Millie~

A week later

What on earth am I doing? I thought to myself as I walked out into the gym. I had been hoping I could conveniently "forget" the tryouts and then never have to worry about it again. Unfortunately things didn't go quite to plan, courtesy of Cindy's persistent nature.

Sighing, I looked aroung the gym, placing my hands on my hips. There were groups of girls standing in clusters waiting for the tryouts to begin. In fact, there was quite a large turnout. Perhaps I won't get picked for the team after all. I mean, I could do some casual flips and cartwheels, but my "cheering" repetoir stopped there; let's be honest, I wasn't the cheeriest of people.

Stood in one corner of the gym were a possee of girls in the schools' cheer uniform, a navy blue cropped top, with 'CENTRAL' written in light blue across the front, and a navy and light blue skirt. Catching sight of Cindy's bright hair, I noticed she was talking to two other girls, both of whom looked slightly familiar. One had dirty blonde, pin straight hair that was tied up in a high pony tail and secured with a navy ribbon and the other was a Latino girl with black, long, wavy hair that was loose down her back. The three of them turned to face the other cheerleaders before turning to face the mass of hopeful girls.

"Excuse me," the blonde girl called out over the chatter and the hall went quiet immediately. "Hi, I'm Arden, and I'm cheer captain this year. These are Gisele and Cindy, my deputies," she said, motioning to the Latino girl and Cindy as she spoke. "We appreciate you all coming and we all hope that even if you don't make the team, you have a great time!" Oh god, I can't deal.

"The tryouts will be run in two sections, the first is a freestyle section where you will have 10 minutes to do whatever you would like to impress us. For the second section you will be learning and performing a short piece of team choreography and we will take into account your ability to pick up the moves as well as your overall performance of the dance. I don't think there is anything else to say, so let's start the music and it's over to you," she finished folding her arms. She tried to act sweet, but it was so obvious she was one of those confrontational bitches who go looking for trouble.

Rolling my eyes, I looked around as the music started, not really sure what I was meant to be doing. They had said freestyle, but freestyle what?! I hadn't asked Cindy what I was meant to do because, in all honesty, I wasn't going to be here. I soon snapped out of my daze when somebody came wheeling past me. I watched as they did a roundoff and then a front flip. Looking across the room, I saw Cindy looking at me. She smilled, pointed to the girl who had just done the tumble and then put her thumbs up.

Slowly, I walked to the edge of the mats, where a few girls were queuing up to show off their moves. I stood to the side of them and a little further away. I was watching one girl sprint acorss the mats before beginning her tumble, when I heard some other girls talking not very far away from me.

"Can you believe Millie Ward is here?!" one began, outraged. I didn't look to see who they were or what they looked like, I purely listened.

"I know! She walks around like she owns the place!" the other replied, to which I frowned slightly. Unfortunately, untrue.

"She does! All the boys are obsessed with her but she's not even pretty!"

"Exactly, the only reason the boys like her is because she's such a whore!" my hands balled into fists as I listened to their comments.

"Apparently, she and Aiden Wall were caught together in the boys shower room!" she said quickly as the other girl gasped. I raised my eyebrow and glanced over as one of them ran off, closely followed by the other. Rumour spreading bimbos were the reason I had few friends in school. I watched them as they tumbled well, but it was nothing special. This is where you show them why you're here, I thought.

I sprinted as fast as possible, channelling all of my annoyance into the speed which allowed me to power into a round-off, double twist, double sommersault. Landing, I looked up at the two girls and shot them a smirk, making their faces turn sour, before walking off. I did a few more tumbles but soon the ten minutes were up and the music was switched off.

"Okay everybody, that was great, thank you," began Arden, clapping her hands together. "Now you'll be split into three groups and we'll teach you the choreography so that you're all ready to perform!"

I begrudgingly joined my group which was lead by Arden. We got into three lines and I noticed that the two girls from earlier were positioned in the line in front of me.

"Okay, so I'm going to go through the routine with you slowly. Make sure you keep up, it's pretty simple," Arden explained as she stood in front of us, one hand on her hip. I scoffed at the bitchy manner in which she spoke, earning glares from the two girls.

