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Echo shook her hand and introduced herself, and then a group of other adults walked over. I had seen them before and knew them to be her team of assistant coaches. She had four, no joke. One was a professional choreographer on top of everything else.
Thinking about Echo’s resources too much made my blood boil. Her team had all the advantages, but now they didn’t have their fancy gym. No, they were stuck with the water fountain that only worked half the time, and the haunted locker room with the rest of us.
Camille broke the news about the mats and we divided them in half, which was going to throw both our squads off. This was one situation I hadn’t had them practice for. There wasn’t enough room for them to do their tumbling, or to do all of the stunts, so we’d have to pick and choose what we worked on.
“Thank you,” Echo said, and I thought she was talking to Camille. I’d been trying to avoid her as I waited for my squad to get their act together and come over as a group so we could have a little chat about the ground rules.
“Thank you,Kiri,” she said, and the sound of my name in her mouth sent a shiver down my back.
“It wasn’t my choice,” I said.
“I know, but still. Thank you.”
She ducked behind the curtain but then poked her head back around again. “Do you know when the new mats are coming? My squad isn’t used to using ones that are this low quality. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
There it was.
“I’m not sure,” I said, my eyes narrowed and my voice icy. “You can ask Camille.”
She grinned at me. “Thanks.”
Echo went back around the curtain and clapped her hands to call her squad to attention.
“You all are representing me, and the school, and I expect you to act with decorum. For those that don’t know what that means, I want you to act like classy and gracious people. If you can’t do that, fake it.”
There was a ripple of laugher. I’d pitched my voice low, but the other group had their music on loud so I didn’t think they would hear me anyway.
It hadn’t even been an hour and I was already losing my mind. I was so used to having the entire gym and no other distractions. This was going to be a test of character for my team as well as me.
Kevin, my class clown, raised his hand.
“Yes, Kevin,” I said, trying not to let out a heavy sigh at the snarky response or witty remark I knew was coming from his mouth.
“What if we can’t fake it?”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at the whole squad.
“Then you get thrown in the snake pit, or I hack your social media accounts. Whichever is worse. And don’t think that I can’t.” I loved to claim that I could do things that I couldn’t, but I knew people who could. Dom’s husband used to work in IT and could do that shit with his eyes closed. One of the main reasons I never wanted to get on his bad side.
That seemed to terrify them sufficiently until we discovered a new problem: the curtain.
Instead of keeping us apart, I kept finding my team’s eyes wandering to the cracks in between the curtains, and when stunts went up, you could see the flyers popping up and down.
“This is a nightmare,” I said to Dom as we tried to get the kids to focus.
“It’s like wrangling toddlers that are hopped up on sugar. We need to give them something to focus on,” Dom said. He really was going to make a great dad.
I gathered the team in a circle. “Okay, if you can’t do this and not be distracted, I’m going to cut this practice and just leave. You can’t be safe if you’re looking over at what they’re doing. I’m not letting a bunch of you get hurt. It would be irresponsible. So, can I have you all committed to safety?”
That was one thing most of them could take seriously. They knew the injury and concussion rates of cheerleaders. Did they get reckless sometimes? Yes. But that’s why I was here to rein them in and give them parameters and make sure we had enough spotters who were paying attention. And if we didn’t, I would step in and spot myself. Not all of us had four assistant coaches.
They all nodded and agreed that they were.
“Okay, since we don't have a lot of space, we’re going to do opening stunts, one by one, with counts. If you’re not in the group, you have your eyes glued to the stunt and if a flyer hits the floor, you will be doing conditioning for the rest of practice, and I will not be happy. Understood?”
I was surly and on edge and I couldn’t wait for this damn practice to be over. All of my energy was trained on maintaining my squad’s focus, and there were twenty-two of them.
The first stunt went up without incident.
