Pyramid of One

by Zoe Evans

  Jared winced in pain when we stretched out our backs.

  “Vat is matter?” said Katarina, looking concerned.

  “Those beds,” said Jared. “It’s like they’re made of rocks or something. I should have brought my own pillow at least.” He pouted.

  “Hey, Jared,” teased Matt. “Did you enjoy your little sleepover with the ladies?”

  “Yeah, no thanks to you,” snapped Jared.

  “Guys!” I said before it could get any worse. “Are you with me today or what?”

  “With you,” everyone said in unison.

  “All right. Now let’s get to some cheering, ok?” The group lined up, all facing one another except for me. I was the star of this stunt we’d been practicing, called the teddy bear. I did a cartwheel and then, at the end, held my legs straight as the bases caught me. Matt and Ian held my calves, and Tabitha Sue helped to hoist my body up until I was being held in a split. After I was lowered down, the whole squad sprang into toe touches and then made Vs with our arms. Each one of us smiled like we’d just won the lottery. Our choreography went off without a hitch. Yay! And then we ended with our thigh—stand pyramid.

  “Woohoo!” said Matt, clapping. “We did it, right, Maddy? I don’t think there were any mistakes, right?” He was slightly out of breath.

  “Yeah,” I said, relieved. “No mistakes. We were all on the same timing.” The Grizzlies, for the first time since we’d gotten on that bus the day before, looked pumped.

  “Go, Grizzlies!” hooted Mom. She was beaming as she watched us.

  “Another one?” I suggested.

  I led the Grizzlies in another routine—this time with a chairlift and a back walkover. It was almost perfect, like the other one. Other teams stopped to watch us and gave us thumbs—up signs of approval. I was really surprised. I didn’t expect any team to pay attention to us unless we were in the competition. And it was obvious, I think, that we aren’t at competition level. But people stood to watch anyway and be supportive, which I guess is what cheerleading is all about. I don’t think the judges noticed us, though. But then again, you never know.

  Just when we finished our little routine and were jumping and hugging one another, I heard Katie call my name.

  I turned around, and she looked positively ready to pummel me.

  Tabitha Sue came up to me to whisper in my ear. “Hey, you need me to get your back?”

  I shook my head. I had to handle this on my own. Ever since I saw Evan’s comic, I knew that I’d have to face Katie someday. She’d known about Bevan and me since that first day we hung out at the mall—I couldn’t imagine what awful things she’d been waiting to say to me.

  Katie made her way toward me, her ponytail swinging back and forth almost in perfect timing with Kanye West’s “Heartless,” which was playing over the loudspeakers.

  “All this pretending has been ruining my game,” she said. “I’m done. Madison, I know you and Bevan are seeing each other.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  I could feel my face getting redder and redder. “We-we-we’re not really . . .” Seriously, I was stuttering. I guess Bevan isn’t the ONLY person I act challenged around.

  “Oh, please,” Katie scoffed. “Everyone knows.” She waved her hand around as if everyone at the competition was aware of my crush.

  “Katie, it isn’t a secret that we’ve been hanging out, but we’re not, like, a couple or anything.” It’s true! I stopped acting like it was some big secret once I heard that Katie and Evan were a thing.

  “Whatever. You’re hanging out with him. That’s bad enough. I thought you knew the cheerleader rule.”

  I almost laughed, because hearing her say it out loud—the whole “rule” thing sounded pretty ridiculous. I suddenly had this image of what Katie’s rule would look like in The Spirit Rules book.

  But Katie was far from smiling. “If a cheerleader dates someone,” she continued, pointing to herself, “that person becomes off-limits. Forever. Even after she breaks up with him. That’s just the way it goes.”

  She waited for me to speak.

  “I wasn’t planning on going out with him,” I muttered softly. “It-it just happened.”

  “Oh, so he forced you to hang out together in the mall that day? You didn’t look like you minded,” she said, smiling meanly.

  I was like, “Whoa.” What did she do, follow us around that day? Like a stalker? Freaky.