The moves were pretty easy to pick up, with lots of hand waving and clapping, but soon we'd gone through it and I was pretty sure that I could remember it. I wasn't the best of dancers but I couldsee the two girls in front of me were even worse, which helped my embarrassed feeling.

"Okay, so now you're going to perform you're routines," Arden began, addressing all of the girls, "First will be Cindy's group,"

The group that Cindy had been teaching walked to the centre of the mats while the rest of us moved to the sides to watch. The music started and the dance began. There were a few girls who remembered the dance and were genuinely good dancers, but there were others who clearly didn't know their left foot from their right foot. But I didn't laugh. Who knows what I looked like, dancing at parties was far from this type of dancing. For a start, everybody was sober.

Soon enough, Gisele's group had danced and it was finally our turn. Cue my insane cringe moment. We all walked out into the middle of the floor and stood in our organised lines. The music turned on and off we went. Applause from the other girls brought me out of my concentration, and as far as I knew, I didn't forget a dance move. We all walked back to the sides of the floor while Cindy, Gisele and Arden had a quick little discussion before moving into the middle.

"Okay, thank you so much everybody for coming along today," Arden began, "We hope you've all had fun, and the team sheets will be up in the next couple of days," she finished, with a final pearly white smile. Chatter filled the sports hall and I walked out quickly.

Checking my watch after I had got changed, I realised I still had half an hour of the lunch break left. I shrugged my shoulders to myself - not all has been lost. I walked out of the changing room and set off down the halls, towards my locker. There was a large group of boys filling the corridor that led to the boys changing rooms, and they all seemed to be looking at something on the notice board. Spotting Brent amongst the many boys, I went over to him slowly.

"What's going on!?" I asked when I had reached him, noticing the angry spark in his eyes.

"Team sheet for tomorrow night," he said bluntly, motioning towards the notice board behind him. I raised my eyebrow expectantly, even though I knew as soon as I saw Nick Wright moving through the crowd of boys to look at the sheet. I looked away to stop myself from witnessing his reaction and moved my attention back to Brent.

"Coach has put me as a running back," he said, gritting his teeth. I opened my mouth to say something but he stopped me, "You can probably already guess who's quarterback,"

At that moment, Nick and his group of football friends walked past us, chatting loudly and laughing between themselves. Brent stood up straight and stared ahead, his jaw clenched, while I crossed my arms over my chest, scowling at the rowdy boys. Nick caught my gaze and smirked, his eyes flickering to Brent. My fists balled and my eyes narrowed immediately.

"Don't worry about it Brent, just show everybody else how good you are. By the looks of things," I began, motioning towards Aiden who stormed away from the board in an angry rage, "You aren't the only one,"

***

Joy of joys, I thought as the school bell signalling the end of lessons for the day rang. For me, the school bell didn't mean the end of school, it meant the start of Maths tutoring with the one and only Nick Wright.

I trudged slowly to my locker, taking my time to sort out my books and check my appearance in the mirror. After almost being caught last time, there was no way I was going to let anybody see me even walk in the direction of the Maths classrooms - I didn't care how late I would be. Since there were still some students hanging around, I took a detour to the toilets before finally making my way to the classroom. Opening the door slowly, Nick was already in the room, leaning against his desk, using his obile phone.

He looked up as I entered the room, "You're late," he said quickly, slipping his phone into his pocket.

"After what happened last time, I didn't want anybody to see where I was going. I'm not sure about you but I don't want to be caught," I said, pulling out my book and pencil from my bag, before placing it on the ground and taking a seat.

"You make it sound like we're doing something illegal," he replied, chuckling slightly.

I raised an eyebrow at him, "You would know all about illegal things, wouldn't you?" I questioned, using his own words against him. His eyes narrowed as he realised that, unfortunately for him, I still hadn't forgotten the reason we'd first met. "Plus, what we are doing is basically illegal... according to some people anyway," I added quietly, looking down at the desk before me. A tense silence descended on us and my eyes didn't move from the table. He sighed heavily, pulling out the chair and sitting down in it somewhat angrily.

"Yeah, well, what they don't know can't hurt them," he said gruffly. Glancing up from the desk, my eyes met his own brown ones. They were staring right at me and then our eyes were locked. His eyes were like pools of hot, creamy, delicious chocolate, swrling around and around- shit.

