Chapter 3

The cheerleaders were working on formations where the girls stacked on top of each other. They had just managed a teetering triple stack pyramid that included the entire squad; save one girl acting as a 'safety spotter' behind the formation. Then a strong gust of wind came rippling through.

One of the girls in the second tier began to lose her balance, and the spotter moved quickly to support her. But before she got there the whole formation started coming apart.

The girl on top of the formation was Lori, and she began waving her arms desperately to stay perched on the lower tier girl's shoulders.

Chet jumped to his feet when he realized that she wasn't going to regain her balance. But Jimmy moved even faster, flashing forward in a full out sprint towards the growing pile of girls.

He came skidding to a stop just as Lori toppled over, her head and shoulders falling over backwards to point at the ground.

Jimmy wasn't the most coordinated guy in the world, but he got there in time for the back of Lori's skull to crash off of his forehead. His backward collapse from the collision was accelerated by the rest of the girl slamming into his torso. Chet and Rhonda could clearly hear the whoosh of air escaping from his lungs as his chest was compressed between Lori and the track, while his head thudded and rebounded off the ground.

"Jimmy!" Rhonda screamed. She scooped up one of their first aid kits and followed Chet as fast as she could.

After shaking her head briefly, Lori realized she wasn't lying on the hard surface of the running track. She shifted to one side and awkwardly rolled off her rescuer. She struggled up to a sitting position, and looked down at Jimmy in alarm.

His eyes were huge, blinking rapidly as he gasped for air like a fish suddenly pulled from the water.

Chet knelt opposite Lori, unsure what to do. Lori heard Rhonda repeatedly saying 'excuse me, ' and stood up to call for her squad to clear a path.

After looking anxiously at Jimmy for a moment, Rhonda made an obvious effort calm herself. She knelt next to her prostrate boyfriend and took one of his hands in hers, rubbing his shoulder with the other as she watched his struggles to breathe.

She glanced darkly in Lori's direction. "This shouldn't have happened," she muttered.

"Shouldn't we be doing something?" Chet asked.

She shook her head. "Not yet. He's had the wind knocked out of him. It's scary not to be able to breathe, and it hurts like hell. But it'll pass. When he can talk again we'll see if he's thinking straight or if anything's broken."

"Oh thank God," Lori blurted. "I thought I might have killed him!"

Rhonda glanced up at Lori in derisive amusement, but then her eyes focused sharply on the other girl.

"Chet," she said calmly, "could you help Lori lie down too, please?"

Chet quickly moved to wrap an arm around Lori's shoulders, just as she began to waver.

"That's a good idea," she mumbled, feeling her head spinning around.

Chet lowered her to the track. A couple girls ran to get blankets for the two prostrate teens.

"Be ready to turn her on her side, gently," Rhonda instructed him, "if she starts to throw up. Turn her whole body, not just her head."

She looked up to the anxious faces of the hovering cheer squad. "Could one of you call 911? Tell them we have two people with possible concussions that need to be checked out."

Chet peeled off his sweatshirt and made a cushion for Lori's head with it.

He looked around at the other girls. "Is everyone else okay?"

A voice from the back of the crowd claimed a small cut on her thigh. A gap formed and Becky's grinning face appeared; not reflected in a bathroom mirror it looked oddly ... flat.

Lori reached up, grasping his hand. Her eyes moved from Chet to Becky and back again. They seemed to clear, and warmed as they settled on his, irises deep blue wells beneath him.

Becky's face faded back into the crowd.

Jimmy and Lori sat next to each other on the football team's bench, Chet and Rhonda holding towel-wrapped ice-packs to the back of their necks. Chet kept reminding himself to breathe.

The medics concluded there were no serious injuries. They advised that the teens shouldn't be left alone for the next several hours in case any delayed reaction problems arose.

The rest of the cheer squad left soon after the medics drove away; all the girls were effusively grateful to Jimmy for Lori's survival.