Tryouts

What am I doing? I don’t belong here.

Mia Chen pressed herself against the concrete wall of Ridgeview University’s gymnasium, pretending to be absorbed in her phone while the rest of the girls clustered in loud knots across the glossy hardwood. She tried to make herself invisible, but there was no hiding in this ridiculous cheerleader uniform. The spandex crop top clung to her torso and exposed the sad, bony dip beneath her sternum, and her flat chest made the blue and orange fabric look like a child’s toy costume. The skirt was worse; a pleated polyester that swished when she moved, drawing attention to her trembling legs. Mia had spent an hour that morning, alone in her dorm, tugging the waistband above and below her navel, measuring which position felt least mortifying. None of them helped. She looked like a stick bug with glasses and sneakers.

The real girls, the ones with ponytails and gleaming teeth, filled their uniforms out as if the fabric had been tailored just for them. Mia watched them in the wall of mirrors, how they laughed and spun, how they didn’t care that the uniform showed some skin when they stretched. One girl stood at the center of it all.

Natalie Thompson.

As a senior upperclassman and the captain of the cheer team, her voice cut through the hubbub, clear and confident. Even here, with a dozen bodies shifting and tumbling around her, Natalie didn’t blend. She bathed in attention with one hand on her hip, chatting with some of the other seniors. Her hair was so blonde it was almost hard to look at, slicked into a high ponytail that whipped with every step. She sported a perfect tan, and her red lips framed a perfect smile that disarmed everyone around her. She wore her uniform with the grace of a pageant queen who’d won the crown before the contest even started. Her crop top strained under the pressure of her full breasts, and the skirt rode just high enough to take Mia’s breath away.

Before her first day at Ridgeview, Mia had never had a crush, let alone a relationship. The boys in high school were just… background, like the trees or furniture. She’d gone to Homecoming with a boy from calculus, danced in a circle with other girls while he loitered near the punch bowl, then ghosted his texts. Her mother called it being a late bloomer. Mia called it being a defective loser.

But the first time she had seen Natalie at the school’s pep rally, Mia felt like she had been struck by lightning. Her pulse spiked, her chest got all tight, and she couldn’t focus on anyone else for the whole event. Mia had spent the rest of orientation stalking Natalie’s Instagram, obsessing over every post, brainstorming the right way to approach her.

So she’d signed up for cheerleader tryouts, trusting that her high school gymnastics classes would get her through the day. She hadn’t told anyone about it, not even her roommate Leah; she just showed up at the posted time in the uniform they had handed out. That’s what all of this was for, really. Mia didn’t care much for cheerleading, and honestly hated being in the spotlight in a skimpy outfit, but she cared very much if Natalie noticed her.

“Okay, girls, huddle up!” Natalie clapped, the loud crack echoing across the gymnasium. The other hopefuls gravitated closer, forming a loose ring around her. At first Mia hung back, but then, reminding herself why she was here, she started pushing her way to the front of the group. She tried not to make eye contact with anyone as she wormed into the crowd. Natalie waited until the circle stilled, and then began walking around the inside of the circle, taking an assessment of each candidate as they stood at attention.

“First off,” Natalie said in a clear voice, “great turnout. Seriously, you girls look awesome.” There was a smattering of giggles in response, and Mia watched Natalie’s perfect mouth as it turned up in a grin. “Today is just a warm-up, so don’t stress. We’re here to see how you move, not to haze anyone. However.” Mia’s heart skipped a beat as the captain came to a stop in front of her. Natalie looked her up and down with an inscrutable expression.

“We don’t mess around on this cheer team. We train hard and cheer harder. If you’re not looking for a serious sport, now is your opportunity to leave.”

Mia swallowed. She tried to find a safe place for her eyes, but everywhere else was worse than just meeting Natalie’s gaze. So she did, for a fraction of a second, and her face burned from the attention.

“Any objections?” Natalie’s lips quirked in amusement, challenge, or both.

Mia shook her head, then realized the question was for everyone. The rest of the circle chorused a “No,” which dissolved into more giggles. Mia joined half a beat late, flushing at the sound of her own timid voice.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of awkward choreography and basic routines. Mia stumbled through counts, her face burning every time she missed a cue. She was certain that Natalie, orbiting among the girls with the ease of a planet among asteroids, had clocked every mistake. She couldn’t keep track of the steps or her heartbeat, which thudded so loud she was afraid it might be audible over the pop music blasting from the gym’s speakers.

After an hour, her calves were burning and her crop top was glued to her body by sweat. When the ordeal was mercifully over, Mia sat on the bleachers away from the other girls and waited for her rejection to be made official. So much for her intricate plan to get the girl of her dreams. Just when she was getting ready to leave, however, she heard the squeak of sneakers walking towards her, and looked up. Natalie was standing right in front of her. Mia’s mouth dried out. She adjusted her glasses, smearing sweat across the lens.

“It’s Mia, right?” Natalie said with a teasing smile. “Nice work out there!”

Mia’s face burned. Why had she even tried? “I— I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have wasted your time…”

“What do you mean?” Natalie asked. “You made it! Welcome to the team!”

Mia blinked, not sure she’d heard right. “Wait, what?”

Natalie leaned in, and the smell of her clean sweat hit Mia like a drug. “You’re on the squad. But those glasses? Babe, you gotta lose them. You look like a church mouse peeking out from behind them.”

