Revenge of the Cheerleaders

by Janette Rallison

  And what exactly did he mean that he was innocent of anything else that happened? Was that some sort of threat?

  At lunch Samantha and I explained to Aubrie and Rachel what had happened at the dance. I pushed my salad around my plate without eating it. "So not only is he dating Adrian, now apparently he's trying to ruin my life, one painful day at a time."

  Samantha pulled an apple from her lunch sack. "But you sounded really good up there singing."

  "Did I?"

  Aubrie nodded. "I wish I could sing that well."

  My frustration with Rick momentarily evaporated while I considered this. I'd taken choir up until junior year, but to tell you the truth, I'd only signed up for it to get out of taking orchestra. I'd seen those flute and clarinet players wiping the spit out of their instruments and I'm sorry, but anything that involves large quantities of spit doesn't appeal to me. Mr. Metzerol, the music teacher, had never really forgiven me for not joining the show choir, but cheerleading practice was more important.

  Still, it was nice to know that I hadn't made a total fool of myself. So there, Rick.

  Rachel took a sip of her milk, considering. "I don't think his song had anything to do with getting back at you. I think he just wanted to advertise his party."

  "What party?" I asked.

  My friends exchanged glances. Rachel leaned toward me. "You haven't heard? Rick's band is playing at the Hilltop Friday night. He rented out the place for his party. He's practically invited the entire senior class."

  "His friends are passing out flyers about it," Aubrie said. "Adrian gave me one."

  Now that she mentioned it, I had seen people carrying around pieces of blue paper, but I hadn't asked anyone what they were, and everybody who talked to me in classes were too busy commenting on my assembly performance (Hey, when does the music video come out?) to mention anything else.

  Aubrie took the flyer from her notebook and handed it to me. It showed a photocopied picture of Rick and two other guys standing with electric guitars. Blue Rick, by the way, looked about as normal as the real Rick. The flyer read, "Come dance today to tomorrow's hottest band: Rick and the Deadbeats!"

  "They're moving out all the tables for the night and turning the restaurant into a dance floor," Rachel said. "Everyone is talking about it."

  "Everyone is going," Aubrie added.

  I put my fork down on my lunch tray. "To Rick's party? How did this happen? Since when did he become cool?"

  Rachel stirred her spaghetti around with her fork. "Since he made you and Mrs. Jones sing a duet in front of the whole school and the rest of the cheerleading squad dance to it." She gave a small grunt. "Like I'm not going to have recurring nightmares about this day for the rest of my life."

  Samantha patted my hand. "Don't listen to her. No one is laughing at us." More patting. "They're laughing with us. Really hard."

  Rachel picked up her fork and waved it in Samantha's direction. "This is mostly your fault, you know."

  "My fault?" she asked.

  "Yeah, during elections last year when Rick was a royal jerk to you, you didn't do anything to put him back in his place. Remember how you were all about taking the high road? Well, apparently the high road leads straight to musical numbers with the P.E. teacher. Now Rick thinks he can do anything to us and get away with it."

  Samantha thought about this, shaking her head. "Revenge doesn't solve anything. It just makes things worse."

  Rachel let out an exasperated sigh. "That depends on who's doing the revenge and who's dancing to one of Mrs. Jones's solos in front of the whole school, doesn't it?"

  And then Samantha cracked a smile. "If you can think of a way to get Rick dancing to Mrs. Jones in front of the whole school, I'll consider it. Until then, I say we just let the whole thing blow over. Let Rick have his party. So what if people are starting to think of him as some kind of rock star. I've heard Rick's music and no one will be that impressed with his band once they're trapped in a room with them. Just ignore him."

  Easier said than done. I live in a home that's frequently invaded by Rick. Still, I did think it would blow over. I thought his party and his attempts to get back at us wouldn't amount to anything. Which shows you that "psychic" wouldn't be a good career choice for me.

  Chapter 5

  I had no plans to go to Rick's party. I'm forced to see Rick more than I want, so why would I ever willingly go to a place he's performing?

