Of course she’d bring that up.
All I wanted was to escape, but there was only one way out now—and that was through. I’d have to fight for every inch of it. I tried to imagine Chantal in her underwear, a debate trick Todd had taught me, but that didn’t work. Not at first, anyway. In my imagination Chantal had to-die-for underwear, too. Then I imagined her in my underwear. When that didn’t work, I imagined her in Todd’s. I stared at her and her make-believe Star Wars Underoos. Incredibly, I found my voice. “And you’re wrong,” I said, “if you think a nose job and three dozen pairs of expensive shoes will make Jack want you.”
Something flickered in Chantal’s gaze. Hatred? Grudging admiration? Surprise that I could still speak? I know I was surprised.
“Just remember, geek girl—,” she started, while Traci Olson coughed and waved her hands. Chantal ignored her. “Jack Paulson is way out of your league.”
“You know what?” I said, and it was like the entire student body took a collective breath in, stealing all the oxygen in the hall. “He’s way out of your league too.”
“Hey, do ya think you girls could take this outside?” With the kind of ease only a senior could pull off, Rick Mangers parted the crowd.
“I would.” Chantal offered him the same smile that had slain Todd. “But Reynolds here and Ramona the Pest—”
Moni gripped my elbow. Her unfortunate nickname—a leftover from the grade-school playground—was a secret she tried desperately to keep.
Rick halted. His gaze slid over Chantal, smile and all, and then over Traci. At last he settled on Moni.
“Ramona, huh?” he said.
Moni nodded, barely.
“That’s one sexy name. See ya around, spark plug.” He caught one of her curls and let it bounce free before continuing down the hall.
But Chantal wasn’t finished. Not yet. “If you…” Traci waved again, a frantic look taking over her face. Chantal held up a hand, cutting off her friend. “Think that Jack…”
Exhaustion rolled through me then. This was a fight I would never win. “You know what?” I interrupted. “You’re right. He is way out of my league. Go for it, Chantal, he’s all yours.”
Moni did a double take. Todd raised both eyebrows. I swung around, ready to grab both of them and make a break for it. It happened then.
Jack stepped from behind the cafeteria door. I smashed against his chest.
Behind me, Chantal swore, and Traci apologized, “I was trying to tell you.”
“You okay?” Jack steadied my shoulder with one hand and touched my nose with the other. “Nothing broken?”
He smelled warm, like cinnamon or oatmeal. I had no coherent thoughts. And I certainly had no words, but I managed a nod.
“Are you sure?” He surveyed the group behind me, serious game face in place. I turned to look too, relieved, amazed, stunned that Jack picked me over Chantal. Chantal just looked stunned, her mouth open, her icy cool defrosted. Even her hair was less shiny.
“I’m—,” I began.
The bell rang.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to class.”
That afternoon, winter air sneaked beneath the lobby’s double doors and chilled my bare legs, making me wish I’d worn warm-up pants instead of shorts to cheerleading practice. I huddled with Moni, an obvious—if invisible—division between us and the rest of the squad.
It was supposed to be an easy practice, just long enough to assure our coach that we hadn’t gone brain-dead and forgotten how to shimmy in the past three days. But Sheila stood in front of us, hands on hips. No sparkle today, no fire. Something had obviously changed.
“I talked to Vice Principal Torrez a few minutes ago,” she said, her tone flat.
The girls shifted. Cassidy glared at Moni and me—like we knew what was going on any more than she did.
“I couldn’t believe what I heard, couldn’t believe no one told me before now,” Sheila continued. “You are representatives of the whole school. But you are also representatives of me. And even when I can’t be there, you still—” She pulled her glossy lips into a tight line. “Your behavior was intolerable.” Sheila paused and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Intolerable,” she said again, with a deep breath this time. “I’m surprised the squad hasn’t been disbanded.”
“This isn’t about us, is it?” Moni whispered.
I hoped not, but it kind of sounded that way.
“I never expected this from my squad,” said Sheila.
Cassidy rolled her eyes.
