Don't Stop Believin' (COMPLETED)

9. Euphoria

Euphoria - Loreen

A/N:

As the proud Swedish citizen I am I named this chapter after our lovley Loreen who won ESC for us. It's also a really great song and she is just amazing!

Okay... So this chapter is really important, so read carefuly. I, myself, starts to hate some of my own characters (is that even possible!?) but I just have to ignore that and keep writing.

Hope you like it.

Please fan/comment/vote if you do

Love

Mattie

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During the coming week, I followed Coach Golder’s advice and went on almost every workout, except Wednesday, when I actually went to the theater to join the choir. Jimmy didn’t get any chance to talk to me again; Derek kept a close eye on him. But he didn’t seem mind the others, because he let them talk and joke with me before training sessions and during drink breaks. Maybe it was because Jimmy was the only one who was young enough to "catch my interest" (the others were closer to 30 than 20)... But I don’t know. Coach Golder at least showed his gratitude for my presence by giving the entire team, but especially Derek, more and longer drink breaks. He would even say a "Good job, Katie!" at the end of the training sessions.

As I said, the week ended and the next began. My schedule was packed and I barely had any free time at all in the afternoons after school. It was Monday (Derek's training). Tuesday came (Derek's training). The day turned into night and culminated on Wednesday (choir practice). If you don’t know, Thursday comes after Wednesday (Derek's training - again).

And the word spread (I suspect it was Jonas who started it all). People began to ogle and whisper when I came near, which always made me want to sink through the crust and disappear for good. I hated all that attention was called, and ... Well, the new I got wasn’t any better than any other variety. Miss Young began hissing at me in class, something she’d never done before and she tried to give me the hard questions that I couldn’t answer. Unfortunately (for her) the fact that I had read collage math in Colorado did that she didn’t succeed. Jonas started giving me weird smiles I didn’t understand and both Eddie and Alec started to tease me about all the gossip.

"Okay, listen up. Both of you!" I said on Friday morning, May 14 when I got to school. It had been almost two weeks since I began to come to Derek’s trainings and I was greeted by a grinning Eddie and Alec. "First; get your own life. Second; Derek I and aren’t dating!" (to my great disappointment). I slammed my locker hard and turned to my two friends who were still grinning wide. Why were they grinning!?

"'The Gossip' thinks different," Alec said and gave me a glossy magazine. The cheap cover adorned with pictures of celebrities.

"What?"

"Page 16," he said, and I quickly flipped the front. The content made me lose my breath.

During a rather ugly and blurry picture of me and Derek in the parking lot outside the stadium where the Blue Tigers were training, a title in big letters said:

HAS THE TOUCH DOWN KING FOUND HIS QUEEN?

The title was followed by a short article and more pictures of us. We laughed or smiled at everyone and of course I looked awful. Out of pure instinct, I started reading the article.

Over the past few weeks, Derek "Touchdown King" Downhill, running back in the TBB-current Blue Tigers, could be seen along with a seventeen year old girl from his school. Derek has taken this girl to almost all workouts the past two weeks, even though the team is training hard for the upcoming finals. No comments from the team members, Coach Trevor Golder or other acquaintances have been able to get.