Mia cringed internally. “But I can’t see without them,” she stammered in a small voice.

Natalie made a face that was superficially sympathetic. “Contacts, Mouse. Or maybe your eyes will adjust. You want people to notice your face, not your prescription.” She winked, then straightened, the conversation apparently finished.

Mia clutched the edge of the bench and tried to imagine life without her glasses. Getting a prescription for contacts would take some time. But she couldn’t say no to Natalie, especially now that things were actually beginning to go well. “I’ll see what I can do,” she finally managed to answer.

“Good girl. See you on the field!” Natalie said. She patted Mia’s bare thigh, then strode away, her sneakers squeaking in time with the music still pulsing from the gym speakers.

Mia was left bewildered at what had just happened. She waited for the world to reassemble itself around her, but all she could do was stare at the patch of skin where Natalie’s hand had rested. A joke, probably. Still, it left a permanent blush on Mia’s cheeks. She slipped out of the gym early, cutting through the puddled sunlight of the quad, and tried to reconstruct the scene in her head. Natalie, of all people, touching her. A pat, not a slap. Good girl. The phrase repeated, then echoed in the blank spaces after. She nearly tripped twice on the way back to her dorm, knees still loose from exertion and brain refusing to let go of that moment.

The butterflies in her stomach lasted all the way back to her dorm room. But as soon as she opened the door, she was accosted by her roommate.

“Mia, where have you— What the hell are you wearing?”

“Hi Leah… sorry for not answering your texts.” Mia wasn’t sure how to tell her friend what she was up to. They had been friends since middle school, and due to some luck and similar interests, they had ended up at the same college. Leah was sitting at her desk, laptop and mouth open as she looked at Mia’s outfit.

“Is that a cheerleading skirt? Are you, like, in a cult now?” Leah’s tone was half-joking, half-concerned, but Mia’s skin itched with embarrassment all the same.

“It’s for tryouts,” Mia muttered. She hovered by the door, bag still on her shoulder, hoping Leah would lose interest. “I got in.”

For a second, Leah just stared. Then, “You’re kidding me.”

Mia shook her head and tried to busy herself by pulling off her sneakers. Leah snorted. “You hate sports.”

“I don’t hate sports,” Mia lied. The phrase sounded alien in her mouth. She tried to strip off the crop top as quickly as possible to get rid of the topic of conversation. “I just thought it’d be good to meet people.”

Leah couldn’t contain her laugh. “What? People suck!”

“Not… all of them.” Mia threw the uniform in the laundry hamper and hoped that would be the end of it. But Leah wouldn’t let it go.

“Not all of them? Wait, did you meet someone cool? Is my best friend gay for cheerleaders now? About time you came out of the closet.”

Mia tried to shrug off her teasing. She could feel Leah grinning at her as yanked open her dresser and pulled a frumpy sweater. “I’m not— It’s not like that,” she deflected.

Leah snorted, soft but not unkind. “You literally just joined a squad of hot girls in skirts and crop tops. Are you hearing yourself?” Mia’s face prickled. She tried to sound casual, like she found the whole thing as funny as Leah did. “I just thought it’d look good on applications. Leadership and stuff. It’s not because of… girls.” She said the last word with a stupid little shrug.

Leah closed her laptop, gaze sharpening. “Mia. Please. You’re blushing so hard you can see it from space.” She smirked. “So. Who is she?”

Mia tried to roll her eyes dismissively. “It’s not like that,” she said again, and even she didn’t buy it. “I’m not— I don’t, like, get crushes on girls.”

“Of course not,” Leah rolled her eyes. “Just one. Natalie Thompson, right?”

Mia froze. Was it that obvious? But how could she not know, when Mia had been stalking Natalie like a serial killer for the past month? Leah had even caught Mia scrolling through the captain’s feed one time; of course she couldn’t fool her best friend.

“Okay, you got me.”

“Jesus, Mia,” Leah said, mouth curling up sly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you crush on someone this hard. At least not enough to do something so drastic.”

Mia flopped backwards onto her bed, pulling a pillow onto her face to hide from the attention. Leah crossed the room and collapsed onto her own bed, legs crisscrossed, staring at Mia with that know-it-all look that made Mia want to throw things. “You should be careful, you know.”

“About what?” Mia said, muffled by the pillow.

“About Natalie.” Leah answered. “Haven’t you heard the tea about her? She basically rules Ridgeview; the last guy she dated left the school when they broke up. People say she’s either a major bitch, or just likes breaking hearts. Regardless, I don’t think she’s even bi.”

Mia pulled the pillow off her face. “Well she was nice to me.”

Leah shrugged. “Hey, I’m just giving you the word on the street.” She looked at Mia with mild concern. “Just… don’t let her eat you alive, okay?”

Mia scoffed miserably. “You don’t need to worry about me. It’s not like it’ll go anywhere; I’m just another loser on the team.”

Practice started the next morning, two hours before most students had even rolled out of bed for class. Mia woke up with her stomach already knotted with anxiety. Leaving her glasses on her bedside table, she brushed her teeth in the dorm bathroom. Mia could still see a few feet in front of her without her prescription, and she stared at her own foggy outline in the mirror. Mouse, she thought. Maybe Natalie was right; maybe that was why she hadn’t made any new friends this year. But today was her chance to change things!

When she got to the gym, the other girls clustered around the edges of the floor, stretching in pairs, doing lazy cartwheels to limber up. Mia heard the buzz o