Studying You - Chapter Four

Stalker Romance | Short Story | Multimedia Elements

All of my work is meant for those who are 18+ and may involve dark themes.


Sienna

The next day…

Itching to get back to practice after the summer off

I cringed as I posted the photo. It was true that I didn’t love cheerleading but I was hoping to get cheer captain this year. A leadership role like that on the squad would look great for colleges—and would help solidify my spot at my current school. I was the best on the team. I fully expected to get it.

I rushed after class to the locker room to get changed for practice. I knew our coach planned on having the vote for cheer captain right at the beginning of practice. I didn’t want to be late.


The grass crunched underneath my sneakers as I walked out onto the field, tightening my ponytail as I walked. I squinted my eyes and jogged over to the area where the rest of the team was stretching.


“Alright, girls!” Our coach, Linda said as she clapped her hands together. Her voluminous brunette hair had so much hair spray in it that it didn’t even move with the wind. “I hope you all had good summers. Let’s get things started by deciding who our cheer captain is going to be this year, shall we?”


She passed out small pieces of paper and pens to everyone.


“Voting is simple,” she said after everyone had paper and a pen. “Write down the name of who you want to choose as cheer captain and fold the paper over. I’ll come and collect the responses and tally everything up.”


I bit my lip as I scribbled my own name down on the piece of paper. It felt wrong to do it but it was strategically the best decision if I wanted to win.


The field was silent as we watched Linda count up the votes.


She smiled as she turned back to us. “And our new cheer captain is…”


I put my hands behind me and got ready to stand up. 


“...Haley!”


I watched as the bubbly dirty-blonde skipped up to the front of the group.


It was all I could do not to let my jaw drop.


Haley? How did she climb to the top of this group so quickly? I smiled and clapped with the rest of the group while my brain tried to process the situation. It must have happened over the summer—when I’d let myself take a break from all of this. 


The rest of practice went by in a daze. A chill went up my spine though when I pulled my phone out of my bag at the end of practice and saw a message waiting for me.

Unknown Number Offers to Make Her Cheer Caption


I didn’t really expect my stalker to be able to do anything to help, so I was surprised when I went to practice the next day and Haley just…wasn’t there.


Coach Linda clapped her hands again, getting our attention away from our stretching and warm-ups. “Hi ladies, I have some unfortunate news. Haley transferred schools as of this morning. We’ll go with the person who had the second most votes for our cheer captain—Sienna!”


I put on my polished fake smile as the confused girls around me clapped.


At the end of practice, I grabbed my phone and sent a text to my stalker before I could consider what a bad idea it was.

Previous
Previous

Studying You - Chapter Five

Next
Next

Studying You - Chapter Three