The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading

by Tahmaseb, Charity

  Todd stared. “There’s practice?”

  The throng of kids carried us along the hall. I found myself walking backward and bumping into other students. Step. Bump. Step. Bump.

  “What could you possibly need to practice?” Todd asked. “How to smile like an idiot at a bunch of brainless jocks?”

  Step. Bump—and straight into Jack Paulson.

  “Hey.” Jack spun. “I resemble that remark.”

  Todd’s ears turned red. It wasn’t often someone could fluster the boy genius. “Sorry.” He adjusted the books in his arms. “I was just—”

  Jack slapped Todd’s shoulder. “If the Nike fits, bro.”

  For once I wasn’t paralyzed in Jack’s presence. I laughed. I mean, If the Nike fits? That was funny. I caught the look in Jack’s eye as my giggle started to fade. He held my gaze, and his expression changed slightly, in a way I couldn’t read.

  “See you in reading?” he asked.

  Commence para-lyze-ation. I nodded—at least, I think I did—before he turned to walk down the hall. The bell rang, lockers slammed, and we joined the crowd of students heading for class.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” Todd stated. “It’s not going to make you…whatever it is you think it’s going to make you.”

  “I don’t know,” Moni said. “I ran the gauntlet twice this morning without a single comment.”

  The gauntlet? Well. That was a change.

  “Really?” I asked. “Twice?”

  Moni nodded, and when we passed the chemistry lab, she left us with a wave. Before she crossed the threshold, though, she ran back and caught Brian in a hug.

  “Thanks,” she told him. Brian blushed and stared after her. It was obvious he was crushing. Moni was too, though from what I could gather, Brian’s online game character was moving forward way faster than the real-life boy seemed capable of.

  “He gave me a wand last weekend,” Moni had said.

  “A what?”

  “A wand, Bethany. That’s got to be worth, maybe, seventy-five thousand points.”

  “Has he asked you out yet?”

  “In real life?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course in real life.”

  “Then…no.”

  I was pondering how long it would take Brian to catch up with his virtual self when Todd poked me.

  “Listen, Reynolds, you can still resign, right?”

  I turned toward Todd, and a wave of students knocked me into him. We were pinned against a wall, with only millimeters separating me from Todd’s massive self-centeredness. “Why would I do that?”

  “Just because Jack Paulson, the God of Mount Prairie Stone, condescends to talk to you, once, it doesn’t mean the natural order of things has changed.”

  I swallowed the urge to tell him I talked with Jack all the time. More than once, anyway. In the hall after tryouts, in Independent Reading…Okay, so really, Jack talked, I mostly stammered. Natural order aside, sometimes we came close to real conversation. But I knew—and so did Todd—that it didn’t mean Jack would ask me to the prom, or even sit within ten feet of me in the cafeteria.

  “Uh, I need to get to class,” I said. We both did. But even though we were heading for the same room, I scooted away from him.

  “See?” Todd said. “It’s starting already.”

  His words glued me to the floor. A few students turning in to history smacked into me. “What’s starting?” I asked.

  “The whole cheerleader thing. Next you won’t even sit with us at lunch.”

  Not at this rate. “Look.” I drilled a slightly chewed fingernail against his chest. “You’re the one acting like a jerk. Not me.”

  “I’m just trying to warn you. Nothing good can come from this.” Todd flipped his mop of hair and marched into class.

  The frost outside was nothing compared to the icicles forming at our history table. Todd actually shielded his face from me with his hand. Where was his sense of irony? Wasn’t Todd the one who hated high school—the cliques, the politics, the “buddy” shoves into lockers that echoed through the hallway and rattled his jaw? He of all people should get the cosmic humor in all of this. Instead there he was, acting like someone who…someone who thought popularity mattered.

  I pulled out my notebook and a pencil. I’d gone along with Moni’s cheerleading scheme to help her, sure, but that was just the start of it. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I had something to prove: Popularity shouldn’t matter. Not in cheerleading and not in anything else, either. Of course, deep down, I worried that it did. My pencil rolled across the table toward Todd’s notebook. Instead of stopping it, he picked up his books and let it roll off the edge and onto the floor.

