The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter

by Kristen Tracy

  Sadly, I just got her voice mail. She was probably with maniac Willy inside a stupid cave where she didn’t get cell phone reception. In addition to hating Willy, I was really starting to hate caves. I left Grandma a message:

  “This is Bessica and I’m calling you from the bathroom because I have no idea what your cow card means. Can you please call me as soon as possible and explain? Also, would you please consider coming home? Just consider it. Your room is very empty. Sometimes I go down there and sit and miss you and feel rotten. In ten minutes I plan to—”

  And then I just hung up, because I sort of wanted to leave Grandma a cliff-hanger message. Because I thought that might encourage her to call me back sooner. I peeked out the door at the clock on the wall. Lunch was over in five minutes. Time flies when you’re bummed out on a toilet. I looked at my phone. I felt like calling somebody else. Then it hit me. I should call Marci Docker and ask her for more tips about trying out for cheerleading. Because she was an expert. Also, she was one of the only people whose number was programmed into my phone. I was so relieved when she answered!

  “This is Bessica Lefter again,” I said. I could hear a ton of noise in the background. I guessed high school was a loud place. “I just heard some cheerleaders talking about tryouts and it made me very nervous, and that day we had lunch you said a lot of helpful things and I was hoping you could give me some pointers.”

  There was a little bit of silence. And I was afraid she’d forgotten who I was. And I was getting ready to talk about her feet issues and how she knew my mom, but then she started talking.

  “Bessica Lefter, you are too adorable.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I liked the compliment, but what I really needed was guidance. “How important is stretching and what muscles should I stretch first? I’m worried about my neck.”

  “Don’t worry too much about stretching or your neck,” she said.

  This shocked me, but I figured that Marci knew what she was talking about.

  “There are three things you need to do,” she said.

  I wished I’d brought a pen with me. But I just had half my sandwich, a paper bag, some carrot sticks, and Grandma’s postcard. “Tell me slowly.”

  “Okay. First, show up.”

  “Right,” I said. But that sounded like a no-brainer. I was hoping for the inside scoop.

  “Second, be proud and be loud.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. That made sense. I wanted them to understand that I could cheer at high decibels.

  “Third, shake your butt like a wild animal.”

  “What?” I asked. Because I thought maybe that was code for something.

  “A lot of people are afraid to surrender to the costume. You can’t be afraid. You have to go out there and act like a wild animal. You’ve got to grab their laughter. That was my strategy for being the bee.”

  Then I realized that I was talking to the wrong twin. I was talking to Vicki. The mascot. And so I hadn’t gotten any helpful information at all.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But can I ask one more question?”

  “You betcha!”

  But then the bell rang, and I was so startled that I snapped my phone shut. Uh-oh. And then I didn’t have time to call Vicki again. And I didn’t have time to call Marci either. Because lunch was over and I had to get to geography. Because we were going to have a test on the Arctic tundra and its relatively low biodiversity.

  fter school ended, I stayed in my PE clothes and got my backpack out of my locker and walked to the gym. It looked like there were about thirty other girls trying out. Last year’s cheerleaders didn’t have to try out again. That meant there were five spots open, but three of them weren’t even real spots. They were alternates. Which meant that you had to learn all the cheers, but you didn’t necessarily get to do them in front of people. But you could still eat lunch at the cheerleader table. And that was all I really wanted anyway. There was a poster that said Sign In Here. So I walked over and put my name down.

  After I did that, I didn’t sit with the big clump of girls trying out. I sat off to the side. I glanced over at the group of kids who were trying out for mascot. There were only a few. Oh my heck! Dolan the Puker was there. I couldn’t believe that he wanted to be a bear or a wolf. The last thing any middle school wanted was a puking mascot. Didn’t he know that? What was he doing?

