A Non-Blonde Cheerleader in Love
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Guys? On the cheerleading squad?
“All right! Let’s get this meeting started!” Coach announced.
Then the door opened again and everyone fell silent. The distinct sound of boy laughter was followed by the appearance at the door of none other than Daniel Healy. My Daniel Healy. My gorgeous, beautiful, non-wrestling, guitar-playing Daniel Healy. Who was, apparently, very good at keeping a secret.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sage said.
My jaw dropped like a stone. Daniel looked at me, smirked and sauntered into the room. Clearly he was enjoying the expression of total stupefaction on my face. But the shock didn’t stop there. He was followed by Terrell Truluck, wide receiver extraordinaire; Steven Schwinn, intrepid Weekly Catch reporter; and a big, beefy Asian kid who, for some reason, I knew to be named Joe. A few other guys trickled in and together the boy brigade filled up the back row.
Un-be-freakin’-lievable.
I could feel the total bafflement of my squad mates. Meanwhile, Coach Holmes’ smile nearly engulfed the room.
Daniel gave me a jaunty wave, loving every minute of this. I tried to lob back a look of death, but just ended up grinning. Daniel on the cheerleading squad? This could be so, so cool!
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008
Copyright © Kieran Viola, 2007
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Scott, Kieran, 1974-
A non-blonde cheerleader in love / Kieran Scott.
p. cm.
Summary: When the Sand Dune High cheerleading squad goes coed, Annisa and the rest of
the team must learn to get along without turning the season into a battle of the sexes.
eISBN : 978-1-436-26883-7
[1. Cheerleading—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction.
4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S42643Boy 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006014268
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Peyton, MacKinley, Ava, Ryan, Dylan and Amanda
Special thanks to my All Star cheer squad:
Sarah Burnes, Jen Bonnell, Wendy Stewart, Shira Citron and
Ally Stevenson, all of whom always make me feel like I can do no wrong.
(You guys can fight over who gets to be captain.)
As always, I’d also like to thank my family, Mom, Erin and Ian,
for their encouragement, support and, well, their plain old silliness.
To my myspace cheerleading friends and all the fans who have written
to me, thanks for keeping me in the know and inspiring me every day.
As long as there are girls as fabulous, intelligent and positive as you
out there, I know there’s a reason to keep on working!
Most of all, thank you to Matt, who just keeps making me happy.
1
“He’s coming, everyone!” Tara Timothy hissed with one of her patented no-nonsense glares. “Get ready!”
The dozens of students and faculty members that had gathered in the lobby for the impromptu wrestling pep rally instantly fell silent. No one messed with Tara Timothy, fear-inspiring leader of the Sand Dune High cheerleading squad. Excuse me, the national champion Sand Dune High cheerleading squad. We had just won at nationals a few weeks back and I still liked the ring to our nifty little title. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that I, Annisa Gobrowski, former member of a fairly uninspired cheer squad from New Jersey, was now a member of the greatest squad in the land.
I stood on my tiptoes to see through the glass doors of the school. Sure enough, K. C. Lawrence’s blue Jeep Wrangler had just pulled into a space near the top of the parking lot.
Together with the rest of the squad, I backed up under the light-blue-and-yellow “Pin ’Em Crabs!” banner we had all worked on at Tara’s house the night before. Suddenly I felt someone’s arms encircling my waist from behind.
“Hey, Jersey,” Daniel Healy whispered in my ear.
My heart fluttered around in my chest as his warm breath made goose bumps pop out all over my skin.
“Hey, yourself,” I replied over my shoulder, feeling oh so cutesy coupley.
Daniel, blond, tan and huhmana-huhmana as ever, quickly smooched my cheek. Yes, my cheek. He was my very own hunk of boyfriendly perfection. Mine all mine. Daniel was my very first boyfriend and, even better, this was going to be my very first Christmas with a boyfriend. That’s right, the holiday to end all holidays was just around the corner and with Daniel in my life I had so much to look forward to. Kisses under the mistletoe, long walks in the snow . . . I mean, the sand . . . Ah, it was going to be perfection. When I had moved to Florida from New Jersey a couple months back, I had thought my life was pretty much over. But lately things were seriously looking up.
