by Belle Payton
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CHAPTER
ONE
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
The bass drum player was pounding rhythmically to excite the crowd. The cheerleaders shouted and clapped and performed hair-raising acrobatics. Ava Sackett watched, holding her breath, as her friend Kylie McClaire’s older sister, Yvette, stood on another girl’s shoulders high above the ground and then pointed one leg up into the air.
But then the opposing team scored another field goal, and the Ashland Tigers’ fans lapsed into a despondent silence. The Tigers were losing by seventeen points, and there were only seven minutes left in the game.
From her seat high in the stands, Ava looked down at her older brother, Tommy. He stood on the sidelines with the rest of his teammates, dejectedly watching what was happening on the field. His helmet was off, and when he turned his head, she could see his thick brown hair drooping down over his eyes. Ava knew what he was thinking—not only was the team going to lose, but also there was no way he’d be going into the game.
Farther along the sideline was their father, Mike Sackett, who was the coach of the Ashland Tigers. His job was the reason their family had moved to Ashland, Texas, from the East Coast this summer. Ava watched as Coach stalked up and down the sideline in his Tigers jacket, communicating with his assistant coaches through the big headphones he wore. The assistant coaches were stationed in the tower high above the field, where they could watch the game.
The crowd groaned.
“What happened?” demanded Ava’s friend Kylie. Kylie hadn’t really paid attention to football before she and Ava became friends—she was more interested in things like jewelry making and fantasy novels—but Ava was teaching her how the game worked. To Ava’s delight, Kylie seemed to enjoy football almost as much as Ava did.
“PJ misjudged the throw,” said Ava. “Did you see how Tyler Whitley stopped and cut over toward the sideline? PJ’s lucky it didn’t get intercepted. It doesn’t look good.”
“Is there any way we can pull out a win?” asked Kylie.
“Highly doubtful.” Ava watched Kylie’s sister leap off two people’s shoulders, land in a pike on their waiting arms, bounce up onto her feet, do a backbend, and finally land in a split. “Wow. Your sister is awesome.”
“Wow. Kylie McClaire’s sister is awesome,” said Alex Sackett, who was sitting between Lindsey Davis and Emily Campbell, a few feet farther along the bleacher from her twin sister.
“She’s amazing,” agreed Emily.
Alex watched in fascination as Yvette stood on the shoulders of two teammates standing side by side, her arms up in a V. Then she pulled her right leg up from the side so it was touching her ear—all while standing on one foot on someone’s shoulder.
“She’s so flexible,” said Alex.
“Well, at our level we don’t do stuff like that,” said Lindsey. “But we do a lot of choreographed routines. It just takes practice.”
“I’m sure you could do it if you worked at it, Alex,” said Emily. “You should try out for cheerleading with us.”
“Yeah,” agreed Lindsey. “You’re from such an athletic family.”
“Ha,” said Alex. “Ava and Tommy inherited all the athletic genes.” Not only was Tommy on the high school football team, but Ava had just made the middle school football team a few weeks ago. Alex noticed that Rosa Navarro, sitting on the other side of Lindsey, was listening intently to the conversation but not adding to it. Alex had heard Rosa was one of the best seventh grade cheerleaders. Does she not think I have what it takes? Alex wondered.
“It’s a combination of dance, gymnastics, and tumbling,” Emily said. “But not all of us do the big acrobatic tumbling stuff. That you really do need to have practiced from a young age.”
“Rosa’s our best tumbler,” said Lindsey.
“Don’t you think Alex should try out, Rosa?” asked Emily.
Rosa hesitated. “Well, not everyone is cut out for cheerleading,” she said. “It takes a lot of coordination and flexibility.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed. What was that supposed to mean? Did Rosa think she was uncoordinated?
The roar of the opposing team’s fans interrupted the conversation. The clock ran down. The Tigers had lost.
Alex was still busy thinking as everyone stood up to leave and her sister poked her arm.
“That was pretty grim,” said Ava.
“Huh? What was grim?” asked Alex, puzzled.
Ava stared at her. “Uh, the game? The fact that we just lost?”
“Oh!” said Alex with a little laugh. “Right. Yeah, too bad. So are you going to Sal’s?” The middle school kids usually gathered at the local pizza place after home games.
Ava frowned at her. “Yeah, I promised Kylie I’d head over with her,” she said. “But I’m only staying for a little while—I want to rest up for my game tomorrow. I’ll see you there?”
“Yep, sure,” said Alex. She was still thinking about Rosa’s remarks. Not that she had time to participate in sports, now that she was class president. And it was true that Alex herself commented all the time that she was uncoordinated athletically. But it was one thing for Alex to say it. It was quite another thing for someone else to agree with her, out loud, in front of everyone.
And honestly, cheerleading? How hard could it be?
CHAPTER
Two
“So you really think I should try out?” Alex asked Emily about an hour later. They were at Sal’s, sitting at a long table full of kids eating pizza.
“You totally should!” said Emily. They watched Sal, the owner, waltz around the room, refilling water glasses as he sang opera arias at the top of his lungs.