  My mom had other ideas. Apparently going-to-Rick}s-party fell under the category of chaperoning-my-sister, which she wanted me to do. She was convinced alcohol would turn up at the party and she wanted to make sure I could yank Adrian home as soon as it appeared.

  After my mom informed me of my chaperoning duties, I called Samantha. "Hi Sam, remember how you like Rick and want to give him another chance and all that?"

  "I never said that," she said.

  "Well, close enough, and I need someone to go to his party with me. What are you doing Friday night?"

  There was a pause and then, "Wait a minute, Chelsea, weren't you the one who spent half of English class rearranging the letters in the words, 'Rick Debrock' to see if they had a hidden Satanic meaning?"

  So then I spent fifteen minutes explaining to Samantha how my mom had assigned me as Adrian's chaperone, and I was on Prohibition patrol. "I need someone to hang out with while I'm there. I mean, I can't be the only one in the room with an iPod strapped to my ears in an attempt to drown out his singing. It would look funny."

  Samantha sighed and said she would check and see what Logan was doing. Which meant I couldn't depend on her, since she was obviously using the old, "Let me check and see what my boyfriend has planned" ploy so she could call me back and say, "Darn, but he already bought movie tickets." Like I couldn't see through that. I'd used it myself.

  I dialed Aubrie's number. I didn't think I could talk Rachel into coming since she'd been the one to insist that the reason I couldn't find anything suspicious in Rick's name was because I wasn't using his middle name, which was probably something like Damien or Lucifer.

  But Aubrie is the friendliest person I know. She doesn't have to fake being peppy while wearing her cheerleading uniform. She was born perky.

  Aubrie agreed to come, although she nixed my iPod plan. Then Samantha called back and said that Logan had to work but she could come. Since the three of us were going, I called Rachel and used peer pressure to get her to agree to come with us. As I hung up the phone I thought, this might not be such a drag after all.

  The rest of the week passed by in a blur of what had become normal: homework, cheerleading, and ignoring Naomi and her friends. Mom told us that she had to go out of town in two weeks to go to a conference in Arizona on geriatric exercise. Our neighbor, Mrs. Fennelwick, had agreed to check up on us during Mom's absence, and Mom cheerfully reminded us of all the house rules; emphasizing no parties, no boys over, and no pretending that we were lost, dying, or possessed in order to frighten Mrs. Fennelwick. We had already learned by sad experience that Mrs. Fennelwick doesn't have a sense of humor. The story involves a dog whistle, the legend of the ghostly mailman, and her pampered cocker spaniel, but I won't go into that.

  Anyway, it was the usual stuff.

  Since Mike was likely to show up to Rick's party, I took extra time doing my hair and makeup on Friday night. I have long, strawberry blonde hair. Back before she became princess of the dark, Adrian used to tell me I had the prettiest hair in the world. The first couple of times she dyed her hair, she dyed it strawberry blonde to match mine.

  It didn't look right on her though. She doesn't have the blue eyes or the fair coloring that I do. She takes after our dad, with brown hair and dark eyes.

  I know people think I'm the prettier sister. You could always tell while we were growing up because my mom's friends would gush about what a beautiful girl I was and then they'd turn to Adrian and say something like, "And my, look how tall you've gotten."

  But Adrian is pretty in her own way. I t
hink she has an exotic flare. Well, at least she did before she started smearing so much eyeliner on that it looks like she's trying to pencil in glasses onto her face.

  After I'd finished getting ready, I drove Adrian and myself to the Hilltop. She hadn't said much to me since the "Be True to Your School" incident. I'd come home and asked her if she had anything to do with putting Rick's CD into my boom box and she'd said, "You must have accidentally put it in there yourself. Don't blame us for your disorganization."

  I could see in her face that she wanted to believe what she'd just said, but didn't. How many excuses would she have to make for Rick before she saw him for what he was? Softly, so she knew I wasn't attacking her, I said, "Adrian, how can you like a guy who's going to spend his entire life getting in trouble?"

