by Carrie Jones
To continue to be fair, this is a really dumb cheer. However, I am a pro here. I point my pom-pom at the kid and think about giving him a not-so-subtle salute with my middle finger. I am so not in the mood.
The kid stands up and glares at us. His little button-down dress shirt seems ridiculously out of place. Everybody else under ten has T-shirts on. I almost feel bad for him, stuck here under the yellow gym lights, stuck between sweaty grown-ups in their maroon high school spirit sweatshirts smelling like cigarettes, body odor, and popcorn. Almost.
“D-E-F—E-N-S-E. It spells defense.”
“Beyotches, I know you can spell. Just shut up,” he yells. He brandishes his floppy blond-haired head at us.
I glance at Lyle. He raises his eyebrows, because no matter how secure in his manhood he is, he is not into being called a beyotch by some brat kid. Lyle’s cheek twitches like he’s about two seconds away from running up the old, wooden bleachers and pummeling the boy, which would not be good, obviously. Dakota just bangs his drum. I don’t think he can hear anything over that.
I try to catch Seppie’s eye, but she’s oblivious, as is basically everyone else. The mom next to the yelling boy is fixing the bra strap beneath her ancient black Metallica T-shirt. She has no clue. Neither do the rest of the four hundred or so people crammed into the gym. They’re watching the basketball game. They’re watching each other. Nobody is watching this weenie kid.
Nobody except me and Lyle and the guy sitting diagonally behind the boy. That guy is wearing sunglasses inside, but you can still tell that half his attention is on the kid and not on the game, which is slamming on behind me and Lyle and the rest of the varsity squad. He also seems to be staring at Dakota a lot, which is kind of weird because Dakota is just sitting there, occasionally playing drums when the pep band crashes out another rah-rah support-our-team song. Then again, I’m pretty much constantly staring at Dakota too, so who am I to judge?
Someone in the bleachers yells, “Go, Thomas!”
Thomas is the point guard and crowd favorite. He is incredible. Judging from the cheers, he must have stolen the ball. Obviously, our cheer worked. Take that, kid.
Other people start jumping up and down. I turn to see it. A shot from way past the three-point line, almost at half court, right at the halftime buzzer. Swish. It is all net and all beautiful. The crowd screams. All the cheerleaders scream, except Lyle, obviously. He yells. I do a couple herkies to show my support. Everything reeks of popcorn.
We run to the net end of the court as the ballplayers head off to the locker room for a halftime talk. Lyle and Seppie roll out the long, blue tumbling mat. I wipe my hands together and try to pump myself up. I scan the crowd, trying to locate my mom. She’s not here yet, I don’t think, which is weird. Punctuality is her middle name. (Not really. It’s Denise.) Dakota gives me a thumbs-up, which is nice, and a drumroll, which is even nicer. My stomach becomes a cliché of butterflies fluttering and all that stuff. Dakota will have to be my winner in the next-guy-to-like contest, because Lyle is unfortunately off-limits, thanks to his best-friend status. Speaking of … I sneak a peek at Lyle, who is outgrowing his shirt in a good chest-too-big way.
Do not stare.
The voice commanding my head is a guy’s voice. My subconscious is a polite, commanding male? It makes me laugh because it is just so bizarre.
Bunkie Brady, the school’s athletic director, yells some encouragement, and I bounce on my toes. I’m up. Lyle smiles at me and I power run ten steps. I double back handspring into a back layout and then a back twist. I land on my feet and raise my hands up, turning to face the home crowd. They go wild. They always do, which is really nice, and more than makes up for the D.
I hustle out of the way for Lyle to blast down the mat. He front tucks three times. It’s his only tumbling talent but he has perfected it. Girls swoon. That’s just how he is. People start screaming, all pumped up. He takes my hand and we start making them frenzied. That’s our job. That is the point of cheerleaders, and Lyle may love cross-country while hating cheering, but he completely adores the attention.
“We ARE West High!” we chant. “We ARE West High!”
They chant it back to us, clapping two beats at the appropriate time. The rest of the squad comes up behind us, screaming it, too. It is insane, all noise and feet-stomping, hands-clapping craziness.
