The Cheerleaders

by Kara Thomas

  I follow her to Mrs. Goldberg’s computer and stand behind her, watching as she enters the URL for the proxy we all use to get around the school’s blocked websites.

  Ginny opens up Facebook and enters login information. The page loads, displaying the news feed of someone named Elizabeth Lewis. She’s a round-faced blond woman. Late twenties, maybe.

  “Who is she?” I ask. I’ve never seen her before.

  “A member of the International Honor Society of Nursing.” Ginny flushes. “I don’t know who the woman in the photo is. I found it on Google.”

  Ginny moves so I can check out Elizabeth Lewis’s news feed. Elizabeth likes to post humorous photos about nursing school, various slow cooker recipes, and photos of her chocolate Lab, Luke.

  I look up at Ginny. “Wait. You made all of this up?”

  Her face is sheepish. “I had to make it convincing so Carly would accept my friend request.”

  “No, it’s impressive. How did you do all this today?”

  “I didn’t. After we went to the library, I checked Carly’s page again. She made it private. I wanted to look through her pictures and see what else I could find out about her.”

  Ginny gets up so I can check out the profile. I scroll up to Elizabeth’s friend list; she has forty-nine friends, one of whom is Carly Amato.

  I stare at Ginny. “You’re a genius. How’d you get all these people to add you?”

  “I just added a ton of random people who have nursing listed as their major. I made sure to get a bunch from OCCC. Most people just click accept.”

  Ginny drags a free chair over to Mrs. Goldberg’s computer. She rotates the monitor so we both have a full view of the screen. “Anyway, I didn’t find anything in her pictures that seemed important and I forgot about Elizabeth’s profile until this morning when you told me Carly blocked you.”

  Ginny pulls up Carly Amato’s page. She loads Carly’s album of profile pictures. “I had study hall last period, so I went to the library to look through these again.”

  The buzzing in my ears has reached a crescendo. “What did you find?”

  Ginny silently enlarges a photo of Carly in ripped denim cutoffs and a white tank top. She’s holding a Corona bottle, a slice of lime stuffed down the neck. The sky behind her is black, starless.

  She’s standing in the bed of a black pickup truck.

  Ginny’s voice is in my ear, pulling me back. “I looked through all her other pictures. This is the only one with the truck in it.”

  I deflate. “So no license plate or anything.”

  “I also looked for any pictures from the same night to see who she may have been with, but there aren’t any.”

  I rub my eyes. “Goddamn it. We can’t even message her and ask her whose truck that is, because she’ll get suspicious and block Elizabeth.”

  “I thought of that,” Ginny says. “But she has a lot of other pictures. If we can figure out who else she was friends with at Sunnybrook…There’s got to be someone who knows who drove that truck.”

  I cycle through Carly’s profile pictures again, starting with her oldest ones. Carly at prom, in a black satin dress, a slit up to her thigh. I pause and point at the black girl standing next to Carly in the prom photo. She’s wearing a white gown with a beaded sweetheart neckline, her silky hair loose and wavy over her shoulders. “I recognize her—I’m pretty sure she was a cheerleader.”

  Ginny leans in to get a look at the girl’s face.

  A rap on the door makes us both jump in our seats. Then, a woman’s voice: “Who’s in here?”

  Ginny winces. “I left the classroom light on.”

  My stomach plummets as Mrs. Goldberg’s office door opens. Mrs. Coughlin looks around the room, her gaze finally resting on Ginny. “What are you doing in here?”

  Ginny looks like she’s going to throw up. “Yearbook stuff.”

  “Oh really.” Mrs. Coughlin clutches the lanyard around her neck. She peeks around Ginny, her beady eyes lasering in on me. “You’re not on yearbook.”

  “I’m helping,” I say stupidly.

  “Mrs. Goldberg is out today,” Mrs. Coughlin says. “I’m covering her class next period. There is absolutely no reason for you to be in here unsupervised.”

  “We have permission,” I say, when Ginny doesn’t speak up.

  “Monica, do not pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” Mrs. Coughlin tears out a referral sheet from her attendance ledger and nods to Ginny. “What’s your name?”

  Ginny stares at Mrs. Coughlin like she’s just undergone a lobotomy.

  “This isn’t fair.” My voice is quaking; Mrs. Coughlin is just being spiteful because I didn’t help with the memorial.

  Mrs. Coughlin tears out another referral sheet, violently. The ripping sound shuts me up. “Would you like detention for two afternoons, Monica?”

  Something in Ginny seems to have come unglued. Her eyes are blazing as she stares at Mrs. Coughlin. “I told Monica it was okay for us to be in here. I deserve detention. Not her.”

  “By all means, be a martyr.” Mrs. Coughlin scrawls something on the referral and hands it to Ginny. “You can keep each other company in detention tomorrow.”

  * * *

  —

  A parent has to sign your detention slip, just so they know that they raised a fuckup. I could forge my mother’s or Tom’s signature, but I wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Coughlin to call her.

  Mom’s sitting at the kitchen island when I get home from practice, bent over a booster form. I watch her for a moment, absorbing her idiosyncrasies—she taps her pen to her chin when she’s thinking, sighs through her nose when the thought is unpleasant. She shakes her head and crosses something out on the paper, not noticing me standing across the island from her.

