Something To Prove (TNT Force Cheer Book 7) Read online

  Written By Dana Burkey

  Copyright © 2020 Dana Burkey

  All rights reserved.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is dedicated to all of the hard-working cheerleaders who lost the end of their 2019-20 season. I hope this book comes to you during a time when cheerleading seems to be needed the most. I cannot wait to see you all back on the mat again soon, and once again cheer you on to victories big and small.

  This book is also dedicated to Dehen Cheer, and MySixChicks who helped make this book cover possible.

  “Have you seen my cheer bow?”

  There was a long pause before my dad called out, “You’re kidding right?”

  “I need my gray one,” I clarified, all the while digging through my dirty laundry hamper for the second time. “I took it off after the gym last night and left it on the couch.”

  My dad's laugh carried in from the living room where he was waiting for me, but I didn’t let it interfere with my goal of finding the bow. I needed it after all. Showing up to the gym without the proper practice wear and bow would mean extra conditioning after the evening of hard work was over. The only problem was that the bow was nowhere to be found.

  “Max, did you check the basement?”

  “Why would it be in th-” I began, only to stop myself when I understood what he was suggesting. “Lightning”

  The word came out as a groan, but I was happy for the suggestion from my dad since I knew he was likely right. Leaving my room, I raced down the basement steps and ran to the far corner by the washing machine. Thankfully, I spotted the bow right away. It was on top of a pile of socks, hair ties, and a handful of other items my cat had transported there in the day or two since we last cleaned it out. Moving things around the house was a fun new game she had taken up, and my bow was clearly the latest victim.

  “Found it!” I called out. I quickly dusted the bow off with my hand then slipped it into place with the hair tie already holding my shoulder-length brown hair in a half ponytail.

  Once it was in place more or less, I ran back up the steps and quickly grabbed my sparkly teal cheer backpack from the kitchen table. My dad was already walking out of the house, so I followed after him and loaded straight into the car. Pulling my phone out of the waistband of my tight black cheer shorts I saw I was running behind. We only had a few minutes to make it across town, or else I would be late and have extra conditioning after all, despite finding the bow. Not to mention I wasn’t going to have as much time to stretch before practice so my flying skills might suffer for it. But there wasn’t much I could do about any of that, other than pray we didn’t hit traffic or too many red lights

  “Do you need more pegs on your bow wall?” my dad asked me once we were backing out of the driveway.

  “No, there’s room,” I assured him. “I put the ones I don’t wear as much in some old shoe boxes so I have some space for new ones. I just need to remember not to leave the bows out now that I know Lightning likes them too.”

  As my dad laughed in reply, I felt my phone buzz in my lap and picked it up to see I was getting messages from what seemed like half of the team. I was never late to practice, and also always early. So the fact that it was so close to the start of practice time and I was nowhere in sight was causing everyone to start to panic. Not feeling like sending the same message a million times I sent a quick “be there any second” to Emma and told her to spread the word. I hoped it was enough to keep even more texts from arriving.

  “You can run in while I park,” my dad told me when we finally pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later.

  “Thanks,” I said in a rush before racing out of the car and through the front door.

  Walking into the TNT Force Cheer gym I expected to see my teammates from Nitro warming up on the last of the four mats that run down the right side of the room. But, only two of the blue spring-loaded cheerleading floors were being used, neither of them by my own teal team. I glanced at my phone to make sure I wasn’t even later than I thought, but I still had a full two minutes until practice officially began.

  “Max!”

  I turned to where the muffled voice and accompanied knocking had come from and was glad to see Juleah standing inside the office. She was waving for me to come and join her, which was only confusing until I walked through the door and saw my teammates were all in the office as well. Sitting on the floor was a sea of athletes in teal and white practice gear, as well as my coach who was standing by a large projector and screen near the front of the room. As usual when I arrived at the gym my eyes scanned the room until I spotted Jackson. I watched as Whitney tried to scoot over to leave room for me to find a seat next to him. But, instead of trying to climb over people, I waved them off and took a seat next to Juleah instead.

  “What is all of this about?” I asked Juleah.

  “Literally no idea,” she sighed. “As soon as we all started getting here TJ just made us come take a seat. No explanation or anything yet.”

  Looking at my coach, he wasn’t giving any hints at all. Instead he was holding a clipboard and checking off what was no doubt a team roster. He rarely took roll, since when someone was missing during a practice it was easy to see their stunt group not perform or them not in the routine. Sitting in the office, however, must have made it a little harder to make sure we were all present. The look on his face was hard to read, possibly since any serious expression was overshadowed by his freshly dyed teal hair. Putting our team color in his usually blond hair was traditional before big comps. It was always so bright after he dyed it that it took a minute to remember that unlike his crazy and fun hair, when we were in the gym TJ was all about being focused and serious. As a former all star and college cheerleader, as well as one of the owners of the gym, he was all about working hard and doing our best. So, the fact that we were in the office instead of out on one of the mats was confusing to say the least.