  “Practice will start in ten minutes!” Alice Potgeiser yelled. She looked so happy and fluffy-haired. I touched my pixie. I didn’t regret whacking off all my hair, but sometimes I wished it felt fluffier. Then I unzipped my backpack and reached inside and took out my banned phone. I held it close to me. Sitting off to the side in the gym was tough. Since school was over, I thought it was okay to try Grandma again. So I did.

  “Bessica!” Grandma answered.

  “How come you didn’t call me back?” I asked. I was really surprised I didn’t have a message from her already.

  “I just got out of a cave.”

  “Right,” I said. I didn’t bother asking her about it, because I didn’t really care.

  “Did you get the pants?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But there’s a problem.”

  “Are they the wrong size?”

  “No,” I said. “They fit. The problem is the message that’s printed on the butt. Mom says it’s not decent and I can’t wear them in public.”

  “They’re pajamas!” Grandma said. “I didn’t think you’d wear them in public. Who wears purple stretch pants in public?”

  “My entire PE class,” I said. “It’s our uniform.”

  Grandma didn’t say anything back, so I kept complaining. I walked farther away from the cheerleaders and toward the mascots, because I didn’t want the cheerleaders to hear me being totally negative.

  “My life sucks and things are terrible,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “The school gymnasium,” I said. Then I looked at some of the kids trying out for mascot, shaking their butts, and it made me laugh.

  “Are you laughing?” Grandma asked. “Things can’t be that terrible.”

  “Oh, they are,” I said. And I didn’t explain that I was watching something funny. “It’s like everybody in my life is a bull chasing me through a field.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I couldn’t believe that Grandma couldn’t remember about the bull. I cleared my throat. “Remember how you told me that Sylvie’s mom was like a bull chasing me through a field and I needed to avoid the bull?”

  “I do remember that,” Grandma said.

  Then I heard a crashing sound on the other end of the phone.

  “What was that?” I asked. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the motor home. I’m trying to bake Willy a cake for his birthday.”

  Then I felt worse about everything, because my life was pretty stinky at the moment and I wanted my grandma to be at my house, baking a cake for me.

  “If you were here, my life wouldn’t be this terrible,” I said.

  “Bessica, I’ll be home in three weeks.”

  It felt like my own grandma had punched me in the face.

  “I’ll have been run over by twenty bulls by the time you get here!”

  Then it sort of got hard for me to hear, because the mascots were making a ton of noise. They were laughing and pretending to be wolves and bears, and it was out of control and annoying. So I pressed my ear very close to the phone so that I could hear what Grandma was going to say. Because I knew that it would be very kind and loving and inspirational.

  “Stop acting like a victim,” Grandma said.

  I pressed my ear closer to the phone. “I think we have a bad connection. What did you say?”

  “Bessica, you’re giving away your power.”

  “Huh?” It was like Grandma had gotten so old that she’d forgotten that sixth graders don’t have any power. The eighth graders have the power.

  “Mrs. Potaski is a control freak,” Grandma s
aid.

  And this made me stop breathing a little, because Grandma had never called anybody a freak before.

  “Wow,” I said. But Grandma kept going.

  “You stir her pot, Bessica. Sure, you’ve made some mistakes. But you’re good at heart.”

  I moved away from the noisy mascots so I wouldn’t miss a word of what Grandma was saying. “I am,” I said. I watched as the cheerleading hopefuls and current cheerleaders stretched on big green mats on the gymnasium floor.

  “You should enjoy middle school,” Grandma said.

  And I tried to interrupt her and tell her about the psycho-bullies and Cameron Bon Qui Qui and fluffy-haired Alice Potgeiser and rude Raya Papas and alt Nadia, but Grandma didn’t let me.

  “Look for happiness and you’ll find it.”

  “I don’t know if I believe that,” I said. Because if Grandma came to math with me, I didn’t think that she’d believe it either.

  “Bessica, do you know what I hear in the background while we’re talking?”

  I looked at the stretching girls.

  “Cheerleading tryouts?” I asked.

  “Laughter,” she said.

