As long as Zoe could focus on her choreography, she was fine. Only one of her voices knew anything about cheering, so when she and the other girls were in the middle of a routine, that's the only one that was speaking.
So when she wasn't in the middle of a routine, she just made sure she was focusing on the next routine, to the exclusion of everything else. Just get through this night, then she and Sarah and Karyn would-- no, that was too much thinking about things that weren't directly in front of her. She turned to Sarah on the bench. This was what was in front of her. She would think about Sarah, and that's how she would get through this football game.
So even though her entire family was only a dozen or so feet behind her, sitting right in the front row of the bleachers, Zoe had entirely blocked them out. They were the last people she should be thinking about if she wanted to stay focused.
Dawn, on the other hand, naïve and unassuming as she sat on the aisle seat, had no such compunctions, and while everyone else was laser-focused on the football game, the thoughts in Dawn's head were moving a mile a minute. She could hardly keep up with them, herself. So a part of her was even a little surprised when, during a time-out, she found herself grabbing her mother's arm to get her attention, and asking, "what would you think if I asked you to start calling me Max?"
Linda wasn't entirely sure how to respond, but she spoke very carefully. "If you want to try a new name for a little to see how you like it, I'll support you. But can I ask why?"
Dawn thought for a moment. All of the ideas that had been spinning through her head all game needed to be organized, but she wasn't sure how to organize them. "Me and Athena were talking today, and someone wrote 'Max' on the collar of her sweater, and I just got this feeling that I'm supposed to be called Max." It seemed like such a bare-bones sketch of the vibrant mural she'd been thinking.
"Well, okay," Linda put a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "If that's what you want, then for now you'll be Max."
And, seated just on the other side of Linda, this was when Mikey joined the conversation with a snort. "How weird is it going to be to have a big sister named Max!"
"Mikey!" Linda admonished. But as she turned her attention to her youngest child, she was missing the soul being ripped out of her daughter.
It wasn't because Mikey was so dismissive of her decision to use a new name. It was because Mikey had referred to her as his "big sister." Something about that felt wrong. At the core of her being, in the pit of her stomach, Dawn knew above all else, more than anything in the world, that she was the little sister. And if she was the little sister, how could she also be Mikey's big sister? This was very wrong.
Dawn felt nauseous. She felt dizzy. She stood up to escape this thing she was feeling, whatever it was, but when she turned to step out into the aisle she lost her footing, and she fell backwards onto the stairs, flipping over herself until she landed on the grass of the sidelines, flat on her back, her pleated black skirt flipped up and exposing her entire lower half.
Despite a chorus of gasps from the surrounding stands, Zoe was too focused on the cheer routine she was currently performing to realize that something had happened. She was focused on her next move, and she was focused on Sarah. And so it was only after Sarah broke formation, turned around and started running towards the bleachers, that Zoe allowed a non-cheerleader voice into her head: "something has gone wrong."
A lump formed itself in Zoe's chest as she turned to see Sarah running towards the prone body lying on the grass. "DAWN!" The word escaped Zoe's throat without need for instruction from the brain. Everything was a blur. Without any memory of having run, Zoe found herself beside her sister, all focus away from cheerleading and directed straight onto Dawn.
So she almost didn't hear, among the gasps and cries from the crowd, when Jay Duncan, who in some other reality may have been one of Jon's closest friends but had never met Dawn in the current reality, failed to stifle a laugh as he said "She's wearing princess panties! What kind of high schooler still wears princess panties?"
"I stopped wearing panties like that when I was, like, ten years old," Kyla Leeson added in a crueler tone than she'd intended.
But Zoe shut them out of her mind, hand on her sister's cheek. "Dawn, can you hear me?"
The younger girl nodded her head, also taking in the shouted conversation around her. Somehow hearing someone compare her to a ten year-old was calming, but she didn't understand why.
But Zoe didn't need to respond, and Dawn didn't need to respond either, because they had a Sarah. "Shut the fuck up, you unfiltered dingus!" the cheerleader shouted like it was the word of God. "She's just a freshman, lay off her!"
For a moment, for a brief moment, that statement took Zoe's attention. Dawn was supposed to be a sophomore, not a freshman. But as she looked back down, a part of her wondered if the girl before her was even old enough to be in high school.