  Whatever doubt had flickered in her expression immediately extinguished. "Rick is the smartest person I know," she said. "You don't have to worry about him. Or me."

  I dropped it after that. I was not about to let her start a lecture on how brilliant Rick was. She liked to point out that he skipped a grade back in elementary school. Big deal. You'd never know it by the way he goofs off in class now.

  So anyway, we were pretty silent until we got to the Hilltop and had to park down the street because the parking lot was full. As we walked up to the restaurant she said, "You don't have to drive me home. Rick is going to take me."

  "No, Mom said she wanted us to stick together. That means you're going home with me."

  Adrian tossed her hair off her shoulder, or at least she would have tossed it if it hadn't been shellacked with so much hair spray that it didn't move. "What are you—Mom, the sequel? You guys can't keep me away from Rick forever. We're in love."

  I couldn't help myself; I laughed. I know it wasn't the most sensitive thing to do, but I just couldn't imagine anyone being in love with a guy who changed hair color more often than he changed his socks. I mean, if he couldn't even commit to one shade of hair dye, how was he ever going to commit to a relationship? Adrian shot me a dark look and I removed all traces of humor from my face. "He's told you he loves you?" I couldn't imagine that either.

  She didn't answer, which meant he hadn't. Instead she lifted an eyebrow at me in a superior way. "Sometimes you don't have to say it. When you're in love you know it."

  We'd almost reached the restaurant doors and I slowed my pace. "You know it? That's all there is to it?"

  Her expression softened, as though just talking about Rick improved her mood. "The first time he danced with me, I knew it was love."

  How can you take someone seriously who says things like that? "Just because you danced together? Shouldn't other things matter when you make those kinds of decisions?"

  She rolled her eyes like I was the one being foolish. "See, that's how I can tell you've never been in love. If you had, you'd understand."

  Uh-huh. Some people refuse to be reasonable.

  After we went inside, I looked for my friends. This proved to be harder than I thought because the place was packed. Most of the senior class had come, and as Aubrie pointed out when I finally found my friends, quite a few attractive strangers besides.

  "Who would have thought that Rick knew hot guys?" Rachel said. "Do you think they're from Moscow or that they're college men?"

  Moscow, Idaho, was only eight miles away from Pullman, Washington, so there was always a certain amount of crossover at any given activity. But since the other two Deadbeats in Rick's band went to WSU, it was more likely that the hot guys were their friends.

  "Doesn't Rick have an older brother?" Samantha asked.

  He did. I knew this because I'd heard Adrian talk about him. Pullman High was so small that normally you knew who everyone was, even in the classes a year or two ahead of you, but Rick moved here the end of our sophomore year. His older brother stayed in California to finish high school, and then came to Pullman to go to WSU after that.

  Adrian said he was conceited and obnoxious. I figured that since she thought Rick was normal—whereas I thought Rick scored rather high on the conceited and obnoxious scale—that Rick's older brother must be so bad he had dedicated his life to harassing people in customer service departments.

  "I've never seen Rick's older brother," I said, " I 'd tell you to watch for someone who looks like Rick, but to tell you the truth under all his hair color and eyeliner, I'm still not sure what Rick looks like."

  "Well, at least Rick had the taste to rent out a nice place for his party," Samantha said. "How much do you think it cost him?"

  "A lot," Rachel said. "This place isn't cheap."

  "Where do you think he got the money?" Aubrie whispered.

  "Probably doing something illegal," I said. "That's why he constantly changes his hair. It helps him evade the authorities."

  Because Rick had always hung out with the fringe teenagers, and since he'd only lived here for a year and a half, my friends knew very little about him.

  "Does his family have money?" Rachel asked, and then everyone looked at me, like I should know. And you would think I would, seeing as Rick was dating my sister. But I didn't. I generally blocked Rick, and all things Rick-like, out of my mind.