“You doubt this is my squad, Cassidy Anderson?” Sheila leaned forward and got right into the captain’s face. “Without my time, my money, and my sponsorship, there is no varsity cheerleading squad. Are we clear on that?”
The freckles on Cassidy’s face stood out against her suddenly pale skin.
“Now. Since the boys’ basketball team has the gym, everyone will do stairs and run laps through the halls.” Sheila cut the groans short with a single look. “I have a stopwatch, and Mrs. Hanson has agreed to stand post on the opposite end.” She let her eyes drift across each cheerleader then, inviting dissent. “You’ll be running alone. That way you’ll have time to think. Because by next Monday”—she pulled a stack of paperbound booklets from her tote—“I expect each of you to review the Prairie Stone High School Athletic Code of Conduct and write a five-hundred-word essay on the duties of a role model.”
This time, not even a look from Sheila could stop the groans. She sent each girl off down the hall, one by one, and the pounding of sneakers echoed against the lockers. Kaleigh threw Moni and me a dirty look before taking off. I leaned forward to start my sprint, but crashed into Sheila’s outstretched arm.
“The two of you won’t need to run,” Sheila said.
“But—?”
“Ms. Torrez told me about the other girls setting you up on the night of the big game. She thought it was unusual that two girls with as little”—Sheila tilted her head—“experience…as you would be featured so, uh, prominently. But it wasn’t until a board member overheard some girls at the coffee shop that things came to a head. I wish you’d told me yourselves.”
With that, she frowned. I thought we might be in worse trouble than the girls who were running laps. But then some of Sheila’s sparkle returned.
“Anyway, I always hated getting punished for something I didn’t do,” she said. “You girls can lift weights with the wrestling team today.”
Not an hour earlier, I would’ve sworn Sheila had been a gauntlet girl in high school. Now I wondered. I looked behind me, then down the recently emptied hallway.
“It’s okay,” Sheila said. “No one will know.”
It was possible, I guessed, that no one would figure it out. But counting on it left me queasy. Moni wasn’t nervous at all. She could barely contain her excitement. But then, she was always better at math and had already figured out the obvious:
Weight room + wrestling team = Rick Mangers.
She practically dragged me down the hall and toward the stairwell to the basement. The clank of metal echoed up the stairs. With the first step, the dank smell of earth surrounded us. Weights. Dirt. Rats. This was better than doing laps? In this part of the basement the hallway widened, but the ceiling lowered. I always felt like I had to stoop to make it through. What did Jack do when he came down here? Crawl?
The lights above went from fluorescent to bare bulb. “You think Rick’s down here?” Moni asked, her voice hushed.
“I guess,” I said. “What do you—?” The clanking grew louder, accented by occasional grunts. Boys, definitely. We halted at the same moment and gave each other a look.
“What do I what?” asked Moni.
“What do you think the chances are that anyone will find out about this?” I waved a hand toward the light filtering from the end of the hall.
“Who cares?” Moni said, louder now. Her voice echoed down the corridor—if we could hear the boys, then maybe they could hear us. I put m
y hand on her arm. Moni might think a short skirt and a set of pom-poms made us invincible. I wasn’t so sure.
“They deserved it,” she said, all defiant, but I caught the flicker of fear in her eyes. “Besides, if they do it again, Sheila will probably kick them off the squad.”
We reached the chain-link fence that separated the weight room from the rest of the basement. In a far corner, Coach Donaldson sat at a gray desk. He nodded at us, then went back to his clipboard. When the door clattered behind us, a dozen boys looked up. Then, from nowhere, Rick Mangers appeared at Moni’s side.
“Hey, spark plug, I could use someone to spot me. You up for it?”
Moni didn’t squeal. At least I had to give her that. But she did squeeze my arm so hard, the circulation was cut off.
“Go,” I said.
They really did make a cute couple. Rick was on the short side, and Moni barely skimmed his shoulder. Both of them blond, both with turned-up noses—Moni’d probably already thought up names for a dozen blond-haired, pixie-nosed kids. And Rick? Well, if Rick thought beyond the next wrestling meet, I would be surprised.
