I hid my face in my hands. Someone really needed to teach him the meaning of TMI.
“Then I thought about it,” Todd continued. “Really thought about it. And you. And this whole cheerleader thing. At first I was pissed.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I mumbled into my palms.
“I couldn’t believe you’d actually try out.”
I peeked at him through the V of my fingers. “Moni made me do it.”
Todd rolled his eyes. “Figures. But then you stuck with it. And it occurred to me.” He glanced behind him. I think he wanted to rush upstairs and adjust the lighting for dramatic effect.
“We don’t have to wait,” he said.
O-kay. “Wait for what?”
“For anything. We’re always talking. Can’t wait for the weekend, can’t wait for summer, for graduation. For anything that doesn’t involve high school. I mean, I wouldn’t have picked cheerleading—”
“You don’t have the legs for it.”
He held up both hands to shush me. “But there you are, embracing the here and now, making the most of high school.”
Oh, so that was what I was doing? And I thought all I’d been trying to do was keep most of the school from seeing my purple-clad butt.
“And why the hell shouldn’t we?” Todd smacked his fist against his palm. “Who says you’ve got to be popular to be a cheerleader?”
Certainly not me.
“Or…” He peered at me over the top of his glasses. “Student body president.”
Wow. I sure didn’t see that coming. But in that case, popularity probably helped. For a moment I studied him: the untamed hair, oversize glasses, the misbuttoned plaid shirt that covered his “I Did It All for the Wookie” tee. There was no way.
Or was there? Todd certainly had the brains to be student body president. He had leadership ability too. And, with his superior debate skills, he might even be able to actually secure the often-promised, but never realized, coffee shop next to the school store. At the very least, he could probably talk the administration into upgrades for the school newspaper. Was that enough to win the election? No. Todd would have to look the part.
I gave him another once-over. Despite its present condition his hair had a decent cut. I knew his mom still took him to get it trimmed. Maybe switch out the nerd-screaming glasses for an updated pair? Or contacts, even. The plaid shirt would have to go, of course. Ditto anything even vaguely Wookie-ish.
Todd wasn’t cute, not in a boy band sort of way, but his features were strong—presidential, even. Moni and I could take turns dressing him.
I eased off the chair and inched across the stage until I knelt above him. “Are you serious?”
“Come on, Reynolds. We both know Chess Club president is a bullshit extracurricular. I’m aiming for the Ivy League. I got the grades. The SATs will be a snap, but I need more.”
“You’re no slouch at debate,” I said, “and the paper—”
“It’s expected,” he said. “And so typical, it’s boring. The genius kid excels at chess and debate. And runs the school newspaper. Big freaking deal.”
“It takes more than brains to be student body president, you know,” I said.
“That’s why I came to you.”
I hopped off the stage and headed for the door. “Come on.”
I waited while Todd dashed up the stairs to shut down all the lights. The bell hadn’t rung for seventh period yet, and the halls were quiet. I didn’t have what Todd so desperately needed, but Moni did. I dialed the combo to her locker and swung it open.
“Mr. President,” I said, handing him a green and pink plastic bottle, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Hair Gel.”
Moni kept her promise to Rick. We choreographed a more complicated two-person routine, including the shoulder sit with a snazzy dismount. When the referee held Rick’s hand high in the air, declaring him the winner in his weight category at Thursday’s meet, we got to it. Whistles from the boys, cheers from the stands. Rick blew Moni a kiss. From the stands, Jack gave us a thumbs-up. After the meet, Andrew and his freshmen teammates came up to us.
“Wow, you guys are really getting good,” Andrew said. “You should compete.”
In cheerleading? The boys were sweet, but we weren’t that good and probably never would be. We weren’t bad, though. I doubted if even Chantal still thought we were the school joke.
At the thought of jokes, my mind went to that bet between Rick and Jack. It still struck me as odd. I turned to Moni. “Has Rick ever said anything about the bet?”
“What bet?”
“The one they had, about us cheering for wrestling all season.”