  Then I glanced back at the noisy mascots.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s the stupid mascot people.”

  “Bessica!” Grandma boomed. “Laughter is good. While you’re standing there stressed out of your head, there are people who are finding happiness. You should join them.”

  I glanced at the aspiring mascots. Some of them were crawling on the floor.

  “I don’t know for sure, because I didn’t go to elementary school with them, but I’m pretty sure the people you are referring to are dweebs.”

  Grandma sighed. “Maybe dweebs are happy people.”

  I almost gagged. Did Grandma want me to become a dweeb? If I did that, Sylvie would never want to be my friend again. And Noll Beck would lose all interest in me. And I couldn’t imagine that I’d truly be happy. Because a part of me would always be bummed out that I was a dweeb.

  “I want everybody to like me,” I said. “I want to be a cheerleader.”

  Grandma didn’t say anything right away.

  “Bessica, I don’t think I can support you in your cheer quest.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Grandma had never taken away her support before.

  “You don’t even like to invert yourself,” she said.

  She was right. Then I saw a girl try to do a backflip smack her head on the floor, and I gasped.

  I realized right then and there that cheerleading was not in my future.

  “But I have an hour before Mom picks me up,” I said. “Should I just walk around?” I pictured myself walking through the hallways, but that seemed sort of boring. And lonely.

  “Do something that will make you happy,” Grandma said. Then I heard the sound of an oven door slamming shut.

  “Were you making Willy’s cake the whole time I was talking to you?” I asked. Because I wanted to think that Grandma would be focused on me the entire time.

  “Bessica, I have to go, but will you do me a favor?”

  It bugged me that I was having such a miserable day and Grandma was still going to ask me to do something for her.

  “What?”

  “Lighten up.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  And then Grandma said that she loved me and I said that I loved her and we hung up. Then I walked out into the hallway to get a drink of water and take a break from my life. When I turned the corner, I was very surprised by who I saw.

  “Nadia!” I said. “I thought you were suspended.”

  She shrugged. She was dressed in black clothes and was wearing tinfoil bracelets and had tinfoil around her neck. She looked more alt than ever. “I have permission to be on the premises. I’m here to pick up homework.”

  “Cool!” I said. Then I rushed up to her like we were friends. Even though we weren’t.

  “I was just in the gym, because I was going to try out for cheerleader, but now I think I might not. Because I’m not sure that I want to invert myself. But I also don’t want to live in loner town.”

  Nadia folded her arms across her chest. “Cheerleaders are lame. And loner town has a lot to offer a person. Like your own personal dimly lit space.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I thought of the cheerleaders I’d seen in the bathroom. They had been pretty rude. I thought of the dark hallway that led to the shop classes. Why did anybody want to be socially certified as a nothing? I didn’t get it.

  “Do you want my advice?” Nadia asked.

  And I wasn’t sure if I wanted Nadia’s advice, but I decided to listen anyway.

  “Quit trying to fit in with these farmers. Get a Mohawk. Stand up and stand out.”

  Then Nadia gave me a peace sign and walked off. And I didn’t really think she’d said anything all that useful. Because my pixie was already so short that I didn’t think it would make a decent Mohawk.

  I walked back into the gym. I didn’t want to wander around the halls. Because that wasn’t really making a decision about anything. That was just killing time until my mom showed up. To my right were aspiring cheerleaders. To my left were aspiring mascots. Everybody in both groups seemed very, very eager. I looked back and forth between the two. I felt stuck. But then I saw something that got me unstuck. An aspiring mascot attempted a backbend and fell on her butt, like a total dweeb, and then broke into hysterical laughter, which was apparently how total dweebs reacted to things. I knew which group I needed to pick. I walked over to the cheerleader crowd. And I didn’t stay off to the side like I had before. I walked right through everybody. And when I got to the sign-up sheet, I took the pen and scratched off my name. Hard! I didn’t know if anybody was listening, but I said, “I’ve decided that I want to be the mascot.”

