It's too cliché (Darrel Curtis)

Chapter one: the cheer captain

—Kitty Lebeau—

—6 years before Ponyboy Curtis fell asleep in the lot—

The house is trashed like it always is, you'd think that for living in a house that's in the West side of town it would always be in tip top shape. Claudia is sprawled out on the couch like she always is (probably sleeping off a hangover) "Mom! I'm sleeping over at Nancy Adderson's house tonight. We're working on stuff for cheer!" I yell, waking her up in the process. "Whatever, your grandfather is coming soon so I need you to clean the house" she muttered. My grandfather is the one reason why we live in such a nice house on the nice side of town, he owns it so whenever he comes over we need to kiss his ass.

I quickly head up the stairs to my room also known as the only clean room in the house. My room is quite big with a twin four-poster bed that's painted white and a pink quilt that I sewed myself. I have a large window seat that I do most of my homework on and a large chest of drawers that most of my clothes reside. I quick grab my bag and some clothes, including my cheer uniform, I don't know why we even have to go to this ceremony it only matters to the up coming seniors away. Couch Lovelace is announcing the Captain which is always a senior, or once in a blue moon, a junior. So I don't understand why she's making the freshman come.

"I'm leaving, bye!" I yell, I got a grown in response. The walk to Nancy's house isn't long by any means it's just a street over so I was quite surprised when a nice red Cadillac  pulled up right next to me. "Hey! You're Kathrine Lebeau, right?" The boy said, he looked to be my age with curly black hair and brown eyes. "Yes, and who are you?" I step back. "Paul Holden I'm in your grade, I'm going to play football" he replied, "where are you going?" He asked. "Nancy Adderson's house, we're having a sleepover to work on cheer stuff" I replied. "Why don't I give you a lift? I'm heading just past there" he offers. Oh hell no, if Claudia's boyfriends have taught me anything is to never except men's offers.

"No thank you, I'm alright. I like walking anyway, having a good day." I quickly start walking away, hoping that he'd turn around his car and drive away. I don't look back as I run, I don't stop until I'm in front of Nancy's house, I didn't have to wait a second before Mrs. Adderson opened the door. "Kathrine! Come in, Nancy is just upstairs. How are you sweetie?" She smiled and hugged me, "I'm great, just getting ready for our first year of high school!" I laugh. I hear footsteps quickly running down the stairs, "Kitty!" Nancy yells throwing her arms around me.

"Hey Nan!" I smile, Nancy was the first friend I made in Tulsa, she and everyone else in her family has curly red hair and hazel eyes. Except for her mother who has straight brown hair and blue eyes. "Well I don't want to interrupt y'all's important cheer work" I heard Mrs. Adderson laugh.

We quickly head upstairs to do the job that Coach Lovelace assigned us to do, fix the banner. The banner was ripped up to hell in back last year when the cheerleaders had won bronze at a local competition which was a huge deal because we are not the best team and so they took the cheer banner and took it to a party and got black out drunk (which is incredibly rare for us socs) and woke up in the morning with the banner ripped to shreds. And three girls ended up pregnant, by greaser (you can't imagine that absolute scandal that caused)

So I volunteered to sew it up during cheer camp and Nan came along for the ride. "I have it just over here". Nancy pointed to the bag containing the banner, "holy shit, she wasn't kidding, this is torn to shred!" I laugh. The pieces of the banner range from the size of a pillow case to the size of my palm. "Yeah, it's like it was torn up by animals, I mean they were acting like 'em" she laughs. I pull out my sewing kit from my bag, I've been sewing since I was three since my mom didn't care enough about me to fix my clothes herself.

So I picked up a needle and thread and taught myself how to sew, I was going to start teaching my dear Margaret before the...accident. I shake my head, I need to get my mind off that. "Let's lay theses pieces down" we start laying the pieces out, it's quite easy to tell where everything was supposed to go, oddly enough. Probably because of all the different colors and large letters, soon enough the words "Laken Gym Cheerleading Competition large varsity division Third place" was gleaming up at us, Laken was the name of the gym that the small competition was held.