A/N: HOLY CRAP I really suck! Guys I'm so sorry this took so long to post. I've been super busy lately, but no one wants to hear all of that hahahahah so I'll shut up.
I've come very close to finishing the story guys. (: I really hope you like the ending. I'm not really a fan of sequels, but I don't know. Sometimes I just don't wanna let these guys go hahaha. That makes me sound psycho but whatever, I'm attached to my own characters. \: Anyways, there's still more drama, so enjoy. (:
- Railene
Chelsea's POV
"Did you hear?" one of my friends from cheering, Jenna, asked as I slid into homeroom, late, Monday morning. I wasn't usually late; in fact, since Brooke had been my homeroom teacher, I was usually early; but I'd been behind that morning. And it didn't seem to matter, as Brooke was late, too. Even later than me.
"Hear what?" I asked, signifying that most likely, I hadn't.
"We're playing Sanfield on Friday," she filled me in.
Sanfield had a Division One football team, and their cheerleaders were professional. They competed every year, always made it to states, and sometimes made it to nationals. And the team always travelled for away games, no matter how far.
"Shit," I said as much to myself as to her. This was definitely a problem, as the team was nowhere near where it needed to be. I took some responsibility as captain for the state of the team, and placed none on Brooke. My feelings for her aside, Brooke had been the best coach the team had had in the three years I was on it. If we suffered, I owed it almost completely to the general apathy of people like Tiffany Medlock, who placed gossip and jealousy over her performance.
"I know," Jenna said. "If we don't get it together this week, we might as well not show up."
That was when Brooke entered, hair wind blown, and keys in her hand. The semblance of lateness; I knew it well.
"So you heard?" she said to us, referring to Jenna's last comment.
"Sanfield?" I speculated. "We're screwed."
"We can face them," she said confidently. "We just have to work. Hard."
"Really hard," I agreed.
"So pass that along," she said as she went through her stuff for an attendance sheet. "No absences, no lateness, no laziness. We need to get a new halftime routine down, with better stunts, and the jumps need a serious amount of work."
I smiled. I loved it when she took charge. "Let's go to work," I encouraged, suddenly excited by the challenge.
So all that week, work we did. We did strength training. We did new intense stunts. We worked on cheers, we even reworked our motions. All the while, Tiffany scowled, but complied. I began to think that maybe Brooke and I had gotten through to her, and she actually had decided to put her energy into cheering.
I knew I had. By Friday, cheering had about all the energy I possessed.
__________
Brooke's POV
That entire week, I don't think I knew the meaning of the word sleep. Practices were running until about 6:30, on average. I had grading to do, lesson plans to make. Even when I found time in which to sleep, sleep evaded me. I just had the feeling that Kate hadn't fully forgiven me for Saturday, and the guilt was keeping me up at night. That, and the permanently looming notion that I was completely at the will of an irrational sixteen year old girl, who could at any time have my job taken away, or have me carried off to court.
I knew, as well, that Friday would be the most important game my girls cheered at that year. If they didn't get it together, Sanfield would no doubt put them to shame. But if they actually pulled through and performed, this game would put them on the map. Sanfield was well recognized, and we all knew it. If these girls could hold their own against them, that meant our Athletics Director would take note. That meant more funding. That meant competitions, materials, travelling...everything these girls deserved, but didn't have. And it was in my hands to lead them to getting it.
I found myself almost willing the passage of time. I was dying for some day in the future where this game was behind us, the team was where it wanted to be, things with Kate were better, and Chelsea and I were able to be together without worrying about the cost. Technically speaking, that day was November 13th. But even after that, it wasn't going to be easy for the two of us. We still couldn't go public, for the sake of my job and her social survival. We couldn't be seen together, and we couldn't let on during school at all. It was a lot of adversity to struggle against, and though more often than not I pushed the thought away, I was more and more frequently haunted by the silent question of whether or not we would make it.
Chad called me Thursday night just to see how I was doing, as the last time he left me I was so hung over I was practically still drunk. Of course, one of the first things I asked about was Kate.
"Surprisingly, she doesn't seem completely and totally pissed," he said.
"Really?" I asked. That was something.
"Yeah, which is progress for someone who's always pissed about something."
"Pissed at me about something," I added. "Is Megan mad?"
He seemed to find this funny. "As if I spoke to Megan."
"So I'm not the only one who doesn't like her?"
"Honey, you may have been trashed that night but your judgement of character was on point."
"It was the Cabernet Sauvignon thing. That's what put me over the edge."
He laughed, then imitated, "Cabernet Sauvignon."
By the end of the conversation, I ended up unloading onto Chad all of the problems that had been plaguing my mind lately. It was probably stupid of me, as I was supposed to be keeping a secret, but I eventually divulged my whole history with Chelsea, from the first day in homeroom up to Tiffany's confrontations the previous week. It wasn't the most prudent idea to tell anyone about Chelsea, but I figured that if I couldn't trust Chad, I couldn't trust anyone. He surprised me by acting very cool about the whole thing; while Chad would never judge me, he sure loved drama, and this had drama written all over it.
