Forgotten Specters

by C. R. Jane

  I could feel the energy in the air as Shelton navigated through the parking lot that was already full of tailgaters getting ready for the game. Damon had walked me through what to expect so that I wouldn't seem so out of place with not knowing anything. After thanking Shelton, I got out of the car, and walked into the varsity entrance where the cheerleaders' locker rooms were.

  "Eva!" I heard Lexi call out.

  She was hustling in from behind me.

  "You are seriously the worst at answering your phone!" she cried. "I waited outside your dorm room for thirty minutes so that we could walk together, until I finally figured you had spent the night somewhere else!"

  She suddenly got a mischievous look on her face.

  "So…who was the lucky guy?" she asked.

  I blushed.

  "Damon asked me to spend the night last night," I said shyly, trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal.

  "Ooh girl, you have to tell me how that gorgeous specimen is in bed. You're the closest I'm ever going to get to that."

  I blushed even further.

  "Ummm, we didn't sleep together…well we did sleep together…but we just slept."

  Lexi grabbed her heart, acting like she was having a heart attack from the shock of my statement.

  "Why the hell not?" she asked. "If I needed to cut off my right arm to get a chance with one of the "triplets" I would gladly do it," she said, only half joking it seemed.

  I didn't say anything, just continued to walk down the hallway to the locker room.

  "Are you trying to play hard to get?" she asked seriously. "Because a girl like you doesn't need to do that you know. I've seen the way Damon looks at you. I don't think he even remembers other girls exist."

  I stopped outside the door leading to the locker room. I could share things with Lexi. That's what normal girls did with their friends right? And it's not like there was anything wrong with being a virgin or anything like that.

  "I'm a virgin," I whispered, before opening the door and running inside without waiting to see what she had to say.

  "Eva, wait," she called out after me.

  Luckily, I had made it into the main part of the locker room where a lot of the girls from the team were already gathered. Some of the girls stared at me as I ran in, but they soon went back to getting ready when I didn't do anything interesting. Lexi popped up behind me, taking my arm and pulling me to the corner behind a row of lockers.

  "How is that possible?" she asked.

  "How is what possible?" I asked back, knowing exactly what she was talking about, but not wanting to answer.

  "Eva, babe. You're the hottest girl I have ever seen in my life by far. The guys must be crawling up your door to get a chance with you. You're telling me that none of the man candy available ever caught your eye?"

  I looked everywhere but at her.

  "I didn't have a lot of chances to interact with boys," I answered uncomfortably.

  "Okaaay…" she answered.

  She softly touched my shoulder.

  "Hey, I'm sorry. I'm being super in your business and you don't even know me well enough at all to feel comfortable sharing things like this. You don't have to feel uncomfortable with me about anything though. I already know we are going to be best friends."

  Lexi gave me a big hug, and then finally took a step back, letting me have a little bit of personal space finally.

  "Let's go get ready for the game," she squealed suddenly, her bubbly personality returning in full force, a definite 180 from the conversation we had just had. I smiled at her, glad that she was letting it go and not running from my social awkwardness. I shook off the conversation and did my best squealing impersonation back to her. Weirdo or not, this was my first college football game and nothing was going to dampen my mood.

  Chapter 17

  Lexi primped me to within an inch of my life. My hair was in a high pony tail, and expertly curled into ringlets. She had lined my eyes with a dark black eyeliner and two coats of mascara, making my eyes pop like crazy since my eyelashes were so long and dark naturally. I had watched her put a million products on her face, layer after layer of makeup that I didn't think she needed. When I said so, Lexi explained to me that we had to wear heavier makeup during football games so that we would look better on camera.

  "Lucky bitch, I can't even think of what to put on you," she said. "I don't think I could even see your pores if I got a microscope."

  I powdered my nose and pretended not to hear her. Finally after an hour of getting ready, Selena called us together for a pregame meeting. She rattled on about making sure we didn't embarrass the team. After ten minutes of lecturing, Coach Ryan graciously stepped in, cutting Selena off mid-sentence and giving us a pep talk to try and counteract the threats that Selena had just leveraged against us. Then, it was time to go out to the underground tunnel that led up to the field.

  Lexi had explained to me that we would run out onto the field before the football team, but I still felt butterflies as we waited for the team to come out. I watched as the football team started to stream out of the underground entrance to their locker room. The first couple of players almost tripped when they saw us standing in the hallway. I looked down at my uniform. Rothmore's school colors were red, black, and white. My uniform consisted of a black sports bra type top that had Rothmore in red and white across the front, and then a black mini skirt. I felt really uncomfortable showing this much skin, and the looks that the players were giving me as they came out in the tunnel made me even more self conscious. I didn't think it was possible to petition Coach to let me wear a t-shirt, so I would have to make the best of it I laughed to myself.

  At that moment, Eric came out, making a beeline towards me as soon as he saw me. Right before he got to me one of the football coaches barked out his name, saving me. I was beginning to think that the coaches were actually guardian angels in disguise with how much they kept Eric away from me.

