I looked down at my note cards. I could do this. Just like an essay test, or my Life at Prairie Stone columns. Only harder.
Could I write something that would bring Jack and me together again? Probably not. But if I could close just an inch of the space between us, then maybe, just maybe, it was worth it. After all—no risk, no reward.
The dance team wasn’t up to gauntlet-girl caliber in the mean-girl department. Still, anything sent to the Jack Paulson would be noted (Oh, my God, what a total loser!), scrutinized (Can you believe she really wrote that?), and subsequently spread around school.
I didn’t need the grief—or multiple sets of acrylic nails prying open any note I might write to Jack. But then, I wasn’t writing to Jack.
Dear Jack,
I was wondering.
Are all bets off?
Your friend,
Elizabeth Bennet
P.S. I’ll be cheering for you on Friday.
I pictured the entire dance team huddled over a yearbook, trying to determine just who this Elizabeth Bennet was. Good luck with that. Then I thought about my copy of Pride and Prejudice. Did Jack still carry it in the pocket of his letter jacket? Whether he did or not, I guess it didn’t matter. Even if no one else could figure it out, Jack had never been the dumb jock he pretended to be. He’d get it.
The second note was harder. I’d spent half the night brainstorming what to say, but all I kept coming back to was how stupid it was that Moni and I still weren’t talking. So I wrote:
I was thinking.
The Gauntlet +
Geek Night +
Cheerleading =
Worth throwing away because of one prick?
I didn’t sign this one. I didn’t have to. Moni could do the math. I hoped whatever answer she came up with, it would be the right one.
On Wednesday roses sprouted all over Prairie Stone High. They bobbed in line in the cafeteria, were greeted with squeals in the classrooms, and seriously disrupted study hall. One rose wasn’t such a big deal. After all, girls banded together, made sure everyone in their group got one. It was something that, in the past, Moni and I vowed never to do.
But more than one flower? Then it was a sure thing. You were cool.
By noon I had collected exactly zero roses. I still hadn’t seen Moni. Coach Miller pulled all the basketball players out of class for extra practice. If the team beat the Wilson Warriors, they’d go to the regional tournament. But that meant Jack’s desk in Independent Reading sat empty.
I was walking down the hall, my mind on three-dollar roses—and what a deal that wasn’t—when I almost missed her. Moni stood near our old meet-up spot just down the hall from the cafeteria doors. She held a folder to her chest, a single rose in her hand. She looked like she was hoping I’d walk past and not look back.
“Hey,” I said.
Moni turned from me. She tried to slip away, but I grabbed her arm. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “The least we can do is talk. Come on, if it makes a difference, I know just how you feel.”
“Yeah right,” Moni said. “No one’s talking about you.”
Not now, of course. But the halls had been thick with gossip about Jack and how he’d dumped me. “They were,” I said.
“And half the guys were saying how dumb Jack was for doing it.”
“No way.”
“Way,” said Moni, and I glimpsed a sadder version of that Moni Lisa smile.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
Moni closed her eyes and hugged her folder tighter. Talking in the hall wasn’t getting us anywhere. The gauntlet was empty, and for now, the path to the girls’ bathroom was clear. “Come on,” I said. I walked across the hall and into the restroom, hoping Moni would follow.
At first she didn’t. But by the time I’d checked under the last stall—just in case—I caught Moni’s reflection in the mirror. I studied her face. Nothing about it looked right. Nothing about this whole deal felt right.
“Talk to me?” I said. “Please. If you don’t want to be friends, that’s fine.” Not really, but not knowing was worse. “At least say it.”
Moni slumped against the mirror. “You’re the one with everything to say. Why don’t you start with ‘I told you so’?”
I kept quiet, not because I didn’t have a right to say those words, but to prove to her that I wouldn’t.
“I thought…” Moni closed her eyes. “I thought this was it. You had Jack. I had Rick. Everyone else had a sparkly new life, my mom, my dad. Why not me? But it was all…”
A joke, I thought. “I know,” I said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” Moni said. “Rick said you sent Jack after him—”
“I did what?”
