Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

  “Sorry,” I say. “But we’ve got a lot of planning to do. Plus, Leo always cries at the end of this movie, and it’s one of the only times I get to see him be vulnerable.” I know as soon as I’ve said it that I’ve made a horrible mistake. Leo’s arm tightens on my shoulder, and I can hear Tig laughing.

  “We’ll come,” Leo says, letting go of me and pulling Tig to his feet. Tig grumbles, but he’s powerless to resist Leo.

  “Leo,” I hiss, trying to convey that Polly thinks it might be a prank without actually saying the words out loud.

  “Hey,” he says. “We’re here to make friends and influence people, aren’t we?” He throws an arm around Amy’s shoulder. He’s trying for an effect that he’s not quite achieving, and I don’t think I’m the only one cringing.

  Amy is looking at her shoes. I know that this is an awful idea, but I can’t stop him without being a jerk.

  “They’ll be fine,” Polly says, and I back down. If Polly thinks the St. Ig’s team is on the up-and-up, then they probably are. And if they’re not, it’s not like Leo’s new to pranks.

  “Be safe,” I say, which is also dumb, but it’s the only thing I can think of.

  “He’ll be fine,” says one of the St. Ig’s boys. “It’s not like drowning is part of your curse.”

  Everyone laughs at that, and then everyone stops laughing really quickly so we don’t accidentally get the attention of an adult. Then they all melt into the darkness towards the lake. It isn’t until Amy sits down next to me that I realize she hasn’t gone all the way to the lake with them. I’m a bit confused, because she’d invited us in the first place, but maybe she only wanted to do the prank if we were going too.

  “Do you want me to leave so you can do choreo?” she asks.

  “No, we can’t do much more without the guys,” Polly says. “And as you can see, they have the attention spans of gerbils.”

  “At least yours listen when you talk,” Amy says.

  “Appointed captain, eh?” Polly says. We were elected—unanimously—so we have our jobs because the team wanted us to have them.

  “By the vice principal,” Amy confirms.

  “Oooooh, you’re practically a narc!” I hope she understands I’m teasing, and when she laughs, I feel much better about it.

  “Don’t remind me,” she says. And I can see that her laugh hides real distress.

  “Will you guys be okay next week?” Polly asks.

  After our “day off” tomorrow, we launch into five straight days of endurance and strength training. It’s equal parts cardio, choreo, and hell, all leading up to our performance day on Friday. It’s an incredibly exhausting week in every sense, and I’ve seen it bring even strong teams to tears. At least I’ll be leading a team I know has my back. Amy might as well be carrying a picnic basket of vipers.

  For a few moments there’s silence and we each pretend to watch the movie. I cannot imagine the dread Amy’s feeling for next week. It’s the exact opposite of what I have.

  “Maybe it’ll bring us all together? Make us stronger for the season?” Amy breaks our silence but she doesn’t sound hopeful.

  “I’ve heard war does that to people,” Polly says. “And as you know, cheerleading is a lot like war.”

  She sounds so serious that I can’t help laughing.

  Polly keeps going, as if to prove Amy isn’t the only one good at improv. “Or is there any chance you might contract a fatal illness?” She nods at Rudy in his Notre Dame uniform. “You know, ‘Win one for the Gipper’? Nothing better for team spirit than a captain’s life cut tragically short.” Polly reaches over and holds her hand against Amy’s forehead, and Amy swoons theatrically, nearly falling into her arms across my lap. “You are feeling a bit feverish.”

  And then Amy’s laughing too, even though it’s a very serious part of the movie, and everyone is looking back at us. We ignore them, still piled on top of one another, and laugh until we cry. The moment is well and truly broken when a very, very wet Leo grabs Amy by her shoulders and pulls her out of Polly’s grasp.

  “Leo!” I say. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “She set us up!” Leo hisses. At least he’s smart enough not to shout. If he gets caught, it will be obvious where he’s been.

