'86, Baby 〡Eddie Munson

t w o

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"There you are!" Chrissy exclaimed as Juliet approached the doors to the gymnasium. "I thought you were going to be late. Coach is waiting for us in the changing rooms."

"Sorry," Juliet apologised, taking the pom poms that Chrissy was offering to her. "I got held up with my dad at home."

"You okay?" Chrissy asked, looking over her friend in concern. She knew all about her dad's affair and the blackmailing. "I'm okay." Juliet answered with a reassuring smile. She supposed the hurt had just become second nature to her now.

"Good. Maybe this time we could use the money to go on a trip over Spring Break? Somewhere near the beach where we can go swimming?"

She lopped her arm through Chrissy's. "Sounds great."

      If there was one thing about Hawkins High School, it was that it certainly had school spirit. Almost every pupil had flooded into the brightly decorated gym to watch the morning's pep rally.

As the school band played their instruments, Juliet performed alongside the rest of her team. As cliche as it sounded, she genuinely loved cheerleading. The camaraderie, the teamwork, the athleticism. She loved her uniform that made her feel a part of something and important, she loved the gruelling hours of practice to perfect a particular difficult move and the pride that came with finally pulling it off.

And she was good at it too. Not just in that cute way of throwing her pom poms in the air and shaking her hips, but seriously good where performing round offs and high kicks was nothing. So good she had been accepted into Stanford early admissions on a cheer scholarship.

She was thrown into the air moving into a flawless toe touch then landing gracefully into the arms of the two male cheerleaders. It was an adrenaline rush being so high in the air, contorting your body into faultless shapes and only hoping your team were there to catch you when you came back down to earth.

The performance came to an end with a loud cheers and even Juliet had a beaming smile on her face.

"Let's hear it for your Tigers!" The announcer shouted and the cheer team ran over to take a seat at the bottom of the bleachers whilst the basketball team came rushing in.

"Good morning, Hawkins High!" Jason, the Captain, shouted into the microphone causing the crowd to go even wilder than they had before. "First off, I'd like to thank each and everyone of you. Without your support, we wouldn't be here. Give yourselves a big hand."

They all cheered and applauded, the microphone feedback whining. "And of course, I have to give a special shout-out to the best and the prettiest fans of all time, the Tiger Cheer Squad... Chrissy... I love you, babe."

They all awed whilst Juliet rolled her eyes at the cheesiness but teasingly nudged her best friend after anyway. She wasn't the biggest fan of Jason, but he sincerely loved Chrissy and that was all that mattered.

"You know, I think I can speak for all of us when I say it's been a tough year for Hawkins. So much loss. And sometimes I wonder how much loss can one community take?  In dark days like this, we need something to believe in."

"Told ya so." Juliet whispered into Chrissy's ear with a smug smirk, satisfied that she was right about the speech Jason was going to make. But she was barely heard, the whole of the gymnasium holding on to every word Jason was saying. "So, last night, when we were down by ten points at half to Christian Academy, I looked at my team and I said, think of Jack, think of Melissa, think of Heather, think of Billy. Think about our heroic police chief, Jim Hopper. Think about everyone of our friends who perished in that fire. What did they die for? For us to lose some crap school? No!"