Back in Lake Point, Jade and Jonatha had other things on their mind.
Cheerleading practice, especially the night after a game, took things kind of easy. For the two, it was a chance to get a bit more of the lay of the land.
There was a regional meet next weekend, but it was still a week and a half away. Most of their time until then would have been spent at basketball games. With last night's big bench-clearing brawl, the immediate future of Lake Point basketball hung up in the air given all the suspensions that could come down. The state athletic association had caught wind of the evening's events, not least because the film was spreading like wildfire on Twitter.
Today, though, the focus was light stretching drills, which frequently also turned into a gab session.
"So...Jonatha?" Jade tilted his head and looked at his best friend.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"Well...uh... I had... I had a dream last night," he stammered out nervously.
"There must be a lot on your mind right now. I know there's a lot in mine..." Jonatha giggled again. This new personality is rubbing off on me again, he thought to himself.
"So... I'll admit, this dream was weird. I was in a high castle and my hair went all the way to the floor."
"Like Rapunzel?" Keitha interjected. "Been reading too many fairy tales lately?" she chuckled.
"No... I was in this castle and then a knight came riding in with shining armor and everything." "And I saw...saw her face." Jonatha's eyes grew big at the last two words.
"Was it anyone you knew?"
"Well, it was someone I met last night."
"Who would that be?"
"The girl from Mount Valley who gave me her number, who I just texted."
"Silly Jade, you know nobody from Mount Valley would want to date anyone here."
"Did you even look at them? If they weren't wearing green and gold uniforms, like, they could have passed for students here!" Brandi added. "Strange, strange stuff is going on around here."
Jonatha was positively dreading Home Ec class again. He'd never had a chance to figure out what was going on in there, because yesterday he was fresh off the aftermath of the wish. And since it was right after gym class, he was still adjusting to the idea of clothes he would have called "feminine": a tank top, a bra, and a skirt.
Walking into the kitchen classroom revealed that nothing had changed. Well, almost nothing. He saw a student that he didn't remember in the room yesterday, and what's more, she was sitting next to the only open seat in the room. Was someone just out sick or something? She wore a pink Lake Point spirit T-shirt and her hair was arranged in dreadlocks. I don't think I wouldn't have missed another girl around, given there are so few of them in Home Ec.
When the teacher, a young man by the name of Mstr. Dallas, walked in, he was carrying a stack of worksheets and passed two out to each table of four. "Today, class, we're going to be honing in on our food safety knowledge! To do that, we're going to work in pairs on these questions and have you look through your textbooks to find the answers." Jonatha now actually had an opportunity to get a better vantage point on what this class was all about after feeling so weird yesterday.
Jonatha looked at the girl, and given that the other two people at their table had already paired up, they were left working together.
"Hey, I don't think I've seen you around this class before?" he asked.
"I've been here the whole semester. My name's Symone Black, though everyone just calls me Sym. I'm on the basketball team...Aren't you a cheerleader? I'm sure you've noticed me."
Basketball team? Jon thought to himself. I don't recall someone with dreads on Lake Point... He couldn't spend too much time thinking about this, because he had work to do. The assignment required students to go throughout the book and learn about all sorts of food prep no-nos, like cross-contamination, as well as the kinds of conditions that allowed harmful bacteria like salmonella and E. coli to thrive.
"Last night's game was a real barn-burner, wasn't it?"
"You... You have that right," Sym said with just a hint of hesitation in her voice. "That was the fight of a lifetime. And Lake Point might miss the playoffs because of it."
"W-wait, what?"
"There aren't that many games left in the season, and we might have to forfeit another if we don't have enough eligible players. They say the athletic association is very unhappy." She talked as she wrote down the answer to a question about temperature storage of fresh foods. She sounds like she's been on this team the whole time. This change in reality is so confusing. I can't keep track of things any more.
"What made you take Home Ec?"
"I dunno, it gives me the chance to look at all these cute boys!" She wasn't wrong in saying that, either. "You boys only get cuter when you put on aprons, you know."
"And you girls never give up, do you?" She only laughed nervously in response. "So what classes do you have?"
"I have that health class next. But you know that. Unless you forgot we just did a project together. Remember, the presentation was yesterday!"
Jonatha almost fell over in his chair. Group presentation? That was me...Nicole...and Karyn. He stumbled. "Oh, I forgot..."
"Are you OK?" Sym quickly added. "Cheerleaders...don't surprise me all that much," she muttered under her breath.
It was in that moment that Jonatha had half of a puzzle solved. Black. The last name. Wait... Then where's Karyn? And who is this? "Do you have a sister maybe?"
"Sorry, only child." She raised a brow. "What's with the stranger act though? You're acting like you barely know me. Why are you acting like just another airhead all of a sudden?"
Nicole was spending a study hall reviewing game film, as she did almost every day after a game.
Even if there had been a brawl with eight minutes left, that was still 24 minutes of action to review: defensive formations, shooting technique, the works. Yet this time, she found herself starting with the brawl itself. The camera had been on a tripod in the back row of the bleachers, where it caught the whole thing.
Given the chaos of the moment, she found herself constantly jumping back to the beginning and watching the fight in slow motion, from Ash Miller's shove to its climax and eventually the mob starting to split apart. That included the two teams being forcibly separated, the visitors being sent packing in their uniforms.
She was about to move on to other moments in the game when she thought her eyes were tricking her. Did I just see... Did I just see what I thought I saw? In all the chaos, she saw Karyn Black being separated out with the visiting team and being sent toward the door. She saw a member of the opposing team being left behind. Wait a minute... How did no one notice they sent Karyn to Mount Valley?
As she watched them disperse the crowd, she noticed a few more oddities where people were pushed in the wrong direction. At the time, in the chaos, no one thought much of it. But it was hours later. Why hadn't someone said something?