  “She’s been here the whole time,” I hiss. Polly has got up and gone around me to make sure that Amy is okay. She seems mostly surprised, but I am shaking with anger. “And anyway, you can’t just walk up here and grab a girl like that. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Of course you’d defend them,” Leo says. “All they do is talk about how awesome you are. How you’re a real captain—with real legs to match.”

  Both Amy and I flinch at that, but Polly goes ice cold.

  “Leon David McKenna.” Polly is glaring at him, her face so hard that even I’m scared of her, just for a second. “Get your ass to your cabin before you get caught, and if I ever hear you talk like that about any girl, alive or dead, I will skin you.”

  Leo looks like he has about a million things to say, but he says none of them. He slinks off through the grass. I have no idea where Tig went. I hope he’s smart and just went straight to his cabin to dry off.

  “What was that about?” asks Jenny, who has appeared out of nowhere. I don’t know how much she’s heard, and right now I kind of don’t care.

  “Leo got pranked and he’s pissed about it,” I tell her as calmly as I can manage, though I can feel my heart racing. Everyone is looking at us again, more interested than when we were laughing. Scandal, even the potential of, attracts the worst kind of attention, and right now that’s the last thing we need. “It’s really important that no one cause a scene.”

  Jenny goes back to watching the movie, and I turn to Amy. “I am so sorry about that.”

  “I had no idea,” she says. “They never tell me anything.”

  “Were any of them from our cabin?”

  “No,” she says. “They all love you. It was the boys and the other girls.”

  “Well, thank goodness for small blessings,” Polly says. “And as much as I hate to say it, I think the coaches just got here. We’re going to have to watch the movie.”

  I look up and see the familiar silhouette of Caledon. I don’t know how she does it, but she always seems able to see us in the dark. Hopefully Leo and Tig will count themselves out for the rest of the night. They don’t care about the triumphant finish in this movie anyway. Neither of them has ever been a benchwarmer in their lives.

  “Agreed,” I say.

  I don’t remember the last time I went to a movie and someone sat between Polly and me. If it had to be anyone, I’m glad it’s Amy. I don’t usually get sentimental about camp friendships, largely because I’ve never had one, but when we all go back home next week, I think I’m going to miss her.

  CHAPTER 6

  THEY DON’T DROP US, BUT the new boys are slow. In theory, you can be a cheerleader if you can count to eight, but Cameron and Dion are lost without music. We can only go as fast as our slowest teammates, and at practice on Saturday morning, Dion and Cameron are by far the slowest. I can tell Caledon is getting to the end of her patience.

  “Dion, Cameron,” I say, taking pity on them. “Come here for a moment.”

  I’m pretty sure that part of their problem is that they’re lifting Jenny. She’s the lightest (a fact she’s quite proud of), but she’s also the least stable in the air, and the boys are compensating for her and losing their count.

  “Watch Leo and Tig do it,” I say once they’ve joined me on the sideline.

  Polly counts them through the whole thing. They don’t need it, but Cameron and Dion do. We watch Leo lift Polly into Tig’s grasp, and then Tig braces himself and throws her up in the air. She flips, perfectly in time and still counting. There’s a moment when she hangs in the air, just her and the sky and the very tops
of the trees. The view is great, if you can keep your head together, and that is something both Polly and I excel at. She comes all the way around and descends, and the boys catch her and put her on her feet for the eight count.

  “Goddamn.” Cameron shakes his head and wipes the sweat from his eyes. “I should have stuck with hockey.”

  “Hockey’s too easy,” I say, trying to radiate patience and confidence. “Your turn.”

  Polly takes over the main practice, shifting Jenny to the dance line for the moment while I practice the throw. Cameron is the stronger of the two, but Dion is more sure, so he’s the one who will be throwing me.

  “Five, six, seven, eight!” I count, rocking back on my feet and throwing myself into Cameron’s arms.

  He’s smart enough to use the inertia to get me towards Dion, but he pushes just a bit too hard, so when Dion throws me up in the air, I go off behind him instead of straight up. In the air, there’s not a lot I can do to save myself, so I finish the flip and point my feet to the ground. I do my best not to panic, but I can’t see the ground for most of the manoeuver.

