Mason was still in his cheer uniform as he started sobbing. He didn't care how he looked dabbing his tear streaked makeup with a handkerchief. He was so far past that. Next year. The words echoed like a sentence. He’d be here another year, and maybe another after that. Every semester pulled him deeper, erased more of the boy he’d been.
The college acceptance letter should have felt like a victory – an escape from his high-school cheer hell where his ex-girlfriend's mom had sponsored the squad and insisted on a new all female image. The college had given him a full ride. A cheer scholarship. Now, as he cried tears of frustration at the end of his senior year, he remembered sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading that letter, the words blurring on the page. His stomach knotted tighter with every sentence he reread.
The scholarship hadn't just been for him. It was for the squad. For the all-female squad. The same one his ex and her mother had orchestrated to trap him in this nightmare. His squadmates had arrived at school the next day, squealing. “We made it!” “Can you believe it?” “Free college!” They crowded around him, spraying glitter hairspray, already planning Instagram posts about a scholarship that, as much as he wanted to, he knew he couldn't turn down.
And now, thanks to his grades, he was trapped for another year.
He shoved the handkerchief aside and looked at himself in the mirror across the room. The reflection that stared back wasn’t the swaggering boy who’d once strutted down the halls of high-school with Tanya on his hip and Carly watching him admiringly from near the lockers. Instead: smooth legs, spankies under a pleated cheer skirt, hair fully grown out into a feminine style. A girl. A convincing one.
All those late nights practicing the “female” parts of routines had wrecked his coursework. He knew how to nail a perfect herk and keep his lipstick from smudging mid-chant — but he couldn’t tell you the last time he’d finished a physics assignment. The balance had tipped, and the scales weren’t ever coming back.
Another year, he thought miserably. Summer would fly past and fall would come quickly. Another year of tucking his crotch so when he cartwheeled, noone could see the bulge in his spankies. Another year of half-time shows. Another year of group photos with the football team.
A professor looked his way and he forced a smile, the kind he’d perfected while waving pompoms and doing high kicks, the kind that made his jaw ache, and the truth pressed down like a weight: he wasn’t just pretending anymore. The squad wasn’t letting him go, and neither was the scholarship. His future was sealed in spandex and glitter for another year...at least...
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