Recognition flickered in Moni’s eyes. “Oh, that. I thought it was a joke, that they were just…flirting with us. No biggie.”
“Jack said something the other night….”
“What’d he say?”
“That if I got sidelined, he’d lose the bet with Mangers.”
“So?”
Jack can’t afford to lose a hundred dollars. I couldn’t say it out loud. Sure, the whole school knew, but saying it felt like betraying Jack.
“Rick bet against us,” I added.
“They’re jocks. They compete. It’s what they do. Bet or not.” She pointed at herself and then me. “Who’re the real winners here? Cheerleading. Payoff. Big-time. Remember?”
I turned toward the bleachers and found Jack grinning at me, and I had to wonder what I was worried about. Moni and I would show up for every meet. Jack would win. Nothing else mattered.
Friday afternoon Jack caught me around the waist after the last bell. No one stared at us, not anymore. We’d been deemed an official Prairie Stone High couple. And now that we were? Old news. No one cared. Well, almost no one. I’d felt Chantal’s icy glare more than once while walking through the halls, either on my own or hand in hand with Jack. It was like she couldn’t look away, even though I thought that maybe she wanted to. Call me petty, but after everything that had happened—especially what happened in the gauntlet—I was kind of glad she couldn’t.
I wouldn’t say being with Jack elevated my status on the cheerleading squad, but it didn’t hurt it either. What seemed clear was this: No one wanted to upset me, because that might upset Jack. Behold the power of the A-list jock. It was weird—and a little disconcerting—that Moni and I couldn’t hash out a compromise with the squad on our own. But after what had gone down with the school board and Sheila, it was a relief.
Jack swung me in circles. Then, while I was still dizzy, he asked, “Want to go to a party tonight?”
“Sure!” I said without giving it a thought, without wondering where the party might be, or whether my parents would let me go. It was one of the few Fridays we didn’t have a varsity basketball game. The Panthers had coasted to a win on Tuesday, and Jack was still coasting on that high. Saying yes was easy.
“It’s at Mangers’s,” he said, almost as an afterthought.
Oh. One of Rick’s parties. It wasn’t the sort of thing I thought I’d ever be invited to—or Moni, for that matter. And now, we were. Or at least, I was. Moni had left school halfway through German to meet her dad. Monica, it seemed, had planned a night at the opera for the three of them.
“Opera?” I’d said when she told me.
“Yeah, I’m sure the fun will be over way before the fat lady sings.”
I’d seen Moni before school and at lunch. We’d been partners for Gesprächsaustausch (“conversation exchange”), and she hadn’t said a word about Rick throwing a party.
A few hours later a twinge of guilt hit me when Jack pulled the Toyota through the main entrance of Prairie Stone’s only gated community. This was Todd’s neighborhood and I knew the area, if only for that reason. Just as I knew that right now, he was hosting a Star Wars–themed campaign kickoff meeting. And yeah, I’d been invited. And yeah, at the last minute I’d sent him a cop-out e-mail saying I couldn’t come. And with Shelby at a sleepover, my parents were headed to a movie
. I’d mentioned Jack and going out, and only got a reminder of my curfew. Technically not lying didn’t make me feel any better about it.
We came to a stop at a T. Valley View Estates was at least as pretentious as it sounded. To the right, it was even more so. Large, conspicuous, hey-look-at-me mansions lined the lane in that direction. The one on the crest belonged to the Emerson family. The sight of the Death Star (as Todd called it) made me duck my head. I leaned forward, pretending to adjust the hem on my jeans.
We turned left, where slightly smaller houses stood, their landscaping creating sculpted mounds beneath the snow. It was nothing like the area where I lived—student housing mixed with families, close enough so Dad could walk to campus when the weather was nice. It was even less like Jack’s neighborhood, in the old part of Prairie Stone.
I glanced behind me just as Todd’s house slipped from view. “Guess the tractor beam is off tonight,” I said.
“What?”
I shook my head. “Never mind.”
Jack rounded the last curve before Rick’s house—“house” being one of those relative terms. I guessed you could fit two of mine inside it, and still have room for Rick’s ego.
