This choice: Change the membership of the cheerleader squad • Go Back...Chapter #14Backstabbers by: Seuzz   "Bullshit."
So asserts Chelsea Cooper later that morning. You're in the F wing girls' restroom,—just her and Gloria Rea and Kendra-you—touching up makeup and checking yourselves out for flaws in the mirrors. Chelsea cut off cheerleader practice a little early, and dragged Kendra-you (and Gloria) out of the gym and into the school while there was still five minutes left before the bell.
Kendra knows what that means. As she's now part of your collective, you do too.
"I'm not shitting you, Chelsea," Kendra-you insists. "Why would I?"
Gloria mutters from the other side of Chelsea: "Maybe you think you've actually got a chance with him."
"Then I'd tell you if I did!"
"No you wouldn't. 'Cause you don't want it getting back to Hannah."
"If that'd, like, break them up—"
"You don't want to try too hard too fast with him, Kendra," Chelsea says. She leans into the mirror to study her pores. "You're smarter than that." She gives you a quick, sidelong glance—hard and a little spiteful. "You're so smart about these things."
She doesn't even try to make it sound like praise.
It all goes back to a text message that you failed to reply to last night, after you got Kendra back home from an evening of grasping, nails-dug-into-each-other's-flesh between Kendra-you and Marc-you. It started with Kendra-you peeling the condom onto Marc-you's thrusting cock, then grinding herself down onto it as Marc-you tried launching her from below. After spending the male member of your beast with two backs, you ate her out with his mouth, then peeled off his jeans and nibbled the insides of his thighs until he was ready to come again, this time down her throat. With time and bodies so well spent, you dressed them up again silently and took them home.
Well? was the text that Chelsea sent, and as you hadn't digested Kendra's memories yet, you ignored until this morning, when too late you realized what it was about. Chelsea ignored your hurried reply—We just talked about yearbook and youtube stuff and treated Kendra-you with cold indifference during cheerleader practice, a fact that Eva-you and Jessica-you also noticed, and quietly mentioned to Lin Pol. ("Jesus, looks like Kendra stepped in it with Chelsea somehow.") Then came the summons to the restroom, where things could be hashed out privately.
Her repair work complete, Chelsea turns around to lean against the sink while fixing you with a very direct stare.
"You could totally go all the way with him, Kendra," she says. "And I don't mean— Tch!" She rolls her eyes. "I mean go together. Marc's not a player, you know," she adds. "That's just one of the things that makes him worth it, you know. You hook him, and you know it's for keeps."
Behind her, you can't help noticing, Gloria's eyes curl up into slits.
"So don't fuck it up, Kendra," Chelsea says. "If you come on too strong with him—"
"I know that, Chelsea," Kendra-you snap while elsewhere Marc-you glows with pleasure at Chelsea's praise. "You think I'm an idiot?"
"I'm just trying to help. Jeez, don't bite my head off! My point is that we all want to see you pull this off. Don't we, Gloria?"
Gloria nods, even as she scowls.
"So we all need to be pulling together," Chelsea concludes. She smiles so hard that her eyes are swallowed up in her dimples. "And if we're all going to pull together," she continues, still dimpling hard, "we all have to have all the facts. Like what. Happened. Last. Night."
You sigh. "I told you. Nothing."
Chelsea's smile curdles. "Well then maybe you weren't trying hard enough." She picks up her things. "Are you going to see him again? For this—pff!—yearbook stuff?"
"I don't know. Probably."
"The correct answer is, 'Yes', Kendra. We'll come along too—" She prods Gloria "—so we can help out. You do want us all pulling together, don't you, Kendra?"
"Yes, Chelsea."
She dimples again. "That's right. Come on, we don't want to be late to class," she says as the bell ending first period rings.
* * * * *
Adding Kendra to your collective opens up a whole new world to you—a world not only of being Chelsea Cooper's confidante and punching bag—but a world of classes and relationships neither you nor the Garners knew existed.
