Dreamland by Sarah Dessen Read Free Book Online Page B

course, had helped to design and sew. Everyone was nervous as we stood waiting to run out onto the field from the opening under the bleachers. I was cold and convinced that I would blow my backflip as I’d done in practice just the day before, when I landed with a resounding whump on my back, knocking the wind out of myself. I just lay there, feeling oozy and strange as I stared up at the rows of retired basketball jerseys, fluttering from the ceiling overhead.
    â€œYou’ll be fine,” Rina said to me now, grasping my hand and squeezing it. Rina, of course, loved cheerleading. She was a natural. We had still been in pre-season when she started dating the quarterback, and she was the clear crowd favorite, eliciting cheers—mostly male—just for walking out onto the field. Eliza Drake hated her, too.
    The band started playing “My Girl,” the squad theme song, and I knew Boo was in the stands, her face twisting, disgusted. The girls in front of me began psyching up, jumping up and down and shaking their pom-poms, as we all started running down the slope to pop out onto the field to the cheers of the crowd. There was a pack of people that was especially into the cheerleaders—mostly guys, girls who hadn’t made the squad, and parents—who were sitting right at the overhang where we came out, and as we ran forward they chanted each of our names.
    â€œEliza!” they yelled, and Eliza Drake did an impromptu handspring, showing off.
    â€œMeredith!”
    â€œ Angela! ”
    â€œ Rina! ” And the crowd went wild, screaming and cheering, as Rina turned around and waved one pom-pom, smiling at her public.
    I was the last one out.
    The music was loud as the cold air hit me, and I was already thinking of my backflip when I heard someone over my head yell, “Cass!”
    I stopped dead in my tracks, causing Caroline Miter, the mascot, to crash right into me. I don’t know if everyone was yelling my sister’s name: The one voice was the only one I could hear. And for one fleeting, crazy second I thought she must be there, somewhere close, in the places I’d always searched for her in my dreams.
    â€œ Cass! ” the voice yelled again, and I looked up to see a man pumping his fist. He was talking to me. His breath was coming out in small white puffs. “Cass!”
    â€œCome on,” Caroline said to me, her voice muffled under her tiger head as she yanked me by my sleeve out onto the field. “Hurry!”
    I scrambled behind her into formation, but I couldn’t stop looking at that guy as he yelled my sister’s name at me again and again. I was barely aware of the dance routine as I did it, everything in slow motion as the girls squatted and built the pyramid and I climbed up. When I stood, knees wobbling, the crowd was a blur of noise and color in front of me. It was so cold as I reached up to touch the scar over my eye, tracing its length and feeling my pulse there. I tilted my head back and looked up at the stars; I could still hear Cass’s name in my head, and suddenly I felt wide awake.
    The world is speaking to you every day, she’d said to me so many times. You just don’t always know how to listen.
    I was listening, then. I could hear everything.
    â€œ Cass! ” The guy was still shouting, or maybe he wasn’t and I was only dreaming, really dreaming now. I closed my eyes. “Cass!”
    And that is the last thing I remember before falling.
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    It is nothing short of a miracle that Eliza Drake happened to look up and see me begin to fall backward. Regardless of her feelings for me, she jerked out from under Lindsay White, who fell and broke her nose, to stagger backward and catch me. Those new fifteen pounds in her butt and hips most likely saved my life.
    When I opened my eyes, my ears were ringing and the first thing I saw was a circle of cheerleaders standing around me in purple sequins, pom-poms limp at their