by Brian James
I even waited for him before lunch. I didn’t want him to walk in and see me at the popular table and think that was the end of everything. I would’ve sat with him if he asked me to. Even if he didn’t ask, I would’ve if he hadn’t been rude when I caught up to him and grabbed his sleeve.
“Leave me alone, Hannah,” he shouted. “Or do you have another name already? Michelle? Mara? Why don’t you just pass me a note once you find out what they’re calling you from now on.”
I let go of his sleeve and watched him walk away, waiting until he sat down before I went in and sat with Meredith and Maggie and my other new friends.
I still feel bad no matter how much of a jerk he’s been. I just wish I could snap my fingers and make him understand but nothing is ever that easy. I just have to keep trying. Eventually he’ll see I’m still me.
“Don’t worry about him,” Meredith says when she sees me sulking. “He’s always been a little strange.”
I frown at her so that she knows not to make fun of him around me. But still, she’s right. I need to forget about Lukas for right now. This is something he’s got to get over, not me.
I go back to staring at Greg.
At the moment, he’s much more interesting to me. I let myself daydream about being his girlfriend. About the way he’ll show me a different side to Maplecrest and make all my bad impressions go away. Then maybe we’ll fall in love forever. Get engaged and then married and have kids with soft bunny hair like his.
“I can talk to him for you,” Maggie says.
“No!” I shout and Maggie laughs.
“Don’t be nervous,” Maggie says calmly. “I’m sure he’s going to like you. You’re one of us now after all.”
One of them.
I try to wrap my head around the idea of what that means. The privileges and responsibilities. Being able to get away with things other kids would get thrown out of school for. Making sure I keep up the right appearance. All the things that go along with being popular. It seems like too much to comprehend all at once and I put it out of my mind. I’ll have plenty of time to figure it out as I go along. Besides, I never know how long it’s going to last. I could move out of here next week as soon as my dad comes back. No need to worry in that case. Just go with the flow.
“Okay, I guess,” I say.
“What? You mean you want me to talk to him?” Maggie asks, checking just to make sure.
“Why not?” I say and she tells me that’s more like it. Glad I’m finally getting into the spirit of what it means to be one of them, to be a perfect girl.
A stale scent like old sweat and cardboard boxes escapes from the equipment room as Maggie emerges with a uniform for me. It’s like the smell of the butcher shop next to our apartment building in the city and I’m filled with the memory of passing it by on summer mornings when the heat brought out the worst of the smells, making me gag a little. I try to peek in the room but only a sliver of fluorescent light shows inside as the door closes heavily behind her. “You’ll probably want to wash these but you should try them on first to make sure they fit,” she says, handing a uniform skirt and top over to me.
“Yeah, it smells like dead mice in there,” I say.
The fabric in my hands smells like dead mice, too.
Maggie laughs and says she knows. “I’ve made Mrs. Donner complain to that lazy janitor a million times but he never does anything about it.”
“That’s too bad,” I say to be polite. Really, though, I only care about having to wear the leftover souls of dead mice against my skin until I can get home and run it through the wash three times.
I put the uniform down on the bench and stare at it.
“Go on already,” Miranda barks. She pushes it closer with an anxious shove as time ticks away toward the time we’re due out on the field. I stare at the uniform, one hand pinching my lips and the other running my fingers over the stitched M sewn into the sweater vest.
Black as midnight.
Black badge of honor.
A superhero suit that will grant me special powers the instant I put it on.
The other girls are standing around me. Most of them are already dressed for practice and they are waiting to see me try on the clothes. It makes me uncomfortable to have so many eyes watching as I undress out of the clothes I wore to school. Letting them drop in a pile at my feet and I shiver, standing only in my underwear. Pull the uniform top over my head as quick as I can and the static electricity makes my hair stick up on end. I step into the skirt and pull it up over my bare knees until it rests on my hips, a little too snug and the elastic waistband starts cutting into my skin.
