by Dana Burkey
“Don’t puke on me, okay?” Matthew asked as we were finally lining up for partner stunts. As expected, I was paired with him once again.
“I should be fine now,” I promised. “Next time I might have to let you win during the run.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he laughed, then turned to ask Liz a question.
Liz was assigned to our partner stunt group to serve as a spotter. She was a new member of Nitro, after moving up from Dynamite last season. I was still just getting to know her, since she was rather quiet. It was odd to find someone at the gym who didn’t have an outgoing personality, but Liz proved that for some people, being a cheerleader didn’t mean you had to fit into a mold. She had poker straight black hair that drew even more attention to her dark skin and perfect complexion. But, when she wasn’t on the cheer mat she wore thick glasses, large gold hoop earrings, and always had her face in a book. In fact, she often was reading while stretching before practice, getting in a few more chapters while she had the chance.
“Alright everyone, we’re doing some basics to start, so everyone better stay in the air,” TJ began after he assigned everyone to their groups. “I just want to see a simple walk in to start. Every group needs to do 20 of those then we can move on to working on doing toss to hands 20 times and then toss to hands with a press extension 20 times as well.”
I couldn’t help but exchange a big grin with Matthew, since all of the skills TJ wanted us to start with were going to be extremely easy. Not only because I was so small and Matthew was so strong, but also because we had done much harder skills together during our stunt class all winter. But, knowing that the harder moves would come later, we began with the simple ones that had been assigned to us. First, I stepped into Matthews cradling hands while he lifted me up to shoulder level and turned me to face forward. After 20 reps of that, he held my waist and lifted me up to either shoulder level, or up all the way to the full height of his reach, or extension level. Each time I bent my knees and pushed off the ground as hard as I could so it would be even easier for him to lift me into place. It allowed us to progress through the reps quickly.
“Are you serious?” Liz asked as Matthew set me on the ground after the final toss to hands press to extension. “That was like flawless.”
“We’ve worked on partner stunts before,” I explained with a shrug, then looked around to see how the other groups were doing. Most of them were still working on the toss to hands, with only Leanne’s group on the toss to hands with extension. But, as I was looking around I noticed some people were missing. I was still learning who everyone was, although we were still required to wear our bows with our names rhinestoned onto them, which helped. Even still, there were some people I never had the chance to talk to. So, as I looked around and couldn’t figure out who was missing, I simply started counting. We started the season with 25 on the team, but after Scott left that should have left us at 24. I counted twice to make sure, but was still only counting 22 athletes on the mat.
“Who’s gone?” I asked Liz and Matthew, interrupting a conversation about grips for other basing skills.
“What?” Liz asked, before Matthew could reply.
“Amber moved down to Fuze and Hannah R is on Bomb Squad now,” Matthew explained. “They were both on Spark last year, so they’re still pretty excited about team placements.”
“How did I miss that?” I asked. Beside me Liz seemed unaffected by the news, likely meaning she had noticed well before I did that people were gone.
“Well, you might have seen it sooner if you hadn’t spent part of conditioning bringing up lunch,” Matthew paused. “Literally.”
Rolling my eyes, I made a mental note to really get to know the people on the team I hadn’t talked to much. Even on a team of just 22 it was hard to spend a lot of time chatting when we were running, conditioning, and working hard whenever we were together. Sure, I knew all the guys by name, and every girl's name was on their bow. But I wanted to do more. I knew if I was moved off the team I would want people to realize I was gone. Knowing that, I could only assume everyone else felt the same way.
“We should have a team cookout and pool party at my house,” I said out loud. Although it was the second time I mentioned it, I was much more serious than the first time I brought it up to my elite stunt group.
“Tonight?” Matthew asked.
“No, maybe this Saturday?” I thought about it a little longer then added, “Or Sunday even. I just feel like now that we almost have the team finalized I want to make sure I’m getting to know everyone better. I mean, we’re going to be together all season.”
“That’s a great idea,” Liz nodded. “Count me in.”
“Me too,” Matthew nodded.
“Great,” I smiled. “Three people down, 17 more to go!”
After a chat with my dad to figure out details, we decided Sunday would be the perfect day for the party. It was sure to give us enough time to get the house and backyard cleaned and decorated, even with the camping trip coming up. Well, the decorating was an idea from Emma, who came over along with Matthew, Connor, and Jade to swim after Monday’s practice. We decided we would start the party at 11 so everyone could swim for a little while before lunch was ready. Then we could of course stay for a while after lunch to eat and swim and hang out.
Since Emma was the one who decided we needed to get teal table cloths, balloons, and more, I insisted she go with me to the party store in town to get supplies. Jade helped look while the guys walked around trying on costume items or sword fighting when we weren’t looking. Despite their distraction, we filled a whole corner of the basement with bags of everything teal they sold at the store and then some. The non-teal items consisted of lots of white, black, and silver glittery decorations to go with all of the teal.
