Hunted

by Dean Murray

  It seemed to take forever for the football team to run through the good luck tunnel, but then finally the last blue-and-white helmeted figure was past me. I turned to run over to our normal spot on the sidelines and found myself face to chest with Jackson.

  He looked incredibly gorgeous in the blue-on-white uniforms that Miss Winters had picked out for the male cheerleaders. I was still honestly more than a little blown away that Jackson was on the team. Not that he'd made it, but that he'd tried out in the first place.

  I didn't have any room to talk, but the guys we'd had try out for the cheer squad were mostly nerds. I generally got along with nerds better than with most other kinds of people, but once I'd realized that the guys on the team were going to be catching Cindi as she did a backflip off of the top of the pyramid I'd suddenly become a lot more concerned about how strong they were than how smart they were.

  Jackson was the shining exception in the group. Miss Winters had eventually selected five other guys, two per pyramid, but it was Jackson who was already taking the lead in practices. He was even talking about getting the other guys into the weight rooms a few times a week so that they could bulk up.

  I tried to stop before running into Jackson, but I was moving too fast. If it had been one of the other girls I would have knocked them flat, but Jackson simply put his hands around my waist before I collided into him, and then picked me up so that I was looking down at him with my feet pointing straight up in the air.

  I'd seen Jackson practice this particular lift with a couple of the other, smaller girls but I'd never expected to find myself performing it with him. My hands found his shoulders out of reflexes I didn't even know I had, and I pushed against him in an effort to take some of my weight off of his arms.

  I had a split second to feel my stomach knot up from being so high up in the air, and then I felt my skirt slide down towards my stomach, revealing the tight little shorts that were part of the skirt. Cindi was a flyer, and she had a good point that it wasn't like anyone was actually seeing our underwear, but the shorts were still more revealing than anything I normally wore.

  As Jackson brought me gently back down to the ground I could feel a blush breaking out all over my face, and I honestly wasn't sure whether it was because of my skirt having slid down or because I was making a spectacle of myself in other ways. He'd just saved me from the humiliation of bouncing off of him and falling down, but the last thing I wanted to be doing right now was to be performing the kinds of tricks that would make people notice me.

  "Sorry, Adri. It was the only thing I could think of to make it look like you'd planned on running the opposite direction from everyone else."

  My cheeks got even hotter as I realized he was right. Somehow I'd gotten turned around and I'd been headed towards the visitor's side of the field. I'd almost been doubly embarrassed and only quick thinking on Jackson's part had saved me from looking like a complete idiot.

  "Thanks, Jackson. I guess I'm even more nervous than I realized."

  I got a smile in response as we both ran to our assigned spots and started into the first cheer. The game went by more quickly than I'd expected it to. We yelled and jumped and kicked and almost faster than I could believe it, I looked up to find that there was less than a minute left in the first half.

  My nerves had settled down during the first half of the game, I'd even pretty much forgotten about my near miss with Jackson earlier. I was just starting to worry about our halftime routine when I heard screams of outrage from the fans on our side of the field.

  A couple of the other girls were disciplined enough not to turn and look, but I wasn't one of them, not that it did me a lot of good. The only thing I could see was a group of blue and white uniforms gathered around someone else, also in our uniform, who was on the ground curled up in pain.

  I looked at some of the other cheerleaders, hoping for a clue as to what was going on, but all I could tell was that most of them looked really worried. Our coach and a couple of EMT's hauled our guy off of the field on a stretcher a few seconds later, and then the last few seconds of the clock ran down and it was halftime.

  The butterflies in my stomach seemed to have put on a couple of pounds each. Somebody I knew had just been hurt, maybe seriously, and I was about to go out and do a dance that I'd only actually practiced in real life five or six times. I wanted to puke, but instead I just forced my face back into the squad-approved smile and ran back out onto the field with the rest of the girls.

  I'd been doing my best not to notice anyone in the crowd, but this time I was looking slightly more to the right and I saw my dad sitting on the third row up.

  Once again my smile transformed into something more genuine. Our team was actually pretty good and the bleachers usually filled up more than half an hour before the game even started. For Dad to have garnered a spot that close to the front he had to have arrived nearly an hour before the game was scheduled to start.

  Dad hated football. The only reason he was here was to see my first game, just like he'd made sure to see Cindi's first game when she made it on the squad. I knew that Dad had hours of work still that needed to be done tonight, but he didn't look like he was resentful at having to be at the game rather than at home working. He was drumming his fingers against his legs like maybe he wasn't sure what to do without a keyboard in front of him, but he was smiling, and when he saw that I was smiling back at him his grin got even wider.

  A second later the music for the routine started up and I threw myself into the dance with even more abandon than normal. It didn't matter whether I messed this performance up. The other girls on the squad and all of the kids at school would probably make me miserable if I did, but that just didn't seem important against the fact that my dad cared enough about me to come watch in spite of all of the other things he was supposed to be doing.

