A Match Made in High School

by Kristin Walker

  “Look,” Todd said as he strode over, “you need a spotter so you can get the feel of the jump.” He offered a hand to pull me up. “You’re not getting the rhythm of it.”

  I let him help yank me onto my feet, but I gave him the stink-eye. “Rhythm?” I wheezed. “Not only do I have to defy gravity, I have to have rhythm while I do it?”

  “The jump has a rhythm,” he said. “Up and out and down. One and two and three. You’re doing it like up and out and in and down. It’s taking too long and you’re hitting the ground. Here.” He swiveled me around and wrapped his hands around my waist. “Let me spot you, and you’ll feel it. Now squat,” he said, and I did. “And spring.” I bolted skyward again, but this time I felt Todd lifting and holding me up a millisecond longer than I could have myself. I touched my toes as he chanted, “Two.” By, “and three,” Todd had guided me down onto my feet.

  “Did you feel it?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said, actually a bit giddy. “Before, I was picturing going up, spreading out, coming back in, and going down. But this time it was like: Up, flat, down.” When I said “flat,” I stooped over and threw my hands out like I was an umpire calling safe. Or maybe I looked like a skinny pterodactyl, because everyone laughed a bit. But I didn’t care. “Lemme try it by myself.”

  I squatted, leapt, yelled, “Flat,” as I hit my toes, and came down, not on my feet, exactly, but into sort of a stumbling squat. Still, it was a far cry from my ass.

  “All right, Princess!” Todd hooted.

  The squad screeched and burst into applause. For me, partly, but also because now there was a chance we could do Maximum Spirit, a cheer that showcased the girls’ gymnastics. The problem was, there was a Russian in the middle of the cheer that everyone had to do simultaneously. It was one of the squad’s top cheers, and we didn’t stand a chance without it.

  “You’ll get it now,” Simone Dawson chirped.

  Amanda wasn’t quite bubbling over with optimism, but she did say, “Better. Keep working. You have a week and a half to get it perfect.” She announced to the group, “That’s practice, everyone,” and together we chanted, “Go Eagles,” and clapped once—the customary end-of-practice ritual. We splintered off into the waning afternoon.

  I grabbed my water bottle and squirted a victory drink into my mouth. I hopped on my bike and pedaled home as fast as I could; I wanted to try the Russian again in my room. I recognized full well that I was a total dork. But I didn’t care. Because I was now a total dork who could defy gravity. And that had to count for something.

  When I got home, Mom handed me seven messages from Marcie. (My cell had been off at practice.) “She sounded desperate,” Mom said.

  I snatched the notes and the phone, ran up to my room, and dialed.

  “Mar?” I asked when I heard a muffled hello.

  “Oh, Fee. He broke up with me.” I could hear her crying.

  “I’m coming over,” I said.

  CHAPTER 26

  TWELVE MINUTES LATER, WE WERE SITTING CROSS-legged on Marcie’s canopy bed. An afternoon of weeping had turned her face into a war zone. Her mascara ran down her cheeks in dark trenches. Her usually dainty nose was engorged and dripping. Red blotches dolloped her skin like crimson camouflage. She hugged one of her lacy white pillows tight to herself.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, basically, I’m not pretty enough for him,” she blurted.

  “He said that?”

  She smeared her nose across her sleeve. “No, what he said was that I’d become too high-maintenance. Too much hair and nails and makeup and crap. Said he’d always pictured himself with a . . .” Her breath shuddered as she tried to catch it. “A natural beauty.” Marcie dissolved in tears. I wrapped my arms around her. That sonofabitch, I thought. Then I said it out loud.

  “Marcie, you are a total natural beauty,” I said. “You always have been and you always will be. Gabe is a blind horse’s ass if he can’t see that. And you know what? Even if he could see it? He’s a shit-can for thinking looks are all that matter. You know that.” I held her and stroked her hair exactly like Mr. Pickler had Sam’s.

  “I know,” she sobbed. “Anyway, I think the real reason he broke up with me is because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  “Well, who would?” I said, counting all the times I’d fantasized about it myself. “Gross,” I added for extra believability.