In the basement, I added my coat to the lump of outerwear that was growing in the center of a spare bed. Jack kept his letter jacket on.
After the cold of outside, the first thing I noticed was the hot sharp scent of alcohol. It was too dark to see much of the basement beyond lots of leather, lots of chrome, lots of polished wood. The place was huge, with one main room and several smaller ones down a long hallway. The music was turned down low, in what I thought was more of a “make-out” vibe than a “drink until you puke” one. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad?
A long bar ran nearly the entire length of one wall. Rick stood behind it, playing bartender. He spotted us—or at least Jack—and waved us over.
“Paulson.” He tossed Jack a Heineken. Then Rick turned to me. “Beer?”
When I shook my head, he made a show of searching behind the bar, clattering glassware. “You know, I think I have some milk and a bottle, I mean glass, right here.”
Oh, ha-ha. Hilarious.
“I’ll just have water,” I said.
“Water?”
“It’s that stuff that falls from the sky when it’s raining. And when it’s really cold,” I pointed to the patio doors and the snow outside, “it looks like that.”
Jack laughed and gave my waist a squeeze. “She got you, man.”
“Score one for the quiet chick.” With equal amounts of humor and condescension, Rick pulled a petite bottle of Evian from the fridge and handed it to me. I cupped it in my hands. I used to think the tiny bottles were cute. That was before Rick Mangers handed me one.
Rick moved on to serve someone else, even though most everyone was already serving themselves—from a keg by the patio.
Jack tucked the unopened Heineken into the pocket of his letter jacket. “For my dad.”
What was he going to do? Walk into the house and say, “Hey, Dad, just got back from a party and thought you’d like a souvenir beer?” Of course, with Jack and Mr. Paulson, that scenario was entirely possible.
Jack’s hand lingered at my waist. Standing apart from him was something he didn’t seem to want me to do. So I stayed there, safe and content in the crook of his arm. The room was filling up with high school royalty, the anyone-who-was-anyone jocks, and the seniors from the cheerleading squad, every last one, including the captain.
Cassidy’s high-pitched laugh cut off when her eyes met mine. She gripped the beer she was holding even tighter, and her face drained of color. We stared at each other. For once Cassidy didn’t appear hateful. She gave me a small smile of conspiracy and sipped her beer. I won’t tell if you won’t, her look said.
So much for Prairie Stone High’s zero tolerance policy. All I could think was: I so didn’t belong here.
Track star R.J. Schmidt wandered past, then backtracked and parked himself right in front of us. If there was a poll for that kind of thing, R.J. would be voted Fastest Boy in the senior class. That “honor” would have nothing to do with his record-breaking hundred-yard dash.
“Nice manners, Paulson,” R.J. said. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “This is Bethany,” he said. But by his tone of voice he might as well have been saying, “This is mine.”
“Gotcha,” R.J. said, and laughed. “See you around.” He winked at me and headed for the keg.
Jack shoved his free hand deep into his letter-jacket pocket, but he kept the other one on me. Judging by his scowl, he could’ve been on the basketball court, not standing in the middle of Rick Mangers’s basement.
Someone clamped us both on the shoulder. I yelped. Next to me, Jack tensed. Rick wheeled us around. We were apart for a second, then Jack tugged me close again, and this time slipped his hand into my back jeans pocket.
It was a little too fast, a little too strange, a little too intimate. I jumped, and Jack got his fingers caught in my belt loop.
“Got yourself a live one there, Paulson.”
Rick’s grin said it all. I not only embarrassed myself, but I was bringing Jack along for the all-expense-paid trip to Dorkland. He stepped apart from me and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Hey, I was just talking to Amanda.” Rick tugged a tall, blond, obviously older girl over. “She goes to Prairie Stone State. Doesn’t your dad teach there?”
I nodded, reluctant. Anything to do with my parents at a Rick Mangers party could not be good.
“Really?” Amanda said in between snapping her gum. “What’s your dad’s name?”