  “Alright everyone,” TJ called out, once Craig came racing into the office not long after my arrival. “I know we don’t usually start practice in the office, or watch movies for that matter, but I wanted to start this week with something a little different. We’re less than two weeks away from heading to Orlando. That means we don’t have a lot of time to get ready and perfect all the changes we’ve made over the last few weeks. But, the hard work will be worth it, if we push through to the end.”

  TJ paused as some people began cheering around the room. Orlando was home to the World championship of cheerleading, often simply called Worlds, and it was our goal to walk away in the top spot. Getting second place the year before had been awesome but was also a bit of a let down. Not to mention we didn’t perform as well as we wanted at Nationals just a few months prior. All of which combined to leave us more hungry for a win than ever before.

  “To help us really focus I wanted to do something we’ve never really done as a team,” he continued. “We are going to take some time and look back at our season. All of our performances, starting back in December. We’re not going to watch chronologically though. Instead, we’re going to start with our lowest score and work our way up. I want you all paying attention and
focusing on each performance, and hopefully how far you’ve come. Once we watch through them all we will start our more traditional practice. It’s crunch time people, so I want to see focus all night, starting with these videos.”

  Pushing a button on the laptop on his desk, TJ unpaused a video that was loaded up on the screen. Until then it wasn’t clear what performance it was since the camera had been zoomed in on the mat. But, as soon as it began playing and Nitro was welcomed onto the performance floor, I heard a groan around the room. It was our performance at Nationals, and we all knew it wasn’t going to be a good one.

  “Talk about starting practice on a fun note,” someone near me said quietly enough for our coach not to hear.

  I nodded silently in agreement, then watched the screen as the music finally began. Like every all star cheerleading routine, it was a two and a half minute performance that consisted of different skills. We had jumps, stunts, dance, tumbling, and pyramid, all combined in a way to hopefully wow the crowd. And honestly, for the first whole minute, we did just that. Everything was looking great, hitting well, and done with the energy and performance value that had gotten us into first place after day one. But then, I watched as the running tumbling began.

  “Now the fun part,” Juleah spoke the words while wrapping a comforting arm around my shoulders.

  I wanted to look away and avoid reliving my mistakes but knew TJ wouldn’t be happy if I did. So, instead, I watched. I watched every painful minute that I had seen on the playback screen after the performance and then again and again non-stop on social media over the following weeks. Since we had gone from a top spot on day one to dead last on day two it was big news for people who needed something to talk about. I watched as I ran out of steam while tumbling, causing both Jackson and Connor to be off on their tumbling as well. It served as a domino-like line of mistakes that went crashing into pyramid, and didn’t seem to stop until our music ended and we were finally allowed to leave the stage.

  As the two and a half minute routine came to a close I glanced around the room and saw the looks on the faces of my teammates. People looked angry, frustrated, and sad. A few even had tears in their eyes remembering our “fall from grace,” as so many had called it on Instagram and Twitter. But, as my eyes roamed the room, I made eye contact with Jackson who was looking my way. He smiled at me, his eyes lighting up in the process. I smiled back, knowing what he was thinking about even without him saying it. Sure, that weekend we had lost the chance to walk away as champions, but just hours after our not so amazing final performance Jackson finally asked me to be his girlfriend. Even thinking about it, I found myself getting butterflies that continued as TJ began cueing up the next video.

  “Well, we made it through the worst of it,” I commented to Juleah, still feeling my tummy doing cartwheels thanks to Jackson.

  “Only barely,” she frowned. “I don’t know if this is supposed to motivate us, but right now I just want to cry or something.”

  “Agreed,” Emma chimed in from on the other side of her. “At least we only had to watch that video once.”

  The videos continued for quite a while, giving us a chance to watch as one by one our performances improved. We went from totally bombing half of the routine in Dallas, to only having a few stunts fall or tumbling busts. Then, we watched routines with bobbles, or sloppy performing. Finally, we got to videos where we hit zero. This meant that we had received no deductions while performing. Seeing videos of Nitro hitting zero on the big screen changed the mood in the room and fast. We went from being down on ourselves for our mistakes, to actually cheering and screaming as we hit one perfect performance after another. The last video, filmed at our final competition of the season, left the room supercharged as our coach finally powered down the projector and turned to us with a grin on his face.

  “So, any thoughts?”

  “That was a lot,” someone across the room commented.

  “It was hard,” Emma added.

  “Yeah, the second half was fun but looking at Dallas again was rough,” Connor explained from his spot a few people away from me. He didn’t look my way while he spoke, even though I was a big cause of the terrible routine.

  “Okay,” TJ began slowly. “I know we’ve done it a lot, but let’s take another second and talk about Dallas. What went wrong that we didn’t see in other performances?”

