Week 12 Story: The Jealous Cheerleader

It was a Monday morning at Sunnydale High School. It was like any other morning except today was the first day of the new school year. You could see everyone excited to see each other after a long and hot summer. Especially Jennifer and her cheer-leading girls. Jennifer was the captain of the cheerleaders at school. She was top of her class and was liked by all the students, even teachers, at Sunnydale. Boys would go crazy over her. That all changed when Molly showed up. She was a transfer student from the north side. She was everything Jennifer, but even better. This got Jennifer very angry. She became obsessed with becoming the most popular girl of the school again. She became jealous.

Jennifer devised a plan to get rid of Molly once and for all, so that she could sit atop of the popularity scale in the end. Given Molly's rapid popularity at school, she was almost forced to join the cheer-leading squad. This wall all a part of Jennifer's devious plan. Now that she had Molly right where she wanted, all she had to do was wait till their first practice.

The day had come. Sunnydale's first cheer-leading practice took place after school. All was going well and everyone seemed to enjoy the practice so far. The girls then proceeded to the lifting portion of the practice and the girl of choice was none other than Molly herself. Jennifer was very eager to be one of the girls to lift Molly. Everything was going smoothly. All the lifters, including Jennifer, got Molly in the air, but once it was time for them to catch her everything went wrong. Jennifer was suppose to catch her, but instead "slipped" away and this leaded to Molly crashing down onto the grass. Molly was rushed to the school infirmary and was diagnosed with a broken foot from her landing. Jennifer was so excited to her about Molly's injury because that meant her plan to take her out was coming to fruition.

Little did Jennifer know that this injury caused the whole school to feel sympathy towards Molly. They teachers even took time out of their lectures and had all the students write "get well" cards for Molly. Many students even went to visit Molly in the infirmary and signed her foot cast. Jennifer's planned had totally backfired. Eventually by the end of the school year, all the students had found out that Jennifer was the one who purposefully didn't catch Molly and gave her the broken foot. Jealous Jennifer was never heard from again. Some say she transferred schools.

(Cheerleaders, Source: Forever Twenty Somethings)

Author's Note:
In the original story there was an uncle who took the every son that this family bore and killed him. He had killed 3 before a 4th child came into this world. He was kept a secret and the uncle's wife told him that they had bore a daughter and not a a son. However, the uncle found out anyways when he saw what was underneath his clothes. The uncle asked for the son and took him out to get some logs. They wandered out far into the forest where the son got caught in one of the logs. The uncle left him there to die and rot however he had tools with him that led to his escape. He gathered the log and left them in front of his uncles tent. The uncle was furious and tried to kill him many more times. Next was with ducks and eggs, then it was with clams, and then finally he made the nephew a box. He trapped the son inside this box and threw him into the ocean where he drifted from island to island until finally he halted. Two daughters found him on the shore and brought him back to their village where the chief decided to care and raise him. However, he began to miss his previous home and his parents, so with permission from the Eagle people, he flew back to the previous village. He brought them back a huge whale, but the jealous uncle took it all for himself and left none for the nephews parents. He was furious and took the uncle up into the sky and dropped him into the ocean. He couldn't swim for he drowned and died. The nephew got his revenge and took his parents back to his new found home where they all lived happily. I wanted to modernize this story and placed the setting in a high school and centered the story around two girls. One was the popular cheerleader of the school, Jennifer, and the other was a new transfer student who won every one's heart, Molly. My retelling changed a lot of things, but the main story is the same with the jealously playing a huge part.

Bibliography: "The Jealous Uncle" by Stith Thompson. Web Source