Give Me A . . . .

Words for Wednesday is a writing prompt that can be found at
Under the Porch Light
 http://ramblingsoftheterminallyaging.blogspot.com/

This week's words are:
inducted, plethora, insubordination, retribution, despair, museum

          A plethora of dust motes floated in the air surrounding TerryLee as she sat in the attic, her ham-like thighs blanketing the old trunk.
It was hot up there, but for once she was oblivious to the heat, caught up as she was in the past. She put down that day’s newspaper and the article that had brought her upstairs and stared out of the cobwebbed window.

She could still hear the crowd in the bleachers, the shrieks of sixteen-year old girls hoping to draw attention to themselves, and the earnest exhortations of the parent Boosters. The band would be playing an off-key lumbering version of Louie, Louie – destroying any coolness the song had ever possessed.

          But best of all, she could remember the eyes. The spotlight was on her and the other cheerleaders as they stood with their backs to the football field. As the captain of the squad, hers was the center position and she had always made the most of it. They were supposedly there with their short skirts and pom poms to draw cheers from the crowd, inspiring the team.

          TerryLee always had her own agenda – to draw the attention of every male in the stand, and drive them to the brink of despair with her well-filled letter sweater and her perfect thighs. She would direct her chants to each one at a time, pulling his eyes to her until he was slack-jawed with desire, and then she’d move on to the victim.

          One Saturday night, when Central was playing East Thurber, she went too far. A sophomore she remembered seeing alone in the cafeteria, Johnny Woznowski, was sitting on the first riser of the bleacher directly in front of her. It was really too easy, his eyes filled with a desperate longing by the end of her second cheer.

          Soon he was following her around school, appearing outside each of her classroom doors. Just to amuse herself, she began a whisper campaign about him, saying he had webbed feet and sewed his own clothes. Instead of becoming a pariah, he inexplicably became a minor celebrity and her high school years spiraled downward from there.

          She was thrown off of the squad for insubordination and Lindsey Loomis was made captain. TerryLee’s college cheerleading scholarship fell through and she ended up attending community college. She dropped out after two semesters, got pregnant and put on forty pounds. Her days of somersaults were long gone.

          She looked down at the newspaper as it lay next to her molting pom poms, announcing the final retribution.

     “Woznowski Donates 20 million from 

Computer Empire to Establish National 

Cheerleading Museum

 Jennifer Loomis first  inducted.”