“Sports are not really my thing,” said Alex. She glanced down the table. Toward the other end, Lindsey and Corey O’Sullivan sat side by side, talking in low voices to each other. They had been very close until a family fight pulled them apart, but recently they’d started being friendly toward each other again. Alex wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it, but she was pretty sure she was glad—even if her heart did still speed up a little bit whenever she saw Corey.
“So, Alex, how psyched was Charlie when you told him you’d won the election?” asked their friend Annelise Mueller, who was sitting across from Alex.
“Charlie?” asked Alex blankly. Then she remembered. Charlie! Her phantom boyfriend! The one she’d told everyone she was going out with back home. Ugh! Alex knew she was a terrible liar. She was constantly forgetting what she’d told people and acting clueless when they repeated stuff she’d said to them. She had blurted out that she had a boyfriend named Charlie in a moment of panic, and now she regretted the lie every day. To further complicate things, Ava really did have a sort-of boyfriend back home named Charlie, although who knew what the status of that situation was. Alex needed to figure out how to spread the word that she had broken up with Charlie, and soon.
“Oh! Charlie!” she said with a laugh. “Yeah, um, he was really happy about it.” She searched her brain for a way to quickly change the subject. “So, when are cheerleading tryouts again?”
“This Sunday,” said Annelise. “Are you going to try out?”
“It does sound really fun, but I don’t think so,” said Alex. “Even if I wanted to be on the team, I wouldn’t have time. Being class president is a big responsibility.”
>
Rosa stopped chatting with Xander Browning, who was sitting across the table from her. “How are you planning to fulfill the sports requirement, then?” she asked.
Alex froze, a slice of pizza midway to her mouth. She set it back down. “What sports requirement?”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” asked Emily. “Everyone has to participate in some sort of athletic activity for at least two seasons. It’s part of the district’s ‘physical fitness initiative,’ ” she said, making air quotes with her fingers.
“That’s totally ridiculous,” said Alex. “My responsibilities as class president should exempt me from such a dumb rule.”
Rosa snorted. “Being in student government does not begin to approach the time commitment that a real sport requires,” she said.
The table had suddenly quieted down. Everyone seemed to be tuning in to Alex and Rosa’s conversation.
Alex was aware that people were interested in what she would say about this. She looked for Ava. Ava was usually the one she relied on for navigating these tricky social situations. But Ava was sitting across the restaurant at a booth with Kylie and their friend Jack Valdeavano. They were laughing their heads off about something. Fleetingly, she wondered if Ava and Jack were becoming more than friends, but then she snapped back to the conversation at hand.
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “believe that if you want, but I definitely don’t have time to both be class president and do a sport. What if I volunteered to be the manager or something?”
Lindsey shook her head. “Even if you just want to be manager, you still have to try out for the team,” she said. “At least for cheerleading. Coach Jen only takes managers who show an interest in the sport.”
“Oh,” said Alex dejectedly.
“You should totally just try out, Alex!” said Emily excitedly. “You have the perfect personality for it, and you get good grades, and you must be a natural athlete! Seriously, just look at your family.”
Alex was intrigued. Lindsey and Emily genuinely seemed to want her to join the squad. And they were right, being athletic was in her genes. Really, she’d always been able to do just about anything she set her mind to. Why should cheerleading be any different? “Hmm,” she mused. “I could—”
“She won’t make it past the first cuts,” snapped Rosa.
Alex’s temper flared. “What if I do make the cut?” she demanded.
“Well, then you’ll be all set,” said Rosa with what Alex suspected was a tiny twinge of sarcasm. “Maybe Coach Jen will let you stick around as the manager. But cheerleading is not as easy as it looks. A lot of girls don’t make it past the first round.”
“We’ll just see about that, won’t we?” said Alex. “Now I’m thinking I might just try out and see how it goes.”
“Awesome!” squealed Emily.
Everyone went back to talking and eating. But Alex’s mind was in a whirl. What had she just done?
CHAPTER
Three
“You did what?” asked Ava, her eyes round with disbelief.
“I told them I was going to try out,” said Alex miserably. “I know. It was dumb. I just sort of blurted it out without really thinking about it.”
The girls were home from Sal’s, getting ready for bed in the bathroom they shared. Their Australian shepherd, Moxy, had splayed herself out right in front of the door in the hallway. Ava could hear Tommy playing his keyboard in his room, and their parents had gone to bed early. Coach had been pretty quiet and preoccupied after the Tigers’ loss.
Ava put some toothpaste on her toothbrush and frowned. “Alex, you do realize you’re going to get cut immediately. No offense, but these girls are really good. They’ve been practicing for years. They go to cheer camp and stuff in the summer. And this is Texas. You’ve probably noticed that people don’t do things halfway here.”
“I know,” said Alex. “But Rosa practically forced me to say I’d go to the first day of tryouts. It was a matter of pride. My pride.” She sighed dramatically. “All I have to do is make it past the first round of cuts and then I’ll be done. I can prove to her that I’m not a total klutz, and Emily says after I demonstrate my commitment to the sport, the coach might let me be manager for the team, which will be an easy way to fulfill my athletic requirement.”