  Nobody said anything. But that was okay. I went over to the mascot group and found a place to sit that was nowhere near Dolan the Puker. I sat by a girl with red hair who I had never seen before.

  “Hi!” the girl said when I sat down. “I am so nervous. Are you? I’m Maddie. Maddie Bell.”

  And I nodded, but I didn’t say anything. Because I wasn’t used to having people talk to me in middle school. Or be nice.

  “What’s your name?” Maddie asked.

  “Bessica Lefter,” I said.

  Her eyes grew very big. “The girl who kicked in the vending machine?”

  I shook my head. “That was Nadia Strom.”

  But Maddie Bell’s eyes stayed big and she moved a little bit away from me. I tried not to take it personally. Then a teacher showed up who was wearing a lot of spandex. “I’m Ms. Rich, the mascot advisor. I’ll be teaching you a series of cheers. Word of warning—the mascot position is usually won or lost based on school spirit.”

  She handed out a piece of paper with a bunch of cheers written on it.

  “I have one piece of advice,” Ms. Rich said. “When it’s your time to shine, you better bring it. Also, make sure you read our cheer sheet. It contains important information.”

  Reading through the cheer sheet, I noticed there weren’t any wolf ones. Dolan noticed this too.

  “These are all bear cheers,” he said.

  Ms. Rich nodded. “We’ve taken the wolf off the table. There’s been a recent spate of coyote attacks. We want to steer clear of animals that resemble wild canines. We want our mascot to be a reassuring symbol of school unity.”

  And so now that I couldn’t be a wolf, I thought about what it would feel like to be a bear. I had to be honest. It felt weird. Then Ms. Rich had us stand up, and she led us in a bunch of fun exercises that involved kicking and leaping and crawling on the floor. And I only looked at the cheerleaders a couple of times. Mostly when I heard a thud or a scream. Luckily, none of them broke their necks. Before I knew it, it was time to go. Ms. Rich explained that we had one final practice before school auditions. She also repeated that we needed to read the cheer sheet. I grabbed my backpack, and w
hen I went outside, my mom was in her car waiting for me. I ran straight to it.

  “How was cheer practice?” she asked.

  “Forget cheer practice,” I said. “I’m trying out for mascot!”

  “You’re going to be a wolf?” my mom asked.

  I shook my head. “Wolves resemble coyotes and they eat local dogs. I’m trying out for the bear.”

  My mother frowned. “Speaking of local dogs, Betty lost her dog last night to a coyote. He got snatched right by the mailbox.”

  “I heard about this in math! That’s horrible!” I said. “I didn’t know it was mallet-toe Betty’s coward dog.”

  My mother sighed. “Can we quit with the labels?”

  “Okay,” I said. Because I wasn’t trying to be mean. Just accurate. “Are you going to bake her another casserole?”

  I was afraid that I already knew the answer.

  “We’ll visit her tomorrow,” my mom said.

  And then I thought of a great idea. “But I need to practice for mascot!”

  “All day?” my mother asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “You’ll miss seeing your friend Raya.”

  I looked out the window at the hay fields turning yellow. “I can live with that.”

  hen I was practicing for mascot in my bedroom, I realized that Ms. Penrod was right about something. Having the right clothes really did matter. Because I wasn’t able to act “bear” enough without looking a little bit like a bear.

  I realized this when I put on my dad’s winter gloves and it helped me tap into my inner animal. But I needed something more. I explained this to my mom while she made mallet-toe Betty’s casserole.

  “Having the right athletic gear is essential for optimum performance. That’s why I need a furry head,” I said, pointing to my pixie.

  “You want me to make you a bear costume?” my mom asked.

  “Or you can buy me one.”

  “Do you know how much something like that probably costs?”

  “No.” I had never seen one at the mall.

  My mother poured a can of cream of mushroom soup over a mushy substance. “That looks very gray,” I said.