“You didn’t know?”
“It’s pretty sad. My source for gossip these days is Todd.”
That got a half smile, but it didn’t last.
“Everything’s just so screwed up,” Moni went on. “I don’t know what’s true anymore and what’s fake. Except Rick. That was pretty much all fake. And the ironic thing is, real is the reason I started liking him in the first place.”
“I thought it had to do with that wrestling uniform,” I said, but my lame attempt at a joke made Moni’s eyes turn watery.
“That’s what everybody thinks. But it wasn’t because he was so hot. I thought Brian was cute. And it wasn’t because he was popular or whatever. I really liked hanging out with the kids in Math League and the debate dorks…and you. It didn’t take me very long on the cheerleading squad to figure out I didn’t need new friends. I needed…I don’t know. Something to hold on to, I guess.”
I wanted to be supportive, to say the right thing, but I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“I needed skin,” she said finally. “And bones. And yeah, the muscles didn’t hurt either. Do you know that in all the time that I was Brian’s online girlfriend, he never touched me, didn’t even try to hold my hand, not even once? And then there was Rick. The minute I met him he had his arm around me. It felt solid. Real. Like something that couldn’t just disappear. But now, poof.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. And I was. If anyone deserved the real thing, it was Moni.
“I wish we’d never tried out for cheerleading.” She turned the rose by its stem. “Oh yeah. It paid off. Big-time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “At least once a week, we don’t have to worry about what to wear.” I shimmy-kicked and shook invisible pom-poms. “And I don’t know about you, but my school spirit is really shiny these days.”
Moni snorted. It wasn’t a laugh, but it was close.
“So?” I tried. I thought we were almost there, almost back to what we had been. But a look at Moni’s face told me: Not yet.
“What you did for me with Chantal…,” she started.
“What about it?” I asked.
“The thing is, if it was the other way around?” Moni shut her eyes for a moment. “I’m not sure I would’ve done the same thing.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“Maybe you would,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know until I did it.”
Moni laughed. That was good, except it didn’t sound so happy.
“So why did Jack go after Rick?” I asked, partly out of curiosity, but mostly just to change the subject.
Moni shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I do know I was supposed to be ‘grateful’ to Rick because he fought over me.”
The way she used those air quotation marks around the word “grateful” confused me. “Oh. Grateful?” I said when I finally plucked the alternate meaning from my mental vocabulary list.
“Yeah,” Moni said, “really grateful.”
“And…” I looked away. “How grateful were—?” As soon as the words came out, I wished I could stuff them back in.
Moni closed her eyes. “Don’t worry.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Rick Mangers c
an really be a prick.” Moni opened her eyes. And for the first time, I thought I saw a spark there. “But at least he’s a prick who understands the word no.” A single tear slipped down her cheek.
I pushed past the folder, past the rose, and gave my best friend a hug. The rest could come later. But right now, she needed something real.
Sheila canceled cheerleading practice that afternoon. Then I remembered it was Valentine’s Day. Anyone with glossy red hair and perfect nails probably had better things to do. Besides, Moni and I would’ve been the only ones to show up anyway. I’d spotted most of the other girls on the squad—collectively they could have opened their own flower shop with all the roses they’d received.
For the first time since November, I didn’t have much to do once school got out either. Girls’ basketball, the gymnastics team, and the wrestlers all had away meets this week. The boys’ basketball team wouldn’t play until the rematch with Wilson High on Friday. My homework was caught up. I’d even finished my latest Life at Prairie Stone column.
I did have to fix dinner for Shelby, though. Mom and Dad had taken the day off to eat piroshkis and catch a matinee at the Guthrie Theater. Only in Minnesota could oniony Russian hamburgers be considered a romantic meal.
Shelby and I polished off our reheated tuna noodle hotdish and she headed to her room to categorize the valentines she’d received at school that day. I turned on my laptop and opened my IM program. Moni pinged me right away.