  “I got this.” I set my detention slip on the counter and push it toward her.

  She looks up at me. Sticks her fingers beneath her reading glasses and rubs her eyelids before peering at me. “What is it?”

  “I have detention tomorrow.”

  Her expression is flat. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I was in the yearbook office during lunch and Mrs. Coughlin wrote me up for not having a pass. It’s stupid.”

  My mother ignores the detention slip and turns back to her booster form. “I’ll call her after dinner and get you out of it.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?” She takes off her glasses and sets them on the counter. “You’re going to miss practice if you’re in detention.”

  And so will Ginny. “I don’t care. Coach is ready to cut me from the competition team anyway.”

  I wait for her to yell. But she just sighs. “Fine. No computer or cell phone until the weekend.”

  Now I feel a flutter of panic. “You can’t take my computer. I have to write a paper for English tonight.”

  She pushes her stool away from the counter, jolting me. She storms down the hall off the kitchen, making a right into Tom’s office. A beat later, Petey shouts from the living room: “HEY! Who turned the Wi-Fi off?”

  My mother steps out of Tom’s office and zeroes in on me. “There. You don’t need the Internet for an English paper.”

  “This is such bullshit.”

  “Do you need to see Dr. Feit?”

  My stomach starts pumping acid. Dr. Feit is her therapist; my sister saw him once after Juliana and Susan were killed. I don’t know how my mother can stand the sight of him.

  “Are you seriously threatening to send me to a shrink?”

  “I don’t know what else to do, Monica. I’m tired of watching you turn into someone else.” Her cheeks flush. “If you keep acting like this, you’re eventually going to do something Tom and I can’t fix for you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to fix anything,” I say.

 
She turns away from me and I scream inside my head, Don’t fucking cry.

  “Do you realize that you didn’t even hug me?” I ask. “After Dr. Bob’s. You wouldn’t even touch me.”

  My mother flinches at “Dr. Bob’s.” Cranes her neck to the living room, obviously worried that Petey heard, like my little brother has any idea what she’s talking about.

  “I took care of you. Everything I do is for you and your brother.”

  “You hug him,” I say. “You won’t come near me. Do I really remind you of her that much?”

  “Go upstairs, Monica. I’m tired of talking about this.”

  “Talking about what? Jen? You won’t talk about her. That’s the point.” I’m about to erupt. I’m tired of keeping this shit to myself and I’m sick of my mother acting like my sister’s name is a forbidden word in this house.

  “No, I do not want to talk about her.” My mother looks as livid as I am. “I don’t want to think about the worst day of my life and every way I could have stopped it. I couldn’t protect her, and I can’t protect you.”

  I don’t know what to say. I spin on my heels, because I don’t even want to look at her anymore.

  “Monica. Wait.”

  I turn around. My mother’s hand is outstretched. “Give me your phone.”

  I pat my pocket and flinch. I totally forgot to stop by Mr. Franken’s office and get my phone back from him.

  “My chem teacher took it away,” I say. “I don’t even have it.”

  “Wonderful. Upstairs. We’re eating in an hour.” She shakes her head and all it does is infuriate me, because it’s like at this point she’s expecting me to screw up every day.

  I stomp out of the kitchen and up the stairs. It’s not until I’m shut in my room that I silently thank God Mr. Franken has my phone and that my mother can’t go through four weeks’ worth of texts between Ginny and me.

  * * *

  —

  The sky is cornflower blue and cloudless in the morning. Rachel and Alexa don’t say much on the ride to school, casting furtive glances toward me whenever there’s a beat of silence. I don’t have the energy to ask why they’re treating me with kid gloves.

  When we get to school and see the white lilies resting against the flagpole outside the gym, I understand their awkwardness. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Bethany’s and Colleen’s deaths, and today is the memorial.

  After homeroom, Mrs. Barnes’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, instructing all students to report to the courtyard for a special ceremony. A freshman science class pours out into the hall after the announcement, some of the kids whooping and hollering. No first period! Sweet, I have gym!

  I can’t do this. Even with Rachel beside me, I can’t go out there and deal with the stares from my classmates. I don’t want to be the suicide girl’s sister today.

  The tightness in my chest gets worse when we reach the crowd funneling through the double doors leading out to the courtyard. Mrs. Coughlin swoops by, holding a bouquet of pink balloons.

  I feel my free hand curl into a fist. “What the hell are those for?”

  Rach fiddles with one of her pearl earrings. “I heard someone say they’re doing a balloon release.”

  “A balloon release? Seriously?”

  Rach looks over her shoulder. “Jesus, Mon, calm down.”

  “Do they know how bad that is for the environment? Balloons kill birds. They eat the balloons and they die.”

  “Mrs. Coughlin wanted to do it,” Rach says. “Cut her some slack. Her daughter died.”

  I picture Mrs. Coughlin’s face yesterday when she gave me detention, how gleeful she looked. As if nothing pleased her more in that moment than to screw me over.

