by Jo Knowles
“D.? You still here?” Cal shakes me.
“Huh?” I look at the paver. Maybe I should give it back after all.
“I was saying I think we should keep the paver here,” Cal says. “It’s like . . . a monument.”
“A monument to what?” I ask.
“To bravery. To sticking it to the assholes.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. “I like it. And . . . it’s like you stuck it to them even better because you didn’t do anything with it. They’re probably waiting for you to, like, smash the windshield of their car or something. They’re probably all freaked out, wondering when you’ll strike.”
But instead of making me feel better, that makes me feel worse. Sure, they call me a bitch. Sure, I have no idea what it means. Sure, Ape Boy lusts after my sister. But everyone does that. Maybe they’re just pissed because our crappy house is making their pristine one less shiny. Maybe they are just tired of doing all that work and watching me do nothing.
Cal gets up and puts the paver on the shelf we keep our “treasures” on: a photo of the three of us, a trophy our Little League team won in the fifth grade, a two-dollar bill some old guy gave Jack for helping him find his cat, the quarter we flip on when we have to figure out whose turn it is to go to the house to get provisions, and Cal’s sixth-grade report card with three As. They earned him thirty bucks from his mom. They were the last As he ever got.
“But this thing doesn’t stand for something good,” I tell them. “Don’t put it there.”
“Sure it does,” Cal says. “It stands for . . . you keeping your cool. Yeah.”
“Only because Taurus Man came after us and I didn’t get a chance to do anything,” I point out.
“You still wouldn’t have done it,” Jack says.
I can’t deny it.
“It’ll be our reminder,” Cal says. “A symbol.”
“Of what?” Jack asks.
“Of the day we stopped the road scam,” Cal says.
We’re all quiet.
“For real?” I ask.
“Yeah. Seeing that guy kind of freaked me out.”
“I always hated it,” Jack says.
“Me too,” I say.
Cal reaches in his pocket and pulls out a wad of bills. He puts it under the brick. “Another reminder. We’ll never spend this money. Got it? Now. Let’s play another hand.”
We play cards for what feels like hours and no time at all, until it’s too cold and dark to keep going. When Cal takes me home, there’s a car at the curb and Sammy is standing next to it, leaning in. She appears to be yelling. She turns and squints at Cal’s headlights, then goes back to yelling at whoever’s inside. I get out and start toward her to make sure everything’s OK.
“Just go!” she yells. “I never want to see or speak to you again! Ever! You’re a pig!”
Jacob, the driver, says something I can’t hear, then revs the engine and takes off.
“What’s all that racket!” Ape Boy yells from his yard. He’s standing outside, under their porch light. He’s always standing out there at night, like he’s patrolling the neighborhood or something.
“Are you OK?” I ask Sammy, ignoring him.
She’s crying.
“Yeah, fine. Just . . . never mind. I’m fine.”
She says it quietly and sadly, like all the fire she had a minute ago has turned to ash.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” Ape Boy says.
Sammy rolls her eyes. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”
I wave Cal away, and he drives off.
Sammy and I start to walk up the overgrown path to our front door. The dead grass is as high as our knees and completely gone to seed. My mom made a path to the front door with different-colored carpet squares she got for free when she pretended to be looking to buy carpet at a local store. That was years ago when we were kids. The carpet was supposed to keep the weeds from growing up. Sammy and I used to jump from square to square, pretending they were islands and the grass around them was green acid that would burn our feet if we touched it.
Now we step on the squares again. They’re so old and worn that weeds are growing up through them, and grass has grown so thick around them they barely make a path at all. Sammy hops from one square to another, just like when we were young. She’s in her cheerleading outfit, and her skirt swishes like a little kid’s with each jump.
I hop behind her. “Don’t touch the acid!” I yell.
“Hey!” Ape Boy calls again.
Sammy stops and glances over at him.
He looks from me to her to me again. “You ever gonna mow that lawn, bitch?”
“Who are you calling a bitch?” Sammy asks.
“Me,” I say. “But I don’t get it.”
“Leave my brother alone!” Sammy yells. It’s the first time I remember her standing up for me. I want to hug her.
Ape Boy makes a disgusted face at us, like we’re trash. “You live in a dump!” he yells back.
Sammy smiles at me. We both crack up. What else can we do? We know we live in a dump. What’s it to him?
“What a jerk,” she says quietly. And I know for sure that everything he said was a lie.
“Love me, love my mess,” Sammy quotes. She takes another hop, then looks over at Ape Boy in his pristine driveway. Slowly she lifts up her arm and gives him the finger. Then she hops all the way to the front door.
Before we go inside, I look over at Ape Boy one more time. He’s just watching us. Not moving. Like he’s suddenly completely lost.
Maybe no one has ever given him the finger before.
I can’t believe it, but I suddenly feel a little sorry for him.
Instead of giving him the finger, I wave.
“Good night!” I call over as friendly as I can.
He shrugs and shakes his head in a confused way.
I smile and go inside.
SHARP WORDS CUT THE STAGNANT BUS AIR. SHOUTS ABOUT who should sit where. The usual insults. I sit quietly and stare out the smudgy window, waiting for the Girls.
