It started inside the walls of the Air Complex.    

Our high school had many things. High end computers; a library to kill and die for, and teachers that were both competent, and good-looking.

But since my great-aunt Millicent and her squad left, no one had picked up the cheering team. We did have a dingy old basketball team, but it had no victories to show for its existence at all. Convincing the principal that they might only need… cheering up.

So the girls and I left the school that day with a detour by the gymnasium, where we picked up cheer outfits. Two girls, Cecilia Ryan and Juliette Al Fassi saw us, and asked if there was room in the squad. Seeing as Hugo and Romain noped right the hell out of the whole idea, there was.

And just like that, we were a team on more than one aspect.

At first, understandably, we kind of sucked. With the amazing repertoire of two songs we knew how to dance to and dance moves to match a hectic ten-year-old’s, we decided we probably should practice before doing any kind of stupid thing in public.
The wooden-floored rooms in the Air Complex were a godsend. From there, we could practice and fail safely. In the room with the DJ Booth, Marie spent hours fine-tuning the songs and mashups we would dance to. It turned out, the skills the DJ displayed on our bowling night had fascinated as much, if not more, than the dancing itself.

We met three times a week, and we were great at this.