Fly Away by Nora Rock Page A

won’t stop blubbering. Nobody’s warmed up. What kind of captain does this to her team?”
    I stared at her, my mouth hanging open.
    â€œI can’t believe you think this competition is more important than Arielle’s safety!” Lucy said.
    â€œOh, come on,” Shona said. “Arielle’s safe. She’s probably on the number fifty-two bus right now, going to some art gallery.
    She blew us off.”
    â€œShe did not!” I said.
    â€œShe did,” said Shona. “And don’t pretend you weren’t in on it. Why else would she make you assistant captain?”
    â€œShona,” I said, fighting to keep my anger under control, “if I had any idea where Arielle was, do you really think I would keep it secret?”
    Ashleigh jumped to her feet. “Enough! All of you. If we have any hope of getting this done, we have to focus on cheerleading. Sharon, can you take Arielle’s place in stunt group three?”
    Sharon was a tumbler. The way the routine was choreographed, she wasn’t tied to any stunt group, though she sometimes acted as spotter.
    â€œHow should I know?” Sharon wailed. “I don’t know Ari’s part!”
    Besides, I thought, she was hysterical. If I were Keri, the group-three flyer, I wouldn’t want to put my safety in Sharon’s shaky hands.
    â€œI’ll do it,” volunteered Jada. Like Ashleigh, Jada was one of the few girls who were handling this whole situation with some maturity and composure. The way I was supposed to be handling it, as assistant captain.
    Arielle wasn’t even there, and I’d still managed to let her down.
    Ashleigh nodded. “Thank you, Jada. Now we’ll find an empty spot in the hall to stretch, and then I’ll ask the organizers if they’ll let us into the on-deck room a few minutes early. Maybe they’ll be understanding.”
    The on-deck room at this competition was not really a room. It was the southernmost third of the stadium floor. It was divided from the north side by a high curtain, put up to hide the sound equipment and to provide a backdrop to the performance mats. There were mats on the south side too, but these were reserved for teams warming up. Normally, they don’t let you into the warm-up area until about fifteen minutes before you go on. Some creative begging on Ashleigh’s part got us a little corner where we could work out the choreography changes made necessary by Arielle’s disappearance.
    Lucy, Priya and I lined up in front of Keri’s stunt group so that Jada could copy Lucy’s positioning. Being a good base meant knowing two things—where to place your hands for the lifts and throws, and how to time all your movements with the flyer’s momentum. Jada had been a base before Emma’s accident. Every competition song has its own rhythm, and each stunt group has its own particular signals, apart from the usual beat-counting, to communicate timing.
    With Jada and the rest of group three watching, I performed the slow turning arabesque from “Midsummer,” and then the tuck throw from “Groovy” while the rest of the girls counted the beats. It wasn’t until Lucy and Priya put me down that I realized I hadn’t felt nervous doing the stunts. In fact, I hadn’t thought about my own performance at all. I’d just concentrated on keeping my movements precise so that Jada could follow Lucy.
    Maybe that was the trick—to stop thinking so much about myself as a performer and more about how I fit in with the team. Maybe that was how girls like Ashleigh and Jada—and Arielle, of course—stayed so calm.

chapter fourteen
    Despite my own little discovery, the ten minutes of extra practice in the on-deck room didn’t make any difference. We could have practiced all day, and we still would have stunk. We moved like a band of zombies out there.
    When we walked off the mats, Coach Saylor was