Here is a preview from my next book: Spinsation Two: One More Beginning. It is written from the perspective of Pam, a second-year member of the Eunice High School Color Guard. Enjoy!
“Today we are really gonna start moving!” Tabitha said as she jumped up to her place in front of the guard. “Everybody get up, get up.”Tabitha started us off with the Hummingbird warm-up dance. My muscles and my skin cried mutiny as I went through the larger arm and leg movements. I couldn’t even reach my toes, everything was laced so tightly!“Make sure you keep breathing!” Tabitha called out over the music.I blew my breath out. I hadn’t even realized that I was holding it until that point. I breathed in again, carefully, and blew out. I looked down at my stomach and saw the bright red skin wrinkling oddly as I did rib isolations.“Keep your head up, ladies, you need to be practicing performance ALL the TIME,” Tabitha said in my general direction. “Remember, you want to be interesting to look at no matter what you are doing. Even if you are just standing there picking your nose, make sure that you are making people WANT to look at you!”This elicited a few giggles from some of the other girls, but I was far too focused on the churning in my stomach to get the silly joke. I tilted my chin up to look at the place where the ceiling and the wall of the band room met and let my legs do the lunges on their own. Then came the turns, only two in a row, but my stomach was churning along with my legs. I felt light-headed and stepped on my left foot; rather, I stepped where my left foot should have been.I didn’t realize what was going on really until I felt hands on my back and arms. Joanie and Sam were grasping me and pulling me back up. Everything happened very quickly up to that point. I had lost my balance and started to fall backward. Luckily, my girls were there to back me up.What was I thinking?“Pam,” Sam was saying as she and Joanie hoisted my arms over their shoulders. “Pam, are you ok? What happened?”I nodded at her and blinked a few times to try to clear the dizziness from my head.“Ladies, if everything is alright then get back to dancing,” Mrs. Brown said as she came over to me.Since I was supporting my own weight, Sam and Joanie left me to finish dancing.“You all good?” Mrs. Brown asked. “You almost took quite a tumble.”I pressed the palm of my hand to my forehead and closed my eyes. Then I looked up at Mrs. B.“Yeah, I just got dizzy with all the dancing and spinning,” I said. “I’m fine.” Then my stomach betrayed my cool confidence by letting out a growl so loud I was sure it would drown out the music in the room.“Did you eat breakfast?” Mrs. Brown asked.“Um,” I thought back. I had grabbed something from the kitchen right? An apple, or a granola bar. I looked in the direction of my backpack to try to remember if I had eaten something in the car on the way to school. “I can’t remember,” I admitted, letting my shoulders sag.
<p>That's all for now. Keep an eye out for more to come soon!</p>
J.M. Hope