  By now, cheerleaders from both the Titan and Grizzly squads were surrounding us. It was like we were having some kind of showdown, like in the movies. (If this were Bring It On, I wondered which actress would play me. I hoped it was Kirsten Dunst.) Ian, Matt, Jared, Tabitha Sue, Lanie, Jacqui, and Katarina stood behind me, and the Titans were behind Katie. I felt stronger knowing I had my team LITERALLY on my side.

  “Actually, Katie, Bevan asked me out. And I avoided going out with him because of your rule. Then we happened to bump into each other that day at the mall, and we had a great time. It just kind of happened. We have hung out a couple times since then, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I can’t help that he likes me and I like him.”

  Katie rolled her eyes and was about to say something but I cut her off.

  “Honestly, Katie, I think that rule is kind of silly. I love the Titans and I love cheerleading, but your rule doesn’t have anything to do with the sport. Competitive cheerleading already has enough rules of its own, don’t you think?”

  I waited for a response. Zilch. Nada. Silence.

  So I continued. “I just don’t think it’s fair that I have to deny my feelings because you dated him once upon a time.”

  Katie pursed her lips. “You know, Evan told me you didn’t care about people’s feelings sometimes.”

  I could hear the gasps of surprise all around us.

  “Evan the comic geek?” said Clementine, laughing.

  “He’s not a geek!” protested Lanie.

  Just then the announcer’s voice boomed through the gym. “This is the Sunset Valley Regional Qualifier, day two,” he said. “Welcome, everyone.”

  “We’re up soon,” Clementine said to Katie.

  Katie stood there fuming as she looked at me. Hilary and Clementine took her by the arm and led her to the practice mat.

  The Titans followed Katie and Clementine onto the mat, and I was just left standing there with this look of shock on my face. Seriously, I didn’t think we could fit any more drama into this weekend!! I’m officially irritated, but I can’t deal with it now because I have to go cheer on Jacqui. But boy oh boy, am I looking forward to that bus ride home now. . . .

  POST-COMPETITION, HOTEL LOBBY

  And the drama just continued. . . .

  After I shook myself out of my funk, I noticed that Jacqui was standing in front of me looking absolutely terrified. I shook myself to clear my head of the fight, and focused on my teammate.

  “What’s wrong, Jacqs?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t go out there. I just saw one of the judges. I—I don’t know how I didn’t notice before.”

  “Notice what?” I asked.

  “Last year she gave me the lowest marks of my entire cheer life! I was depressed for, like, a month. And now, with her up there, I’m gonna mess everything up for the Titans.”

  “Oh, Jacqui, no, you won’t,” I said reassuringly. “You’re so great. I’m sure the judge was just having a bad day. You blow half the cheerleaders in this room out of the park.”

  Jacqui didn’t even look like she was hearing me.

  “Mads, you have to do it. You know the whole routine. You watched the whole thing.”

  Me?! Was she completely out of her MIND!!!??? If anyone had asked me yesterday, I definitely would have been thrilled. Even if I’d have to do some stunts I wasn’t totally familiar with. I would have just learned them on the fly. But to just go out there without any practice? NUH-UH. Although, it would have been an amazing chance to get the judges to notice me. And also, with this fight with Katie, I�
�d probably never be invited to be a Titan. It could’ve been my one and only chance of making it to the qualifier with the Titans.

  But Jacqui was the better person for the job. And I’d been an awful co—captain for not wanting what was best for her and for the Titans. The Spirit Rules says you should always support your teammates—no matter what. There’s no room for jealousy on a team. And it’s true—these bad feelings have only gotten me down when I should’ve been excited for a Grizzly to compete at the qualifier—even if it meant she’d be a Titan for a while.

  I grabbed Jacqui’s hands and faced her. “Jacqs. Just go out there and cheer your heart out. Don’t think about judges. You’re so not like that. Do it for the Grizzlies. Everyone on the squad is behind you. You’re an inspiration to them and me.”

  Jacqui bit her lip. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Come on, Jacqui,” said Matt from a few steps away. “Go show ’em what the Grizzlies are all about.” He smiled.

  “See?” I said.

