Althena Book 2

6. Pep Rally

The next few days fly by. For practice on Wednesday, we get our cheer uniforms and try them on. They are tight and small. I love it. Thursday, we discover our team can't do the routine without Mike telling us when to go. So, he's coming to the pep rally too.

Friday morning, I put my uniform on and jump all over the bedroom.

"Are you supposed to wear that to school?"

"Yes. It's spirit day. We wear our uniforms."

"Put on some shoes, woman. You want to pull your hair back?"

"I don't know." I freeze. Then I text Lila. I ask her about her hair. "Yes. Pony tail. With ribbons."

He laughs and helps me with it. The majority of the uniform is green. Then it has black and white designs. He uses black ribbons since my hair is white. I think it's nice.

Conner, Drogon, and Cyrus are at the table when I finally get there. Conner has his jersey on.

Drogon smiles. "You need shoes, pretty girl."

"I forgot."

"I thought you were wearing my jersey number?"

Drogon shakes his head. "People can only wear official sports uniforms for spirit day. Her jersey isn't an official cheerleading uniform. She'll be able to wear it to some events."

I jump on Conner and snuggle him. "Tadita has them. She's giving them to us before the pep rally. I'll wear it there."

"You are cuddly this morning."

Mike comes in with my shoes and socks. "You are going to have to make time for each other. Chasing each other around school isn't the same as quality time. She's starting to feel it."

"Well, you assholes won't let her sleep in my room."

Drogon rolls his eyes. "Neither of you will get up for school. And neither of us are brave enough to walk in there."

They crack up laughing.

Conner puts his arms around me. "We'll go out tonight, baby. I'll give you extra cuddles. This week has been hard on everyone."

"It was that." Drogon helps me up. "Eat your breakfast. Then put on shoes."

Conner drives us. The second he parks, I run for the cafeteria. I find Lila. "Is my hair ok?"

"Yes. Is mine?"

"It's perfect."

Amber nearly tackles us. "Are we face painting numbers later?"

Lauren stands on a chair. "NO. We're already going to be wearing numbers."

Jenna nods. "That s**t always melts on my face and gets in my eyes. Damn, that boy is sexy."

We watch a sexy boy walk by us. He winks when he sees us watching him.

"MY RIBBON FELL OUT. HELP." Lexi runs into me and Lila. We knock each other into the chair Lauren's standing on. She flies off it.

Conner catches her, puts her on her feet, and hands me my book bag. "I'm gonna go get some food."

I push Lexi into the chair. "He acts like we don't eat before we come here."

"Growing boys need food." Jenna fixes her lipstick.

"The only thing growing on him is his gut." We crack up laughing. "I guess he works out enough with hockey though. He's not getting fat."

We fix Lexi's hair and Conner comes back with his food. Then some of his hockey friends sit with him. I'm too excited to sit. I think we all are. We break out into a cheer twice.

"It's 8. Time to go to class."

Mr. Penn comes over. "The pep rally is not for 6 hours, girls. You need to calm down and go to class."

I get to science and Akmae stares at me. He's in his basketball jersey. "I thought you were in choir?"

"I am. I'm a cheerleader too."

"Basketball?"

"Hockey. I didn't want to be smashed in the gym."

"Yea, they don't give you much room for games." Then he laughs.

"What?"

"They make it hard to take cheerleading seriously."

"I can see that. But it is fun, and it's a real sport too."

"As long as you're having fun."

Mrs. McBride stands up. "I graded the weekly lab by how close you were to my numbers. When I made the jars, I weighed them. I knew the total weights. So, once you got everything separated and weighed the individual items, it should have equaled the weight I had. If you were within 1, you got an A. 2, you got a B. And so on. Now, I do offer extra credit for this lab. If you and your lab partner can give me a logical reason, in scientific form, on paper, submitted by the end of class, for the reason why the numbers weren't equal, you can receive up to 10 points. This will move you up 1 letter grade. Even if you got an A, you can still do this." She hands me ours.

I jump around in my seat and hug Akmae's head. "We got an A."

He laughs. "Good job. I want the extra credit though."

"Me too. I think..."

The teacher cuts me off. "Work on your theories in your lab cubicle, please."

I run back to it, and he comes in a minute later with paper. "You are wide awake. What was your reason?"

"The water. It air dried for 24 hours. But maybe some people's sand didn't dry all the way. Or they didn't boil the salt enough so it still had moisture in it."

"That's perfect."

"Another one is filter paper. We weighed it and took that number off the weight for the sand. Maybe some people forgot that."

"We only need 1. I think not being dry is a better answer."

"Yea, the second one is just human error."

Mrs. McBride smiles at us from the door. "I would accept either. The guide for writing something in scientific form is posted on the wall in front of you."

We get it filled out, and I run for it. I make it through all morning and eat lunch with Conner. Then he walks me to the tutor's room. "Aren't you leaving?"

"I would have to come back in an hour. I don't know what I'm doing."

"You can study with me."

"I might sit here and work on some homework."

I snuggle against him. "I'll sit by you."

He kisses my head. "Thank you."

Mrs. Crew doesn't care he's there. He works at the table beside me while she helps me with my stuff.

