Rebecca is much like any other teenager girl. She is beautiful, full of energy and she wants to be a cheerleader when she grows up. Having been on cheer for most of her life making the varsity team was a dream come true, but it is what she must do to maintain that dream that starts to break Rebecca’s spirit. The girls must weigh in every week and must maintain a certain weight to cheer. If they are overweight the things, they are willing to do to their bodies to lose the weight within the twenty-four hours given by their coach is unspeakable. When Rebecca finds herself starved, high on meth and running in the middle of the night the only thing she wants is her mother. She calls for her, cries for her and by the time her mother finds her in the middle of the street Rebecca’s dreams of cheering are over along with her life. It is not until the near end that we realize that it is the spirit of Rebecca that is telling us this tragic story. In the end she visits her own funeral, and she always comes to see her mother who was the strongest woman that she knew and now she has to find the strength to move forward without her little girl.
Cheer Life (also published in DI)
Hello my name is Becky Carson I am 17 years old and the only thing I want to do in my life is to be a cheerleader. Right now I'm on the varsity squad at Titan High School “Go Raiders.” Hopefully after high school I will attend college where I will do four more years of cheer and then it is time to audition for the major leagues. I don't really care if I'm a cheerleader for basketball or football but I definitely know that I have the personality and the energy and I definitely have the looks. That was the speech that I would give. It wasn't even real. It was the presentation of who I needed to be in order to be. When I was born my mother named me Rebecca after my grandmother. She said that I had my grandmothers’ eyes and her hair and when I came out kicking and screaming I also reminded her of my grandmother's personality. We still laugh about that all the time. My mother put me in cheerleading when I was three years old. She said she had to figure out a way to tame my energy. When you're three cheering is all about kicking and jumping and pom-poms and laughing and eating ice cream with the rest of the three-year-olds on the team as you sit on your mama’s laps and just laugh. I remember very clearly when I used to laugh. I don't laugh anymore. I haven't laughed in a long time.