The heater under my seat blows blasts of hot air up my bare legs. The scum-green seat is prickly hot under my thighs. I pull at the hem of my skirt so it covers them up better, but I can still feel my sweat forming under my skin. I just hope when I get up, there won’t be wet spots on the seat. Please. Not that.
I look down at my chest and the fuzzy red I sewn there. I for Irving High. Red on white. I remember when I first got it and tried it on. Staring at myself in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. How the folds at the waist wouldn’t smooth out. Because it wasn’t sweater folds; it was my stomach. My “spare tire,” as my mother would say. My muffin top.
My mother opened my door without knocking, swinging mirror me aside. Her own image stood where I once did. She, of course, is slimmer. Taller. Better. I watched her eyes travel from my head, down to my chest, my stomach, my thighs. The disgust she didn’t even try to hide.
“That costume doesn’t suit you,” she said, as if I was dressing for Halloween.
She sighed. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off my thighs. Was it old recognition? Did she remember when she looked like me? Even worse? Before she had her fat sucked out and stomach stapled over? Was she imagining doing the same to me? Now that the pain of surgery was a memory, she was always hinting about my “someday” future of thin. When I would have my thighs and stomach sucked and stapled if that’s what it took, to slowly disappear. If only I was old enough.
When she finally met my eyes, she made her worried face. The one that predicted nothing good could come of me in this “costume.”
“It’s for cheerleading,” I told her. “Remember? I made the squad.”
Sometimes when I tell her things, I think I am waking her from a dream.
“Oh,” she said. “I forgot.”
I petted the soft sweater and swished the skirt a little.
“What will you do with your hair?” she asked.
“I want a French braid
with a red ribbon. A lot of girls wear theirs that way. Can you do mine?”
“I don’t know how.”
That was a lie.
When I was little and chubby was still cherub-acceptable, she spent hours dressing me up as Little Miss Cute, braiding my hair, planting pretty bows on my head, making me wear shiny shoes.
“That’s OK,” I told her. “One of the Girls can do it, then.”
She raised her right eyebrow. She always raises her right eyebrow when she doesn’t believe me.
“Sammy,” I said. “Or Grace or Claire.”
The eyebrow remained poised. She still hadn’t accepted my newfound friends. Hadn’t accepted the fact that they existed. She’s spent so long trying to get me to have girlfriends instead of “that Stephen boy,” and now that I finally have some, she can’t seem to break out of her cloud of negativity.
“You haven’t had any of them over,” she said. “So I wasn’t sure how it was working out.”
I haven’t had any of them over because I don’t want her comparing me to them. I don’t want her asking me why all my friends are skinny and I’m not.
Because she would. I know she would.
“It’s working out fine,” I said. “If it weren’t for them . . .” I paused. I didn’t want to tell my mother that the Girls got me on the squad. That would raise suspicions of why. And even I didn’t want to fully explore that.
“I wouldn’t have tried out,” I said vaguely.
She studied my face, maybe picturing what my hair would look like pulled back.
“You have such a pretty face,” she said. Such a shame about the rest of you, she didn’t need to say out loud.
That night I looked up how to braid my own hair on YouTube and practiced for hours until I got it right. Just in case the Girls couldn’t do it after all.
I am careful not to cross my legs as I sit here, waiting for everyone to find a seat so we can go. Instead, I squeeze my knees together and try to move forward so that I am sitting on the edge of the seat. This helps keep my thighs from swelling out on the sides and accentuating my cellulite. My mother calls it “cottage cheese.” I’ve seen her notice how my thighs pucker into dimples when I sit. I have seen the face she makes. Like it hurts her eyes. Like she is looking at a mirror that reflects what her own legs used to be.
“Are you sure that skirt isn’t too short?” she says whenever I try to dress like the Girls. “Maybe you should wear those cute pants I bought you instead.”
Every morning before school it’s the same: her eyes roam my body, she makes her worried face, and then she suggests I change.
“But everyone wears skirts like this,” I tell her.
Worried face.
“But the pants look so nice on you, honey.”
Change, her face pleads.
“They’re much more . . . flattering.”
Please.
She knows. She was a fat girl once, too.
My feet are already sweaty in my new white socks with the red pompoms on the heels. Grace said they were retro when one of the girls complained. But Grace is in charge. So everyone believed her and acted like the socks they had worried about one minute ago were now the coolest thing on the planet. Retro. Yeah. They all nodded and admired their feet.
A sweater-soft shoulder presses against mine. An unmistakable watermelon scent wafts around me. Paul Mitchell hair spray.
“Hey, Lace,” Sammy says, adjusting her skirt. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”
Grace and Ben walk past us. They always sit in the seat farthest back. Grace smiles at me, but Ben pretends I don’t exist. I’m sure my joining the squad is the very worst thing that has happened to him. Ever.
My brother is not the kind of brother who loves and adores and protects his little sister. My brother wishes I didn’t exist. The feeling is mostly mutual.
“Where’s Claire?” I ask.
Sammy sighs. “I heard she went home sick.”