I heard the sound of shuffling feet behind me and turned to find five skinny freshmen. One pushed the other so that, domino-style, the boy closest to me stumbled forward. “Hey,” he said. “I was wondering, I mean, with—” He pointed toward Moni and Rick. “Do you need a partner?”
I imagined myself crushed beneath the weight of a giant barbell. “Sure,” I said. “I kind of lost mine.”
“We noticed,” one of the other boys said.
“Uh, I’m Andrew.” The first boy stuck out his hand so randomly that I had to jump back to avoid being stabbed in the stomach.
“Bethany,” I said.
“We know.”
Oh. They knew? What did that mean?
The other boys jostled one another like kids, but Andrew’s face looked serious when he led me to the Nautilus machine.
“Will you guys be at the meet tomorrow?” he asked.
We’d been to all of them so far. Besides, Moni had the book on wrestling memorized; it was her new favorite sport. “Why wouldn’t we be?” I asked.
He gave me a grin. “Bench presses?”
I didn’t really need his help to do that, and he didn’t need mine. Still, it beat lifting alone, I guess, even if his attention made me feel a little awkward. Actually, Andrew was fine; it was the other four boys gawking at us that creeped me out. They laughed when Andrew tripped on his way to the bench, all gangly arms and legs. I tried not to smile. He was sweet, and in a year or two, that boy would drive all the girls crazy with those high cheekbones—he just had to grow into them.
“Why don’t you go first?” he said.
That might be safest. I sat on the bench, but before I could adjust the weights, someone spoke on the other side of the room.
Rick sat, an arm braced against his thigh. In one clenched fist he held a weight larger than I could pick up with both hands. “See, spark plug?” he said. “This is the way you do a bicep curl.”
It wasn’t clear who admired that bicep more—Moni or Rick. I sighed.
Andrew heard Rick too. I could see his expression change, grow harder. He didn’t speak, but the way he shifted his posture left me feeling uncomfortable. I leaned back on the bench and grabbed the bar.
After a few up-down clanks, Andrew spoke. “That’s too easy. You need to move the setting up. Like this.”
Okay. Now that was heavy. A burn spread along my arms. Sweat sprouted on my upper lip. That had to be attractive. Between lifts, I fumbled for conversation. As the older woman, it seemed like my responsibility to provide some.
“Ever see a rat down here?” I asked.
Andrew raised his chin, and I saw the baby-smooth underside of his jaw. His gaze focused on something, or someone, across the room.
“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”
7
From The Prairie Stone High Varsity Cheerleading Guide:
At away games, you are all ambassadors for Prairie Stone High. Every move, every cheer, every comment will be scrutinized. Your behavior represents the behavior of all Prairie Stone students. Make certain to present a united front: The squad that cheers together stays together.
Over the next few days, I wouldn’t say things actually improved on the cheerleading squad. The invisible no-geeks-beyond-this-point barrier remained, as did the attitude, but the rest of the squad hardly got the chance to put it in practice.
I wondered if maybe Sheila owned a copy of The Art of War, because our coach was a master at countering the mean-girl tactics of the rest of the squad. At practices, she insisted that every girl treat the others with courtesy to the extreme. If she caught someone give so much as an eye roll, they paid for it in laps and push-ups. She showed up early for every practice—and waited until Moni and I were loaded in our parents’ cars before leaving the building.
She even crossed us off the cheer schedule for Thursday’s gymnastics meet because she couldn’t be there to monitor how the other girls might treat us. We didn’t have the heart to tell her that if we didn’t show up at gymnastics, no one would.
And during those same days, I wouldn’t say my standing with Todd, Brian, and the much-missed geek squad improved either. Moni and I were still on the Geek Night e-mail list, but cheerleading took up more hours than I ever thought it could. Between practices, games, and keeping up with homework, there wasn’t time for much else. What little headway I’d made with Todd over break vanished the second school started again. I worried my parents had been right. Taking on cheerleading was way more than I’d bargained for.
