Brittana: cannon

Chapter 1: the beginning

Santana was nervous. It was 2 weeks before the start of her freshman year and she stood in the gym of William McKinley High School and watched as the girls around her were doing light warm-ups and stretches. Most of them were already wearing Cheerios uniforms, although there were more than a handful of girls like her in cheer shorts and tight tops. She already felt like she did not fit in among the throng of red and white uniforms and perfect hair-dos, and she debated whether she should change her dark hair from its messy bun into a ponytail like the others were sporting.
Santana just had to make the main squad this year. It wasn't common for Coach Sue Sylvester to put freshmen on her top squad, but Santana was determined to be different. She needed to be different. Starting high school meant she could break from the mediocre popularity she had gained in middle school.
Santana had this feeling deep inside of her that she needed to be accepted by her classmates. She always felt a little different, although she wasn't sure why. She didn't really feel close with the girls she hung out with in middle school. Mostly because she was afraid to let them get too close to her. She felt kind of awkward around most girls, and she didn't really feel the way other girls did when they were around boys.
Santana didn't like feeling uncomfortable, and it caused her to develop a bitchy attitude. She protected herself by building walls around herself and by throwing out insults. She found that her attitude earned her respect, which made her more popular. When she became more popular, she felt better about herself. That was why she was going to be one of the most popular girls at McKinley and no one was going to stop her. First, she just needed to nail this cheerleading try-out.

The overwhelming number of girls there was just a little intimidating. Plus, she had missed the cheerleading camp earlier in the summer for the vacation her parents insisted they had to go on for "quality family time" before Santana started becoming "too grown up" to want to hang out with them anymore. Little did they know that she had stopped wanting to hang around her parents sometime in middle school. Things were just too different in her life now, and she didn't feel comfortable around her parents much, particularly when they wanted to know what was going on in her life.

Something caught Santana's attention from the corner of her eye. She turned to see a blonde girl towards the corner of the gym doing some spins and turns, her loose hair flying around her as she danced. Santana's breath caught and her heart started to pound.

She had finally started getting used to the little fluttering in her chest that she got when she saw some pretty girls and was learning to ignore it. But she had never felt anything like this before. She definitely couldn't ignore the way her heart tried to beat its way over to the dancing girl, or the way her body warmed up as if she had stepped outside into the summer heat. She finally realized she was holding her breath and let it out in a shaky exhale.

"Nervous?"

Santana whipped around at the voice, her heart beating hard for a different reason now, as she came to face a different blonde girl. This one had her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail like the Cheerios did, but didn't wear the uniform. Santana noticed that the girl wore a small cross necklace as well as a more modest, though still tight, pair of shorts and top. She seemed to also have an amused smirk on her face.

"Excuse me?" Santana asked. She hoped that her face looked calm and that the girl hadn't noticed how affected she was by the dancer in the corner.

"I noticed you were staring at that girl. She is pretty good, so I was just wondering if she made you nervous about maybe not making the team," the girl replied.

She sounded sweet, like she was trying to be Santana's friend. Santana knew that girls like this were the ones to watch out for. They were usually the ones that acted like your best friend, but were the first to stab you in the back to climb their way to the top. She knew immediately that she needed to become allies with her, but first she needed to make sure the girl didn't think she was anything other than the image she wanted to project.