Chapter 10 #2
I've cheered since I was six years old and I quit at seventeen because I got too big. I'm twenty-four now. I saw your video this morning. I want to try out.
I put the laptop down on my desk.
Picked it back up.
Read the next one.
I don't look like a cheerleader. I've been told that my whole life. But I look like the woman in your video. Can I come?
I set it down again, more carefully this time.
"Clover."
"Give me a second."
Gabrielle gave me a second. She sat down across the desk and waited. She knew what we were looking at and knew better than to rush it.
I read two more. Both of them were some version of the same thing. Some version of I have been waiting my whole life to see someone who looked like me on that field and now I have and I am asking if there is room.
Each one slightly different.
Each one the same underneath.
I had known this would happen. I wanted to be here to build the whole thing because I knew this would happen. Because I had been the girl who needed to see it and hadn't, and I had carried that long enough to turn it into a job description.
Knowing it would happen and watching it actually happen were not the same thing.
"Okay," I said, when I trusted my voice again. "We need to talk about audition capacity, because the structure I have right now accommodates sixty women and if this keeps—"
"We expand it." Gabrielle didn't hesitate for even half a second.
"The space—"
"We find a bigger space."
I looked at her. She looked back. Forty-three years old, new owner of a professional football team, sitting in my office on a Monday morning with graffiti being cleaned off her stadium and her video blowing up the internet and she was the calmest person I had ever been in a room with.
I thought about the three words on the outside of the building.
I thought about Monty Whyte and his transition period.
I thought about the fourteen women who’d already applied, the twenty-seven new ones today, most of whom had been waiting for something like this their whole lives. My laptop dinged with a notification of another application.
Twenty-eight.
Twenty-nine.
"Okay," I said. "Bigger space. More judges. Maybe some local celebrities?"
Gabrielle smiled. Then she opened her laptop and said, "Yes. Including Kingman, Daws, and Rutherford."
And there it was.
"The response to his clip specifically is—" she paused, scrolling through something with the expression of a woman who had been reading analytics since before I finished my coffee, "extraordinary is an understatement.
Sports media is picking it up. There are League fan accounts making compilations. "
She looked up. "I want to build this in. The audition content, the first preseason game. Kingman, Daws and Rutherford visible with the squad as this thing grows."
Every professional instinct I had lined up in a neat row and told me this was the right call. The numbers agreed. The now thirty-two women in the application portal agreed. The mission, which was bigger than my feelings about any individual colleague, loudly agreed.
"That makes sense," I said.
"Good." She closed the laptop. "I'm going to set up a meeting this week. You, me, Theo, and I want the boys in the room directly. Get everyone aligned on what this looks like going forward."
"Great." My voice was a marvel of modern engineering.
"Oh, and I suppose Monty will want to be looped in. He'll say it's about budget approvals. But I want to keep my eye on him." She said it pleasantly. Neutrally. Like she was already adding it to a file somewhere.
"Of course. Good plan."
Gabrielle stood up. Then stopped. “Oh, also, my sister Tiki is in town.”
“This town? Like Cincinnati? I didn’t think she ever left New York unless it was for the Bahamas.”
“Me either. But her divorce from Reggie has changed things. Hopefully she just needs a little coddling, some shopping, and I can send her back on her way. But I may be calling you to save me from her chihuahuas. She’s got three now.”
“I am strictly a cat person.” There wasn’t anything awful about Tiki, aside from keeping tiny yappy dogs in her purse. She was just a bit self-centered, but I’d gotten along with her fine the few times over the years she’d been around.
Gabi gave a big sigh and left. I sat very still in my office for approximately one full minute.
Then I picked up my phone and looked at the view count.
Two point four million.
Thirty-some-odd women had been waiting their whole lives to see themselves on that field.
This morning they had picked up their phones or laptops or tablets and asked if there was room.
Because of a video. Because of a tumbling pass and a fifteen-second routine and one completely unfiltered man with terrible timing and excellent aim saying the true thing on camera.
I put the phone face down.
Thanks for nothing, Kingman.
I opened my laptop and got back to work.
The calendar invite came through at three seventeen.
Gabrielle Jackson has invited you to: Cheer Team Strat and Alignment Meeting. Wednesday, 9am, Conference Room A.
I read the attendee list.
G. Jackson. C. Freeman. T. Roper. I. Kingman. F. Daws. B B. Rutherford. M. Whyte.
I read it again. Then a third time, because apparently I needed three passes to fully absorb an attendee list that was not going to change no matter how many times I read it.
Monty Whyte.
Isak Kingman.
And me.
All in the same room.
On Wednesday.
I opened a new document and titled it Wednesday Talking Points and stared at the blinking cursor for longer than I was going to admit.
My phone buzzed. The FaceSpace memories feature popped up and showed me a photo of Tig as a kitten sitting in a bowl of potpourri looking extremely pleased with himself.
I sent him three heart emojis even though he was a cat and could not read them, and then I started typing.
Wednesday was two days away.
I had been in harder rooms than this.
I was getting everything I wanted. Just with a side of dumbass football players I didn't want.
I. Did. Not. Want.