  She took a deep breath. “Ok.”

  We all went to our seats to watch.

  “And now, introducing the Port Angeles Titaaaans!” called the announcer. Everyone ran onto the floor, hollering and whooping. Not a single person on the team was wearing anything less than a megawatt smile. They took their positions right as the cheer medley began.

  “Go, Titans!” Tabitha Sue shouted.

  The cheerleaders at the front did a number of backflips across the mat, while the cheerleaders in the back did round—off back handsprings diagonally across. Clementine did a running jump into a basket toss, then tumbled toward the front of the mat, clapping to the beat when she landed. Then there were rewinds into partner stunts. The guys lifted the girls into perfect scorpions, the girls’ feet pulled so close to their bodies that they almost didn’t look human. Then everyone did some dance choreography with stunts in between while the music played “Pump It” by the Black Eyed Peas. The audience was going nuts. Especially Mom, who was getting red in the face from screaming.

  After some cheers, it was time for the grand finale: the pyramid. My eyes stayed glued to Jacqui as I prayed she’d hit it. She launched into her X out basket toss and was hoisted up again into another pyramid. This one was even higher and more complicated than the first: a wolf wall—one of the more difficult pyramids. The flyers held their poses at the top, waving and smiling at the audience. When they tumbled down from the pyramid, the whole gym was yelling for them. The Titans looked ecstatic, jumping up and down and hugging one another when their routine was over. Looking at Katie, you couldn’t tell that just moments before, she’d been fighting with someone. This was why she was a Titan. She could get into cheer mode at the drop of a hat. Nothing trumps CHEER.

  As soon as Jacqui was off the mat, Coach Whipley ran up to her. It looked like the two of them shared a moment. I know that made Jacqui ÜBERHAPPY, and THIS time, I’M happy for her.

  Jacqui ran toward us afterward.

  “You did it! You rocked that routine!” I said, flinging my arms around her.

  Just then Marissa Kemper came up to her. “You were awesome. Thanks for covering for me,” she said. Wow. If I was jealous of Jacqui, I couldn’t begin to imagine what Marissa was feeling. She was the one who was replaced. At the qualifier.

  Both teams waited—without talking much—to hear the results from the godlike announcer’s voice.

  “The score for the Port Angeles Titans”-he paused- “is 9.34!”

  We opened our eyes in surprise. “What does that mean?” someone asked.

  “It means we’re going to Regionals!” squealed Clementine.

  “There are only a few teams left,” Coach Whipley pointed out. “And none of them holds a candle to the Titans.” She smiled. “I bet we made second place.”

  For Jacqui’s sake (and also, I admit, for getting Katie to NOT want to murder me anymore), I really, really hope Coach Whipley is good at telling the future.

  On the bus ride home, I went over to Katie to smooth things over. Luckily, the Titans did in fact place second, so Katie is in a WAY better mood than before. I wonder if the stress from the competition had something to do with our fight. Either way, I felt weird about how we left things. I couldn’t stand to have this issue between us any longer.

  I made my way toward the front of the bus, where she was kneeling on her seat, facing backward to talk to Clementine and Hilary.

  “Can I sit down?” I asked.

  She looked me up and down and then shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t own the bus.”

  When we were seated side by side, I rubbed my sweaty palms along my jeans. “Hey, things got really crazy earlier,” I said. “I’m sorry it got to that point.”

  She looked away from me, out the window. “Yeah, I guess I might have overreacted. Listen, I wish I had known you didn’t, like, ‘go after’ Bevan. I think I would have handled the whole thing better. I thought you did it on purpose or something.”

  “Well, I have to be honest. I’ve liked him for a while, even though I wished I didn’t. But I did try really hard to stay away from him. I didn’t want this to come between, you know, the Titans and the Grizzlies.”

  “Well, he obviously likes you, too,” she said sadly. “I’m really not good with rejection. If you can’t tell.” She smiled a little.

  “But what about Evan?” I asked. “He’s awesome. Aren’t things working out with you two?”

