Ain’t a Cheerleader in Texas...
Epilouge
And in her dorm room, Jessica snapped out of her reverie. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and she wiped them away before reviewing the letter. It was more coherent than she had expected, and if it was full of things she would rather not have let her parents know, then that was the price she would pay to keep other girls from falling into the same trap.
With a flourish, she signed Jessica O’Neill and smiled as she changed into her cheer uniform and met up with her teammates.
In the second half of the game at Austin, the basketball coach watched his team’s cheerleaders in the stands and worried. “Men, we’re doing so badly that our cheerleaders are falling back under! Why else would they be so enthusiastic when we’re down sixty!” he yelled in a futile attempt at motivation.
“They’re not cheering us, they’re cheering that they ain’t them,” one of his players replied with a smile, noting the glare that Jessica shot at the girl in the center twirling too perfectly as she led the homegrown cheerleaders in another mindless routine. Close examination of her tank top would reveal white script: Kellie, ‘09 captain.
The cheerleaders finished their routine with a synchronized cheer that the nine Houston Methodist cheerleaders answered with a vicious throat-slashing gesture that got the team a bench technical.
“Well, I’ll be. I guess there are nine cheerleaders in Texas with minds of their own now,” the coach said with a smile as he sent his men back out onto the floor. The 20-0 run against the opposing bench that ended the game went unnoticed by everyone except a few people in Vegas, but Jessica and her friends beamed at the support.
The next day, she sat in the barber’s chair for her monthly appointment, head tilted back as the last traces of her past that had grown beyond her shoulders fell to the floor. “Still got a little mojo in those hips, I see,” the barber chided Jessica. “Sure you don’t want me to warm up the foil?”
“A girl can’t have old-fashioned school pride anymore without being accused of being a Texas cheerleader?” Jessica answered, putting a hand over her heart in exaggerated horror. “Hand me today’s Chronicle? Thanks.”
She flipped through the paper, and sighed when she saw an ad in the bottom former of the Style section for Texas Elite’s ‘09 cheer camp. “The more things change,” she muttered.