  “We had a lot of distractions in Dallas,” Whitney called out. “Being in first after day one was almost too much to handle for us I think. We let it get to us and it showed on the mat.”

  Again, Whitney didn’t look my way, but I knew this was a comment that applied to me. As others around me chimed in, I found myself thinking again about the weekend just over two months ago. I had gone into Nationals wanting so badly to win and walk away with a championship jacket. But the night before finals everything fell apart. My best friend and neighbor Peter decided not to come to the competition to support me, and we got into a big fight. It was enough to leave me shaken, distracted, and exhausted from a sleepless night. Which more or less made the perfect storm for me to mess up when my team was counting on me. Sure, I wasn’t the only one on the team who caused deductions that day, but mine definitely added a lot to the train wreck.

  “Alright, how do we deal with that?” TJ’s question caught my attention, although I had no idea what had been saying before he spoke. So, I waited with everyone else until he continued. “How do we make sure it’s different?”

  “We need to focus on the people around us and not what other people are saying,” someone offered.

  “And we need to perform like we know we’re capable of,” another voice rang out.

  “Yeah, we need to push every second of the routine and leave it all on the mat.”

  “Exactly,” TJ said finally. “We know what regret feels like. What it feels like to come so close, only to let it all slip away. So these next two weeks I want us to focus on fighting for every minute, every second, and every point in our routine. We don’t just need to get out there and cheer, we need to get out there and live through the cheer.”

  Most people around the room once again clapped and hollered in agreement. There was also a buzz of nervous energy throughout the room, clearly the result of everyone being ready to get out into the gym and start practice more officially. I assumed that would mean a three-mile run as was our usual start of practice, but TJ shocked me along with the rest of the team when he explained just what we would be doing for the evening.

  “Listen up everyone,” TJ called out, getting the room quiet again. “You have five minutes to stretch and get a drink of water and then we’re going through a standard Worlds warm up. We’ll be doing this all week and into next week, so if you need to stretch and do conditioning on your own before practice, then start coming early. Got it?” He paused as we all nodded or replied in confirmation. “Your five minutes starts now.”

  Instantly moving into action, all of Nitro exited the office and headed to the blue mat at the far end of the room. I walked quickly, putting my cheer bag into an open storage cubby next to the spring-loaded floor, then slipped on my cheer shoes. Around me other athletes did the same, all of us not wanting to waste any of the minutes before the real work began.

  “Forgetting something?” a familiar voice asked as I finished tying my shoes.

  “I don’t know, maybe?” I kept my voice even but turned around so Jackson could see the smile on my face. “Hi.”

  “Hey,” he grinned down at me, pulling me in for a hug.

  “Happy now?” I said as we finally separated.

  “I mean sure,” he shrugged. “But I was talking about your necklace.”

  Immediately my hand reached up and covered the small X and O charms hanging from the silver chain around my neck. I had been in such a rush leaving the house I had forgotten that I was still wearing it, so I got to work removing it so I could place it in my gym bag. As I did I couldn’t help but smile, knowing I had owned the necklace for a ful
l year now. Given to me in Florida before the final day of Worlds the year before, it was a gift my mother had set aside for me before she died. It allowed me to feel like she was always with me, and also was a reminder that she was proud of me. Which filled me with even more confidence for the night ahead, even if the necklace would be in my bag instead of around my neck.

  “Thanks,” I told Jackson, finally turning back to him.

  “Any time.” He nodded. “Although I shouldn’t be so nice after you distracted me so much while we were watching videos just now.”

  “Distracted you?” I repeated. “How?”

  “You just look really beautiful today.”

  I blushed at the compliment, not really sure what to say in reply. Jackson made comments like that all the time, but it always caught me off guard. Not only was he my first boyfriend, but he was also the first boy that went out of his way to tell me I looked nice or do sweet things for me just because. It didn’t help that he proved to be a distraction for me as well. He was almost a head taller than me, and muscular from all his time lifting weights and also other cheerleaders. He had light brown hair that was usually sticking out in every direction in a purposely messy kind of way, and green-brown eyes I could easily get lost in when I wasn’t meaning to.

  “Thanks,” I managed in reply as he wrapped me in another hug.

  “You two are so cute,” Emma commented, making me untangle myself from Jackson much quicker than I would have otherwise.

  “Yeah, couple goals for sure,” Juleah agreed with a laugh.

  “I should go stretch,” I mumbled, walking away from the cubbies and finding an open spot on the mat to take a seat.

  Glancing back, I saw Jackson roll his eyes at something one of the girls had said. It always made me feel good to know he was as uninterested in what everyone else had to say about our relationship as I was. Thankfully though, the comments had died down in the weeks since we started dating. At first it was non-stop, but now it was rare while we were at the gym or even just hanging out in a group. Social media was a bit of a different story thanks to the ship name “Max and Jax” that still seemed to give everyone a lot to talk about. Although, that was easy enough to avoid just by turning off my notifications.