Ava nodded, but it was hard to hide the exasperation she was feeling. Alex was always getting into these situations by saying stuff without thinking about it. Well, there’s nothing I can do, Ava thought. Her sister would just have to get knocked down and learn her lesson.
Ava spat into the sink and rinsed her mouth. “I’m going to bed, Al,” she said. “I have a big game tomorrow.”
“Do you mind very much if I don’t go?” asked Alex. “They posted the video of the routine we have to learn for Sunday, and I think I’m going to need all day tomorrow to practice it.”
Ava nodded. “That’s fine. You never know what’s going on in the game anyway.” With a wry grin, she headed into her room and left her sister in the bathroom, practicing clapping her hands with enthusiasm.
The middle school Tiger Cubs’ game didn’t go well either. Ava’s team lost 17–7. The car ride home from the game was a quiet one.
“It’s nice that you went in as wide receiver,” said Mrs. Sackett, breaking the silence at last.
Ava shrugged. “I didn’t touch the ball the whole game,” she said. “Except to kick that extra point.”
“But it’s great that Coach Kenerson had enough confidence in you to put you in,” said Mrs. Sackett. “Right, Michael?”
Coach flicked a glance at Ava in the rearview mirror. “That’s right, Ave,” he said. “You ran a nice pattern.”
Ava sighed and gazed out the window at the passing landscape. “I heard Mr. and Mrs. Kelly grumbling to Andy after the game,” she said. “I think they were mad Coach K pulled him and put me in. They probably thought we could’ve won if he’d stayed in the game.” The Kellys and their nephew Andy Baker had been some of Ava’s biggest opponents in her quest to be the first girl to play football in Ashland.
Coach sighed quietly and shook his head, as he turned the car into the Sacketts’ driveway. “Doug Kelly means well,” he said. “He’s just looking out for his nephew. But the fact is, the Armadillos were the better team. I don’t think it would have made a difference one bit. You’re not as skilled yet as Andy Baker, but you’re faster and have great instincts. It was just a tough outing for Corey, and our linemen didn’t give him enough protection.”
After a long shower, Ava felt much better. She put on comfy sweatpants and a T-shirt and headed to Alex’s room to see how she was doing with her cheer routine.
“Hey,” said Alex, although the word came out in the form of a grunt.
“How’s it going?” asked Ava, suppressing a grin as she watched her sister attempting a split.
Alex groaned and fell over to the side in an ungainly tumble. “Ow!” she said. She pounded lightly all over her thighs with her fists. “I can’t unclench my muscles.” She groaned again. “I’m not even close to doing a split. I’m, like, a foot off the floor!”
“It takes time to get to that level of flexibility,” said Ava, coming into the room and sitting on the ground next to her sister. “Have you really stretched out first? You don’t want to hurt yourself.”
“Sort of,” muttered Alex. “But I’ve seen you do one before. You don’t even warm up first.”
“Al, I stretch all the time, though,” said Ava. “Here, I’ll show you some stretches you can do.”
The two of them spent the next fifteen minutes in a series of floor positions.
“Try one,” said Alex. “Try doing a split and let me see how far down you can go.”
Ava hesitated. She didn’t want her sister to feel bad. But she took off her sneakers, and in her socks, lowered herself down on the polished wood floor, in the space between the rug and the wall, and slowly descended into a full split. She pretended to wince with discomfort a little, bu
t in fact, she was good at splits and could drop into one pretty readily.
“You can totally do one!” marveled Alex. “That’s so awesome!”
“You can too,” said Ava encouragingly. “You just need to practice every day.”
“I don’t have every day,” said Alex. “I have to do one by tomorrow.” She sighed. “Hey, remember back when we were in ballet class when we were, like, five? You were the best one in the class. It was only when you learned you had to wear a pink tutu that you flat-out refused to go back. Remember that?”
Ava rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Guess we haven’t changed all that much,” she said.
“Can I show you the video of the routine I’m supposed to learn?” asked Alex. “Maybe you can help me with it, just a little?”
Ava smiled. “Let me just eat something first. I’m starving. We can practice down in the living room.”
Half an hour later, both girls stood side by side in front of Alex’s laptop, which they had propped up on a high shelf of the curio cabinet. They had moved most of the furniture into a corner of the room and rolled up the rug so they could work on the bare wood floor.
“Okay,” said Ava. “Let’s try it one more time. Together. Right foot first. Knees high. Arms go straight up and out in a V. Ready?”
Alex nodded resolutely as the music began, her face the picture of concentration.
Ava counted along. “. . . five, six, seven, eight! March-march-arm-arm-clasp, turn, head-head, squat-two, three, four . . . jump!”
Ava looked behind her to see if Alex had sprung up in unison with her. Alex was sprawled on the rug, a dejected look on her face. She’d fallen. Again. Ava groaned inwardly. This seemed hopeless.
Someone in the doorway clapped, and the girls turned. It was Tommy.
“Not funny, Tommy,” said Alex through gritted teeth. She scrambled to her feet.
“No, really, you guys looked great, at least for a minute,” said Tommy. “Is this for a talent show or something?”