  As luck would have it, everything went smoothly and five minutes later we were all running back off of the field to make way for the drill team. Cindi was one of our best dancers so she was at the front of the squad and was one of the first to make it back to where Miss Winters was waiting for us. She handed me my water bottle as I made it over to our end of the bleachers.

  "Good job out there, Adri."

  "Thanks, Cindi. I kept expecting to screw up."

  She smiled and shook her head. "I knew you would do just fine. Did you see Dad up in the stands?"

  "Yes. Not until halftime, but I saw him then. I take it that Mom didn't come?"

  Cindi's mouth compressed to a disapproving line. "No. At least I haven't seen her yet tonight. It's not like it's a surprise though."

  It seemed for a second like Cindi was going to say something else, but then Miss Winters clapped twice to get everyone's attention and we all gathered around to get our marching orders for the second half of the game.

  I'd barely been able to keep up with what I was supposed to be doing out on the sidelines, I hadn't had any time or attention to keep up with the game, but apparently the game was a mix of good and bad. Miss Winters double-checked that we were all there and then took a deep breath.

  "Okay, girls, as you all know we're up by two touchdowns, but this has been a high-scoring game and now that Victor Stalking is out with an injury, things could get ugly. I want you all to give it everything you've got. Hopefully if we can get the crowd really excited it will help the backup quarterback score some points."

  She looked down at her clipboard and then rattled off a string of formations that she wanted us to work into the last half of the game. We all nodded and each put a pom-pom into the middle of the group. I screamed "Go Wolves" with everyone else as I double-checked that the board with the cheers on it was still resting inconspicuously against our end of the bleachers.

  Miss Winters knew that nobody would be able to remember all of the cheers she'd just queued up for us, so she used the white board to remind us all during the actual game. I'd sort of expected more of a pep talk from Miss Winters, but the drill team looked
like they were almost done with their number and it turned out that Cindi and a few of the other girls had been assigned to go help the mascots throw t-shirts into the crowd.

  Just before Cindi rushed out on the field she grabbed my arm. "You've got about five minutes before our next routine. It would be a good idea to stretch out anything that's feeling tight. You don't want to start cooling down and then pull something, it happened to a couple of girls at the start of the season."

  A stubborn piece of me thought about trying to go find my dad, but I knew that even if I did find him I wouldn't really have enough time to talk to him. Besides, Cindi was just trying to help out and it would be stupid of me to ruin how well things were going between us now. She wasn't actually being bossy, she just knew more about what was going on than I did.

  I grabbed Cindi's yoga mat and rolled it out on the grass so that I wouldn't get my uniform dirty. A couple of the other girls were doing the same thing, but nobody said hello or even smiled at me. I'd pretty much expected to be ignored by everyone but Cindi and Sheree for the first few weeks at least, but that didn't make it any easier.

  I looked around, hoping to find Sheree so that I could walk over and talk to her once I was done stretching, but she was standing over behind Miss Winters. She was talking to Jackson again.

  I took a deep breath in place of the sigh of disappointment that I otherwise would have let slip out, and closed my eyes as I wrapped my hands around my ankles and leaned forward to stretch out my hamstrings.

  "Do you want me to put a little pressure on your back so that you get a deeper stretch?"

  I recognized Jackson's voice even before I opened my eyes to confirm that it was him, and that he was really talking to me instead of someone else.

  "Um, thanks, but I'm going to pass. Miss Winters seems pretty against assisted stretching like that. It's not that I don't trust you, but I'm such a klutz that I'd probably end up injuring myself somehow and have to sit out the next three games."

  Jackson's shrug was so laid-back that I was pretty sure I hadn't offended him. "I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. You're really not any more klutzy than any of the other girls, but that's okay. Do you mind if I join you?"

  I realized he had a mat in his left hand, which I hadn't noticed before because I'd been too busy staring at his face while trying not to look like I was staring. I nodded and he unrolled his mat and sat down next to me. About the time he started stretching out his quads I managed to process what he'd just said.

  "That's nice of you to say, but I am the girl who just about ran over you earlier tonight. Thanks, by the way, for figuring out a way to make me look like less of an idiot."

  He waved away my thanks. "Don't worry about it. It was actually kind of fun to stunt with you. You're pretty good considering that you haven't done any of that kind of stuff before. You tensed up the right amount without getting so tense that you forgot to help me out. We should practice that kind of stuff together. I'm stuck with whomever Miss Winters assigns me to for the pyramids and the like, but nobody said that we can't do some stunting together at other times, like we did today."

  It was like there was a little fairy somewhere who was trying to make my life more difficult than it had to be. I'd never been even the slightest bit interested in any other boys before now, but there was something about Jackson that changed all of that for me. I wanted to get to know him, I really wanted to get to know him. If he'd asked me if I wanted to go to dinner and a movie I would have said yes in a heartbeat, but this was something else entirely.

  Just agreeing to join the cheer squad had been a stretch for me. Stunting was way beyond anything that I was comfortable with. I much preferred to keep my feet safely on the ground, but as scared as I was of putting myself so completely in his hands, the physical danger wasn't even as worrisome as the social consequences.

