Walking into school always feels like I'm walking into the lions' den, ironic in the fact that our school are the 'Lions', I never know what's going to be waiting for me on the other side of those doors. Who's waiting to pounce on me or if I'll be able to just breeze through like an ant, so small that nobody notices me.

Well, that theory is blown completely out of the water when I feel someone tug me back by my waist the second I step into the hall. I go to scream but a hand covers my mouth.

Holy shit. Am I being kidnapped at school does this even happen?

I thrash against the arms around my waist as they drag me into a classroom but as a minty scent surrounds me so does a low voice against my neck.

"Calm it, it's just me Blondie." Blazes voice travels into my mind and I stop thrashing about, he lets go of my waist as we enter an empty classroom, well almost empty.

I open my mouth to ask him what the hell that was all about but he walks straight past me, encouraging me to turn into the classroom where Brady, Ethan, Rutherford and a few other boys off the team are stood around Connor. I shrink back against the classroom door

He's slumped on a plastic chair, Brady holding his shoulders up. His face is mangled shades of purple and green courteous of the bruises around his eyes and on his cheeks. His nose is covered in bandages but I can see the discolouration seeping through onto his cheeks. Brows furrowed in anger he glares at Blaze who crouches down to his level, inches away from his face.

"Say it." Blaze snarls complimented by a grunt from Connor, he tries to break free but Brady has his shoulders, "Come on now Scarotski. What did we talk about?" Connor tears his eyes away from Blaze's wicked smile and up to me, the rage in them makes me feel all liquid-like.

"I'm sorry," Connor mumbles through his busted lip.

"And?" Blaze prompts.

"What I did was disrespectful and nasty, I shouldn't have touched you nor thrown my drink over you." He sighs with defeat as all the boy's eyes land on me. I think they're waiting for me to say something.

"Oh...uh, it's... it's okay." I stutter looking down at the interesting floor tiles.

Blaze gets up and pushes Connor from the chair,

"Good, now fuck off." He says ushering half the boys out of the room, Connor at the front limping back out into the halls. After the door shuts I place my rucksack on a spare desk.

"Thanks... guys." I murmur digging through the contents of my bag, "I hope I didn't get you into trouble last night?" The boys let out a chuckle.

"Of course not Big A," Brady shakes his head, "Blaze has been wanting to get at him for years, you just gave him a valid reason." Blaze settles on the teacher's desk, balancing his elbows on his knees.

I pull his jacket out of my bag and go to give it to him, "Thanks for that... and uh you could have just asked me to come here, you didn't have to practically kidnap me from the hallways." I giggle slightly watching him jump down and shrug the jacket over his bulky biceps, the chains that hang from the pocket of his jeans jangle at the movement.

"Cheers Blondie." He chuckles slightly, gazing past me, his minty sent attacking my nose as he leaves the classroom.

"He gave you his jacket?" Ethan asks as we follow back out into the bustling hallway.

"Uh yeah, I was covered in milkshake. Why?" I turn to watch him scoff with a headshake but before I can ask more we've joined Vixxie and Carrie at our lockers. Both of them hold confused expressions.

"Uh what was what about?" Carrie giggles, I presume they both saw me leaving the classroom that just held the football team.

I spend the next ten minutes before the bell explaining what happened at the diner last night watching their faces convey shock, anger and rage- in Vixxies case.

"Those pricks!" Vixxie shouts loud enough for people to turn and look, "I'm going to go and rip their dicks off!" she stomps her platform boot against the floor.

"Vixxie, calm down it's okay. Blaze and the guys got Connor to apologise this morning." I say catching her arm so she doesn't go storming down the hallway after them. She grunts and crosses her arms.

"Good! But that still doesn't excuse him from being a prick!" Carrie and I chuckle at her rage-filled sentence. We spend the last few minutes of our own time chatting about Carries pending trails and Vixxies boot collection.

"Anyway, I've got to skedaddle, early cheer- try-outs." Carrie sighs swishing her hips clad with her cheer captain uniform, it does make me a little envious, I wish I could still wear a uniform like that with the same amount of pep.

"I'll walk you there." Ethan smiles, running his hand over his head. Carrie giggles and turns to make a googly face when he's looking ahead at the halls. Vixxie and I wave her off.

"I don't know why those two don't just get together, they've been like this since freshman year. I thought when the twins left it'd finally happen but..." Rutherford shrugs.

"What do you mean?" I turn to him, filling my arms with books.