  My jaw dropped when Damon stepped out into the tunnel. A lot of the girls started screaming when they saw him. He smiled at them and waved, and then turned towards me, giving me a smoldering look in the way that only Damon could. My heart leapt.

  If I thought he looked good in everyday clothes, or even in his practice pads…nothing compared to him in his uniform. The Rothmore home uniforms were all black, and they left nothing to the imagination. He had turned to answer a question that someone on the team had asked him, and I found myself drooling over his butt. Damon Pierce was dangerous. Not that I had doubted his powers before, but this was on a whole other level. Damon walked over and wiped imaginary drool from my mouth, or it could have been real drool. I couldn't be blamed for my reaction to him at the moment.

  "See something you like baby?" he asked with a smirk.

  I nodded profusely, inwardly yelling at myself. There was no playing it cool with these boys. He leaned in close to me, the scruff on his face tickling my ear.

  "You look so fucking hot baby. I'm dying to drag you off and start back where we left off last night."

  I don't think I could have blushed any harder than I did at that moment. He pulled me in for a kiss in front of everyone, prompting most of his team to give a big cheer, and causing Coach Ryan to yell at us to "break it up."

  At that moment, the horn sounded from up the tunnel. It was time to go out on the field. Adrenaline hit me as my feet touched the turf. Since we usually practiced on the fields next to the stadium, we had been practicing this last week in the stadium so that we could get our spots right for our game performance. Despite those practices, nothing could have prepared me for what this felt like. I had read that the Rothmore football stadium could hold 70,000 people, an architectural feat in New York City, but I hadn't really comprehended what that many people would actually feel like. There were people everywhere. The field was full of the marching band, reporters, medics, and
tv camera crews.

  We ran to the sideline to start cheering as the football team started to run out on the field. The noise of the crowd was deafening. A chant of "Damon, Damon" started, and I saw Damon waving at the crowd. I wondered if he had already taken the medicine he had told me about, and how long it lasted. He certainly still looked supernaturally perfect as he tossed the football to a teammate for warmup. I tried not to be distracted with how the muscles in his arms and hands flexed so sexily as he threw the ball.

  "Eva!" Lexi whispered from next to me. "The camera is on you, try to smile!"

  I immediately turned on my smile, mentally forcing myself not to stare at Damon anymore. The cameras were indeed facing right at me, and Coach Ryan was motioning at me from the sidelines to get a move on.

  We started a new cheer that involved me doing a few complicated flips in front of the crowd. I got into position and began to execute the flips, the crowd in front of me going crazy. As I finished, I stumbled on my last step. I grabbed my head. It felt like a million hornets were buzzing in my ear. The buzzing rose in intensity. As it got louder I realized that the buzzing actually sounded more like a million voices talking at once. I shook my head, trying to clear it and get rid of whatever was happening. Someone pulled on my arm.

  "Are you okay?" yelled Lexi.

  Except I didn't think she was yelling, it actually looked like she was just whispering. What was happening to me?

  I smiled weakly and shrugged my shoulders, motioning that I was alright. She looked at me suspiciously but went back to the cheer. I went along with the motions, pain continuing to pulse through my head from all of the noise. I looked over to where Damon was talking to his coach about 30 feet away from me. All of a sudden I could clearly hear their conversation.

  "This is a hell of a team to start the season with, but I'm confident you'll pull us through," the football coach was saying.

  I shook my head. There's no way that I should be able to hear their conversation from so far away. I stared at a couple who appeared to be arguing at least 40 feet away.

  "I saw you staring at her ass Brian, you can't hide that from me," the lady yelled at the guilty looking man standing beside her.

  What was happening to me? I experimented with people at various distances and learned that if I focused hard enough on the person, there was almost no distance in the stadium that was too far for me to hear what they were saying. I also learned that if I didn't focus on one person, the buzzing of all of the voices would return, practically paralyzing me in the process from how loud everything got.

  There was an extremely quiet girl on the team named Diane. She was friendly with everyone, but didn't seem to like conversation very much. I focused on her for the rest of the pregame, which provided me some much-needed relief. I was so busy trying not to blast out my eardrums by focusing on Diane, that I didn't notice Damon surreptitiously trying to get my attention while pretending to grab a drink on a bench nearby until Lexi nudged my shoulder.

  "Hey baby," he said, still pretending to be drinking his water and watching the crowd in an effort to throw reporters off that fact that we were together.

  I couldn't help but laugh. Everyone was still looking over to where we were standing, they were always looking at me despite my best efforts to blend in.

  "Having fun?" he asked me, his voice blaring out at me.

  "There's something wrong with me I think," I told him hurriedly since the game was about to start. He looked at me sharply.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "I can hear…everything," I told him, struggling to clearly explain what was happening to me.

  His worried expression relaxed.

