Orion dropped her bag on the floor, under the bar at the island. Her hair was thrown into a messy ponytail–she hadn’t fixed it since practice. Pulling open the door to the fridge, Orion went right for the alfredo–her favorite. She wasn’t a big fan of red sauce and she wasn’t quite in the mood for pesto. “Oh…” Orion made a face. Q’s alfredo was never good, and everyone told him so but he still ate it. Disappointed, Orion set that tub down. She felt the warmth of Soren’s hand on top of her head in the way big brothers do sometimes. She gave both her brothers a smile and grabbed the plain buttered pasta and the big bottle of the shaker parmesan cheese. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wren stick a cigarette between his lips, and she let her eyes close in a moment of frustration before turning back to Rory. Not bothering to warm the pasta up, Orion portioned out some cold penne and threw on some salt and parm. She sat at the kitchen island with a fork and slumped over as she ate. “My coach is starting weigh-ins again, and he said I’m too heavy to fly again this year, so I’m back to being a base. Then he sat there for twenty minutes making us tumble over and over again, and now he’s saying my full looks sloppy, which is not the truth at all. He just as some personal vendetta against me,” Orion said, getting mad at her pasta as she stabbed each piece with her fork so hard they ripped in half. “Sorry,” she said after taking a deep breath. “I’m just frustrated I drive an hour there and back every night to be treated like garbage.”
Rory admired Orion for doing her own thing. In Nora’s home, though she encouraged everyone to be unique and find themselves, oftentimes, people’s hobbies were a little repetitious. You had the musically-inclined famous boys, Milania’s beloved dancers, the under-the-radar stoners, the Whoops Ledges teenagers, the recovering AA still-smoke-cigarette young adults, the LGBTQ+ crowd, the young, cool mothers, and that was really about it. There wasn’t any clique for cheerleaders, so Orion said screw it, and she created one. Granted, it was just her, but she was still cool. Rory didn’t understand cheerleading too much, but tumbling was something she could get behind. Before coming to Nora’s, Rory competed in gymnastics and she was pretty good. Now, her standing back tuck was just a party trick. She knew her parents would probably be sick hearing that after imaging how much money they fished over for her for all of those years. “I had an old gymnastics coach who would purposely order our team leotards too small so we’d have to lose weight or not fit into them,” Rory said, scrunching her nose, “And I was like…ten. She was crazy.” She finished frosting the last few cupcakes of the batch and decided on green sprinkles to decorate them with. She wasn’t sure if Will was a sprinkle guy, but Rory liked them so she made the executive decision just to use them anyways. “Nobody says you’ve got to stay at that gym forever. Just ‘cause they’re good or have a popular name, sure, but isn’t your happiness important? You don’t want to lose your passion for it, you know…burnout or whatever.”
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