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“Okay, fat asses, I know you’ve been eating everything under the sun for the last few weeks. Time to pay for it,” Tina announced, smiling sadistically.
She was the worst. It didn’t bother me, her criticisms and fat-shaming rolled off my back, but I could tell it bothered the other girls. I couldn’t wait for Tina to graduate so that hopefully, the cheerleading squad could move on to a new era of benevolent leadership. Either that, or another mean girl would take up the mantle to torture us all.
The whistle blew, and we started practice. Football players wandered in and sat. They were here to train, in theory, but often they just hung out and watched the cheerleaders practice. A lot of them had girlfriends on the team, while the others used the squad as prime hunting ground for either hookups or girlfriends.
As I was gulping down water during our break, I spied a new face toward the back of the gym: Isabelle, Eve and Lily’s friend. She waved when I met her eye. She was scribbling away on her pad while we worked on a new routine.
As soon as we were done, she made her way down the stairs to me.
“That looked absolutely exhausting,” she breathed as she reached me.
I nodded. “It felt it. Thinking of trying out?”
She exploded in a graceless guffaw that made me like her a lot more. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She was wholly herself. It was a cool thing to see.
“You don’t want me on the cheerleading squad. Not that I’d make the cut, not enough fitness or pep.”
“You can fake the pep, take it from me.” I grinned at her.
She laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. You are an inspiring example, but honestly, I barely have time for school and the paper as it is.”
“Are you here for a story?”
She nodded. “Did you hear those rumors about doping a few weeks ago?”
“Aren’t there always rumors about doping?”
Isabelle shrugged. “Probably, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and I need to start covering some real stuff or I’m never going to make it off spell-check duty and the crappy gossip column.”
“Wait, you write the ‘Hooking Up at HHU’ column?”
She nodded miserably. The column was our campus’s answer to Gossip Girl, and usually exposed all sorts of secret relationships. It had outed quite a few couples no one had suspected. It was tongue-in-cheek and no one took it seriously, but it would still be an easy point to score.
“How do you get your info?” I wondered.
“People message in, usually with pics. It’s not that big a campus, there’s always someone around, somewhere…it’s easy to get stories, really. We live in a fishbowl.”
I nodded, chewing my lips and turning over a budding idea. “That’s true.”
“So, got any hot gossip about the football team? And not that the quarterback likes to bend over in the shower for the tight end…I already know that one,” she teased.
What? I glanced over at the two guys in question. They’d been watching the cheer practice, seeming just like all the other horny jocks ogling the girls stretching and dancing right in front of them. Looks could be deceiving.
“I have an idea…but I’ll need a favor in return.”
“I’m listening,” Isabelle said, poising her pen over her paper.
“I don’t know any doping info, but I can get you face-to-face with the guys who were accused, maybe after they’ve been drinking, after a game, when they’re loose-lipped and feeling invincible.”
“Really? That would be incredibly unprofessional of me, and I’m in one hundred percent. What’s the favor?”
“I have a story for you…a secret couple. Can you out them in the column?”
Isabelle checked her watch. “I can even get it in for tomorrow’s edition.”
Yes!
“Amazing. Can I?” I reached out and snagged her pen and scribbled two names across her paper. “This is the couple. Top secret, no one knows.”
