Shoot for the Team

Chapter 2: The new boy

It was a long week waiting for practice. I practiced my routine a lot. Tuesday seemed like the longest day ever. I had three tests, and a lot of class work. After school, I went to my best friend Hope's house. Hope and I did our homework, started sewing a hat for my little sister Katie, and made up a dance. We ate dinner, and then Hope's mom dropped me off at jump rope.
When I walked in, I knew something wasn't right. Everyone was crowded in the corner of the room. I jostled my way to the corner to see what was going on. When I finally got to the front of the crowd, I frowned.
There was a new jumper. A younger jumper. A jumper that was so little that they were cuter than I was. This frustrated me. I wanted to be the star of our jump rope show, but this jumper was younger and smaller and would draw more attention to the screen. Not only this, but the new jumper was a boy.
All of the jumpers on our team were girls. Of course, I had seen boy jump ropers at Regional and National jump rope competitions, but NEVER on our team. They even called us the jumping sisters. Never in the history of the San Diego Speed Skippers had there been a boy on our team. Well, I'm sure there had been, but not as long as I had been on the team, which I like to consider the history of our team.
A little boy on my jump rope team. Great. This was just what I needed. A smaller and cuter jumper to steal my spotlight. I was really upset, and I didn't want to look at him, so I just walked away.
I pretend to work on my frog, a jump rope trick I had gotten long ago, but I wanted an excuse to get away from the boy. I continued to ignore him for the rest of practice. Everyone kept talking to him and saying what a good jumper he was and complimenting him and stuff like that. And for the first time in my life, I was shy.
At the end of practice Melissa called us all in again, and she told us that we would start filming in a month. She said that she wanted the show to look really good, and that we should practice really hard so we would look like pros in the show.
She also said that the show was going to be hard, and that they were gonna provoke us to put our teammates down and have emotional outbreaks, because that's what people wanna see. She said that this may cause fights within the team. She said that we could call it off now as a team if this wasn't what we wanted. But I wasn't worried. I wanted the fame.
"Hey Julie!" Rosie said after Melissa had her talk. "Hey," I said. "What do you think of the new boy?" She asked. "What do I think of him?" I relied, "I think he's trying to steal my thunder. I'm supposed to be the little cute one!" "Relax," Rosie replied. "You still are little and cute. And it might be nice to have a boy on the team for a change. He seems nice enough. Anyways, I've been thinking about what Coach Melissa said, and I'm worried. Do you think fame will ruin our team? Will it ruin everything?" I could here the fear in her voice.
"Fame won't ruin our team," I assured her. But a boy might, I thought
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