Dreaming of Cheers (Standing Up to Life Book 3)

Chapter 4:

AT ABOUT ONE o'clock Mom ended up dropping me back off at school. I had returned just in time for Amy and I to have Home Ec with Coach Holt. "Hey Tiffany, where were you at?" Coach asked me as I came in with a pass.

I spoke softly, "I had a doctor's appointment."

"Okay, everything alright?" She asked.

"More or less. Maybe sometime I'll explain it all." I told her.

I think of all of the teachers I still trusted Mrs. Remar the most, but Coach Holt was rapidly becoming someone I felt like I could trust too. Well, I could trust her there was no doubt... but you know how it is... there's always one teacher you know that you can share stuff with.

"Okay... I was just getting ready to tell Amy this. Why don't the two of you go ahead and head down to the locker room and begin working on putting the face paint on each other and the other girls?"

"The locker room?" I asked quietly, with some trepidation.

She leaned close to me and said, "no one will be changing right now anyway – plus I got it approved that you're going to use the coach's office in there to change from now on."

I smiled. Something else that I'd been worrying about was suddenly working itself out. That was unexpected!

The two of us walked down the hallway with our backpacks in hand to go to the locker room. Our school was setup so that there were three locker rooms for each gender. Two of them were for PE, and the other one was reserved for sports activities. This time of the year the girls' sports locker room was used by just the cheer squad and the volleyball team. Of course, right now that meant it was empty because it wasn't after school.

Entering the locker room for the first time was yet another sign that I was being accepted as a girl. I noticed that the bathroom actually had stalls setup for the toilets – so I could even use the restroom in here without causing problems. There were also curtains around the shower stalls so I could probably even change in here if we could ever get it worked out. I think Coach Holt realized it was inevitable that I was going to need to.

Amy poked me and brought me back to reality. She showed me a locker where Coach Holt had all of the squads' makeup and face paint stored. We dug through it until we found some of our school colors and started painting things like 'HMS #1' on each other's faces. The other girls started coming in at that point too, with Amy and I working to get everyone's faces done as quickly as we could.

"Tiffany, why haven't you been coming here to change now?" Lindsey asked me as I did her face.

"Umm... I don't want to cause more problems than I already do I guess," I told her.

"I don't think any of us would mind if you were in here," she told me.

"Well... Coach Holt says I can start using the Coaches bathroom in the office to change." I said with a smile before pausing, "I still have things that I don't want anyone to have to see though," I told her while losing the smile.

"I guess I understand that one." That was all we had time to talk about though because Coach Holt came in and began issuing orders to us to get stuff ready for our performance. We were also going to be taking part with the normal cheerleaders on a routine, so we had to get some pom-poms out to the gym for that before coming back in for a quick meeting.

We had performed at the football game last week... but that hadn't been everyone watching. I was beginning to feel my nerves a little bit. I knew that I had to make sure I did as well as I could, if not perfect, to keep anyone from being able to comment on my skills.