  What was next? Would he delete me from his IM friends list? Scratch my name off our shared report? Please. I groped for the pencil, trying not to display my purple butt. What did Todd know about cheerleading, anyway?

  When Jack Paulson entered Independent Reading, he looked right at me. Or rather, he looked at my face, glanced at my bare legs, then centered on my face again. Gah. I struggled to hold back a blush. And failed.

  He took his seat next to me, stretching his own long legs along the desk in front of him. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for this.” He let a thick book thump on the desk. “At least, I think so. Maybe.”

  I caught a flash of the library’s copy of The Lord of the Rings when he hefted it a second time. I’d suggested it to him in one of our almost conversations.

  “Wilker says if I get through the whole thing and tell him stuff that isn’t in the movies, I’ll definitely get a B, maybe even an A.”

  “That’s great,” I said, or something equally scintillating.

  “My grade point average could use it.” Jack grinned. “So, what are you reading—today?”

  It was his standing joke. Independent Reading class meant, well, independent reading. There were a few books we read together as a group, but most of our time was spent on books of our own choice—and I brought in a new novel at least twice a week. Sometimes I thought I’d caught Jack staring at me while I read. For him, reading was mostly a spectator sport.

  I pulled Pride and Prejudice out of my bag and laid it on the desk. It was the second of our class reading projects, and we were due to start on it soon.

  “I’ve already read it,” I said, “but—”

  The second bell rang, and Mr. Wilker rapped on his desk to quiet the remaining talkers. “Everyone needs one of these before Monday,” he announced, waving his own well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. “We’ll begin discussing the first couple of chapters then.”

  Jack groaned. I glanced his way, and he gave me a weak smile. “I’m on the library’s waiting list, here and downtown,” he whispered. “Who knew that dumb book was so popular?” He laughed, but in his eyes I thought I saw a hint of worry—about buying the book? Everyone in Prairie Stone knew about Jack’s mom, the cancer, his handyman dad, and the insurance that hadn’t even begun to cover all the medical bills.

  Jack leaned across the aisle. “So what’s it about?” he asked. “I tried looking at SparkNotes—boy meets girl, boy pisses girl off.”

  “Something like that,” I said. “Things get off to a rough start. First time they meet, Mr. Darcy disses Elizabeth.” I sat back and held in a sigh. God, did I know how that went. The first time I’d laid eyes on Jack, he’d been laughing at me. But that had been freshman year—ancient history, or so I hoped.

  “Yeah, I got that part, and I thought maybe with the notes…,” Jack said while he watched the front of the room. “But that’s not going to work, is it?”

  “Not in this class.” Lots of kids took Independent Reading thinking it was an easy A. It was anything but that.

  As Mr. Wilker continued detailing the sort of questions we could expect on the test, I thought about the time Jack’s father had come to my house. It was a Sunday about two years ago, when no one else was available for an emergency involving water pipes, a large
leak, and our newly refinished basement.

  I’d watched Jack work with his dad that day—we all did at first. Me, Mom, Dad, Shelby; it was kind of like a live-action documentary, only instead of the Discovery Channel, it was happening right downstairs. After an hour, Mom and Dad slipped away, then Shelby and I brought drinks for Jack and his dad. The cola was generic—the only kind Mom ever bought—but Jack didn’t seem to mind. He gulped it down, and when he’d finished, his dad smiled.

  “Okay, Jackie,” he said. “I don’t care how pretty they are, we need to get back to work.”

  I’d peeked at Jack through my bangs, wondering how he’d react. Would he roll his eyes? Look away? Pretend he hadn’t heard? Laugh at me again?

  None of the above. Instead he winked at Shelby, gave me a grin, and proceeded to squirm behind the water heater, a place where spiders, centipedes, and who knew what else lived. I’d known from the first day of high school that Jack was incredibly cute, which I’d assumed meant he was also narcissistic and mean.” Now I had to amend my opinion of him. He wasn’t really a stuck-up jerk; he was nice.