“Professor Reynolds,” I said, and a second later realized how snooty that sounded. “He teaches psychology.”
“No way!” Amanda squealed. “Intro to Psychology?”
“Yeah, and a couple of other classes.”
“Oh, that’s great, that’s just great,” she said, but a moment later she burst out laughing. I thought about the senior I’d interviewed for my Life at Prairie Stone column. He’d made Dad’s class sound cool. But he’d also mentioned how many times my dad talked about me in class. Amanda whispered in Rick’s ear, then laughed again. Rick smirked.
“Small world, isn’t it?” With an arm around Amanda’s waist, he swaggered away.
Jack watched them leave. “She’s probably failing,” he said. “Not the sharpest stick in the…er, whatever sticks come in.” He sighed. “But then, that’s the way Mangers likes them.”
Then why does he like Moni? The question nearly left my mouth, but I swallowed it back because the answer had already occurred to me. Maybe he doesn’t.
A few minutes later Rick was back, this time pulling Jack away from me. “Come on, man, I gotta show you something.” When Jack balked, he added, “It’ll take what? A whole friggin’ minute? Come on.”
“I’ll—” Jack threw an annoyed look at Rick, then turned back to me. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
It was the last thing I wanted, but I nodded. And then, in a room filled with people, I was alone. I hugged myself, but that looked desperate and defensive, so I dropped my arms. I found myself inching from the center of the room, away from people I didn’t know. Well, I knew them. They just weren’t the sort who wanted to know me.
I backed into a wall and pressed my palms against the paneling. I wished I could blend into the woodwork. So this was a coveted, infamous, if-you-have-to-ask-you-weren’t-invited Rick Mangers party?
God, it sucked.
Then, from a room down a hallway, came the whiz and pop of guns along with cries of dismay. It sounded just like…Geek Night?
I should have stayed where I was; Jack had promised to come right back. But the lure of the familiar was too much. A bunch of guys playing video games? That I could deal with.
A door opened, and the glow from a television spilled into the hallway. Inside the room, a group of jocks packed a couch. The overflow testosterone
took seats on the floor. A beach scene filled the TV screen, where a game character was trying to push past a squad of soldiers. He wasn’t having much success.
Oh! I knew this one! I crept toward the couch. “Go toward the shoreline,” I said.
A few of the boys turned, gave me a weird look.
“If you go in the water, you can walk underneath without drowning and get by the soldiers.” I shrugged. “It’s a glitch in the game.” One of many things guys at Geek Night had discovered, catalogued, and assigned a weighted rank based on usefulness to overall strategy.
“Hey!” the boy with the controller shouted. “That works. Move over, Peterson.” With this, the boy named Peterson landed on the floor. “Come here,” the boy said without looking at me. “You know any more tricks?”
“A few.” I took a tentative perch on the edge of a cushion, my fingers pressed against a coffee table loaded with soda cans, beer glasses, deflated bags of chips, and an empty bottle of vodka.
The boy next to me beamed with each trick I fed him. “Cool,” he said. “I’ve never gotten past this level.”
I got so caught up in the game that I barely noticed the boy on my other side leave. Only when R.J. Schmidt slid into the open spot did I sense a change in the room, a tension. R.J. leaned forward, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Paulson shouldn’t leave a girl like you all alone. So, when’d you move to Prairie Stone, Beth?”
“It’s Bethany, and I’ve lived here almost three years now.” Not that someone like R.J. would’ve noticed. I tried to scoot away from him, but there wasn’t any room. “I really need to—”
“Pretty girl like you doesn’t need to do anything. Just relax and let R.J. take care of everything.”
I looked to the boy next to me for help. He sat like a statue, face forward. In fact, every set of eyes but R.J.’s were glued to the television screen. If I’d sprouted horns right then, I don’t think anyone would have stirred. R.J. slipped an arm around my shoulder.
“Hey,” I said, squirming away. Then, “Please, I’d really rather—,” I started, but he didn’t seem to understand a polite refusal. Instead he pulled me a little closer.
The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading Page 16