“No shit.” Mack chuckles under his breath, careful not to piss Coach off even more than I already did.
I sigh, but then throw a glare in Nash’s direction when heskates past us to take his spot in the first line. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how hurt Taryn looked when she told us about her last conversation with Nash. I just wanted to hurt him too.”
“Dude,” Mack shakes his head. “That’s something Tucker would usually do. You two are rubbing off on each other these days.”
I take my spot, ready to sprint. If anyone had told me I acted like Tucker a few months ago, I would have taken offense, for as much as I love the guy. Right now? I’m kinda proud of myself. Tucker has shown me more than once how he would do anything for his loved ones. I take being compared to him as a badge of honor.
CHAPTER FOUR
KICKLINE
TARYN
The past couple of days, I spent a lot of time in my room. I’ve also done my very best to give Genevieve a wide berth when we’re training.
Thank goodness it isn’t very hard since they’ve been grouping us in groups of seven while learning the dances we’ll be performing during Friday night’s game against UCLA. They matched dancers according to height, and I’m luckily almost a foot shorter than Gen.
But if I’ve been enjoying training with Talia and Sam, I feel really bad for Jodie. My BFF is one of the tallest girls in the group, and she’s in the same group with Gen and Olivia.
“Ok, girls.” Lexi claps her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Today we’re going to learn one of the most important dances in our repertoire. We’ve left it until now because we’re going to have you perform it on Friday, right before the national anthem. We hope that having it fresh in your minds will result in the kind of flawless performance we expect from the Shooting Stars.”
Lexi and Adrianna explain the dance routine and showus an animation of the choreography where stick figures dance instead of us.
The routine starts with us dancing in pairs, with one dancer in the middle. There’s a lot of arm movements and hair flips as we move in a circular motion around the middle dancer. When the music slows down for a beat, we’ll form a six-point star around the girl in the center.
Then we’ll open up into a straight line, three dancers on either side of the centerpiece.
That’s when we’ll start kicking our legs in synch with the music, holding the line with our arms extended behind the shoulders of the dancers near us. Pompoms are in our hands.
“Kickline dancing looks beautiful if done right.” Lexi smiles. “You need to be in perfect sync, and I want to see high kicks, like this.”
She plays an older looking video where a girl with poker straight red hair alternates kicking her legs and swinging the opposite arm to the kicking leg while holding her pompoms.
“Those kicks are high.” Talia muses.
She’s right. The girl in the video kicks as high as her chin and still manages to look graceful.
“We want to see you kick to the stars.” Lexi says, right on cue. “Look at the way Carole did it in the video. That’s the standard.”
A ripple of surprised gasps echoes in the room.
“Yes,” Lexi smiles. “That’s an old video from Carole’s last year as cheer captain of our team when we were cheering for the NFL. Doesn’t she look hot?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Carole blush before today.
“Thanks, Lexi, you’re way too kind. More than anything, I feel old. I can’t believe how young I was in thatvideo. I didn’t know at the time, but I was pregnant with my second baby back then. I think I found out shortly after and was benched once the doctor confirmed it.”
“Yeah,” Lexi nods. “You came back after your first child, but you retired after Riah was born.”
Carole sighs. “Yeah. With my husband traveling during the hockey season, it was too much. We had a nanny when our son was born, but I realized that I didn’t want my kids to be raised by paid help. I’ll be honest with you all. I loved being a mom and a wife, and I wouldn’t change my decision to retire for anything in the world. But I missed dancing; I missed the excitement of game day. Experiencing all that again with you is priceless, even if I’m not the one dancing. Come on, let’s see that dance and show me and Lexi those kicks.”
Every new dance routine is a challenge, but in the past few weeks, we’ve already learned a dozen different dances. So at this point, we’re becoming quite quick at picking up every new move our choreographers throw our way.
Everything seems to go pretty well until it’s time to start the kick line.
“No, no, no,” Lexi cries out. “What a disaster. Gen and Jodie, you’re out of sync. Gen, you’re a tenth of a second early and Jodie is a tenth of a second late. You’re lucky you didn’t make the entire line collapse. Being out of sync when you kick is dangerous. You could injure yourself or one of your teammates.”
Carole agrees. “Absolutely. Also, those kicks are way too low. There are only two dancers who got those kicks where they should be. Taryn and Genevieve. Everyone else, if you need time to stretch, go ahead. But if you don’t see the tips of your shoes right under your nose when you’re kicking, you aren’t doing it right.”
