Nicola Abrams was having a, like, really, really rough day.
It wasn’t easy being in cheer and at the top of her class and in the choir and in the chamber choir and being, like, really hot and having the boyfriend that everyone was very obviously so jealous of. Like, it was just really stressful, and then, on top of it, her boyfriend’s crazy ex couldn’t keep Nickie’s name out of her whore mouth, and so it was everything that Nickie could do not to swing on a bitch.
So, like, things were really, really hard.
The stuff that the girl said kept coming into her mind all day, too. Like, it was some really fucking mean stuff that, like…Nickie was totally not actually bothered by—…but also, like…
It wasn’t true, right?
Even throughout cheer practice, Nickie found herself distracted. Which, like, she still fucking killed it because duh but…well…
Basically, if Angeline had still been around to be the cheer captain, Nickie probably wouldn’t have made it through alive.
But also, Angie was a bitch and Nickie was glad she’d graduated.
Speaking of graduated bitches…
Nickie’s eyes scanned the bleachers. Secretly, she hoped that she wouldn’t find her “total bestie” in the stands, but…alas, the recent graduate Adriane Holloway was seated right where she always was, watching the football players practice like she always did, and Nickie felt her heart give a little self-conscious squeeze. Suddenly, Nickie was a little bit sick to her stomach. “Shit,” she mumbled, ducking under the bleachers.
She drew in a deep breath and did a smell test under her armpits, checking that the extra layers of deodorant she’d applied after her brief freshening up after practice were still doing their job. She brushed the sides of her hair in to make sure that there were no flyaway hairs. Did she look okay? I mean, she’d reviewed herself beforehand so that, you know, the boys got a good view—so that, you know, like, he got a good view—but, like, a stone cold bitch’s eye was different than a horny teenaged boy’s.
Finally, she decided that she must look okay enough to step out, and, putting on a bright smile, she slipped out from underneath the bleachers as casually as she could and pretended to just be walking up from the gate, making her way properly to the front of the bleachers. Turning around to pull herself up through the front guards of the bleachers, Nickie pretended to just now notice Adriane, and she excitedly waved to her. “Adriane!” she called, hoping that it also caught the football players’ attentions.
She pulled herself up and threw her legs over the guard rails, and then pranced up to where Adriane sat. “D’ya just get off from, like…” What did Adriane do again? “Work or something or whatever?” Nickie smiled as sweetly as she could. “You are so pretty. It’s literally not even fair.”
And it was true—Adriane was so pretty, as always, and it literally wasn’t even fair.
Nickie plopped down next to Adriane, throwing her cheer duffle bag and her backpack down as well. Nickie was long past the point of making up excuses as to why she came to the football practices. It was usually just her and Adriane at them besides the players and the coaches, so when Nickie first started coming to these practices after cheer a couple of months ago, she would explain to Adriane, unsolicited, in a very long-winded way, the reason for her being at the practice. Once, mother was late picking her up (Nickie walked to school, as she only lived a couple of blocks away); another time (for a couple of weeks, actually), she was observing for a school project, and then, for the next week, a passion project, but…she’d given up on that eventually.
Nickie paused at length. There was the sound of the boys in the background, and Nickie awkwardly eyed Adriane.
The pressing question, prompted by the bitch who wouldn’t shut up earlier, kept nagging at Nickie’s mind.
Nickie kept eyeing Adriane’s face, the question bursting at the seams of Nickie’s mind, pressing up and up and up until—
“You don’t think I’m whiny, do you?” Nickie asked. “Like—like, some random bitch said I was earlier, but I’m so not. She said I was an ugly whiny bitch who was dating a cheater but, like, Saint would never do that to me and, like, I’m so tired of jealous people saying shit like that—like, it’s crazy. Like, I’m not whiny, right?”