  Most of the kids at Pullman High had parents who worked at WSU or Schweitzer Engineering Labs, which made us a fairly homogeneous tax-bracket group. I'd just assumed Rick was the same, but now I struggled to remember if there was something different about his background. What had Adrian said about his family?

  Um . . . they didn't understand his musical genius . . . and well, I usually stopped listening after that. Could they be wealthy?

  Rick drove a jeep. Those weren't that expensive. On the other hand, over the summer his family had vacationed in Kauai. I knew this because Adrian had moped around for the entire two weeks he'd been gone. That's when I'd started trying to set her up with normal guys.

  I shrugged. "Maybe they have money."

  I didn't say more because Rick walked up to the mike, welcomed people, and started his first song. I recognized it right away. It was the one we'd accidentally played at the pep assembly. Everyone burst into applause. I rolled my eyes, then let my gaze wander over the crowd.

  I mentally rated each outfit I saw, every once in a while commenting to my friends if someone had made a great choice or an especially glaring mistake. Samantha is trying to break me of this habit because she says I sound like a fashion fascist, but really, is it that hard for people to follow simple rules? No one gets mad at teachers for pointing out where you should use punctuation in your writing. It's the same thing, but instead of commas, I point out that you shouldn't wear a sweater that makes you look like you're smuggling a life vest under your shirt.

  I want to be a fashion designer someday so I have to pay attention to this kind of stuff. Besides, it's not like I say these things to people's faces. Although I admit I'm considering it in Naomi's case. She's so thin and wears such tight-fitting clothes, that every time I see her I have the urge to slip her a Snickers bar just to keep her from starving to death.

  She and Mike were hanging out with the football crowd. The guys smiled and talked with her, accepting her as easily as they ever accepted me. Naomi had her hand draped across Mike's waist in a way that made me feel conspicuously boy-less and wanting to spend the rest of the evening dancing with a hot, mysterious stranger.

  In fact I needed it. I wasn't about to go one more night letting Mike think that I was still moping over him.

  I leaned over to Rachel. "Hey, are any of the cute guys here without girlfriends?" I knew she'd know. Rachel calculates these sorts of things almost subconsciously.

  "Enough of them to keep me busy," she said.

  Samantha's gaze skipped back and forth between the two of us. "I thought we came to keep an eye on Adrian. Is this going to turn into one of those everyone-goes-off-flirting-with-guys-and-I'm-left-standing-by-myself-in-a-corner nights?"

  "Maybe," I said.

  She rolled her eyes. "I knew I shouldn't have come withou
t Logan."

  "I'll stay with you," Aubrie said, "because I'm loyal, and besides, I have too much taste to go out with any of Rick's friends."

  "Thanks." Samantha cast me a glance designed to make me feel guilty.

  Rachel put her hand on my arm. I recognized the boy-hunting glint in her eye—and yes, she does actually use the term boy-hunting. She has a whole hunting-season vocabulary worked out. She smiled at me. "Let's go get a drink and scope out the room." Then she shrugged in Samantha and Aubrie's direction. "Well, we all agreed that Chelsea needs a new boyfriend; and I'm going to let her have first pick."

  "All right," Samantha said with a martyr-like sigh. "If it's for a good cause . . ."

  How had I suddenly become a pity project?

  I followed after Rachel, enjoying the growing distance from Rick's music. Honestly, he only knew one volume: painfully loud.

  When we got to the back of the room, we picked up some sodas and looked around. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a tall guy in tan Dockers and a white button-down shirt off to our right. A Hilltop employee. A few guys dressed in the same uniform milled around the room, picking up discarded cups and plates, and in general acting as crowd control.

  I ignored him and looked out at the guys standing around the edges of the room.

  "The quarry is before us," Rachel said, "so dust off your supply of pickup lines and let's stalk our prey."

  "I don't have a supply of pickup lines," I said.

  "Then you can use one of mine. Try: Is it hot in here, or is it just you?"

  I laughed because I couldn't imagine myself saying that to anyone. My gaze traveled around the room. "They're nice, healthy stock," I said.

  "Got anyone in your sights?" Rachel asked.