Daniel gave me a squeeze and whispered in my ear again. “I missed you.”
“You walked me to school ten minutes ago,” I told him, blushing.
“Longest ten minutes of my life,” he replied.
“Ugh. Could you guys be any more dramatic?” Sage Barnard said, flipping her Jessica Simpson curls over her shoulder. “Spare us.”
Sage shot us an irritated scowl—as she always did whenever Daniel touched, kissed or even breathed the same air as me—then moved to the other end of the squad line. I didn’t know what her problem was. She and Daniel had been broken up for a couple of months now and she already had a new boyfriend. His older brother Christopher.
I know. Ick.
“So, how does it feel to be a civilian?” I asked Daniel.
“And to not
be wearing a tie?” he said with a grin. “Darn good.”
Daniel was not in a shirt and tie like the rest of the wrestling team because he had recently quit so he could concentrate on his music—guitar, to be exact. I was still proud of him for standing up to his father and Christopher—who was a senior and still on the team. Until this year both Daniel and Christopher had played football in the fall, wrestled in the winter and run track in the spring. They were so alike that Christopher’s friends took to calling Daniel “Mini-Chris.” But now that Daniel had found his own thing, they’d have to come up with a new nickname.
“Here he is! Healy, back off!” Tara demanded, thrusting one of her poms at him.
Daniel instantly released me and took a few steps back, hands raised.
Moments later the glass door swung open and K. C. Lawrence, superstar of the SDH wrestling team, walked in. K.C. was on the short side (good wrestlers often are, I’m told—something to do with center of gravity), but totally buff. He was perpetually tan, as most of the kids around here were, and you could see the green of his eyes from about a mile away. He also had long, blond surfer hair that just grazed his shoulders.
No wonder half the girls in school seemed so ready to swoon at the sound of his name. He was definitely drool-inspiring.
“Let’s hear it for K.C.! Junior Olympic champion!” Tara shouted.
K.C. stopped in his tracks, trapped in the metaphorical spotlight. He clutched the strap on his backpack and stared at us all, stunned.
“K.C.! K.C.! K.C.!” everyone chanted, clapping to the beat.
Finally K.C. ducked his head, waved, blushed and smiled. Then Tara beckoned him over. “Speech!” she shouted. “Everyone wants to hear how you’re going to lead the wrestling team to states this year!”
Cheers everywhere. K.C. looked like he’d rather do anything but address the crowd, and my heart went out to him. Some people were just not down with public speaking. (Myself not included. But I guess that’s obvious or I wouldn’t be a cheerleader, choir member and spring musical hopeful.) Still, it seemed like a better idea to do what the masses wanted than to contradict dozens of shouting teenagers hopped up on Starbucks and sugar cereal. Eventually he walked forward and stood next to Tara. The crowd was rapt.
“Uh . . . how am I going to lead the wrestling team to states this year?” he said, looking around. We waited anxiously. “Uh . . . I guess we’ll just win.”
He shrugged and everyone cracked up laughing, cheering some more. His teammates loved it and clapped louder than anyone.
The crowd started to disperse as the wrestling team practically carried K.C. out of the room. Daniel went along with them, all caught up in the testosterone of the moment, I’m sure. Tara looked at her friend and our teammate Phoebe Cook and her shoulders slumped.
“Well. That was worth all the effort,” she said sarcastically.
Just then, my best friend Bethany Goow loped through the front doors, her eyes hidden behind her dark sunglasses, her hair freshly dyed a psychedelic shade of red for the holidays. She looked around at the pom strings on the ground and the banner above.
“What’d I miss?” she asked, yanking the earbuds out of her ears. I could hear the loud wail of electric guitar from ten feet away.
“Nothing you would’ve wanted to be a part of,” I told her as we walked toward the front hall and our lockers.
“What?” she shouted.