Meredith has her fingers pressed against her mouth, smiling at the sight of me draped in black. “It looks perfect,” she whispers. The girls nearby seem to agree as they tilt their heads trying to get a good look. Touching the hem here and there as they do and treating me like a doll decorated in their favorite clothes.
“It’s a little small,” I say, tugging at the shoulder straps digging into my armpits and pulling at where it clings to my stomach.
“Don’t worry, you’ll lose that weight soon enough,” Morgan says. The syllables slithering off her tongue as her eyes move up and down from my legs to my chest. Pointing out all the places where I’m not as thin as the rest of them.
I cross my arms in front of me to hide from her gaze. I can’t help thinking about the way their ribs all show through under their skin when they got changed. I feel fat standing there in a uniform too small to hold me. If I stopped to think about it, I’d know it was ridiculous. My dad’s always telling me I don’t eat enough and when I go to the doctor, I’m always below average on the chart. But knowing all of that doesn’t stop me from hating the way my body looks under the scrutiny of an army of blue eyes sparkling in a dusty locker room.
Morgan snickers under her breath once she sees how her words have affected me. She wraps her bony fingers around my wrist and tries to pull my hand away from my stomach to show off how unlike the rest of them I really am, how my bones in my pelvis are hiding under a layer of skin.
Maggie steps between us and stops her. Grabs Morgan’s arms and pulls her away from me. Tosses her off like shooing a bug. Morgan huffs in disgust. She can’t believe Maggie would take my side. But she doesn’t say it, doesn’t cross Maggie. She pouts silently before walking away.
“Ignore her,” Maggie says. Then she looks me over the same way the other girls did. “It is a little tight,” saying it more to herself than to me. Then she tugs at the places where the uniform hugs me close and I can feel my breath freeze up. Something about the way her hand feels against my skin is unlike any way I’ve ever been touched before and I feel more like a doll than before. “Morgan’s right, though. After a week of practice, you probably lose five pounds.”
“Oh,” is all that I can get out, thinking again about how imperfect I must look to them. Maggie must be able to tell. Girls can always tell when it comes to these things, and so she assures me it has nothing to do with me. Says it’s not because I need to lose five pounds, just that it’s what happens to every girl because the training is so much work. I repeat my “Oh,” but this time it’s more confident than before.
“And that all starts right now, so let’s go,” Maggie says in a cheerful voice, urging me to get my sneakers on and shuffling the others out of the locker room for the start of practice.
Meredith waits behind with me, still beaming at the sight of me dressed as one of them, smiling like a proud sister and her pale skin glows a little pinker than usual, hiding the green trace of veins that are visible under the surface. “You’re going to be so great out there,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say, feeling grateful for the encouragement. “I’m still not so sure about this whole thing,” I admit as I lace up my shoes. “I mean . . . it’s just that I’m not like the rest of you . . . you know what I mean?”
Meredith lets her eyes go soft and sits down beside me. She rests her hand on my elbow. “Yeah, I know,�
� she nods. “We’ve all known one another forever, it must be kind of hard to jump right in.” And I never thought of it like that, but I suppose that might be what it is. Maybe all my nerves and doubts are just because I’m the outsider trying to fit in. “It’s like being adopted into a family, it takes time,” Meredith says.
“I guess it is,” I say, thinking if the rest of the family is as kind as she is, then I’m really going to like being a part of it.
Meredith gets up, offers me a helping hand, and leads me toward the exit. “You’ll see,” she says as the door creaks open and floods my eyes with the harsh white light of the sun. “You’ll blend in before you know it.”
A few steps in front of me, Meredith disappears in the glare of the sun. And I think that is how it must be. That we are like the drenched afternoon sky that fades all the colors so that after a while you can’t tell yellow from white or blue from green. The squad, standing in four straight lines, blends the same way in front of me so that I can’t tell Meredith from Miranda or Maggie from Morgan. The idea of being lost like this used to frighten me, but now I understand a little better and I think it might feel safe and secure to fade into the scenery. It might be nice to have a family for once.