  Heat crawls up my back as bodies press against mine, angling for the door. “I can’t do this,” I say. Before Rachel can call out to me, I pivot and head for the exit at the end of the hall, away from the courtyard.

  No one notices me slip out of the building, toward the parking lot. I make a break for the fence lining the soccer field, hoping to duck behind it before I get caught. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t be in that goddamn building a second longer. I’ll walk all the way home if I have to.

  “Monica.”

  I halt in my tracks, ready to break out into a run, but when I turn I spot Brandon. He’s heading in the opposite direction, toward the school.

  He hikes his backpack up his shoulder. He looks like he could be a student, with his Sunnybrook High Cross-Country warm-up jacket. His face is shaved, a small nick blooming on his neck. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Are you going to tell on me?”

  Brandon’s mouth forms half a smile. “I don’t think that would be very wise of me.” He jerks a hand toward the school. “Are you sure you want to miss the ceremony?”

  “I can’t—” I start, and suck in a breath. “I just can’t handle it.”

  Brandon’s at my side, putting a hand on the small of my back, so lightly he’s barely touching me. “Security is going to see you if you just stand here. Come on.”

  I let him guide me past the staff section of the lot. His Jeep is parked at the very end of the row, by the tennis courts.

  Brandon unlocks the car and opens the passenger side for me. I duck in and shut the door, even though we’re far away from the school and no one can see me.

  As I’m wiping my eyes, his voice sounds next to me. He’s climbed into the driver’s seat, shutting us both in. “You can stay in here as long as you need. But you shouldn’t cut the rest of the day.”

  I hate that I’m crying in front of him. Brandon takes my hand. “Hey. You’re going to be okay.”

  He laces his fingers through mine. Or maybe I started it, I don’t know. But my lips wind up on his and then he’s kissing me back. Even though we’re so far back in the lot and no one can see us, it’s so stupid—

  Brandon rests a hand on my shoulder. Pushes me away gently. “This is a really bad idea.”

  “I know.” I swipe a finger under my eye; a smear of mascara comes away on my skin. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “There are so many reasons this can’t happen anymore, especially—”

  “Now that you have a girlfriend. I get it.”

  “I don’t want to be that guy,” he says.

  I nod. “You don’t have to explain.”

  Brandon sighs. Tilts his back against his headrest. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Do people ever say no to that question?”

  “What made you do it?” he asks. “What you did. With me.”

  I don’t know what he expects me to say. I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear the truth: that having sex with him was like being someone else. But I can’t make myself say the words. You’re hot and my boyfriend broke up with me and you were just there.

  “Because I was sad.”

  Brandon puts his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I liked you.” Brandon laughs. “And I told myself that you looked older, and you acted older, so it wasn’t as wrong.”

  “But now you do think it was wrong.”

  “I don’t know. It just feels like you used me to avoid your problems.”

  My throat tightens. He’s right—I knew what we were doing was wrong, and I didn’t care because I was ready to set my perfect life on fire and walk away while it burned.

  “Go back to the memorial,” I say. “I’ll wait until everyone starts clearing out after and head inside.”

  For a moment it looks like he wants to stay. I’m not even entirely sure I want him to, but my heart sinks when he reaches for the door handle.

  Brandon climbs out of the Jeep and looks at me. “What just happened—I’m not gonna pretend it was all y
ou or that I didn’t like it. But it can’t happen again.”

  I don’t want to stay, thinking about what happened in this car over the summer, but I can’t go back just yet. So I tilt the passenger seat back and stare at the sky over the school until I see the pink balloons floating upward—five of them, one for each girl.

  Detention on Friday is held in the basement, next to the weight room. I had to ask a random teacher how to find the classroom, because as many times as teachers have threatened me with it for being chatty, I’ve never actually gotten detention before.

  A chorus of hollers greets me when I step into the classroom. In the row of desks by the window sit the usual suspects—the class-cutters, the big mouths, and the guys who will fight anyone who looks at them. One of them is in my grade: Chris Tavares, a wiry kid with pants that sag low on his hips. Boxers printed with red peppers stick out over his waistline.

  He cups his hands over his mouth to mime a megaphone. “RayBURN! Oh, shit!”

  The teacher at the desk in the front of the room—a sub, no doubt—sets down his copy of the New York Post. “Tavares. You want to sit next to me for the next two hours?”

  “No, sir.” Chris slumps back in his seat. But it’s too late; every pair of eyes in the room is now focused on me. I keep my head down as I check in with the teacher at his desk. He crosses my name off a list and tells me to sit anywhere.

  I spot Ginny toward the back of the room, face buried in The Grapes of Wrath. I slide into the seat next to her and whisper her name.

  She sets her book down. “Hey.”

  The teacher snaps his fingers twice to get our attention. “No talking. You may do homework, read, sleep, or silently stare into the void.”

  I glance over at the guys by the window. Most of them have nailed the last two options. One of them has his hands stuffed in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. I hope he’s secretly texting and not doing something else.

  When the teacher turns back to his newspaper, Ginny reaches into her messenger bag. She produces two pieces of paper, stapled together, and sets them on my desk.

  It’s a printed page from the Internet. The header says The Pioneer; it’s the online edition of Newton High School East’s newspaper.