  After they finished working, Jack drank another cola in the kitchen while our fathers haggled over money.

  “Come on, Dale. Let me write you a check,” my dad had said.

  “Can’t let you do that. We hardly did anything,” Mr. Paulson countered.

  “Except save me several thousand dollars.” Dad sounded frustrated.

  I remember shuffling from foot to foot while Jack squeezed the soda can hard enough to leave dents. His jaw had a proud tilt, but his body was stiff and his eyes looked afraid. It made me wonder how much they needed the money, and how many of their customers gave up fighting before they ever wrote a check. Finally Mr. Paulson conceded; he handed the check to “Jackie” for “safekeeping,” and I saw Jack’s shoulders relax.

  Since that day, I liked to think I knew something about Jack, something important, something most of Prairie Stone High didn’t know. Everyone saw Jack Paulson, A-list jock. I saw Jack Paulson, a boy desperately trying to hold things together. Somehow, that made him even more appealing.

  When Mr. Wilker returned us to our “regularly scheduled reading,” I shoved my copy of Pride and Prejudice across the aisle at Jack.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Take it.”

  “But—”

  “Like I said, I’ve read it.” I paused. “Plus, I have an extra copy at home.”

  What sort of freak has two copies of the same book? That was the question in Jack’s eyes. He didn’t know it, but I was actually the freak who had three copies, or was it four? A hardback, two paperbacks, and one copy in a compilation of all of Jane Austen’s works. Admitting that would be social suicide.

  Jack’s expression shifted again. If I was so good at reading, why couldn’t I tell what that look meant? “Thanks,” he said. He tucked the book under his desk and opened his compilation of The Lord of the Rings.

  And that was that. I turned back to my desk before it hit me. I had nothing to read. Not a thing. I’d planned on spending a little quality time with Mr. Darcy and hadn’t even thought to grab a backup book.

  I leaned toward Jack, ready to ask for the book back—just for the hour. But between the time he opened The Lord of the Rings and now, he’d switched books. There he was, reading Pride and Prejudice. My copy. In his hands. Sa-woon. No way was I interrupting that.

  A look of surprise lit Mr. Wilker’s face when I approached his desk. He granted passes to the library, sure, but if he thought someone was screwing around (and he had a built-in sensor for that), they were screwed, period.

  “Bethany Reynolds needs a library pass?” he said. “Should I check for other signs of the Armageddon?”

  A wave of laughter rolled through the classroom. But to tell you the truth, I barely noticed. Instead Todd’s warning rang in my head.

  This doesn’t change anything.

  4

  From The Prairie Stone High Varsity Cheerleading Guide:

  At Prairie Stone High, the varsity cheerleading squad leads by example.

  Some things we don’t do as Prairie Stone High varsity cheerleaders:

  We don’t criticize the sport we’re cheering for.

  We don’t socialize with our friends in the stands.

  We certainly don’t flirt with the participants! Our Prairie Stone athletes need to concentrate.

  By fifth-period lunch, I knew Todd was definitely wrong about cheerleading. One thing had changed: A purple and gold cheerleading outfit made it pretty much impossible to stay invisible. People noticed. Some did double takes. A few stopped conversations midsentence to stare after me.

  But I worried he was right, too. Despite the short skirt, I was still Bethany Reynolds, geek, and the cafeteria was still…the cafeteria. Sure, I’d be there with Moni, Brian, and Todd (assuming he got over himself by then). But other than the gauntlet, no more dangerous territory existed for my kind. It was the reason I’d made invisible = better my mantra in the first place.

  True, in the morning, the cafeteria could be the best place on earth. Its huge bay windows let in a ton of light. The space was warm, with the scent of cinnamon and all-you-can-eat oatmeal. And of course, there was always the sight of Jack Paulson shoveling in two or three bowls.

  Something happened to the cafeteria between first bell and lunch, though. The gentle light of morning turned harsh, highlighting every flaw, making the slightest stain (on your shirt, or your reputation) stand out. And today was no different. If anything, it was worse. Moni wasn’t at our normal meet-up spot after fourth period. Now I was all alone, in a cheerleader outfit—and it felt like the first day of freshman year all over again.