“I said, ‘Nothing you’d want to be a part of! ’ ” I replied. “You’re going deaf with that thing, you know.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll take that into consideration,” Bethany told me, reaching into her bag to shut off her iPod.
“Hey, guys!” Mindy McMahon, another friend and member of the football cheerleading squad, fell into step with us.
“Barbie,” Bethany greeted her with a nod.
“Elmo,” Mindy shot back.
Bethany smirked. “Touché,” she said. “Someone’s learning.”
Mindy shook her head, but I could tell she was proud of herself. It wasn’t every day Mindy was able to come up with a comeback and I was glad that she had. If she had tried to argue the similarities between her physical self and the most famous doll in the universe, Bethany would have definitely won the debate. Tall, naturally beautiful and healthfully tan, Mindy wore a light pink sundress with a blue sweater over it, looking like she’d just stepped out of a 1950s commercial for clothing detergent.
“I kind of feel bad for K.C.,” Mindy said, twirling her blonde hair tightly around her index finger until the tip turned red. “I mean, all that pressure. Everyone counting on you to go undefeated? I don’t think I could handle it.”
“That’s what that was all about? K. C. Lawrence?” Bethany said, incredulous. “I can’t believe I missed it.”
Mindy and I exchanged a confused look. “Are you going all school spirit on us now?” I asked.
“Hardly. But even I can get behind a sport in which hot guys in onesies toss each other around on the floor,” Bethany said as she unwrapped a fresh Blow Pop. “It’s both sexual and ridiculous. That’s entertainment.”
Bethany shoved her lollipop in her mouth and grinned. Mindy paused to study her.
“You know, just when I think you might be semi-normal, you go and say something that totally freaks me out,” Mindy said matter-of-factly.
“Intriguing that way, aren’t I?” Bethany replied, picking at a scab on her forearm.
Mindy kept walking. “So, Annisa, are you ready for cheerleading tryouts?”
“I think so. Should be interesting,” I replied.
“Tryouts! Didn’t you just try out? I gotta go through that again?” Bethany whined.
“I’m not trying out,” I told her. “We need to find three new girls to replace Mindy, Whitney and Erin for basketball season.”
“Yeah. We can’t cheer and play,” Mindy said.
“No. ’Cause that would be, like, hard,” Bethany said in a Valley girl voice.
We ignored her. Sometimes that’s the only way we can carry out a normal conversation with Bethany around. I loved the girl, but she had this whole “I don’t know when to quit” problem. Especially around Mindy. The two of them had been getting along lately for my benefit, I think, but sometimes Bethany just could not stop herself from picking on Mindy, her polar opposite. Luckily Mindy had proven more than capable of letting the jabs glance off her shoulders.
“Who do you think’s gonna try out?” Mindy asked me.
“I don’t know. But I hope some of the girls from last time come back,” I said. “A few of them were pretty good.”
“Can we please talk about something else?” Bethany interjected. “Anything else other than cheerleading?”
“Yeah! Like that girl Shira,” Mindy said. “She could definitely make it.”
“And I’ll need a new base with you gone,” I said. “She would be great.”
“You guys,” Bethany said, desperate.
“I almost feel bad for whoever makes it, though,” Mindy said. “I mean, the whole Tara Timothy breaking-you-in process?”
We both shuddered. That had not been fun. For anyone.
“I know! I know! I’ll try out!” Bethany announced, jumping in front of us and throwing her arms up. Actually, girl had a pretty solid high V going. “I can be a base! Here! I’ll throw you right now!”
And something told me she would do it too.
“Bethany—”
Mindy and I both stopped in our tracks. At the exact same moment we had seen a colorful flyer on the wall behind Bethany. A flyer that took the breath right out of me.
“Ha! I knew that would get your attention!” Bethany cheered, taking the lollipop out of her mouth and pointing at us with it. “Like I would ever join the lemming brigade. Ha!”
Mindy and I looked at each other, then looked at the flyer again. Finally Bethany seemed to realize that our eyes were not on her.