  “Shit!” curses Dion, who realizes his mistake almost as soon as I am out of his hands.

  He’s backpedaling frantically and Cameron moves with him. When I come around and see that they’re going to catch me after all, I tuck. It’s still too late. All three of us crash to the ground in some dreadful kind of sandwich. Dion has taken one for the team and is on the bottom, but Cameron is on top of me, and it’s hard to breathe.

  “Hermione!” Leo has broken formation and is pulling Cameron off me while Cam is too stunned to move.

  “I’m good, I’m good!” I call out. “Dion?”

  “Ooof,” he grunts. I think I’ve elbowed him in the gut. I hope that’s where it was, anyway. With Cameron on top of me, it’s not like I have much control. “Cameron, you weigh a tonne.”

  “Tell me about it,” I joke as we extricate arms and legs. Dion’s blushing and does his best to push me up while also not touching me anymore than he already is.

  “It’s all muscle,” Cameron says, and I know, at least, that his ego survived the fall.

  “You’re all in one piece, then?” asks Caledon, who looks concerned even though we’re laughing.

  “Yes, Coach!” we chorus.

  Then I clap my hands, and shout, “Dion, Cameron. Let’s get it right. One more time.” They snap into position and I count, “Five, six, seven, eight!”

  —

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Dion says an hour later when we head back out after lunch. I know he feels awful, but it was a legitimate mistake. If it had been a stupid one, I might be less forgiving.

  “It’s fine, Dion,” I tell him. “The important thing is that you caught me. As long as you do that, we’re okay.”

  I sling my arm around his shoulder, which is a reach because he’s a lot taller than I am, and when I stumble from trying to walk off balance, he picks me up and swings me around his neck. I shriek, even though I know it’s in good fun, and we’re both smiling when he sets me down.

  “God, Winters,” Leo says, appearing beside me. He’s spent most of the lunch break fussing over me, and had gone to get tape. “Be careful!”

  “We’re fine,” I say. “We’ve got to trust one another, or the team won’t work.”

  “You could just trust me,” he mumbles.

  “I’m the captain.” I stop walking so we can have a chance at doing this privately. “We talked about this before we got on the bus back in Palermo. You agreed.”

  “I know,” he says. “I just miss having you to myself.”

  I don’t tell him that he’s never had me to himself, because that would only hurt his feelings. We’ve only been dating since nationals last spring, and even though we’ve spent a lot of time together over the summer, he hardly has a monopoly on my heart. I like him, obviously, or I wouldn’t be dating him, but I like Polly too, and she’s been my friend for much longer. What Leo and I have is exciting and new. What Polly and I have is forever. But Leo doesn’t seem to understand that and worse, he never seems to try.

  —

  By two thirty, when the weather turns from superhot to superhot, we are cheered out. At this time of year, the days start cool enough that we show up in long pants and sweatshirts, but after lunch everyone is stripped down to shorts and T-shirts or tank tops. We’re also the last team left on the field, by about fifteen minutes. That’s what makes us Fighting Bears, Caledon tells us: We don’t stop until we’re done. Once we’ve done the routine three times with no foul-ups, she dismisses us. The boys run straight to the lake, shuck their shirts and dive in. We girls drag ourselves to our cabins, change into suits and grab our towels. Most of the team is splashing around in the deep part of the swimming area, but the idea of treading water is more than I can cope with, so I just go in to my knees and sit down. My suit immediately fills with sand. It is a distinctly childish feeling, and I don’t actually hate it.

  “Well, at least no one died.” Polly sits down next to me, and for a moment I’m tempted to dunk her, but there’s no way I’m winning that, and we both know it, so I settle for running my hands through the water instead.

  “It wasn’t that bad, or Caledon would still have us up there,” I point out.

  “True,” Polly says. “The boys did well and I think the Sarahs have improved dramatically since their tryouts.”

  “Haven’t they done anything that earns them a nickname yet?” I ask. It’s getting a bit ridiculous.