  I looked around to confirm that we were far enough away from everyone else that nobody was likely to overhear and then shrugged.

  "That sounds both terrifying and fun, but I'm not sure it's a very good idea. Most of the other girls already resent me for getting Janessa kicked off of the squad and then taking her place. It doesn't matter to them that I didn't plan for any of this to happen; they still think that I'm basically pond scum."

  Jackson shook his head. "I don't think any of them would call you pond scum…"

  "Right, but only because they'd be calling me something worse. If I start stunting with you then everyone is going to think that I'm gunning to take over as a flyer. That has trouble written all over it."

  "What if I told you that you'd make a better flyer than one of the other girls?"

  "Sorry, as much as I think that stunting with you could be fun, assuming I can get past the sheer terror of it all, I still wouldn't be interested in taking someone else's spot."

  Jackson brought his right arm across his chest, stretching out his shoulder and back, and it was all I could do to tear my eyes away from the way that his white uniform hugged the muscles along his side. He practically had wings and the material of his shirt was thin enough for me to see just how much definition all of that muscle had.

  "You're very unusual for a cheerleader, Adri. Do you know that?"

  "If by unusual you mean that I don't belong here in the slightest, then yes, I knew that. Even if I hadn't known that coming in, I would have figured it out pretty quickly given the way that all of the other girls on the squad are treating me."

  Jackson rolled his eyes at me. "That wasn't what I was talking about. How many of the girls on the team do you think would show you the same kind of consideration you're so determined to show them?"

  "I don't know—half maybe?"

  "Not even close. Sheree definitely, and maybe Cindi, but if you weren't her sister there wouldn't be any kind of guarantee there with her either."

  I bristled. "Cindi is a nice person."

  Jackson held his hands up as though surrendering. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult your sister. You're right, she's very nice. I was just trying to point out how unusual it is for anyone to forgo something they want because of how it might impact someone else."

  I let my eyebrow rise. "That's a pretty cynical view of humanity. Is that the way you operate too? Do you just ride roughshod over anyone between you and what you want?"

  "I said that most people do that, not all. You're obviously an exception to that rule, and I can say definitively that I'm not like anyone else you know." Jackson waved his arm out towards the field. "What do you think is going to happen with the game?"

  "I don't know. Miss Winters seemed a little worried. I mean, it's a big deal to lose your starting quarterback, right?"

  "It can be, but a lot of people are in for a big surprise tonight. Tristan is really good. I've seen him practice a couple of times and he's fast and accurate. If he wasn't a sophomore and he was twenty or thirty pounds heavier then he'd probably be the starting quarterback instead of Victor."

  "That's good then, I guess?"

  My response earned me another smile. I would have called it mocking, but there didn't seem to actually be any spite to it.

  "You don't actually know anything about football, do you?"

  "Not really."

  Jackson shrugged. "I suppose that most of the other cheerleaders probably didn't start out knowing much about football either. You should learn though, it's actually a pretty cool sport."

  There was an element of longing there that I hadn't been expecting. That didn't make any sense though. Jackson was plenty built, if he loved football as much as I thought he did, he should be playing football instead of watching from the sidelines like this.

  "Why don't you play?"

  Jackson started like I'd caught him off guard, like he hadn't been expecting me to be quite so observant.

  "I wish I could, but my…mother doesn't approve. She thinks it would take away from my studies and distract me from other things that she thinks are more important than football."


  "That doesn't make any sense. I mean she let you join the cheer squad, right? Helping us out is at least as big of a time commitment as being on the football team."

  "Yeah you've got a pretty good point there. Partly it is because we move around so much. I couldn't have played here because I missed the tryouts. Mostly though, she just hates football. Even me being able to join the spirit squad wouldn't have happened normally. Things just kind of lined up perfectly last week for me to be able to try out and for her to say yes when Miss Winters picked me."

  There was something there that I wasn't sure how to classify. It wasn't quite vulnerability, but it was a close cousin. I opened my mouth to say something harmless, but the words that came out weren't what I'd been planning on.

  "Well, I'm glad that things worked out. I have a suspicion that you'll probably have to save me from making an idiot out of myself at least once or twice a game."

  "Somehow I don't think you're going to struggle anywhere nearly as bad as that, but I'll gladly help out as often as you need me to. Let me know if you change your mind about practicing some stunts."

  He leaned in closer so that I could hear him despite the fact that his voice had gone soft.

  "It could just be our secret."

  Jackson winked at me and then stood and walked away as he rolled up his mat. I felt like my head was spinning. I'd been worried that I was being too forward when I'd told him that I was glad he'd made the team.

  In no world I'd even read about did a guy dripping as much hotness as Jackson ever want to get to know a chubby basket case like me. I was pretty sure I'd fallen asleep while stretching. I had to be dreaming, there was no other way to explain it.

  Chapter 7

  The rest of the game flew by in a blur. I managed to hit all of my marks and I didn't drop either of the girls I was supposed to spot for the stunting routines. All in all, if that had been the final result of the evening, I would have felt pretty good about my debut appearance on the squad.