"Well there was a rumour that one of them liked E so being a good friend Carrie backed off but he's always liked her." He shrugs as the bell rings through the hall, students visibly deflate and trudge themselves to their classes.

"Right come on clumsy, I'm pretty sure we have math together," Rutherford says taking my math book off the top of my pile I'm holding in my arms.

"I hate math." Vixxie and Brady say in unison. Slugging behind us.

I manage to make it through two periods of math without throwing myself out of the window, as tempting as it was, but I'm sure I have Brady to thank for making it more interesting. Between aggravating Blaze and doing things to make us laugh it wasn't that bad at all- Even if I've now got three sheets of algebra to do as homework.

Vixxie and I find an empty table in the cafeteria and make base amongst the food serving wasteland. It's usually difficult to find an empty table, they're usually filled with different clique groups but today we were lucky and once you get a table you don't let it go!

Vixxie pulls out her lunch, setting a sandwich, bag of chips and an apple on the tabletop. She's halfway through her apple when Ethan and Carrie flop down opposite us.

Carrie groans, resting her head against the metal as Ethan pulls out a weird looking protein shake.

"What's up?" I ask at her deflation.

"It's all shit!" She mumbles as I notice the boys entering the cafeteria, they search the area before finding the back of Ethan's head. They push through the crowd, since they are definitely a good few inches taller than the rest of the student body and plop down at our table.

"What's crackalakin ladies." Brady sings, pulling out a cold looking cheeseburger from the bottom of his bag.

"You're gross." Blaze mumbles as he takes a bite.

"Well, we were just seeing what's up with Carrie." All attention turns to her still slummed body, her hands now smooshing her cheeks together.

"Ugh, it's all so hopeless." She moans, " There's been hardly any girls at tryouts this year! And the ones that have auditioned are awful! Half of them can't even do a fucking handstand!"

She slams her hands down in anguish, it's surprising, usually, every girl wants to try out for the cheer team- it's like the number one thing you do to fit in here.

Cheerleaders are almost guaranteed into the popular groups, invited to every kind of party, boys making lines for them.

"How come?" I ask.

"Apparently Hannah's been warning girls not to try out." Carrie sneers over at the table full of the typical hot, popular girls. The ones that bought themselves onto the team, they couldn't do stunts if their life depended on it, Hannah was hella mad when Carrie was appointed as captain a few years ago because obviously, she felt she was entitled to it, "She's desperate to make it 'her team' because her daddy is a governor." She mocks with disgust.

"I really hate that girl." I sigh, she's always gone out of her way to make life miserable for everyone else.

"Hey!" Carrie shoots up with a massive grin on her face, "I don't suppose you two would want to try out! Atlas you'd be a perfect flyer and Vix you'd be a perfect base!" She pleads clutching her hands in a praying motion.

I used to be a flyer when I did cheer, it was the best feeling in the world. Me and my mom both had that in common, she was a flyer in high school too. When I was four I got accepted onto my first 'baby' cheer team and I never looked back... until now. When I was appointed to be a flyer, she was even happier than I was.

I catch Vixxie giving me a hopeful look, "I'll do it if Atlas does it." She smiles.

"Nope. Absolutely no way!" I shake my head, if my dad found out I had started doing cheer again, it would be absolute hell. I can't anyway, I'd have some sort of memory trigger and fall down during a stunt or something.

"Come on Atlas! It doesn't matter if you haven't got any experience! I'll help you out!" Carrie pleads.

"Yeah, why don't you just try out, you girls in those short little cheer outfits." Brady jokes sucking air in through his teeth, Vixxie throws one of Carrie's grapes at his head making me laugh. Blaze lets out a weird grunt but a small chuckle at Brady's comment.

"Please! I've always wanted to do this kind of thing and I'm not going to do it without you!" Vixxie turns to me, the glitter in the corner of her glinting under the dim cafeteria lights.

"I can't, I'm just not cheering leader material." I lie, I miss cheer as much as I miss dancing.

"Look, just try out! And being on the cheer team looks so good on college applications!" Carrie taunts.

Shit.

I do need as much extracurricular stuff on my applications if I'm going to get that scholarship. My GPA sits at 4.2 and on top of that I've worked on the debate team, volunteered with tutoring younger grades, take AP English and Spanish and, even though I don't do them anymore, I've got a whole page of cheer and dance competitions, teams and grades. It doesn't hurt to add an extra school team?

I look around at the grinning faces, Vixxie looks like she's in pain- she really wants to try out.

"Fine." I huff.

I'm really going to regret this.

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