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My head felt a little heavy the next morning. When Jazmine came to knock on my bedroom door, telling me that we were all late for practice, I wasn't sure if I wanted to kill her horrible manners when waking me up, or if I wanted to kill myself for losing track of time.

I jumped out of bed and saw Sidney more irritated than me with all the chaos we were involved in because of our tardiness.

The three of us left together, about five minutes after jumping out of bed. We didn't even have time to go to the bathroom in such a rush and despair. When we arrived at T.C., the sweat was already making my clothes uncomfortably sticky. To help the whole situation, Karlee only looked at us through her peripheral vision and ordered us to do 100 push-ups before we even started to warm up.

The three of us looked at each other, but we didn't dare question her, we just bent down and did the requested number of push-ups. I hated doing this kind of thing, but I wouldn't open my mouth to complain.

As soon as we finished, I felt the muscles in my arms almost giving out. However, the feeling of having all my muscles activated and ready for the next exercise was impossible to ignore.

Karlee approached and the expression of fury on her face was clear.

“Does this look like cheerleading summer camp to you?” she asked, sharply analyzing us.

Sidney, I, and Jazmine kept our faces perfectly blank and stared at her.

“Answer me!” She demanded.

“No, ma'am” we said in unison.

“Excellent! Next time you show up this late, without a medical justification, you’re out! You will be completely cut off from my Daytona list forever” the warning was surgical and quite ominous. She knew that Daytona was everyone's dream there, considering taking it away from us due to a supposed lack of commitment was a phenomenal move, I had to admit. “Kendra, to the stage.”

I nodded.

Karlee gave the command for me to jump, so I did.

“Again!”

I faced her and took a deep breath before repeating.

“You're doing a bad landing” she pointed out. “Do it again and focus on your landing.”

My head was a mess. At the same time that I felt pain, I felt anger and self-pity. I was rubbish that morning and I didn't even eat anything. It was obvious that this would not work.

I redid the jump. I performed the necessary acrobatics, although, instead of landing more gracefully, I landed wrong. I felt my foot fall sideways and the twist threw me straight to the ground.

My hands immediately went to my foot as I screamed.

Evans and Colleen ran in my direction before the nurse in the T.C. Everyone checked my ankle and foot. The nurse determined that I had managed to miss the landing, which was obvious, and that I had sprained my foot, but it was nothing more than a dislocation.

“No practice for you until this gets better” said Rosemary, the nurse.

I watched as Evans grimaced slightly as he glanced discreetly at Karlee. He sighed and seemed to gather all his strength to tell the coach my current state.

“You need to learn to be on time” Colleen mocked. “Karlee always picks on people who show up late.”

“We slept too much, my bad” I complained, feeling the pain in my muscles and my sprained foot.

“Then don't sleep too much next time.”

I stared at her, wanting to be sure what the hell I was hearing. Colleen couldn't be serious, it was like stating the obvious. And as if my cousin read my mind, she added:

“Sometimes the obvious needs to be said out loud” I wanted to punch her.

“Can you get up?” Karlee asked, surprising me with the way she suddenly arrived at my side.

Her hand was soon extended for me to grab it and I did so, but putting my foot on the ground was impossible at the moment. The coach asked Evans what the procedure would be for that and then instructed me to set an alarm on my cell phone so I wouldn't forget to put ice on the injured area every 4 hours, as the nurse had requested.

“I demand a lot from you because I know you can handle it” Karlee revealed as I leaned on Colleen for support. “I want to seethis ankle and foot completely healed, and when you get back, be sure that I'll be waiting to practice this landing more” I could only nod. “Can you get back to the dorm without walking?”