CHAPTER FOUR: QUEEN OF THE CHEER SQUAD

The rumor reached Ava before her alarm went off on Thursday morning.

Sofia had texted at six forty-two, three words, no punctuation, the way she only communicated when something was either very funny or very serious: *Check the board.*

Ava was at school by seven fifteen.

The bulletin board outside the main office had been updated overnight, a single printed sheet pinned dead center beneath the glass, and a small cluster of students had already gathered in front of it with the specific energy of people who had found something worth talking about. Ava moved through them without making it look like she was moving through them, which was a skill she had developed over years of being someone people stepped aside for without being asked.

She read the sheet once.

Then she read it again.

CRESTWOOD HIGH CHEER CAPTAIN ELECTION, it said at the top, in the bold formatting the office used for announcements that were meant to feel significant. Beneath it, three names. The process, the timeline, the criteria. Ava read every word with the focused attention she gave to things that mattered, which was different from the attention she gave to things that were merely important. This mattered.

She had known this was coming. She had been preparing for it since the end of last year, quietly, without telling anyone except Sofia, in the way she prepared for things she wanted badly enough that saying them out loud felt like a risk she wasn't willing to take.

What she had not prepared for was seeing Lily Carter's name directly beneath her own.

She stepped back from the board.

"Well," said Mia, appearing at her elbow with a coffee cup and the expression of someone who had been waiting to see Ava's reaction and was satisfied with what she'd found, "this just got interesting."

"It's been interesting," Ava said. "Now it's official."

"Lily's going to be tough."

"I know."

"Everyone loves her."

"I know, Mia."

"I'm just saying, she has that whole warm, approachable, everyone-feels-included thing going on, and you have more of a—"

"Choose your next word carefully."

Mia chose carefully. "Commanding presence."

"Thank you."

"I was going to say terrifying, but I pivoted."

Ava picked up her bag from where she had set it against the wall and started walking toward the gym. Mia fell in beside her with the adaptability of someone who had been keeping pace with Ava Bennett for three years and had simply stopped questioning the direction.

"You're not worried?" Mia asked.

"I'm focused."

"Those aren't the same thing."

"For me they are."

The gym was empty at this hour, which was exactly why Ava used it. She came in early three times a week, before anyone else arrived, before the building filled up and became the public performance it was for most of the day. In here, alone, she worked on the things that needed working on without anyone watching her need to work on them.

She dropped her bag by the bleachers and pulled her hair back.

The routine she ran through was the same one the squad had been struggling with yesterday, the one where Jade's timing had been off and two of the senior members had been half a beat behind on the back sequence. Ava ran it alone, marking the counts quietly under her breath, feeling where the gaps were, identifying the specific moments where the choreography demanded more than her team was currently giving it.

She ran it three times.

On the fourth, she added the full energy.

She was two-thirds of the way through when the gym doors opened and Sofia walked in, took one look at her, and sat down on the bleachers without saying anything, which was one of the things Ava valued most about Sofia. She understood when presence was enough.

Ava finished the run-through and stopped.

"You've been here since seven," Sofia said. It wasn't a question.

"Seven fifteen."

"Ava."

"The back sequence needs work. If I can feel where it breaks down, I can fix the instruction."

Sofia was quiet for a moment, watching her with the specific expression she wore when she was deciding how honest to be. "Can I say something without you shutting it down immediately?"

"You're going to anyway."

"Lily's campaign is going to focus on connection. On making people feel like the squad belongs to everyone, not just to the best performer." She paused. "That's going to resonate with people."

"I know."

"So what's your counter?"

Ava picked up her water bottle. The honest answer was that she didn't have one yet, that she had spent so long being certain her record would speak for itself that she hadn't fully considered what happened when your record wasn't the only thing being evaluated. That was not a comfortable thing to sit with, and she had been sitting with it since she saw the board this morning, quietly, in the space behind everything else.

"I'll figure it out," she said.

"I know you will," Sofia said. "I just want you to figure it out before the election, not after."

First period passed. Second period passed. By third period the election was the primary conversation in every corridor Ava walked through, and she heard her name and Lily's name with approximately equal frequency, which was both informative and irritating.

Lily herself was in fourth period chemistry, two rows over, and Ava spent the class acutely aware of this in the way she was aware of most things she was trying not to pay attention to. Lily took notes in purple ink and had a small succulent on the corner of her desk that the teacher had apparently given up asking her to remove. Two people stopped at her desk before class started to say something that made her laugh, and she laughed the way some people did, easily, like it cost her nothing.

Ava watched this for approximately four seconds before returning to her own notes.

After fourth period, in the corridor outside the science wing, Chloe Whitmore fell into step beside her.

Ava had been aware of Chloe as a variable since the beginning of the year, the way she was aware of most potential complications, with attention but without alarm. Chloe was talented, ambitious, and new enough to the squad that she hadn't yet accumulated the kind of history that Ava had, which in the context of a captain election was both her weakness and, in a way Ava was still calculating, potentially her advantage.

"Congratulations on the nomination," Chloe said, with the particular pleasantness of someone who meant something slightly different from what they were saying.

"Same to you," Ava said.

"It's going to be a good race." Chloe smiled. "May the best candidate win."

"That's the plan."

"I've been talking to some of the girls about what they want from a captain," Chloe said, and the casualness of it was just slightly too practiced. "It's interesting, the things they say when they feel like they can be honest."

Ava stopped walking.

Chloe stopped too.

"And what do they say?" Ava asked.

Chloe's smile didn't change. "That they want to feel like they matter. Not just their performance. Them." She tilted her head slightly. "Something to think about."

She walked away.

Ava stood in the corridor and watched her go, and the thing that followed her for the rest of the afternoon, through fifth period and sixth and the long walk to the parking lot at the end of the day, wasn't anger at Chloe's tone or irritation at the implication, it was the quiet, unwelcome recognition that Chloe wasn't wrong.

Her phone buzzed as she reached her car.

Sofia: *Did you see the poll someone posted in the school group chat?*

Ava opened the chat.

The poll was simple, three names, one question: *Who should be the next cheer captain?*

She scrolled to the results.

Lily Carter was winning by fourteen points.

Ava stared at the number for a long moment, at the gap between where she was and where she had assumed she would be, and felt something she almost never let herself feel, the cold, specific fear of someone who had built their entire identity around being the best and was standing at the first real evidence that being the best might not be enough.

Her phone buzzed again.

Unknown number.

She opened the message.

*Rough day, Bennett? I heard about the poll.*

She didn't need to check the contact. There was only one person in the school who used her last name like punctuation.

Her thumbs moved before she could stop them: *How did you get this number?*

Three dots appeared immediately.

Then: *I have my ways. Also, for what it's worth? Fourteen points isn't that many.*

She stared at the screen.

*Why do you care?* she typed.

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

And then his reply came through, and it was four words that made absolutely no sense coming from Mason Reed, four words she read twice and still couldn't find a satisfying explanation for, four words that sat in her chest like something she hadn't agreed to carry.

She read them one more time.

Then she locked her phone, got in her car, and sat in the parking lot for a full minute before she trusted herself to drive.