ELEVEN
The first time I can remember seeing the ocean, I was five years old. I’d seen it before but I couldn’t remember. My dad always tells me how he and my mother used to take me to Coney Island when I was a toddler. He said I used to spread my arms like the seagulls and run in the sand, pretending to fly. I don’t remember any of that, but I do remember the time we all went to the beach in Virginia the summer before I started kindergarten.
I don’t know if it was because we were in a strange place or if I was just finally old enough to have memories that last, but I’ll never forget staring at the ocean. It didn’t look anything like the way it does in Brooklyn. It looked endless and it looked hungry. The waves were like so many tongues wanting to swallow the world and drag it under.
Cheerleading practice is the same as the ocean, each girl like a wave rolling over one another, struggling to be the first ashore and pulling the others in her wake. The expression in their eyes just as fierce and as hungry and as blue as the water that grabbed for my toes that I kept dug into the sand. And they never get tired, the same way the waves never stopped coming toward me with long, watery tongues wanting to lick my skin. Surrounded by them, I feel just as helpless as I did facing the ocean, waiting to get stolen away.
I had trouble keeping up after the first ten minutes. I couldn’t believe how much energy the other girls had. I couldn’t figure out where they hid it in their skinny bodies. Strength as measureless as the number of waves in the sea, while I was bent over trying to catch my wind. No one but me ever even seemed to be out of breath, and I could see Morgan making sure everyone else noticed each time I raised my hand and took a break.
On the way back into the locker room afterward, I overhear some of the other girls asking Maggie whether or not I really belong. They’re not so sure I’m cut out for it. Not so sure they’ve made the right choice to let me into their group.
“Did you see her? She’ll never survive,” a girl named Mandy says.
“We should just get rid of her now,” Morgan says.
“Shhhh, she’ll hear us,” Mandy says but Morgan says she doesn’t care if I do.
“I care,” Maggie said with an authority that shuts the others up. “I don’t want anyone talking about a member of our squad that way.”
“She’s not a full member yet,” Morgan snaps, saying it like a challenge.
“She will be,” Maggie growls and I can’t help myself from looking over my shoulder to witness the way Maggie controls her with one angry look. And even though it feels good to have her on my side, my mood still sours because I know it’s true. I know I still have to prove myself and I wonder how long it’s going to take. I wonder if I even have it in me to go all the way through with it or if I’ll end up quitting the way I’ve quit everything in my life as soon as it gets too hard.
Morgan’s smirking face passes by me in the locker room. “How’s your head?” she says, rubbing her hand at the spot on the back of her own head mimicking where I hit the floor the other day and banged my head against the lockers.
“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth and she laughs the way witches cackle at the moon in scary movies as she walks off.
It’ll be worth all the sore muscles and sprains just to piss her off. It doesn’t matter how difficult it gets, I’m not quitting because, for no other reason, at least it’ll make her miserable to have me around.
I finish getting dressed. I don’t shove my uniform in my bag, though, I keep it tucked under my arm instead. I don’t want it polluting the rest of my things. The dead-mouse smell has only grown stronger in the last hour. Add in the scent of my own sweat and it’s toxic. It would last forever if I stuck it in my bag. I’d smell it every time I opened it up to get anything, so it’s better to deal with it out in the open for the short walk home. It makes sense to me to suffer a little now to prevent from suffering a lot more later on.
I say good-bye to Meredith on my way out. She asks if I want to go to the diner with her and some of the other girls, but I shake my head. I’m too tired and plus I’m too broke. “Maybe tomorrow?” I say and that seems to make her happy.
“Yeah, sure,” she says. “See you later.”
I hurry out of the locker room and into the darkening halls of the empty school. I want to get out of there before running into anyone else who might try to persuade me to go along with them so I’ll have to sit for hours and gossip. I don’t have the energy for it. I don’t even have the energy to make up excuses, so I avoid everyone by going out the back way and step outside into the safety of twilight.