Heard. It seems strange that she didn’t get a message from Claire.
“She thinks she’s too good for us,” Grace had said this morning in a dismissive way. And that was what Claire was, I guess. Dismissed.
“I like your hair,” I tell Sammy. She always waits to pull her hair back until the last minute. She seems to know she looks best with it down. Long and wavy and perfect.
“Yours too!” She smiles and touches my braid.
“Are you excited for the game?” she asks. Sammy is always so perky.
I smile and nod.
“I’m glad you’re on the team, Lace. Everyone is. We really needed” — she pauses, and I see her realize that what she was about to say would come out wrong — “you,” she finishes.
Me.
I know what that means without the missing phrase before it. What they need is someone like me. And what that means is someone my size. Every cheerleading squad needs a few girls like me. Strong girls. Big girls. Girls who can hold the others up.
Sammy’s expertly curled hair whips my face when she twists around to slap Jacob for making a kissing sound in her ear from behind. I squirm.
He gets up and pushes his way into our seat and practically sits on our laps. This seat is not meant for three.
I slide closer to the side of the bus, pressing my shoulder against the cold metal.
Sammy angles her knees into the aisle like they are a swinging door. Jacob wedges himself between us even more tightly. He makes a point to push his muscular arm against my soft one. Hard.
He is carrying a basketball, as if he needs it to define who he is. A player. A jock. An asshole?
Or just a message: I’m the star.
Like we all don’t know that already. Like his stupid letter jacket with all the pins and patches doesn’t spell it out. MVP. Most Valuable Player. I like Most Vile Prick better.
This doesn’t make me sound like a very good cheerleader. But I’m not here for the boys. I’m here because the Girls asked me to be. Me. No one ever picks me for teams. No one ever picks me for anything. They just pick on me.
My ex–best friend, Stephen, said the Girls are only friends with me because of Ben. He said Grace was desperate to save their relationship and she could keep better tabs on him if she had me to help.
She’s just using you, Lace. Why else would she want to be friends with you?
Sometimes I think if he hadn’t said that, we would still be friends.
Even though he apologized, I know he meant it. How can you stay friends with someone who would say something so mean, even if he was just being honest?
But then there’s the other matter. The other matter. Of Stephen and Ben. And I’m not sure what to think about that.
Jacob strums the ball with one hand as if he’s playing an instrument. The hollow sound makes me feel empty. Like he is tapping me, and there is nothing inside.
With his other hand, he reaches for Sammy’s perfect pink knee and taps that too. She flashes her polished-white teeth at him. His hand slides farther up her thigh.
He is chewing Trident gum. The blue package flavor. It’s my mom’s favorite. There is no other reason I would recognize his breath. It makes me feel sick.
He looks at me once. Just once. His eyes travel from my face, down my chest to my lap, and my legs. I try to raise my knees up to make my legs look skinnier and erase the dimples, but he’s already done looking. Being disgusted.
Tap-tap tappity-tap.
Hollow. Empty.
Sometimes I think my mother was right. This skirt. This sweater. This outfit. Is not the right costume for me.
But the Girls told me that I would “be great.” And that they could “really use me.” And that they “needed a strong girl” to help with formations.
“You’re the foundation,” Grace told me. “You have the most important job of all.”
I believed her.
At practice, I let the size zeros climb up me. Tiny feet on my thighs leaving red imprints. I brace my elbows and place my hands out f
lat for another step, up to my shoulders.
I am a human jungle gym. A stepladder. Every day.
But I am part of a squad, too. And that’s what I like. I like having the same “costume” as everyone else. I like hearing my voice, mostly in unison with all the other girls. I like that Claire always whispers sorry as she climbs up me, as if she senses the humiliation I might feel.
The Girls are nice to me. I know I make them look even better than they already do. Stand next to me and you will feel like a supermodel. My presence makes everyone feel better about themselves.
It’s not that I’m obese. Just chunky. When I was younger, my mother called my folds “baby fat” and said as long as I ate healthy, I would outgrow it. But I think she was just trying to convince herself. After all, she never outgrew hers.
When the Girls saw me staring at the cheerleading tryouts flyer, they told me I should try out. Grace actually hopped up and down.
“You’d be a great addition to the squad!” Sammy agreed. Sammy is my favorite.
I felt my cheeks get hot. I shook my head and laughed.
“Why is that so funny?” Grace asked.
At first I thought she was offended. “Me?” I asked. “A cheerleader?”
“Why not?” She seemed to genuinely want to know.
“Look at me,” I said.
She shrugged. “You’re beautiful!”
I looked down at my stomach. “And fat.”
“Don’t say that,” Claire said.
“Besides, we need all body types,” Grace added.
“Yeah,” Sammy said. “You should come to tryouts. We’re not like TV cheerleaders. We’re nice.”
We’re nice.
It seemed like a promise.
“It’s a big commitment, though,” Grace said. “Joining the squad is like joining a second family. We practice every day after school. We spend a lot of time together.”
She made this sound like it could be a good thing or a bad thing. But to me, it sounded all good. Time away from my mom. Time with my new friends. Time with nice people. Family.