  “I think one of them is trying out ‘Digger,’” Polly says. “But I don’t know which one.”

  “Great,” I say. “They’ll end up called Pom-Poms or something, and then we’ll be really screwed.”

  “Yes,” Polly agrees sagely. “Our biggest problem will almost certainly be our inability to tell the Sarahs apart.”

  I giggle, and Polly grins. I recognize danger half a second too late, and she dunks me before I can put up a fight. I come up spluttering, because I was still laughing when I went under. I know better than to try to return more of the same, so I splash in her general direction.

  “That’s weak, Winters,” Leo says, from the dock, watching me again. “Do you want me to dunk her for you?”

  “It would be the last thing you ever did,” I tell him. “And we need you too badly to lose you this early in the season.”

  He laughs, and then Tig does a cannonball right beside us. The splash isn’t much, because the water’s so shallow, and he comes up howling from a stubbed toe, which cracks the rest of us up.

  —

  It’s the last time we have for fun and laughing for the next six days, though, because starting at seven a.m. on Sunday morning, the real work starts. It gets a bit cooler as the week drags on, reminding us that Labour Day weekend waits for us on Friday, and school after that, but we don’t really notice that the temperature has dropped. During the day, we’re working too hard, and at night, we’re dead to the world.

  Cheerleaders have to be in excellent shape, and by the final Friday night, we’re all in stupendous form. The trainers let us knock off half an hour early so that some of us can shower before dinner. Amy and I let the younger girls go first, and we show up to the dining hall sweaty and gross. It’s worth it, though, because in the forty minutes it takes us to eat, the hot water replenishes itself, and we can take slightly longer showers as a result.

  When I get back into the cabin, there are clothes everywhere. Thank goodness there’s no inspection tomorrow. The girls are trading back and forth; outfits and hair accessories and makeup tips. You’d think it was something more important than an end-of-camp dance where the girls outnumber the boys four to one. And I have a boyfriend, of course. Still, I have to admit, I’m a little excited myself, and can’t stop smiling as I shake out the sundress I packed for the occasion. After a week of eight counts and danc
e numbers where everyone’s arms and legs do exactly what they’re supposed to, all at the same time, it’ll be a relief to just let loose and dance for the fun of it.

  “Here,” says Amy, gesturing to the bed in front of her. “I’ll do your hair.”

  She’s not the wizard Polly is, but she’s still pretty good. In the end, my hair is a lattice of alternating colours and I can’t follow one lock from start to finish. It’s going to take me an hour to pull out, but everyone in the cabin will be in the same boat, so I don’t mind.

  “Your turn!” I say, and we switch places. I’m no master either, but Amy’s thrilled when she sees herself in the mirror.

  “Hermione!” Mallory shouts. “We’re going to be late!”

  “You’re supposed to be late,” Jenny tells her.

  I suddenly remember that Leo wanted to meet at the doors before the dance. Too late for that now. I wince a little at the thought of another black mark on my girlfriend record, but then Amy grabs my hand and I can’t bring myself to care.

  —

  By the time we get to the dining hall, which has been completely emptied of tables, the overhead lights are out, and the bass and a strobe are pumping. I spot Polly in the centre of the crowd and she is a thing of fearsome beauty. Unconstrained by choreography, Polly is one of those dancers a circle inevitably forms around. She is a tiny thing with huge gravity. I stop in my tracks and watch as her every move is captured by the strobe.

  Whoever’s playing DJ screeches the song to a halt, and abruptly launches into one of those decades-old power-pop anthems that demands ironic chorus shouting. I am more than happy to join in. Apparently I really cannot get enough group shouting.

  A song later, Polly grabs my hands and pulls me into the seething mass. It’s all limbs and hips and shoulders and hair, and then someone puts the cup in my hand. It’s hot and I’m thirsty, so I drain it and go looking for a garbage can to put the empty cup in.

  “Hey,” says a voice I don’t quite recognize amidst all the noise. A boy’s voice. “Looking for something?”