It’s a relief when the cold air rushes against my skin. The sweat drying into salt crumbs as the wind blows on me and I can’t wait to get home and let a warm shower wash it all away. I walk as fast as my legs can manage given the way my muscles are burning with each step. I keep the image of the bathtub in my mind the way a wanderer in the desert keeps dreaming of an oasis, the rust-stained tiles lingering in the air like the promise of presents on Christmas morning.
The image shatters and trickles away the second I see Greg leaning against the brick wall outside the boy’s locker room. The security light above his head switches on as the shadows cloud over, tricking it into believing it’s night already. Its white light makes him look ghostly, bleaching his skin like an overexposed photograph and all I can see are his eyes. Beautiful eyes like a girl’s that burn with electricity with a frightening glow that pulls me toward him.
I scratch my fingers through my hair to comb it into some sort of attractive mess. He smiles at me, pushes himself from the wall, and starts to walk in my direction. I swing my backpack off my shoulder and stuff my uniform deep into its black hole. I’d rather suffer later and have this moment be perfect. Besides, the bag can be washed after all.
“Hey,” he says, stopping in front of me.
I stop, too, and say “hi” as shy I’ve ever said anything. I’ve never been very good with boys. Flirting with them, I mean. Not ones that I actually think are attractive, anyway. I’m able to do it perfectly with the ones I’m not interested in, or the strange kids who always fall in love with me, like Lukas. There’s no pressure there because I don’t really care much about the outcome. But when it’s a boy that I sort of secretly like, I end up standing with my hands behind my back and trying to look everywhere but at him.
Greg’s not too good at it, either, though.
I can tell right away. He keeps tapping his foot against the parking lot blacktop. His hands move back and forth from his coat pockets to his jean pockets and he also tries to look anywhere but at me.
“Are you going to the diner with everyone else?” he asks. He stares at the figures on the other side of the lot heading in the direction of town. It gives me the courage to look at him knowing he
’s not watching me.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I don’t really feel up to it.”
“Oh,” he says, “that’s cool.” He shrugs his shoulders and everything but he’s not able to hide his disappointment. It’s obvious he’s been waiting there for me to come out. He’s probably been planning this since lunch, thinking that he’d walk with me and then we’d sit together, talk, and fall in love and now I’ve ruined his daydream.
“Then I’ll walk you home,” he says, saying it like a command and making his eyes as big as can be so that there’s no way I can say no. I don’t know why, but I sort of like not being able to resist him. There’s something exciting about the way he talks to me. And besides, I’m not sure I don’t want exactly what he wants.
“Really?” I ask.
“Really.”
“Okay, yeah.” My stomach feels like it’s turning inside out when I think about being alone with him in my driveway. I stifle a nervous laugh by biting my lip and start to walk in the direction of my house, careful to brush my arm against his so that I can feel the brief contact of our sleeves rustling together when the fabric touches.
A few of the football players pass us on their way to the diner. They point and laugh. I hear them whisper about how Greg’s finally got himself a girl. And I’m really glad he doesn’t take any notice of them. He doesn’t stop and try to show off or act tough, just keeps walking at the same pace as me until we leave them behind.
We don’t talk for the first few blocks. Not really, anyway. He asks me typical questions about my first practice. I keep my answers to one word. Okay. Fine. Things like that. Then he coughs a fake cough before asking me if I have a boyfriend.
I shake my head.
Watching my feet as I walk because I don’t want to look at him and give away the jitters inside me that are leaning toward wanting one.
“What about that kid you’re always hanging out with at lunch?” he asks.
“Lukas?” I ask, pretending to be surprised so I can hide how excited I am that Greg’s been noticing me enough in the lunchroom to know who I sit with. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just a friend,” I tell him. “At the moment, not a very good one,” I add, thinking about how Lukas would react if he saw me walking home with one of the zombies of Maplecrest.