The party planning had me super distracted, so I didn’t get to try out my air mat until Tuesday morning, just an hour before Leanne was coming over. It was still weird to think Leanne was going to be at my house. Not that I didn’t want her at my house, I just wasn’t quite sure she would agree to meet outside of the gym. But in the end, after a little while of sending messages back and forth, we decided that she would come over to work in my backyard. Feeling like working right next to the pool would make us want to swim, I let her know to also bring her swim suit.
I spent the early part of the morning getting the air mat inflated and ready to go. Then, I got it all set up in the grass at the back of my yard that was shaded by a long row of oak trees. With it finally ready for use, I worked on my own tumbling for a while. After Greg mentioned learning to do an Arabian, I looked it up online and tried it out. After working so hard on double fulls and kick doubles, it was pretty easy for me to get used to twisting my body around in the air for the Arabian. I wasn’t sure if I had it exactly right, but it was feeling close to perfect when someone calling my name startled me.
“Max?” the voice said again, and I instantly realized it was Leanne.
“Over here!” I called, turning and jogging to where she was standing behind the fence gate.
Clicking the latch and swinging the gate open, I was only a little shocked at the amount of bright pink and other neon colors Leanne was wearing. She had on a sports bra and matching cheer shorts that were covered in a crazy splattered and swirled pattern all in bright oranges, greens, pinks, and yellows. It seemed to bring out her tan, blond hair, thick makeup, and massive lime green cheer bow even more. I suddenly felt silly in my usual Nitro tank top and shorts. Not to mention I wasn’t even wearing a bow.
“I rang the doorbell twice, then decided to just try walking around,” Leanne said while I paused to assess her outfit. “I’m just glad I found you.”
There was an awkward pause, and in that moment, I felt like inviting her over without Lexi or Halley or even Connor there as a buffer there was a terrible idea. But, then I just dove right in instead, “The mats are over here.”
“Your house is really big,” Leanne commented
as she walked across the grass behind me. “And when you said you had a pool I didn’t know you meant a pool like that!”
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “I was really happy when we moved here and found this house.”
“Why did you guys choose to live in Wichita Falls?” Leanne asked. “I mean, why not Dallas?”
“My dad's research lab is pretty close,” I explained. “Only 20 minutes from here. So, it was perfect. We get to be near his work, and we also didn't have to be too close to Dallas. My dad doesn’t like big cities.”
“Interesting,” she said in reply, then set her glittery teal backpack down in the grass. “Should we get started?”
“Sure,” I agreed, thankful for the suggestion.
It was kind of weird to start our time working together, but things got better quickly as Leanne made a lot of progress. Apparently being out of the gym helped her focus a little more, and in no time at all she was landing the full at the end of a tumbling pass with only a small step or two afterwards. I knew it was as good as it would get until we had a spring-loaded floor to try it on as well, so we decided to take a break and enjoy the pool. I swam around in the deep end for a bit, while Leanne went in the water up to her neck and then floated on one of our seldom used inner tubes.
“Do you ever wear makeup Max?” Leanne asked after she explained that she didn't want to mess her face up when I asked why she wasn’t swimming. She also explained that she needed to be ready to impress, since her brother was in town and had cute friends over.
“Not really,” I replied to her question honestly. “Lexi and Halley try to make me wear makeup outside of competitions every now and then, but I always fight it.”
“Why?” Leanne asked, her face looking more like a sneer than anything else.
“I just don’t like it,” I said simply. “Growing up I never played with makeup. My dad doesn't really know much about it, and my mom was gone before I was old enough for her to teach me anything.” I paused to think about it. “A lot of the girly stuff is still really foreign to me. It’s why I didn’t want to do cheer at first. But I’m glad I finally gave it a try. I still don’t really enjoy all the glitter and sparkles and all that, but if it means I get to do skills like kick doubles, then it’s worth it.”
“I guess that makes sense,” she replied, then gave me a long look. “Why don’t you wear the Nitro sports bra at practices?”
I was thrown off by her question but recovered quickly. “It just makes me feel really exposed. It was hard enough to get used to wearing the super small practice shorts, so I can’t imagine having my whole stomach showing too.”
“But you have abs,” Leanne pointed out, with a bit of a frown. “And the uniforms this year are going to be a crop top style and you’ll have to wear them for competition. Why not get used to it now?”
“I haven't really thought about that,” I said, slowly making my way to the pool ladder. “Okay, I’m getting hungry. Do you want anything?”
“What do you have?”
“I’ll bring out some options,” I offered, then climbed out of the pool and walked inside.
It felt nice to get out of the sun for a minute, not to mention it was also nice to get away from Leanne’s critical eye. Despite the fact that we were having a good conversation, it was still kind of weird being around her. I tried to tell myself that it was a good first step, spending time with her outside of the gym and all. But it still wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to be. I knew it might have been a little easier if more people were there, but that would have to wait for Sunday.
“Okay, I found some chips, pretzels, leftover potato salad and then some strawberries,” I announced listing off the items I had found. I had brought it all with me, just barely managing to carry everything. Thankfully, there was plenty of room on the patio table next to our towels for me to set everything down finally.