  “Lately, it seemed like that was all he wanted,” Mar said. “He never shut up about it.”

  “He didn’t like, force you into anything, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Well, not quite.”

  I pushed her back from me to look her in the eye. “Not quite? What the hell does that mean?”

  She fiddled with a lilac ribbon on the trim of the pillow. “Oh, nothing terrible. I mean nothing too terrible. He’d just get a little . . . aggressive sometimes. But nothing illegal or anything.”

  “It doesn’t have to be illegal to be wrong, Mar. Don’t defend him.”

  “I know. I’m not. It’s just hard to pinpoint exactly what he did. He’d just get pushy sometimes. And mad when I didn’t do what he wanted. But then afterward, he’d tell me he loved me, which I know now is complete bullshit, but when he said it, everything was perfect again. I really thought he loved me, Fee. And that I loved him.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d broken her heart like that. Todd was right. Gabe Webber was toast. As in toasted. He was gonna burn. I would see to it.

  She folded herself over the pillow and wailed, “When is it going to stop hurting?”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I said. I rubbed her back. “Forget him. You know what? Just pretend none of it ever happened.”

  She sat up and pleaded, “How can I?”

  She wanted an answer. She sat there on her frilly, pure white bedspread waiting for me to give her the solution that would heal her heart and restore her dignity. Because that would be great right now, Fiona. Forgetting about it would be great. And you’ve led her to believe it can be done. So, how?

  I thought about Nana surviving forty-three years of pain for Uncle Tommy. I thought about Principal Miller struggling through a speech about marriage, while hers had fallen apart. I thought about Maggie Klein’s slow deterioration within a job that once fulfilled her. And that was when I knew the answer.

  “You can’t,” I whispered. “You can’t forget the bad stuff, and you can’t pretend it never happened.”

  Marcie squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together. “But I want to,” she squeaked.

  I hooked my forefinger under a tendril of her hair and moved it off her forehead. “No. You have to own it. You have to make it yours, Mar. Because once it’s part of you, then you can build on it. It becomes a piece of the foundation of who you are. And who you’ll become.”

  She opened her eyes and nodded faintly. “Not exactly a short-term solution,” she said.

  “I wish I had one for you.” I truly did. Which gave me an idea. “But I bet I can cheer you up a bit.”

  She grimaced and shook her head. “Ha. Doubtful.”

  “Well, watch this.” I crawled off the bed and stood in the middle of the floor in front of her. I put my hands on my hips, shouted, “READY? OKAY,” and slapped my thighs. “WE’VE GOT THE SPIRIT, YEAH. WE’VE GOT THE MAXIMUM SPIRIT. YOU SHOULD WATCH YOURSELF, ’CAUSE WHEN WE CHEER YOU’RE GONNA HEAR IT. NOT A LITTLE,” step and turn, “NOT A LOT,” reach and hop, “IT’S THE,” squat, “MAXIMUM SPIRIT,” Russian, “AND YOU KNOW,” kickety-kick, kickety-kick, “IT’S WHITE HOT!” lick-thumb-and-place-to-ass, “TSSSSSS.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Marcie covered her face and rolled backward, laughing. “Omigodomigodomigod!” She sat up suddenly. “Fee! You were actually good.”

  “You’re obviously delirious from crying.”

  “No, you were totally not bad. Although I admit that the sight of you cheering was one of the strangest things I�
��ve ever seen in my life.”

  “I need to work on the jump,” I said.

  “Whatever. I loved it.” She beamed at me. “Thank you, Fee.”

  “Yeah, well. Only you get the private showing, Mar.”

  I called my parents to tell them I was staying for dinner. After dinner, I called to ask them if I could stay over. They said yes, so Mar and I stayed up late filling each other in on the details we’d missed out on during our “temporary discord” as we called it.

  I told her about Samantha Pickler. She recatalogued all of Johnny Mercer’s finer points. I told her about Uncle Tommy and showed her Nana’s rings that I’d been wearing. She told me everything that had happened between Gabe and her. I listened, even though it was all about . . . Gabe.

  It almost felt like the “temporary discord” had never happened. But we both knew it had.