"It's no big deal, Brooke," he assured me. "You love who you love."
"I know," I said, "but Tiffany."
"Screw her," he said, "She's not gonna try anything. She knows that that would ruin the team."
"And that's the thing," I agreed. "The team can't get ruined. We just can't. We have our most important game tomorrow night."
"How come?"
"They're playing Sanfield High," I explained. "They're the best in the league and their cheerleadrrs are amazing. If we can show them up, we could get major funding."
"Are your girls any good?"
"They should be, but I have no perspective on the whole thing. I'll always be partial to them, but their flaws are magnified because I'm their coach."
"Well I'm coming, then. I'll have to see for myself."
I laughed. "Chad, you don't have to do that."
"But I want to. Marco and I will be there to cheer you on. And I'll see if Kate wants to come along. The cheerleading coach needs her own cheerleaders, right?"
I smiled. "I have twelve of them," I reminded. "And Kate hates me."
"Kate loves you," he corrected. "And she only hates you because she loves you."
______________
Friday came sooner than we possibly couldn't have anticipated. All the practice we put in Monday through Thursday didn't seem to be enough. They'd learned a routine, and it was good. The difficulty and complexity were high, and far beyond a high school level. Maybe even beyond a Sanfield High level. I'd given them the tools, but whether they were going to use them was a question in the hands of fate, and in the hands of the team.
As promised, Marco and Chad met Liliana and me at the game. In proper high school football game fashion, it was freezing cold, and they brought with them about a hundred blankets.
"Kate couldn't make it," Marco explained as they sat down. "She had some thing with Megan, and she said she didn't want it to be weird."
"Correction," I said, "She didn't want me to be drunk."
"Can someone fill me in, please?" Liliana asked.
"Kate has a new girlfriend," I explained. "And when I met her I got drunk and bitched her out."
Liliana seemed to find this highly amusing, and almost spit out the soda she was drinking. "Was Kate pissed?" she asked, and I could tell she was trying to get a mental image of Kate upset for her own enjoyment.
I nodded. "Oh yeah," I said. "Kate was pissed."
"Kate was livid," Marco corrected.
"I can picture it," Liliana said, still laughing at whatever images were passing through her mind. "She would be like, 'Brooke, my relationship is very serious to me and sometimes I think you just don't take it seriously enough.'"
We all laughed. "You're not too far off," Chad said.
"Is the girl awful?" Liliana asked, pressing for details.
"That depends on who you ask," I said.
"She's like Brooke on amphetamines," Chad explained. Marco hit him.
"She's a very nice girl," Marco admonished. "You two would have known if you finished dinner instead of leaving me to third-wheel."
"Well I'm sorry, but someone had to take her home. Do you even want to think about what it would have been like if she'd stuck around?"
"Kind of," Marco admitted.
Joking aside, for some reason it bothered me what Kate had said. She "didn't want it to be weird." I knew that she was only keeping Megan away from me for my sake, but I wished she knew that I could handle it and be mature. It didn't have to be weird, and it embarrassed me to think that I'd been impetuous enough to make it this way. I'd been the one advocating for this whole friendship thing, and I'd proven that apparently I couldn't handle it.
The other thought on my mind, though, was that this didn't really have to do with me and Megan, but me and her. That she was still mad at me over the whole wine-induced debaucle, and that was why she'd declined Chad's offer. I was beginning to worry more and more over whether Kate and I would ever be friends again.
Minutes before the game started, my girls were set up on the track and they looked good. Their uniforms were all ironed, thank God, and they brought their tightest ponytails for the event. They'd worked hard all week, and I knew that they wanted to pull this off more than anything.
When the Sanfield cheerleaders entered, it was a little bit unsettling. They looked good. They looked professional. And some of them were really, really small.
The first half went okay. The cheers from our team looked good. The cheers from the other team were inaudible on our side, but the motions looked sharp and the jumps were strong. By half time, I was a wreck, and it probably read all over my face.
"Are you ready for this?" Chad asked me as the Sanfield girls took the field. We probably should have been going first, considering we were at home, but they didn't seem bothered by it.
"I can't watch," I lamented, expressing my answer.
But of course, I did watch. And they were good. Their stunts were professional, their motions were tight. What I'd given my girls a routine just as difficult; the question lay in whether or not they would pull it off. A routine like that could either set them up for absolute success; or for failure, embarrasment, or even injury.
When they set up, I was paralyzed. Nothing could have satiated my concerns. I appreciated Chad and Marco and Liliana for coming to support me and them, but I was still completely unable to relax in that instant. I found myself petrified of what was to come.
That's when, briefly, my eyes scanned the entire field area. I gazed past the field, past the track, past the concessions, and in a moment my stare fell onto the entrance. That's when I saw her. No Megan, no anything. Just Kate. She'd come for me after all.