QT_Pi: Watcha doin?
Book_Grrl: It’s Valentine’s Day, so—nothing. How about you?
QT_Pi: Starbucks Boy is organizing a special poetry reading at the coffee shop tonight. He and Mom invited me to come along.
Book_Grrl: That sounds…excruciating.
QT_Pi: Tell me about it. Wanna come?
I wasn’t exactly thrilled about watching Moni’s mom and her boyfriend make goo-goo eyes at each other. The probability of bad love poetry didn’t excite me either. But if it meant spending time with Moni (and it didn’t start until after my parents were due home), then…
Book_Grrl: Sure.
The poems were at least as agonizing as I’d guessed they would be. Who knew so many words rhymed with hearts? Well, if you count K-Marts and Descartes, that is. The goo-goo eyes between Moni’s mom and Starbucks Boy—as well as the other couples there—were at least as painful. But if Valentine’s Day had to suck it sucked a little less sitting beside my best friend. And hey, we finally had the chance to drown our sorrows in white chocolate mochas. We even ordered the extra whip.
Thursday, the worst possible thing happened. Coach Miller did not pull the boys’ basketball team for extra anything, and Jack’s desk did not go empty in Independent Reading.
For the past two weeks, the only decent thing about the class had been watching the Pride and Prejudice miniseries. One hour each day, the lights were low, the show took my attention, and if I never really forgot Jack was sitting next to me, well, at least I could pretend to. On some days, the miniseries was the only decent thing about school, period.
That morning Jack entered the classroom at the last second, right as Mr. Wilker dimmed the lights. I tried to concentrate on the end of the show, the very best part. My mind strayed to that stupid rose and the even stupider note I’d sent Jack. Now he wouldn’t even glance my way.
Geek Girl, meet humiliation.
Far too soon, the credits rolled on the last section. Mr. Wilker thumbed the remote control and pointed at Ryan Nelson to get the lights. Reality, welcome back. I wondered if Mr. Wilker would let me off the hook for the Q&A. Sometimes no one would say a thing unless I raised my hand first.
“He was an ass.”
We hadn’t even started the discussion yet, so the words, and especially that word, made everyone whisper. Even more so, since those words came from Jack. He never spoke up in class unless he was called on. Sometimes not even then.
“Well.” Mr. Wilker hitched up his pant leg and sat on the edge of his desk. “Tell us what you really think of Mr. Darcy.”
Jack was staring straight ahead. His hands were clenched on each side of his desk. “I’m just saying, he was a jerk to treat Elizabeth like that. What’s up with the whole ‘I’m asking you to marry me, even though we both know you’re beneath me’ thing anyway?”
I swear I only moved a finger, but Wilker was on it. “Ah, Bethany. I pegged you as a Mr. Darcy supporter,” he said. “Care to weigh in?”
“It’s…” Gah. “It’s hard for us to understand how far apart the two of them were on the social ladder back then. It was a huge liability for Elizabeth to have relatives work for a living, or to not have any dowry, or to be stuck with a mother like Mrs. Bennet. I mean, if you think of it like high school, it’s easier.”
Mr. Wilker laughed. “Go on.”
“It’s like the preps and the losers, the jocks and the…” I didn’t need to say the word; everyone knew the way the sentence should end. “There’s always been an aristocracy. There will always be people who are, um, above other people. Like, imagine a goth kid getting together with the president of the Student Council.” Or the star basketball player hooking up with a geek extraordinaire. “Not gonna happen.”
“If he really liked her,” Jack said, “none of that stuff should’ve mattered.”
“In the end, it didn’t.” I shuffled the pages of my novel, like my fingertips could pull the words I needed from there. “Look at what Darcy did for Lydia.”
“Good point, Bethany,” said Mr. Wilker. “It might seem strange to us now, but Lydia running off with Mr. Wickham and having, um, relations was, well…and then Darcy fixing her—her honor—yes, Ryan?” Mr. Wilker pointed to Ryan Nelson in the back row. “Your take?”