“We ARE!”
Stomp.
Stomp.
“West High!”
Stomp.
Stomp.
Kind of another stupid cheer, honestly.
“We ARE!”
I’m midstomp when there’s this flurry of action over by Dakota’s drum set. The sunglasses guy has captured Dakota by the shoulder and is yanking him down the bleachers, past all the clappers and stompers, right toward the side door. Dakota is screaming too, but not our cheer.
“WEST HIGH!”
I snatch Lyle’s elbow and point. I don’t know if he sees. Poor Dakota is trying to jerk away from the sunglasses guy but he’s not getting anywhere. The guy in the glasses smacks him across the face and hustles him out the door to the locker rooms. How can no one notice this? Crud.
There’s nothing else to do. I book after them, race in front of the screaming basketball fans, and dart toward the locker-room doors. I am right at the doorway that leads out of the gym to the locker-room hallway when Lyle yanks me by the elbow.
“What’s going on?” His eyes are round, worried. “Why’d you take off?”
“Dakota.” I point down the hall. My hand trembles. “This guy with sunglasses took him and started beating on him. He yanked him back here.”
Lyle sturdies his shoulders, calm as he always is, despite the craziness of the situation. “To the locker rooms?”
“Yes.” I try to pull my elbow away. “I have to stop him.”
“You think he’s kidnapping him or something? Really?” Lyle’s eyebrows shoot up like they’re trying to escape his face.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. He was hitting him, and Dakota was screaming.” I start pulling away from him. I am all wild strength. He lets go. “Lyle! We have to do something.”
He nods quickly, all in charge and sensible. “Let’s go get the sheriff deputy guy.”
“Okay.” That will take so much time.
Lyle gives me one of his everything will be fine expressions, which he usually reserves for when I stress out about tests, and then runs off toward the doors where the sheriff’s deputies always stand. I follow him, but he gets stuck behind masses of hungry high school basketball fans. And then people cut between us as he has to shove through all the tired moms buying cheesy nachos for their kids and the baseball hat dads clustered around the bake sale table. It’ll take him too long, way too long to get the deputy. Anything could happen to Dakota and his forearms.
So I don’t stay put like Lyle wants me to. Instead, I rush down the hallway. Sweat, old socks, unwashed T-shirts … the smells hit me as I run under the fluorescent lights. Right now, the home and away locker rooms will be filled with guys talking about strategy and zones. So the sunglasses guy wouldn’t bring Dakota there unless he wanted an audience. That leaves the girls’ locker rooms. I smash open the door to the room for the away cheerleaders. There are clothes and duffel bags everywhere. Hair products roll about on the floor. I slam around the room, searching, searching.
“Hey!” I yell. “You in here?”
I check under the toilet stalls, bash open some doors. Nothing. I slam out of there and rush into our own locker room. God. God. God. I can barely breathe, there’s so much adrenaline running through me. My heart feels like it’s exploding inside my chest.
“Hey!” I yell again as I step inside the locker room.
They stand there on one of the long wooden benches in the center of the room, in between the rows of freestanding lockers. Well, that’s not true. The sunglasses guy stands. His dark hair ruffles like there’s a fan on somewhere. But there aren’t any fans in the locker room.
>
He has Dakota all tied up on the bench. He used duct tape to wrap his ankles and hands together, doubling Dakota back onto himself. Dakota’s eyes meet mine, and you can tell he is so not into this S and M crap.
“Help!” Dakota says, in a kind of oddly calm way for someone being abducted. He looks strangely sexy.
“It’ll be okay, Dakota.” I storm in, and even now I’m blushing because it’s Dakota. I stop a few feet away from them. I stare up at the sunglasses guy. Way, way up. “Let him go.”
Sunglasses Guy jumps off the bench and strides over to me. “Don’t be stupid.”
“No. You don’t be stupid,” I say, angling toward Seppie’s bag, because I know she stashes pepper spray in there. Super against the rules, but like I care. “The police are coming.”
“I’ve been saved by the Asian cheerleader; how perfect,” Dakota says. “Breaking the stereotypes. How droll.”