  Until a few years ago, I’d lived my whole life in tiny nearby Edgerton. I’d gone to school there with the same twelve kids since kindergarten. Then my dad got tenure at Prairie Stone State College, and we moved to the city. No more fifteen-mile drives just to go to the library, grocery shopping, the mall. Yeah, Edgerton was that tiny: think gas station, church, bar/restaurant, as in one of each.

  On the first day of high school I walked into a big new school, knowing no one. Or almost no one. I’d known Chantal Simmons from years of dance class (another fifteen-mile drive), and that was something. Sure, I hadn’t talked to her all summer, but that wasn’t abnormal for us. Her family was the sort that vacationed in faraway places like Europe and Mexico, or at least the Mall of America. Mine was more likely to seek out something more “educational” and “authentic”—like Mount Rushmore or even lutefisk-eating contests.

  I’d searched desperately for Chantal that first morning. When I finally thought I’d spotted her, I couldn’t be certain it was her. Her hair was lighter, more shimmery. Her body was lighter too. Gone were the thick ankles and slightly pouchy stomach. Even her face looked different. And when I smiled at her and waved, there was something tentative in her response. A case of mistaken identity, I’d thought. That girl wasn’t Chantal.

  But then someone called her name, and her response that time wasn’t reluctant at all. She’d spun away from me and greeted the girl with enthusiasm. A tiny crack of doubt opened inside me. But it was the first day. There were schedules to memorize, lockers to open, classrooms to find. Cutting Chantal a little slack wasn’t hard. It was mandatory.

  So mandatory that I didn’t think twice about approaching her table in the cafeteria. There was one open chair, right next to Chantal. I walked over, balancing a tray in my hands. “Can I sit here?” I asked.

  “Well,” Chantal said. “I guess you could, but—”

  Someone snorted.

  “But I’m sitting here.” Dina slipped into the empty chair, leaving her own free. She pointed to it. “There’s a spot over there.”

  Traci sprang up and dropped onto the open seat. “Oh, look. There’s a space over there.”

  Cassidy joined the game; she scooted over too. “Sit here! Sit here!”

  The lunch tray trembled in my h
ands. No way was I chasing a free spot around the table in some demented game of musical chairs. Without another word, I walked away.

  I heard a roar of laughter behind me. And like a sore tooth you can’t keep your tongue away from, I couldn’t stop myself from looking back. When I turned, I spotted the tallest head in the freshman class. That cute kid, Jack Paulson. He was laughing too.

  For the next few days, whenever I passed Chantal’s lunch table, someone would call out, “Hey, there’s a seat over here.” And again, the laughter that made me wish I could sink into the floor.

  By the following Monday, the joke was as stale as the bread in the sandwich bar. No one called out, except a girl named Moni, from my Advanced Algebra class. She waved me over to a table in the far corner. I was hesitant still, but when she nodded her head—and gave me that Moni Lisa smile—I knew I’d found refuge at last. At the geek table, with a couple of boys named Todd and Brian.

  Would it feel like that today? What if Todd pulled a Chantal? I could see it now: Todd recruiting anyone, the kids so weird that even they didn’t like to sit next to each other, all so I wouldn’t have a seat. As frightening as that was, I couldn’t stand in the doorway forever. I took that first step and crossed the threshold to the cafeteria. The volume dropped as I entered. I swear it did. Not to a complete hush, and no one pointed at me, but it still felt like I was being watched. I caught sight of purple and gold, but it wasn’t Moni. It was Cassidy, the cheerleading captain. She sat with the other seniors on the squad—and Chantal Simmons. When I walked past their table, they scooted their chairs so their backs were to me.

  For real? Was that it? That I could deal with. It was almost funny.

  But after I went through the food line, things didn’t seem so laughable. I still couldn’t see Moni or Brian, and I sure wasn’t counting on Todd. When someone touched my shoulder from behind, the tray teetered in my hands. But before it could fall, Brian grabbed it.