  It was just that now, we owned it.

  CHAPTER 27

  SO, I’D MADE UP WITH MAR. I’D MADE UP WITH SEÑOR Shitslacks. I’d even forged a shaky truce with Amanda. The only person I still needed to deal with was Johnny Mercer. Oh yeah, I had to kill Gabe Webber, too, but there was plenty of time for that. First, I had to make Johnny not hate me anymore. I tried to catch him in calc, but he always came in right before the bell and disappeared right after.

  He got away from me again on Friday, and I couldn’t bear to have it hanging over me all weekend, so I decided just to call him. I got his number from Mar, and after school, I snuck up to my room, did some deep breathing à la Maggie Klein, and dialed.

  A woman answered. “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello. May I please speak with Johnny?” I pride myself on my telephone etiquette.

  “May I ask who’s calling, please?”

  “Fiona Sheehan,” I said.

  I could tell she put her hand over the mouthpiece to yell for Johnny. Then I could hear some muffled talking. Then louder muffled talking. And more. Then I finally heard Johnny’s deep, chocolaty voice on the phone. “Hey Fiona.”

  I suddenly wanted even more privacy, so I hopped in my closet, pulled the door shut, and squatted in the pitch-black on a pile of dirty clothes. “Hi Johnny. Um, is everything okay?” I asked, referring to all the muffled talking, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but whatev. “I didn’t get you in trouble for calling, did I?”

  “Nah,” he said. “What’s up?”

  One more deep breath. I figured I might as well get it all out while I had the chance. “Okay, don’t get mad at Mar and don’t get mad at me, but she told me about all the crap Principal Miller is making you do because of that prank, and I wanted to say I’m sorry and thank you, and I hope you don’t hate me because of it, or the bonfire, or because I crumpled up your note, which I only did because I thought you were saying I was an insensitive snob and that you didn’t like me, and I hope you’ll let me make it up to you by giving you my iPod and speakers, or at least letting me pay for your workshop or something, because I really can’t stand you being mad at me, which I know you are, and I totally get, but I wish you weren’t, so please tell me you’ll forgive me.”

  Silence.

  “Is that it?” Johnny said.

  “I think so.”

  Silence.

  I said, “Are you mad?”

  “Nah.”

  “I really am sorry.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “Avoiding you.”

  “I can’t blame you,” I said.

  Silence.

  “So we’re cool then?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Friends?”

  “Um . . . yeah. Friends.”

  “See ya Monday,” he said.

  “Okay. ’Bye.”

  “Hey Fiona?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “Thanks for listening.”

  “Okay. ’Bye.”

  “’Bye.”

  Click.

  Silence.

  I sat there in the dark.

  Friends. He was cool with being friends. That should’ve made me happy to hear, right? It should’ve made me feel just fabulous that Johnny Mercer wanted to be my friend. That was what I wanted, right? To be friends?

  So tell me why I felt like someone had just thumped me in the gut?

  Saturday, December 7

  I’ve done more apologizing in the past week than a politician with a crack pipe and a sex addiction. Everything was so harsh before I’d done it. And doing it was no freaking picnic. But having done it feels great.

  I’m thinking about Mar, and I’m wondering . . . how do you know if it’s really true love? You can’t go by what’s on TV, because everyone knows that’s crap. But even a lie is based in some truth, right?

  So is there really a true love for everyone? And how do you know when you’ve found it? Does it make you all blissed out to be in it? And totally destroy you when you’re not? If the emotions of true love really were that extreme, then wouldn’t true love be easy to identify? There’d never be a question of whether it was the real deal.

  But it isn’t easy to identify. So I wonder if true love is more subtle. If it sneaks up and just stands there next to you, and you don’t recognize that it’s true love until you turn and look at this thing that’s been right there with you all along, and you realize that you never want to be without it.

  Does that sound totally fruitcake?

  Don’t answer that.