But Friday of that week, I found myself without Moni and without the mighty Sheila. To make matters worse, I wasn’t even in Prairie Stone. I wished cheerleading was on a pass/fail system—or that I could opt for an incomplete. Or that I, like Moni, had opted to use a “skip privilege.” Each cheerleader was granted two per season. Because really, cheering was bearable with Moni at my side. And for the past week, when Sheila was there too, keeping the rest of the squad’s attitudes in check, it could almost be…fun.
But tonight, where was Moni? In Minneapolis, of course, with her dad. And Sheila? Summoned to a hastily arranged school board meeting. And where was I? In cheerleading hell. Alone, at an away game. There was no one in the stands I knew, no one on the squad who didn’t hate me.
So it was left to me—and just me—to explain Basketball 101 to Cassidy.
“Think about it,” I said, working patience into my voice. “Panther territory would be, like, our gym. This”—I waved a pompom at the entire court—“is their gym.”
“It’s our end of the court,” Cassidy said. “Our basket.”
“But we switch at halftime,” I pointed out.
Cassidy frowned for just a second. “I don’t see why we can’t still do the cheer,” she said.
I let my pom-poms drop to the floor. “Cassidy, we can’t,” I said. “It’s a home-court cheer. We’ll look like idiots.”
“Then don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Cassidy pointed to the bleachers. “Don’t cheer.”
Had I just been benched? All righty, then. I scooped up my pom-poms and sat, with nothing but the familiar feeling of self-consciousness to keep me company. Wrong place, wrong time, just plain wrong. Really, whoever heard of a benched cheerleader? In front of me, the other girls spread out, arm-distance apart.
“Ready?” Cassidy called. “Okay!”
Together, the squad began to chant, “This is Panther territory. You! Be! Ware!”
A group of loyal fans jumped at the chance to cheer along. If the Panthers won, it would be their fifth in a row; everyone had the regional and state tournament on their minds. But by the second time through the cheer, a murmur of discontent rose up behind me. I turned in time to see the sharper fans give one another puzzled looks. By the third time through, all but the most rabid fans sat down. I was embarrassed—for the squad, for myself.<
br />
Someone should stop this. Okay, that someone was me. I stood, uncertain what to do besides tackling Cassidy and silencing her with the pom-poms—although that option was tempting. Definitely tempting.
Cassidy’s expression clouded, like she was having an actual thought. “We can’t cheer this,” she said.
Oh, so now we can’t cheer it. I reached for my pom-poms, ready to rejoin the squad.
“Stay,” said Cassidy, like she was talking to a dog.
“What?”
“You can sit out the rest of the game. And don’t even think about going all Miss Tattletale about it. My dad’s on the school board.”
On the school board? Before I could process that, Cassidy pulled out a copy of Sheila’s cheerleading guide from her bag and flipped through the pages.
“Besides,” she said, “the captain has the right to, um, to make anyone I want sit out, okay?” She flashed the guide at me. “It says so, right here.”
No, it didn’t. I would’ve bet my pom-poms—okay, so pom-poms weren’t a biggie—I would have staked Jack’s next three free throws that there was nothing in the guide about that. But what could I do? Cassidy was in charge. Her dad was on the school board. And she was reveling in it.
I sat on the sidelines for the rest of the game. Sometimes I called out, “Offense,” or “Defense,” to clue the rest of the girls in. No one listened.
The Panthers won by a single point, a last-second, center-court shot by Jack that left me breathless. I smiled, even though the rest of the squad still shunned me. After the buzzer, I congratulated the other team’s cheerleaders (by myself), slunk off to the restroom (by myself), and headed to the cold, dark bus.
By myself.
The rest of the girls already sat in the back. I found a seat closer to the driver—once a geek, always a geek. It was too dark to read, not that I’d thought to bring a book. Instead, I listened to the whispers and giggles behind me and crushed the pom-poms to my chest.
The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading Page 11