Droll?
“Are you pulling the race card on me, Dakota? Seriously? What the hell? You just asked me to help you. Why are you being a dick?” I sputter. “You’re never a dick. You’re sexy and you point your drumstick at me, which could totally be misconstrued, obviously … but um…” I backtrack, because despite this situation, I’m pretty horrified that I just said all that out loud. “What’s with the race card?”
“Of course…” Dakota smirks. “Race card.”
Sunglasses Guy glowers back at him. “I should’ve duct taped your mouth.”
“Probably,” Dakota says.
I step a little closer to Seppie’s bag. “Are you kidnapping him?”
“Nope.”
“I saw you hitting him. You can’t just hit someone and tie them up and expect nobody is going to try to stop you, even if they are acting racist instead of just being hot like they’re supposed to.” I pretty much put it all out there, because hopefully my crushing on Dakota will distract Sunglasses Guy.
Another step.
“I knew you liked me.” Dakota actually winks. He’s really taking all this well.
“It’s what happens when I work solo,” Sunglasses Guy says. “My partner has more finesse.” He ignores my conversation with Dakota and steps in between me and the bag. I swear he smiles at me. I shudder.
“Partner? What? You’re like some professional kidnapper?” Bad news.
His lips part and he sort of smirks. “I prefer abductor.”
I lean toward the bag. I have to save Dakota, who is obviously not himself right now, unless he really is some sort of freak bigot, but whatever. Panic can do weird things to people. It just means I won’t like him. I try to keep the guy talking. “Lovely. I will remember that. Abductor. How’s it feel to be abducted, Dakota?”
“I’d rather it was you doing the abducting,” he says.
“You’re flirting with me now?” I ask, as I lean just a tiny bit more toward the bag. “I’ve liked you for weeks, and now you get kidnap—sorry, abducted—and poof! Now, you like me.”
Sunglasses Guy loses his smile and interrupts me. “What’s in that bag?”
“Nothing.” Standing up straight, I try not to sigh from frustration.
He reaches forward, lifts it up, opens it.
“Hey! That is private prop—”
“Pepper spray?” He holds the can with distaste. “That’s the best you can come up with?”
I jump over the bench to Dakota and start trying to get his hands untaped.
“Don’t touch him!” the guy roars.
He shoves me away and I fall to the disgusting linoleum floor, smacking my shoulder into a row of lockers and Jordan Riley’s heels. A heel flies up into the air from the momentum and lands stiletto down into a tube of baby powder. A white cloud of soft talc explodes into the air and all over me. I sneeze instantly, and the lockers wobble. I round off out of the way, instinctively, and somehow land halfway across the room. Dakota’s eyes widen in a how did you do that sort of expression. If I can get us both out of this, I will tell him I have no idea how I just leaped a good twelve feet from the floor, but that I am going to try to do it again because—seriously?—how cool was that?
But the guy? He doesn’t even notice, or try to help me up, just says in this dirt-hard voice, “You have no idea what he is.”
“A flirty drummer,” I say, standing up again, trembling and rolling my shoulder. “A flirty racist drummer, but that still doesn’t make it okay to beat on him and tie him up and … do whatever sick thing it is you and your partner are thinking of doing to him. Sex trafficking? Is it sex trafficking?”
He snorts, in disgust I think, and turns his attention away from Dakota for a second to focus on me. Something inside me shivers.
He says, all quiet menace, “You have no idea.”
Dakota shudders and his tongue lashes out. Only it’s not a normal-size tongue. Is it even a tongue? It’s where a tongue should be, but it’s three times as long as a normal tongue (twice as long as a 1980s glam rocker’s) and it is spraying some green liquid. Green! This wipes out any forearm sexiness.
“Watch out!” Sunglasses Guy leaps in front of me. His back starts to sizzle. “Crap!”
He whips around, like he’s protecting me. There is a mark across his back that has seared right through his leather jacket and the shirt underneath, all the way down to his skin. A long burn. The scorched leather smells like burning hair, but sweeter somehow.