“Great,” Leanne said standing up from the deck chair she was sitting in and moving to grab a few chips.
Popping a large strawberry into my mouth I walked over to grab my phone, looking under my cheer shorts where I was certain I had set it. When I didn’t see it there I glanced around and saw it was sitting on the small end table next to Leanne’s sunglasses and phone. Although I didn’t remember leaving it there, I was too distracted by a text from Emma about even more decorations she thought we should make. I replied, letting her know the ideas were great, as long as she was willing to help create everything. Then I returned to the patio table to get more to eat. Between the tumbling and the swimming I was hungry to say the least.
“You really did it?” Kyle asked, all but jumping up and down. “You really landed the kick double?”
“Yeah, it’s on video!” I assured him, pulling out my phone from the pocket of my basketball shorts. “When we get home, I can show you on my new air mat too.”
Moving closer to look over my shoulder, both Kyle and Peter watched the tumbling pass with me, cheering right along with everyone in the video. I had seen the footage a lot by that point, both in showing it to others and thanks to activity on Instagram. It was shared a good number of times on different cheer accounts, and people still commented and liked the original post I made pretty often. No new notifications were coming through anymore though, since the campground didn’t have any cell service. In fact, knowing how little I would use it over the two night trip, I didn’t even bother bringing my portable charger to keep the battery alive for even the trip home.
“Oh, and I did an Arabian today before practice too.” I quickly pulled up that video while I had both of my friends right next to me still watching. “Lenny met with me to work on it for a while since I couldn’t stay with TJ or Greg after Nitro practice was done.”
“Are you wearing a bathing suit?” Kyle asked in shock.
“No,” I replied quickly. “It’s a sports…. outfit.”
“You mean a bra?”
“Uh, yes,” I said then quickly continued. Talking with Kyle about things like bras was just too weird. “Our uniforms are going to be a crop top style this year so I have that to wear during practice so we can get used to it.”
“That move was really cool,” Peter finally spoke up, coming to my rescue.
Peter reached out and pushed play again on the video, distracting Kyle in the process. I was more than thankful, since the sports bra still wasn’t something I was totally on board with. After my conversation with Leanne though, I decided trying the sports bra at practice would be a good idea. It was a little weird feeling so exposed, especially after seeing the look on everyone's face when I first took off my tank top. But, by the end of the practice I was more okay with it all. I only hoped that by the time the competition season rolled around I would be 100% comfortable.
“That was really cool,” Kyle finally said giving me a high five and everything. “Even if you were wearing just a bra.”
“Sports bra,” Peter and I both corrected him at the same time.
“Okay, who’s ready for some fishing?” my dad asked walking up to us. He was carrying a tackle box and some rods while Mr. Morgan stood next to him with a cooler that I knew likely contained both snacks and worms to be used as bait. “Dinner won’t catch itself.”
The fishing trip down to the pond and back kicked off the camping trip perfectly. We returned with enough trout for dinner and breakfast, which gave us lots of energy for a full day of hiking on Thursday. It kept me moving and active, which was nice since I was kind of missing my normal cheer workout routine. I knew that I was still getting good exercise in thanks to the hikes, but it still felt weird to not go for a run and do my now standard core workout. But, at the end of the night as I sat around the fire I realized just how tired I was. Clearly the activity all day was enough to give me a good workout, not to mention it didn’t give me much time to catch up with Peter. So, sitting by the fire we finally had the chance to really talk about all that had happened since I was placed on Nitro.
“Isn’t the point stunt that L
ea’s girls spot?” Peter asked after I went over a little of what had been going on at the gym while he was in California.
“Leanne,” I corrected him, even though he had gotten it almost correct. “Yeah. it was her spot but TJ moved me there instead. I guess since I’m easier to toss and lift and everything. I’ve been doing harder stretches lately too, so I’m getting a lot more flexible. Maybe not more flexible than Leanne, but better than last season for sure.”
“So how are things going with Leanne overall? She’s the one that didn’t like you last year, right?” Peter often surprised me with how much he knew about my cheer life, and his comment about Leanne was no exception.
“It’s going really good actually,” I replied. “She’s still kind of moody sometimes. But, I’ve been helping her work on her full, and I think that’s helped a lot. Maybe by competition season we could even be friends.”
“You? Friends with a super Barbie cheerleader? I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Me too,” I agreed with a laugh. “I really think it could happen though. When she got moved from point stunt she didn’t even mind. I mean, I thought she was going to glare at me all the time or make rude comments like last season. But then instead, she just told me she was okay with everything if it meant we had a strong team for competition season.”
“Sounds like she’s super focused on Worlds already,” he noted.
“Exactly,” I nodded. “After being one of the causes for Nitro’s deductions during the finals last year I think Leanne has really matured. Or at least that might be part of the reason. It could also be thanks to all the killer pool parties we’re going to have all summer.”