She lets me go at 2. Conner goes to the office and I run to the gym.

Tadita hands me my jersey. "Take that one off and put the jersey on. Then come back. We're meeting here."

It's not really a jersey. It fits like a tight little t-shirt, but it's designed like a jersey. It has Conner's number on it. I'm happy.

It ends up being the 7 of us and 3 other people with the jersey style top on.

"What?" Amber nudges me.

"I thought everyone would have a jersey top."

"Usually it's only people who have boyfriends on a team. But you and Lila fixed that problem for us."

"Yea, that fall hurt my ass."

She cracks up laughing. "Lila was crawling."

"We were getting there one way or another."

Tadita stands on her box. She must carry that thing everywhere. "Remember girls, you need to cheer for each name that's called. Let's go take our seats."

"I thought we were on the floor in the gym?"

"We have to watch the band play first. That's a varsity sport somehow. They only name the seniors in it though."

Lila takes my arm. "Thankfully. There's like 200 people in it. It would take forever to read them."

The gym has seats around the court. But we're only using half of them. We're on one side. The band is on the other. The seats by the court are blocked off for certain sports. Hockey and basketball have an area for the varsity teams. I see another one, but it's too far to read. There are a lot of people that go here. Probably about a thousand.

Once the place is full, the band plays for 5 minutes. Then they read 40 names. We cheer for each one. Then we take our places on the court.

Turns out, they do other sports before ours. The varsity bowling, swimming, and wrestling teams have their names read before we actually do anything. They come down one team at a time and wave when their name is read.

Then it's finally time for us.

"Introducing the Varsity Basketball Cheer Team. Led by captain April Henry." Everyone cheers and she waves. Then they go through each of their names.

Finally, we get to cheer. I watch them to see what they do. They only put a couple of extra kicks in. I guess that's enough though. Tadita seems happy.

The varsity basketball players come onto the floor with them. Then their names get read.

I can't help but jump up and down. I am so excited. I see Mike and wave at him. He winks at me. I love him.

"Introducing the Varsity Ice Hockey Cheer Team."

The 7 of us run to the front and everyone else backs up.

"Queen of Darkburn, Her majesty Althena Sage." They scream and cheer so loud. There are some shocked people talking too. Maybe they didn't know I was here. I don't care. I jump around and wave at everyone. I can't even stop smiling.

"The team is led by Captain Amber Ryan." They cheer some more.

After 5 minutes, the music starts and we begin like everyone else. That only lasts 10 seconds though. The JV team runs up to us and tosses Lauren and Jenna into the air. They do toe touches in the air while Lila and I do front flips across the gym floor.

We don't let up at all from there. More tosses and jumps. Everybody cheers. They seem to love it.

We end with Lexi and Kristen getting tossed into the air. They go parallel to the ground and spin in the air while me, Lila, and Amber do a backflip. We land at the same time.

I nearly fall over. I'm out of breath. The place explodes with cheers. I almost get taken out by the hockey team coming off the bench. Conner grabs me and tosses me in the air. "That was amazing, woman."

"We practiced."

"I can tell."

The guys hug us and tell us how well we did. The announcer seems to have forgotten what he's doing for a couple of minutes.

Then suddenly, "Introducing the Varsity Ice Hockey team. Lead by Captain Conner Smith."

He waves while the people cheer. Then he sits me on his shoulder. "You get the cheers, woman."

I crack up laughing. "Put me down."

He stands me beside him, and we cheer for each of the boys. Then it's over.

"Girls, stay here. We're going to have a meeting. Or, come back in 10 minutes if you need a drink."

We get back 10 minutes later. Tadita is on her box.

"That was amazing, girls. I am shocked." We laugh. "Honestly, you did great. You gave me some ideas to work on going forward. I'm so proud of you." She wipes her eyes.

Mike helps her off the box and she says something to him. Then he smiles at us. "You're free to go. Next practice is Monday at 3."

Everyone runs for it and I go to Mike. "Did we do it right?"

"You did perfectly. Cyrus and Drogon recorded it from the box."

"What box?'

"The box up there. We didn't want too much royalty being here to mess up the event."

Drogon comes down to the floor with Granny, Phira, Monte, Mary, and Cyrus.

"We came to see you cheer, sweetie." Phira gives me a hug.

Granny wipes her eyes. "Your mom loved cheering too. Although, you are a lot better at it."

Mary gives me a hug. "I wanted to come see you too. Mike told us you were working hard on it. You looked amazing."

"Thank you."

Monte smirks. "Why is Mike the coach?"

"He helped us all week. Then we tried yesterday without him. We couldn't figure anything out."

Drogon cracks up laughing. "They were stuck staring at each other in the backyard. Standing there."

Mike gives me a hug. "I like helping."

Then the basketball team comes in. They don't know what the hell to do. They're frozen, staring at us.

I laugh. "I guess this is a lot of royalty."

Mike nods. "Let's get out of here so they can practice. You can all come to the house. We'll have barbeque and show you around."

"I need to get Clayton. It would be good for him to see you again. He's been lonely."

Conner runs in and picks me up over his shoulder. "Where to? No practice tonight."

"Home we're having dinner without 45 extra teenagers."

He laughs and carries me out.