News travels fast. By the time students had begun moving between classes at Mount Valley High School, everyone knew that the season was over. And everyone already knew that Ash Miller had started this entire calamity.
At lunch, she had to be the loneliest person in town. Nobody wanted to come near her. The team asked her not to sit with them. Others seemed to move a bit away when she came near. With one announcement from on high, she had become, at least for the hour, a pariah.
She grabbed a meal from the taco bar and sat at a table in the middle, where she might not be noticed as much. Only one or two other people, freshwomen she didn't recognize, were eating there. Suddenly, someone came up next to her.
"Ash? You OK?" It was a good friend of hers in this world, a janegirl named Brianna Walker. He was on the cheer squad but had known Ash for years and was one of the few boys into "girl things" like video games.
"...Now that everything is out there, everyone is pinning the blame on me." She put her head in her hands, looking at the blonde with hair that was sort of short for a boy, and sighed.
"Ash, they can't hold this grudge. This won't last. I understand why they are upset, but... Lake Point has a way of getting under your skin, don't they..."
"Yeah, they do," she replied softly. It occurred to her that the real reason for the brawl might not make sense to Bri, since they didn't send cheerleaders for the game and thus he wasn't there to see it all go down.
"Was it just...the way the game was so imbalanced?"
"Well..." Ash hesitated to say more. "If life is a video game, it's...glitching. And kind of badly. And that incident has affected everyone here in ways they may not even remember."
"A glitch in reality?" Bri now had Ash's attention. "Like...a mistake?"
"You're going to think I'm crazy, Bri, but I need someone to talk to about this that's not on the team. Don't tell anyone unless I tell you, OK? They will think you're just being a ditzy boy, and I know that's not the case." She thought of how Bri sometimes beat her in Peach Kart or Rocket League.
"Alright," he replied, intrigued.
"What if I told you that once upon a time, boys in Mount Valley were almost never cheerleaders, they played football, and their chests were flat?" She made a gesture to her chest, cupping it as if it carried substantial breasts. "And girls got pregnant, wore dresses and had sleepovers?"
Brianna jerked his head back at how silly this all sounded. "That sounds like Bizarro World!"
"Well, that's what we thought Lake Point was. Bizarre. But after that brawl...we became like them. And it started on the bus ride back."
"I'd play that video game," he blurted out.
"Well, in that case, you were cast as one of the NPCs."
A different sort of lunchtime conversation was happening at the cheerleaders' table at Lake Point.
“Have any of you gals seen the new TV show about the J-Boys?” Jonatha asked, eagerly awaiting their answers. He and Jade had been chatting about the show well into the night.
“You mean that lame new reality show about the McMillan brothers?” Keitha asked, rolling his eyes.
“The McMillan brothers!?” Jade and Jonatha yelled in unison as they looked at each other in surprise.
“Yeah,” Keitha said looking at them confused. “Why?”
“Oh, don’t listen to him.” Brandi said, pushing Keitha away and leaning in. “So what did you think?”
“About what?” Jade asked, blinking.
“The show, silly. What else?”
“Oh, right,” Jade blushed and giggled, mentally kicking himself for forgetting. "I can't believe Jacobelle actually thought that girl was cute. She so clearly wasn't his type," Jade grumbled as he took a forkful of his salad.
"But come on! That wasn't even the half of it," Buffie whined. "That dress Joshelle wore to the party was a fashion crime against humanity!"
"What about Jeremielle?" Jade wondered.
"Well, I wanna know where he got that skirt, because it was gorgeous," Jonatha replied before taking another bite of his sandwich.
"And that date he went on was so romantic," Brandi chimed in.
"Oh come on," Keitha snapped. "I know they're sorta local, being at Sapphire State and all, but... You seem positively obsessed with the J-Boys! It's just a lame new reality show." He finished his interjection with a sigh, absolutely bored of all this inane gossip. As much as I love Brandi and I love cheerleading...sometimes this just gets to me, he thought.