I press my back into the locker row that’s still standing, just as Dakota rubs his duct taped hands into the leftover liquid on the floor. The tape snaps right off. So much for the power of duct tape.
“This is not good,” Sunglasses Guy says. “Stay behind me.”
“He’s just Dakota,” I insist, but even I can hear the doubt in my voice.
“I am not just Dakota,” Dakota says, standing up. “Am I, China?”
The man—China?—doesn’t answer. His back straightens, like he is trying to make himself even bigger.
“Okay, maybe you’re not ‘just’ Dakota. You are a racist Dakota who somehow has a green acid-tongue thing going on, which you managed to hide all during English class, but … You’re a good guy, right?” I babble.
“I told you, you should have taped my mouth,” Dakota says to China. “Although I could have spat through that, too. You seem like you’re too cheap to use the good tape.”
China snarls at him. “I didn’t know you were a spitter.”
“You didn’t do your homework, then, did you, hunter?”
Spitter? Hunter? A voice that sounds like Dakota’s bounces around in my head: Stupid human.
“What is going on?” I whisper. I almost reach out and touch China’s leather jacket, but I stop. Some instinct makes me stop.
“Are you going to shut the human up or am I?” Dakota asks. “Although, with the way you catapult yourself around like that … Are you even human, Mana?”
What kind of question is that?
“You know, Dakota, you are definitely no longer on my potential-guys-to-date list.”
He snickers. “Despite my tongue?”
“Especially because of your acid tongue.”
Suddenly, the guy in front of me lunges forward, tackling Dakota. His massive hands circle Dakota’s throat. Dakota’s face turns white and blue and he chokes.
“You’re killing him.” I don’t shout this like an action hero. I whisper it like a wimp, because I am suddenly not sure who is the good guy here and who is the bad guy.
“I wish it were that easy.” China/Sunglasses Guy grunts as Dakota twists and slams his fist into China’s gut. China staggers backwards against the row of lockers and then flops down on his butt.
Dakota captures me by the wrist like he is trying to take me somewhere, but I execute a cartwheel the moment he grabs me, and the momentum twists my hand free even as China snaps him on the rear with a towel in a signature locker-room move. It must take him by surprise, because Dakota squeals and leaps up straight. He pivots and opens his mouth, ready to spit again, I think, an
d I do the only thing I can. I front handspring right into him, smashing him with my feet. He windmills. Acid flies into the air, splatters into the ceiling, and makes a hole.
“You—” He says an unsayable word here and leaps for me, but I back tuck up and out of the way and somehow land on top of the lockers, standing there, trying to keep my balance as they sway. Dakota’s eyes widen. “Well, that’s not right.”
And it’s not. It’s not right at all. I can’t quite figure out how I got up here—I should not be able to back tuck so high. I’m flipping around the room like some sort of deranged kangaroo, but it’s all instinct. I’m mid-handspring before I even have a chance to think about it. Somehow, though, it’s working—but whatever. I jump from the top of one stand of lockers to another and land on the vending machine, but unfortunately, Dakota is not about getting away anymore. Now, he is all about getting me, and he comes rushing after me, knocking down the locker rows as he surges forward, like some kind of human bull—if a human bull had an acid tongue and was kind of hot in a bad-boy drummer way. I spring in the opposite direction, whip tucking once, then twice, and somehow clearing two rows of lockers and ending up near where the China guy had been. I back up into the remaining row of upright lockers. A jockstrap lies on the floor. Why would that be in here? This is a girls’ locker room. And I thought everyone was wearing compression underwear now. But more importantly: where is the China guy?
Dakota smiles at me, and it is a wicked smile, not sexy at all, not cool. “You aren’t all that normal, are you, Mana?”
“I do not know what you’re talking about.” Is he talking about the jockstrap? Because that is so not mine, not that I’m judging. Or is he talking about the leaping?
He makes a scoffing noise, half choke, half laugh, and with a tiny bit of acid gurgle. “Playing dumb? Really? All this time? I bet you aren’t even stupid in school. That was all an act too, huh?”
I have no idea what he is talking about, so I eloquently say again, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
We could be on the same side.
That voice is in my head again.