Nancy Screw and the Coming of Age (18+) Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Preparation H.

Nancy arrived in the nick of time. She could hear the rehearsal cheers just outside the building where she parked. She ran up to the door and pulled it open.

“Nancy,” a voice enthusiastically exclaimed. “It was Billy.” Nancy smiled wide and ran up to hug him.

“I’m glad that Beth was able to reach you. I was hoping you’d be able to make it out. I tried getting a hold of you but somehow the call didn’t get through. Were you having trouble with your phone earlier?” Nancy shrugged.

“Maybe I just didn’t hear it.” Bill smiled back at her and motioned.

“Come on. We’re going to rehearse the cheers one more time!”

Nancy joined the others as they begun to gather. In unison they stood side-by-side and chanted: “Riverside, Riverside! Fight! Fight! Fight! Beat Cliff High with all your might!”

The chant repeated and Nancy tried to present herself as enthusiastically as the rest, but she couldn’t. Her mind kept going back to the book; the part where she had left off. In a way, it made her feel bad, even guilty. There, Turner was with those horrible men who had God knows what in store for him in the confines of the building they were about to enter. Nancy felt herself becoming more and more interested in the world inside that book than she was in the world in which she was in a positive limelight. She was getting bored. And it both scared and delighted her. After all, a part of her knew that her high school life wouldn’t last forever. She was hoping, however, that the excitement that came with it did. The excitement she now got from reading about Turner and about what the outcome might be. And, as her thoughts deepened, she noticed that the chanting became faint and her vision became, in a sense, more acute or focused and, seemingly coincidently, she saw something that she couldn’t believe. To her left she noticed that she wasn’t the only one distracted from the pep rally warm-up. Billy, who stood beside her, had his eyes fixated on not hers’ but on Allie’s, a fellow senior whose beauty turned the heads of every man at Riverside High and, now, seemed to have turned Billy’s. For a second Nancy felt as though she might be paranoid. She blinked hard and then refocused her sights on the mirage beside her. However, as she initially suspected, it wasn’t one. There, burning inside Billy’s eyes, she swore, was that same look he used to give her whenever they crossed paths in the crowded school hallways. Then, just as quickly as those feelings had flooded into Nancy’s mind, they quickly left. For, she feared that they might notice her staring at them and begin to suspect something. The rehearsal was almost over anyway and soon the doors would open to the court where another epic game would soon begin.