Project Popularity

Chapter Twelve

This chapter is dedicated to PinkyGurl for making the beautiful book cover at the side. It’s so gorgeous! 

Chapter Twelve

Jamie Vandeviere

I’d never been the kind of girl that showed school spirits. Not even on game days. Every Friday, the students and teachers at Roseville High would dress in navy blue and gold to show their support for the Roseville Raptors. I had always been one of the few that didn’t, so imagine how discomfited and out of place I’d felt whenever we got summoned to the gym for pep rallies before the big games. Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t like I had a thing against navy blue and gold. I just didn’t really see the point in dressing up when I didn’t care much about football games before. 

But today, I made an effort to look spirit. I attired myself in a navy blue sundress that went just above my knees with a golden belt wrapped around my waist. It was the first football game of the season and in a town as small as Roseville, a football game was as exciting as this place could possibly get. It seemed like half of the town had already arrived by the time Adam and I got to the football stadium, the crowd full and dressed in our school colors.

I hadn't been to a football game since I was in eight, when one of Dad's colleagues accused Dad of having a boring life and Dad wanted to prove him wrong by showing him that he knew life outside of literature and books. Anyway, it was Dad's first football game and pretty much his last. We sat at the very last row, having no idea what was going on the majority of the time, and during half-time, Dad got decked in the face by a hotdog that seemed to have flown out of nowhere. Since then we'd decided football was not for us Vandevieres.

I invited Lucy and Clara to come with Adam and me tonight but they both turned me down almost as soon as the word “football” slipped from my lips. Lucy was picking a relative up at the airport and Clara just made up some lame excuse about having to study for a History test, which was three weeks away. Football games weren’t really her thing and I didn’t blame her since the game was incomprehensible to me as well.

After getting hotdogs, sodas, and chili fries from the concession stand, Adam and I squeezed into front row seats that overlooked our entire football team. I could see and hear the cheerleaders perfectly from where we sat, Summer and her friends bouncing up and down waving their pompoms in the air and doing a series of backflips that I never could have pulled off in a gazillion years. Though dressed the same as the rest of the cheerleaders, Summer easily stood out from the crowd. She seemed extra radiant and sparkly tonight- how many bottles of glitter did she put on her face- and I was amazed by how her shiny blond hair would fall back into perfect ringlets every time her feet landed back on the ground. She made looking dazzling seem so easy.

“Do you miss playing?” I asked Adam when I saw his gaze drifting to the field. Adam got a serious knee injury last year that prevented him from playing the rest of the season. It was the talk of the school last year and Lucy was devastated since he missed two weeks of school.

“Not as much as I miss being a part of the team.” He responded with an easy smile. “I miss spending time with those guys on the field, you know?”

“How’s your knee now? Do you think you’ll be playing again this year?” I asked tentatively. We’d never really talked about this so I had no idea what the current condition of his knee was. Surely, if he had recovered already, he would have rejoined the team?