“Do you think Elizabeth was kind of like a gold digger?”
Jack shifted in his desk chair and scowled.
Mr. Wilker cleared his throat. “What makes you ask that?”
“’Cause it’s only after she sees Darcy’s house that she starts being into him.”
My arm nearly left the socket when I raised my hand this time. God, I was so being teacher’s pet. But once upon a time, Jack Paulson said he wanted to talk about Pride and Prejudice. Maybe that had been a joke too. Good thing I knew the punch line.
Mr. Wilker nodded, my cue to go ahead.
“We know right from the start that Mr. Darcy has money. It’s no big secret,” I said. “Then Mr. Collins comes along and we find out Lady Catherine is rich too. Their two estates are, like, contrasted in the story. Lady Catherine’s house is a symbol for everything that’s wrong with the ruling class. But Mr. Darcy’s,” I continued, “represents everything that’s right.”
I wondered if Jane Austen ever faced down a gauntlet-girl brigade. I knew Elizabeth Bennet had. I stole a glance at Jack. He no longer stared straight ahead. No. Now his full attention was focused on me. For a moment I forgot about roses and humiliation and simply stared back. Such fine eyes, as Jane Austen would say. With my voice faltering, I added, “Seeing this other side of Mr. Darcy is why Elizabeth falls in love with him.”
“Interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, take note.” Mr. Wilker pressed two fingers against each temple. “Thanks to Bethany, I feel an essay question coming on.”
Groans erupted. A few seconds later a ball of crumpled paper smacked the back of my head. It fell to the floor and came to rest between my desk and Jack’s. He snatched the crushed paper, glanced up at Mr. Wilker, then shot a look down the aisle. With a flick of his wrist, he fired the ball toward the back desks. It struck his target’s forehead with a solid smack.
“Too bad you couldn’t do that when it counted, Paulson,” someone said.
Jack looked cool, not angry or embarrassed. No smile. No frown. No game face. Just a slight tilt to his chin, the only hint of his pride.
On Friday, Prairie Stone High erupted once again with roses. Because one day of mortification simply wasn’t enough. Actually, someone on the dance team over-ordered, and they had dozens left
over from Wednesday. They were selling them at a discount—just one dollar today. The line in the lobby was filled with boys who’d forgotten Valentine’s Day. Like a two-day-old rose would fix that.
I was trudging toward my locker after school, but the sight of Moni with two roses made me run. I skidded to a halt, and the back of my skirt flipped up. Purple Butt, meet World.
“What? How? Who?” I asked.
“They were on my desk last period.” Moni turned the roses in her hands.
“And?” I asked.
“Well, there’s one from Brian.” Moni handed me a note.
I examined rows of zeros and ones. “What’s this supposed to be?”
“It’s in binary,” Moni said, and wrinkled her nose. “He’s asking me to meet him here, after school.”
Okay, so we were still dealing with computers, but at least it was paper and ink and not pixels. Not to mention a real rose. It was a start.
“Lucky for him you’re a math geek,” I said. “The other one?”
“Rick Mangers.”
“No.”
Moni shook open the note to reveal a single, one-word sentence.
You.
R.
“Well, you know,” I said, “jocks are all about the one-word sentences. At least it doesn’t say, ‘Me’!”
Moni laughed. “Any idea what it means?” Her hand skimmed over the top of her head. “’Cause he kinda lost me.”
“Not a clue.” I glanced down the hall. “But I think you might find out.” For once, Rick Mangers didn’t appear out of nowhere. He walked toward us, his swagger only slightly hindered by a backpack full of books.
“Hey,” he said, including both of us.
Moni’s face went blank.
“Could I ask you something?” Rick said to Moni. I backed up a few steps and turned toward my locker. “I need to—,” he started, but Todd yelled my name from down the hall, drowning out Rick’s next words.
The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading Page 23