I ripped my eyes away and cleared my throat awkwardly. What is the matter with me?!! Whilst I was internally scolding myself, Nick seemed to get his act together and opened the maths textbook between us.

"Urm," he started, searching the page, "Try that one," he finished, pointing to a question, his eyes still fixed on the page. Okay, Millie, get a grip, I said to myself as I read the question. Oh my god, I know how to do this.

Inwardly smiling, I started writing down the method and working out the question. After reading through my calculations and coming up with an answer, I bit my lip, unsure about how correct my answer was.

"Are you finished?" he asked, two which I nodded slightly, not letting my eyes leave the page. No more staring into his eyes, Millie. He slid the paper over to his side of the desk and read through my workings.

"Yeah, that's right," he said quickly.

"Really?!" I questioned, my head shooting up in astonishment.

"Yeah," he started, as a small smile crept onto my lips, "I probably would have done it slightly differently, but all your workings were clear, so it was easy to see where you changed things," he finished, nodding his head as he slid the page back over to me. I raised an eyebrow - yes, of course he would have done things differently.

"I still got it right though," I repeated, folding my arms over my chest.

"Yes, but remember, this is the easy stuff," he added patronisingly, making my jaw clench in annoyance. We moved onto the next topic and he explained the method and showed me a few examples, before giving me a question to do on my own. Twizzling the pencil between my teeth, I read the question a few times, and then a few times more.

"You still don't know what to do?!" Nick asked exasperated, after a few minutes of him watching me sit and repeat that process.

"Look, I'm not a maths genius, and just because you are, it doesn't mean it's just as easy for everybody else!" I exclaimed, leaning back and folding my arms across my chest. Scowling at me, he snatched the paper from in front of me and started scribbling a method down.

"Your boyfriend seemed pretty angry at the team sheet today," Nick mumbled as he wrote, looking up at me with a smirk.

"Oh yeah, and who do you think is my boyfriend?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at his accusation. Perhaps it wasn't an accusation, but I was taking it like one. He looked up again from his writing and leant back in his chair, twirling the pencil around in his fingers.

"Aiden Wall," he said, deadly serious. I don't know whether it was the pure fact that he thought I was dating Aiden Wall, or his serious tone of voice that did it, but I laughed out loud and in his face. That had to be the funniest thing I had heard since I started Central High.

"What's so funny?" he asked, a glimmer or shock, or was that doubt, in his eyes. I could barely hold myself together as I mustered up a reply.

"Aiden Wall and I have never dated and we will never date," I said between laughs, "Why? Is that word on the street or are you trying to annoy me?"

"No it's not word on the street, he always hangs around you and seems pretty close, so I just thought you two were together," he finished, shrugging his shoulders.

"Is he on the team for the game or not, he looked pretty angry," I asked, remembering how he had managed to bring that into the conversation. Thinking back on it, he's definitely trying to get me angry.

"Yeah, he's on the team. Just not quarterback, which is probably what he thinks he should be" he answered, cockily, making my eyes narrow immediately.

"What makes you think that you deserve to be quarterback?!" I questioned him defensively.

"Well, Coach chose me over the jerk, so obviously it should be me, otherwise he wouldn't have picked me," Nick repleid, matter-of-factly.

"Hey! Brent went for quarterback and he is NOT a jerk," my voice was raising now. I told myself to calm down, because somebody might hear us, but for some reason, and I have no idea how, Nick Wright knew exactly how to push my buttons and make me so pissed off it wasn't even funny anymore.

"I never said Brent, I meant Wall" he started, raising his hands in the air as a sort of, half-assed surrender.

"Yeah, well, you better not ruin Brent's game, I know how susceptible you are to being an idiot. I'm done for today," I finished quickly, standing up from my seat and grabbing my stuff from the table.

"But we aren't finished," Nick said, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair to make himself look like he was staying. I couldn't care less, he could sit like that all night and I wouldn't stay any longer.

"Well, I am," I said sharply, before walking out of the room as quickly as possible. I didn't even care if somebody saw me walk out of there, I just had to get away. It was so typical that in my senior year, the year that I would supposedly rule the school, I had to spend it with the jackass that is Nick Wright.