It's a world with classes like Interior Design, where a girl can satisfy her itch to sketch pretty things while gossiping about who's going with who, and who would be going with who if only she knew how to dress up nicer; or Parenting, where a girl can listen to a lot of advice about pregnancy and after while gossiping about who really should be taking the class, and who should have taken it before she really had too; or Yearbook, where a girl can practice her layout and design skills in while viciously belittling every other girl's choices about who and what should get how much attention; or Visual Journalism, where a girl can get pretty in front of a camera while giving the guys behind the camera some pretty embarrassing erections; or Reading for Pleasure, where a girl can finally catch up on her cell phone texts while pretending to read some pretty pointless books.
Kendra doesn't share any of these classes with the Garners, but you only have to keep her eyes and ears open in order to give your other brains some serious food for thought, especially when Chelsea stops talking about Kendra's plans for Marc and returns to her favorite topic: how to fix the goddamn cheerleader squad.
* * * * *
"Chelsea's going to cut Michelle from the squad," Jessica-you announces as she drops to sit cross-legged in the middle of the bedroom floor. You smile at Lin, and Eva-you thinks, Like the cat that swallowed the canary.
Your Garner girls at Lin's house, having been dropped off there by Marc-you as he raced off for a date with Hannah. (And as Kendra-you is scrolling social media sites without even pretending to watch the boys' basketball team at practice.) You brought treats, too: three chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing and a blueberry swirl on top.
"Who told you that?" Lin asks.
"We have our sources." Jessica-you licks the blueberry swirl off a cupcake and thrills as it dissolves in the back of her gullet, melting right back into the tissues from which she had expelled it on the drive over. (Each of the Garners contributed one swirl to the trio of treats.)
"Chelsea wouldn't tell you," Lin says. Her eyes narrow.
"It was Kendra," Eva-you says.
"Eva!" Jessica-you chides her.
"And you believe her? Why would she—?"
"She didn't tell us," Eva-you says. "Not directly. She—"
"She told Marc."
Lin's mouth falls open. "Why would she tell Marc—"
"They were on a date."
"Oh, not a date," Eva-you corrects her sister-you. "Not a—"
"Oh God no," Jessica-you agrees. "Hannah would kill him."
"They went out for coffee, to talk."
"About what?"
"Yearbook stuff. Soccer team stuff. Marc's got this idea about doing a YouTube documentary about the soccer team—"
"Just a video, Jessica," Eva-you corrects her again.
"Look, you want to tell the story? Not that there's a story to it," Jessica-you assures Lin before Eva-you can grab the dropped thread. "Marc gets these hairs up his butt, you know—"
"Anyway, while they were talking, Kendra let it drop that—"
"Why talk to Kendra?" Lin blanches. "If Hannah finds out—"
"Marc didn't mean anything by it."
"What about Kendra?" Lin looks between your two girls. "Seriously, if she ever gets the idea that she and Marc could, you know—"
"She couldn't."
"Marc can be an absolute idiot sometimes," Jessica-you says, "but he's not stupid enough to take his pants off around Kendra. Here." You press the last cupcake onto Lin, who takes it with obvious reluctance. "But about Michelle—"
"Even if it gets back to Hannah," Lin says. "I don't know if she's the jealous type, but—"
"She isn't," Eva-you says, "and it won't get back to her," you add as, several miles away, Hannah Westrick screams at Marc-you about his meet-up with Kendra. "But about Michelle—"
You break off as Lin bites the top off the cupcake. A warm, gooey feeling flows over your four bodies as her flesh forms around your consciousness. You surface inside her just long enough to give Eva-you and Jessica-you a brief smile, then dive back down and start sucking at her mind and memories. On the surface you continue the putative reason for this meeting: talk about whether it would be better or worse for Cindy's plans if Michelle got replaced on the squad by a new girl. No decisions are made.
* * * * *
"It was Gloria who told her," Jessica-you calls out to Marc-you as he trudges past the bedroom door to his own room.
"You think I don't know that?" Marc-you retorts.
No had to tell him, of course; and no one had to tell you. The deduction was obvious. It would screw up Kendra if Hannah found out she'd had a one-on-one meet-up with Marc; and as Gloria and Kendra loathe each other, and as neither would hesitate to screw the other up, Gloria made sure that Hannah heard that Marc had been out with Kendra last night.
Instead of driving Michelle off the team, maybe you should drive Gloria off.
Or maybe you can just put an end to all the fighting by driving Cindy or Chelsea—does it matter which?—off the squad.
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