  Katie laughed. “Evan is awesome. But I don’t know where you’re getting your info-he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “What?” I asked. That was a surprise. “I thought you guys were going out. Isn’t he the guy you’ve been crushing on?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I made the whole crush thing up so people wouldn’t feel sorry for me when they found out about you and Bevan. I wouldn’t have minded if my real crush were Evan.” She smiled shyly. “But in case you haven’t realized, he’s into you too.”

  I felt like I’d just walked into a glass door—you know the kind you can’t really see until your nose is bleeding? “What? What are you talking about?” I croaked.

  Katie looked down at her lap. “He was pretty bummed when he saw you with Bevan. I think we kind of came together that day, both being upset about our crushes being with someone else.”

  There is NO WAY this is true. Evan? Nuh-uh. She must be reading into things. I just shook my head and tried to gloss over it. “Ok, now I think you’re the one with wrong information. Evan and I have been BFFs for, like, ever.”

  “Look, that’s between you and Evan. But I’m not gonna date someone who is obviously hung up on someone else.”

  “I really didn’t want to hurt you, Katie,” I continued, trying to ignore the Evan part of the conversation. “I kind of liked the friendship we were sort of building.”

  “It’s ok,” said Katie. “But tell me the truth. Are you and Bevan boyfriend and girlfriend? You can tell me now.”

  “I honestly don’t know what we are.” Because, really? I don’t.

  Katie just nodded. “That’s fair.” She looked out the window again.

  Lanie walked down the aisle toward where Mom was sitting and mouthed to me, “You ok?”

  I nodded.

  I really want Katie to not be mad at me anymore. It’s been making me so sick these past few weeks. But it’s up to her now. She’ll either forgive me and move on or hold this against me forever. I remembered another good spirit rule: When in doubt, smile it out. “We good?” I asked Katie, putting my hand on her shoulder and smiling.

  She turned to face me and smiled. “Yeah, we’re good.”

  I walked back to my seat, breathing out a sigh of relief. That was H-E-A-V-Y. I can’t believe how majorly things got out of hand earlier today. All I can think is, THANK GOD the day is O-V-E-R.

  “So, what happened?” asked Lanie when she came back to our seat.

  “Do you mind if I fill you in later? I kind of want to think about things,” I said.
/>   “Totally,” said Lanes.

  I put on my iPod mix and closed my eyes, going over my conversation with Katie. I still was kind of shocked that the tension from the past few weeks was finally over.

  Suddenly my phone vibrated with a text message. Guess who it was from?

  Bevan: What’s up? Haven’t heard from u in a while. Madison: Sorry! Been a craaazy day.

  Bevan: When will u be back? Can we c that movie tmrw?

  Madison: It’s a date.

  Yippie!!! That’s how I feel at this very moment. And . . . since I was finally allowed to be honest with Katie, it’s about time I’m honest with myself. Bevan and I aren’t “just” hanging out (right??!) Not when he’s always finding reasons to ask me to go somewhere with him. That’s gotta mean more than just “hanging.” I’m not entirely sure how much more, but more. Definitely.

  Yup, this IS—without a doubt—a date.

  Tonight we had our first game since coming back from the qualifier and decided to debut everything we’ve learned from The Spirit Rules book, including some of the routines we did at the qualifier. It was a swim meet, so we had more room to move around than we usually do in tiny classrooms. Also, our school swim team is way more of a “sport” to cheer for than, say, speech club. So we were psyched.

  All day I’d been looking forward to the swim meet. So when we entered the chlorine—filled room, I was totally pumped. I could smell the spirit! But I could tell most of the team was nervous to put all their stunts together in front of a crowd that was just focused on them. The qualifier was one thing—we were showing off while lots of people just happened to be there, but they weren’t there to watch US. There were tons of other WAY better cheerleaders they were watching. This time we were the only ones to watch (oh, and the swim team too ).

  “Ok, Grizzlies,” said Jacqui, “make it count. Don’t look afraid. You own these moves.”

  The team stood at the ready. Jared was going to attempt a chairlift like we’d done at the qualifier, with Katarina as flyer. I caught his eye and winked.