A New Beginning

I was at my locker two days later, exchanging a couple of books, minding my own business. However, when I turned around, there was a very tall woman with short blonde hair in a bright red track suit staring down at me. Her blue eyes were narrowed, but I wasn’t sure it was from anger or if she was just sizing me up.

“How much do you weigh, J. Lo?” she questioned. Her tone was sharp, like she thought I was going to answer the question just from fear alone.

However, that was not very me. “Is that an appropriate question…?” I trailed off, shutting my locker and turning to face her face-to-face. “And not that I don’t appreciate being compared to People’s Most Beautiful Woman, but my name’s Sydney.”

“That doesn’t matter to me.” I got kind of confused, but it didn’t take her long to follow up the statement. “I hear that you’re Santana Lopez’s un-surgically-enhanced cousin.”

“I am, but I don’t really like to be grouped together with her.”

It was almost like she hadn’t heard my statement, which wasn’t surprising, since she started talking over me halfway through it, anyway. “Santana’s one of my star Cheerios, and I need to know if you can dance like her.”

“I don’t think so,” I responded.

“How about you show up to practice after school, and we’ll see if you can or not. Because if you can dance half as well as she can, then you’re on the Cheerios.”

She started walking away, and I called after her, “But I hate cheerleading!” She either didn’t hear me, or she just didn’t care. Part of me thought it was the latter.

Frustrated, I let out a huff and hurried down the almost-deserted hallway to my class. Finn was sitting down, and his eyebrows drew together when he saw me. Clearly, I looked as irritated as I felt.

“What happened to you?”

“Some woman in the hallway told me that I had to try out for Cheerios because I was on the team if I was Santana’s cousin. Something like that.”

“Ah, you’re talking about Coach Sylvester.”

“Who is that?” The name sounded slightly familiar, but that might have been because Santana mentioned her.

“She’s the coach of the Cheerios.” I rolled my eyes, a signal of ‘I could have guessed that myself, Finn.’ “She’s kind of hardcore about it. Plus, she has it out for the Glee Club, always trying to get it shut down so she can have more money to put toward the tanning or dry-cleaning funds.”

“And she makes the girls wear their uniforms everyday,” I added as one of them passed by. The shortness of that skirt had to be illegal somewhere.

“She likes to make sure that it’s rubbed in everyone’s faces that her Cheerios rule the school.” Finn shrugged, like all of this was totally normal.

“Now I’m positive that I don’t want to be on the squad.”

“Well, you have to show up. If you don’t, Coach Sylvester is going to make your life a living hell. Plus, it wouldn’t be so bad if you were on the Cheerios, would it? I mean, you’d have Santana.”

I let out a laugh that was a little louder than appropriate. “I’m not sure you realize that Santana being on the team is probably the top reason why I wouldn’t want to be on the team.”

“Puck would like it. He has a thing for cheerleaders. He’d be a happy camper if you joined,” Finn informed me before leaning down to take his notebook out of his backpack.

Not thinking, I almost asked what that had to do with anything, but then I remembered that Puck was my boyfriend now. “Right. I’ll talk to him. Sorry for whining to you about it.”

“Don’t worry. That’s what friends are for.”

I smiled a little before turning back to the front as the bell rang.

* * *

“Hell, yes!”

Well, I should have seen that reaction coming. The second I started describing this morning’s incident, Puck’s eyes lit up like a five-year-old on Christmas morning.

“You would look so sexy in that uniform,” he added, looking me up and down as he envisioned just exactly what it would look like.

“There’s a problem, though, Brainiac. I don’t think I can even dance.”

“Damn. Well, that doesn’t mean that you really can’t. So I think you should still try out. It’d be easier to take down You-Know-Who if you were on the Cheerios, anyway.”

Ughhh…he had a point. Cheerios were at the top of the food chain at this school, and it would help further our plan in a way that we hadn’t even anticipated. In fact, this could make the goal way clearer and easier to reach.

“You’re a genius!” I exclaimed. Reaching up, I pet him on top of his Mohawk.

“No one’s really called me that before,” he muttered, actually sounding kind of humble.

“That doesn’t really surprise me. So this afternoon, you’ll tell everyone why I’m not at Glee Club, right?”

“Yeah. Do I get a kiss?” He gave me what I’m sure he thought was a sexy look, but it really wasn’t doing much to me.

“Nope. Sucks to be you.” I slipped into the last class of the day with a bright smile on my face.

All of a sudden, being a Cheerio didn’t look so much like torture.

* * *

At the end of the day, I was in the girl’s bathroom, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I had broken into Santana’s gym locker (not hard, she keeps a pencil in it because she doesn’t want to take the effort to remember her combination) and stolen a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, so it was easier for me to dance in.

Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I reached up and pulled my hair back into a smooth ponytail. Already, I could feel that I looked more the part of one of the Cheerios. The only thing standing in the way between being at the top of the high school food chain and staying where I was in the middle was whether I could actually dance or not.

Hopefully, I could. Maybe I’d even be better than Santana.

That sounded good. A smile spread across my face as I repeated the words in my head. Better than Santana, better than Santana.

I needed to be better than her. People were depending on me. But nobody as much as I depended on myself.