can't blame a girl for trying | a rini au

1. (Don't Yell at Me Skater Boy) - REWRITTEN

{note: i am rewriting these initial chapters, this one has already been altered as of 08/25/2021. the plot is the same, but it's just more fleshed out. enjoy!}

—

Nina's day was fairly normal for a first day of school. She performed in the pep rally with the other cheerleaders, which went spectacularly if she may add. Even their coach seemed pleased by the way they pumped up the crowd and gave their very first performance of the year. Pre-season was just beginning! She was going to make her moms proud, her team proud. If she had it her way, everyone was going to feel the excitement in the stadium, even if their expectation for this morning's pep rally was to sleep through it.

She fulfilled her duty as a Varsity senior and gave her "welcome gift" to her freshman buddy and showed her around the school, getting her out of the start of her courses... Which, that whole tour and gift giving business was frankly just as dumb as she had anticipated it would be, but whatever, it's a squad tradition for a reason. At least she doesn't have to genuinely mentor the girl like the team used to do. No one fresh out of middle school really needs that kind of conversational obligation with Nina Salazar-Roberts. Those girls are far too green.

The younger girl, Chloe Thomas, had been all peppy and excited to get the little gift basket with its assortment of cheer bows, starbucks gift card, lush bath bomb, and of course a container of silvery-blue body glitter. Everything's done up in the school's colors of course. It's all so goodwill and warm welcomes tied up in a bow of superficial expectations. Maybe Nina would've been more excited to share the morning with her new teammate if she hadn't become so jaded in the aftermath of her own freshman year.

She and her friend Gina had laughed about Sutton Davis's welcome speech on their walk to Government before lunch. The preppy girl was Student Body President for a reason, but she's just so unbelievably cheesy sometimes, especially in these dumb speeches. That's admittedly probably why she was so good with parents and the school board, but it didn't make sitting through the faux inspirational pep talks any less annoying. People want to be revved up at a pep rally, not preached to. But then again, what does she know about running things? It's not like she's the leader of anything. Anything formal anyway...

Cheerleading practice was fairly standard today despite having the pep rally in the morning. Coach Jenn evidently wasn't going to let them "just slack off" just because they put on a good performance earlier in the day. But Nina didn't mind, she never did mind putting in the work for things she cared about. Practice was fun even if it was quite a workout, though afternoon practices being a heavy workout was perfectly usual.

Due to it being the beginning of the academic calendar, this was only a half week for school. Starting on Wednesday was nice, but it meant that they had long practice Monday and Tuesday, so Wednesday's practice was honestly a good break, a bit of a gift. Her tumbling pass in their routine was improving quite a bit according to the coach, so she was feeling proud of herself on that front. The woman was not easily impressed, and Nina had definitely learned that over the past several years of competing under Jenn's leadership.

—

After she tosses her backpack over into the backseat, she's eager to take her ponytail down; it starts to pull at her head after the many hours of having it up. That's not even to mention the strain put on by all the jumping around in practice... Beauty is pain she reminds herself, it's just as her sister Natalia always said, forcing her picture perfect smile as she looks into her rearview mirror. Nina takes off the bow first with its band, setting it on the passenger seat, likely with more care than necessary, before all but yanking the hair elastic off of the high ponytail she was merely tolerating by what was now 5:00 in the evening and slipping the elastic onto her wrist. She needed to keep that, it was her best one. If you say you don't have a favorite ponytail holder you're probably lying to yourself.