  CHAPTER 28

  I SPENT THE WHOLE WEEKEND PRACTICING CHEERS and my Russian. Monday at school, Mom and her activist group, Parents Opposing Mandatory Marriage Education, or POMME, as they’d dubbed themselves, lined up to picket again. (I thought it ironic that their acronym was the French word for “apple,” an actual symbol of education. But nerds like me notice these things.) The POMME chant for this week was: “Marriage education class—can’t decide which kids will pass!” Only this week, they had about four more bullhorns, so the words were unmistakable and frankly kind of distracting.

  But I made it through the day and headed down to the gym for practice. I slipped into the locker room to change into some sweats. Then I strolled casually into the gym. Only then—when I saw Mrs. O’Toole actually upright, talking, and pointing, and I saw the frantic looks on the cheerleaders’ faces as they scuttled around—did I realize.

  The district competition was this coming weekend.

  We had five meager afternoons to pull our competition routine into some semblance of shape. But let’s face it: it wasn’t the routine that needed to be pulled into shape; it was me. I was the weak link by which the strength of the chain would be gauged. I knew it. The rest of the squad knew it. So I made a resolution then and there: no matter how much I needed to study for finals next week, no matter how badly I wanted to finish Pride and Prejudice, no matter who I pissed off and owed an apology to . . . this week, I was A Cheerleader.

  Okay, a little over-the-top. But it’s fun to pretend to be a martyr-hero. As much as I hated to admit it, though, it wasn’t any noble sense of obligation that was motivating me; it was the prospect of public humiliation on an epic level. Epic, I tell you.

  “Come on, Princess,” Todd called. “You’re late.”

  Was I? I checked my watch. I must have dawdled a few minutes too long in the locker room. “Sorry,” I yelled and ran over to the group.

  “Let’s get started. Line up for Catch the Fever,” Amanda commanded. Funny. I’d have to tell Mar that one. Commander Amanda. Amanda Demanda. Amanda the Pan—

  “Fiona!” she barked.

  Oops. Right. Focus. I jumped into line.

  I threw myself into it, full-on. I dared anyone within a mile to resist catching Eagle fever. Because the Eagles were so hot, the fever couldn’t be stopped. So if you couldn’t take the heat, then you’d better just drop.

  I belted the words from my diaphragm like I’d been taught. I smiled like a loony goofball. I hit all my marks, I didn’t drop Simone, and I
ended with a flourish. Ta-da!

  So imagine my surprise when Mrs. O’Toole yelled, “That stunk! Miss Sheehan, you need to get with the program!”

  “What?” I cried. I thought I’d nailed it.

  “She’s right,” Todd said. “It blew chunks. You were way off, Fiona.”

  Todd must’ve been joking. But then again, he’d used my real name.

  He said, “Your legs were bent. Your wrists were floppy. You were late on the jump and the clap again.”

  “I was trying my best,” I bellowed. The dead silence that followed told me the obvious truth: my best was nowhere near good enough for this squad.

  “We know,” Simone Dawson mumbled.

  Ouch.

  Amanda sighed. “All right, look.” She searched the ceiling like she was hoping to find some divine inspiration up between the basketball banners. “Fiona, come into the locker room. We’ll work in front of the mirror. You guys keep going.”

  When I was in third grade, this kid had gotten pulled from math class because he couldn’t grasp fractions. The teacher had sat him outside in the hall so he could work on the more remedial stuff. At the time, I’d thought he was lucky to be getting out of class. Now I realized how embarrassed he must have been.

  I followed Amanda into the locker room like a naughty puppy. She stood me in front of the full-length mirror and told me to do the cheer. I did. And Todd had been right. I blew chunks. “I don’t have a big mirror at home,” I mumbled. Like that was the excuse. Truth be told, it had never dawned on me to use a mirror. What an idiot.

  “Try it again,” Amanda said. “I’ll stand in front of you and we’ll go through the moves in slow motion. Try to match me exactly.”

  We went through Catch the Fever at one-eighth speed. “Really feel the position,” Amanda said again and again. “Cement it into your muscles.” Whatever the hell that meant.

  She explained that my muscles would remember where to go. Some sort of sense-memory thing. I was dubious, but I cemented as hard as I could.

  After Catch the Fever, we did Steam. Then the next one. By the time we’d done each cheer at least a thousand times, practice was over. Once again, all Amanda said was, “Better.”