  "Beckham thought something like this might happen," he said, pulling two small objects out of a bag on the bench next to him. "I've been keeping some ear plugs around just in case. They're a heavy-duty kind, and they should help keep the noise level down until you're able to learn how to manage it."

  "Beckham's been expecting this?" I asked confused.

  Damon was about to open his mouth when his coach blew his whistle, looking over at Damon disgruntledly.

  "I'll explain everything later," he said. "Just put them in your ears for now so that you can get through the game comfortably."

  I nodded and did as he said. I sighed in relief as the ear plugs settled into place. The roar of the crowd died down to a manageable level, and I could stop concentrating so hard on sweet Diane and resume normal conversations with Lexi and my other teammates.

  With the ear plugs in, I returned to cheering. The energy in the stadium was crazy. People were absolutely out of their mind with excitement to see Damon play. Once the game started, I could see why. Damon Pierce was enthralling.

  No matter what the other team did, Damon was better. Our defense seemed to be struggling today, and Mt. Whitmore College was marching down our field almost every time it seemed like. Damon didn't even seem phased. Our team scored every single time thanks to him. Whether he was running it in for a touchdown, or throwing it down the field for one, he was perfect every time. Examining him closely I could tell the difference between him without the magic pill, and him with the magic pill though. He was less polished, less fluid in his movements, less…angelic.

  Watching Damon's face during the game I could see that he absolutely loved playing. I was happy that he had this in his life. Just like Mason's music, and Beckham's acting, playing football seemed to complete something in Damon.

  At halftime we were up by two touchdowns. The team ran off the field to the locker rooms while we prepared to perform the halftime show. Getting into position, a roar from the crowd caught my eye. I thought I saw a familiar golden head walking along the sidelines. Was that Beckham?

  Coach yelled at us to pay attention, and I turned my attention back to the crowd, waiting for the music to play that signaled the start of our routine. For some reason I had been put at the very front center of the formation for most of the routine, and my stomach fluttered with nerves about screwing up. The music began, and I began to move. The stiffness of my movements slowly faded away as I enjoyed the dance routine we were performing. I could feel the eyes of the crowd focused on me, even the reporters had turned their cameras towards our routine, but I ignored it all, lost in the music and my motions.

  "Eva!" came a whisper from beside me as we ran to our groups that we would be doing lifts with.

  "What?" I said, seeing that it was Lexi.

  "You're glowing!" she told me frantically.

  I looked down at my arm, and gulped…sure enough, there was a faint light emitting from my skin. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself, watching the glow slightly fade with shocked eyes.

  Lexi was giving me the side eye as we continued to perform. I knew I was going to have to avoid a lot of hard questions later on by the looks of things.

  I focused on keeping my breathing and excitement under control so that my glow stayed muted. I would have to ask Damon about this little characteristic as well. I just hoped that I hadn't been caught on national television glowing…

  Our routine finished with me being thrown up in the air where I was supposed to do a couple of flips. Adrenaline rushed through me as I soared into the sky, for a second it felt like I was almost flying. I executed my flips, adding in one more turn then was planned in the routine since I was so full of energy. The routine ended…and the crowd went wild. It seemed like we were almost getting the same amount of cheering as the football team did, and I looked around our squad with delight. Everyone was jumping up and down and high-fiving each other. I looked over at Coach and she had a very impressed look on her face as she gazed back at me. She gave me a thumbs-up.

  We raced off the field towards the sidelines. As I got closer, I saw that the golden head I had seen earlier was in fact Beckham. I stopped suddenly, causing Lexi to curse behind me as she
narrowly avoided running into me. He was as beautiful as I had remembered.

  He was chatting with a couple of men standing next to him. The group was all dressed down, and seemed to be enjoying the view as they watched the cheerleading team run towards the sideline. He was wearing dark fitted jeans and a sky-blue t-shirt that was so tight you could see the barest outline of his abs beneath the fabric. I had to hold in my drool. Him and Damon on the field at the same time would probably cause some heart attacks today.

  Despite the fact that he seemed to be occupied, I somehow knew that he was fully aware of where I was. I began to perform our sideline cheers, keeping one eye on Beckham at the same time. Various girls came up to the group frequently and seemed to be asking them all for autographs. While the rest of the group seemed very flirty, Beckham was simply polite, signing their papers and turning to watch the game which had just resumed.

  Damon had winked at me when he came back on the field. I couldn't help but smile back at him. He didn't seem to have noticed that Beckham had come to the game. I wondered if he was as close to Beckham as he was to Mason.

  The rest of the game flew by. Damon was absolutely amazing. Towards the end, I wondered if the medicine was wearing off as his play seemed to definitely border on otherworldly. Rothmore pulled off the win despite the crap performance of the defense, winning by 15 points.

  Damon was so exuberant that he ran towards me after the clock ran off, picking me up and spinning me around much to the crowd's, and the camera's, delight.

  "I made Coach turn on the tv so that I could see your halftime performance in the locker room," he told me before I could get a word in. "You were incredible," he told me with an awed look on his face.