We had won! We were going to nationals!
“Congratulations, Sand Dune High!” the director said, laughing at our mayhem. “Why don’t you all gather around your trophy for the official championship photo?”
“Gladly!” Tara said.
She placed the trophy in the middle of the mat and I knelt down next to it with Jaimee and Sage at my sides. The taller girls like Felice, Chandra, Mindy and Autumn stood while the flyers took the floor. I was so giddy, I was barely able to keep my eyes on the camera.
“Why don’t you try smiling?” the cameraman joked, earning laughs all around.
Tara reached out and grasped one of the poles on the trophy and Sage did the same. Whitney raised her hand with the classic number-one signal and we all followed suit.
“Now everyone say, ‘Nationals!’” the photographer instructed.
“Nationals!” we shouted at the top of our lungs.
As the flash snapped away, I looked around at the rest of the squad and started to feel the pride that Coach Holmes had been talking about back in the hallway again. I was proud that we’d come together and gotten over our differences. Proud that we’d gotten back at those West Wind jerks. But most of all, I was proud of myself for sticking it out, for being myself.
I was a non-blonde cheerleader, and I was at Sand Dune High to stay.
Turn the page for a preview of
the next novel featuring Annisa,
Brunettes
STRIKE
BACK
“Go! Hey, here we go! Fighting! Crabs! Go!”
I thrust my fist toward the sky and grinned as the cheers of the crowd reverberated through my bones. I was never going to get used to the fact that the fans at Sand Dune High actually cheered along with the cheerleaders. I was never going to get used to the fact that they actually showed up. Back at my old school in Jersey, we were lucky if the entire marching band materialized. Even though games were mandatory, they were always finding excuses to skip out on watching our team throw interceptions, run toward the wrong goal and eat mud for four quarters.
“Go! Hey, here we go! Fighting! Crabs! Go!”
I glanced at my friend Mindy McMahon out of the corner of my eye and she smiled back. We were having one of those moments. One of those perfect moments when you just know that everything is coming together. The crowd was totally psyched. The squad was on. Even the weather felt like football. It was a cool night for South Florida—we had topped out at sixty degrees (I know, shiver), but because it was chilly by Sand Dune standards, we had finally been allowed to wear our little mock turtlenecks under our cheerleading vests. Honestly, we had been looking forward to this all season.
Meanwhile, on the football field behind us, the Sand Dune High School Fighting Crabs were taking on the West Wind Dolphins in the county championship game. It was the rematch of the century! Well, okay, the decade. Okay, maybe the month. But still, it was huge. You could taste the tension in the air. Or was that just the overboiled hot dog smell coming from West Wind’s snack bar?
We finished the cheer and turned to watch the action. Instinctively my eyes darted to the game clock. The last time we had played against the Dolphins, our archrivals, we had lost because of a mess-up by the officials involving the clock. Apparently they didn’t know how to tell time. If anything went wrong tonight, this crowd was going to be grilling referee meat on the barbecue and serving it up for breakfast.
Okay, that was gross. But people were really pissed off. Still. Even though that travesty had occurred weeks ago. After all, the total injustice of what happened at that game spurred our football players and cheerleaders to go out and vandalize West Wind High as a finale to our weeklong prank war—an act that had landed all of us in jail.
Yes. Even me. Even though Mindy, Daniel Healy and I hadn’t actually participated in any destruction, and we had been trying to sneak out of there, the Five-O nabbed us and tossed us in the big house.
Sorry. I hardly ever get to use words like that.
But suffice it to say we all wanted to beat West Wind now, fair and square. We all wanted it big-time.