“Mason, it’s ok. There were plenty of people there, tons. I’m glad you were thinking about him.” Time to change the subject again. “Hey, do you know who I saw the other day? Remember Mr. Arbeider?”
“The gym teacher who wore shorts all winter? Of course I do.”
We lapsed into a long conversation about mutual friends, old teachers, old memories. Mason was easy to talk to and we had a nice time at dinner, too. Then after we went to a bar downtown. We ran into a few people we both knew and got a table with them. I was cracking up at one guy, Miguel, who had the funniest stories all about the jobs he’d had since high school. But everyone wanted to hear about my job as the mascot the Woodsmen and they especially wanted to hear about Davis when Mason said that I was working for him. I related some interesting Nutty information but didn’t say much about Davis, other than that he was healing great.
Every time I thought about him, I saw his face when he handed me that bag with the hula girl. It was funny, because he usually reminded me of one of the Easter Island statues—he barely changed his expression, except when he frowned. But when I had looked up at him, holding the hula girl figurine in my hand, he had seemed…expectant. Almost worried. And then when I had been so happy, he had relaxed. It had been very nice of him to get that stuff for me, to remember that I had wanted it. Of course, he had been the one to wreck my car in the first place, but he had also handed me a big check a few days ago, saying, “For the touch ups.” It was way, way more than what the insurance paid out, way more than what the car was worth. I thought more about Davis, wondering what he was doing.
“You ok?” I focused my vacant stare onto Mason, who was watching me with one eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, sorry. I was thinking about work.”
“Want another one?” He pointed at my glass, and I nodded. “Another pop for the lady.” He grinned at me, and I smiled back. Mason was really the perfect date, fun to be with and always considerate and attentive. He was just like I remembered him in high school, when we had gone to…I thought about it. A beach party right when school had started, then the homecoming dance, then the winter formal. I found myself wondering why we had only gone on a few dates, and why it had never evolved into something more.
It was loud in the bar. “Mason, do you ever hear from Lila?” one of our old friends kind of yelled to him.
Mason’s face froze. “No.” He swallowed.
Suddenly it seemed very quiet at our table.
Oh yeah, that was why. I had forgotten about him and Lila, the girl who had transferred to our high school mid-way through the year when I was a freshman. Mason had fallen for her like a ton of bricks, and right then I had started my second semester Basic Design class, and met Julian. Lila and Mason had gone out for the rest of his junior and all of his senior years, but then she had moved away again, and he went off to college.
From the look on his face, his relationship with Lila was not exactly a closed book—not from his end, anyway. “Hey, did you guys hear about when Hank the Hunter got the back of his pants shut in a locker and was trapped for the first quarter of the game last season?” I asked the table. “It was so bad, me out there, the Chipmunk alone!” Mason glanced over and I nodded a little at him.
It was cool and lovely when we left the bar. And it was late, later than I had been out in a while. “Do you want to go anywhere else?” Mason asked me as I unlocked the doors to the car.
“No, I better get to bed. I have to rehearse early tomorrow for Sunday’s home game. It’s the last warmup before the regular season. Hey, if you ever want to go, I can get you tickets.”
“We have a box, my family does. But thanks anyway.”
Of course they did. The Whitaker family owned the land that the stadium was built on, for goodness sake.
“Thanks for covering, when they started talking about Lila,” he said, kind of stiffly. “I always get weird when her name comes up. I don’t know why.”
“Are you over her?”
“Of course,” he answered quickly. Very, very quickly and emphatically. In other words, no, he wasn’t. “It was in high school, eons ago.”
“Yeah, but time passing doesn’t make you forget. Not always.”
“Are you over Julian?” He slapped his hand to his forehead. “Christ, I’m sorry, Katie. That was a different thing than me going out with Lila.”
“It’s ok.” I didn’t know how to answer his question, so I just let it hang there. We weren’t too far from his house, and soon enough I was turning into his driveway. “Thanks for bringing over the car.”
“Would you want to go out again, even though I’m such an idiot and I say stupid things?”
“You’re not that big an idiot,” I consoled him, then laughed. “Sure, let’s do this again.”
Mason leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “I’ll be in touch.”
I watched him walk up to his beautiful house, and blew out a long breath. I liked him just fine. It wasn’t as if there was some kind of incendiary spark between us, but we definitely had fun. If I heard from him again, and I thought that I would, I would definitely go on a second date. I pulled away from the curb. Could I kiss him? Yeah, I could. I had in high school, just once, as I remembered. What about more?
The thought didn’t excite me. Really, it just made me feel strange. Maybe I would have to be in the moment. If we ever got to that moment.
“Julian, I went out with Mason,” I announced, when I opened the front door to my house. “He’s the same as he was in high school, a really nice guy. Hey, do you remember when he and the other soccer players played that prank on the cross country team? That was when you were still running.” I smiled, thinking back. I told Julian about my new car, too. “I got spoiled, driving Davis’. I’ll have to get used to this new one.” I knew one thing that would make it feel more like my car. I went out into the driveway and took out the bag that Davis had given me, and secured the hula dancer onto the dashboard. There. That was better.
I watched her sway as I drove over to the stadium the next morning, gunning the engine. I had slept in by mistake after my big night out. Sam was already there when I tore in, and he grinned superciliously from the ground where he was stretching out his back. It bothered him sometimes.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s tardy.” He pretended to make a mark in an invisible book. “That’s a big black dot next to your name, Miss Bell.”
“Shut up.”
“And that’s another one, for your sass.”
We separated to go change. As always, I used the ladies’ locker room, but Sam had his own dressing room. He was the star of the show, after all.
The mood in the locker room was strained. None of the Woodsmen Dames were talking, they were just silently dressing and looking nervously at each other.
Rochelle came in as I was picking up my Nutty head.
“Abbi, Trish wants to see you in her office.” Her face was hard and angry. I had a glimpse of Rochelle at 40, and it wasn’t pretty.
Abbi stood up slowly. “Why?”
“You know why, you thief,” Rochelle told her. They stared at each other, then Abbi flounced over.
“Bring your bag,” Rochelle stated. “You won’t be back in here.”
There was an audible gasp in the locker room and Abbi whirled around. “Fuck you, bitches,” she announced, holding up both her middle fingers. Rochelle followed her out of the room.
“Holy shit,” I murmured.
“Was Abbi the person stealing from everyone?” Marie, a new cheerleader this season, asked us all. “She took my gold bracelet, then. I had to take it off in the practice room because Trish said it was distracting, and it went missing. I want it back!”
The whole room dissolved into shrill conversation about Abbi and all the things she had stolen. Woah. I quietly left, glad I hadn’t been a part of it. Disgusting dirty mouth, yes, but I had never pegged that girl as a thief.
Sam was out on the field. “You’ll never guess what happen
ed!” I told him.
“Abbi was the thief.”
“How did you know that?” I demanded.
“Lyle has a big yap. He told me when I came in.” Sam twisted one way, then the other. “I slept funny. Help me put on my head.”
We had only practiced for a few minutes when he had to stop. “I better go see the trainer,” he said, his voice muffled by Hank.
“Your back’s that bad?”
“I’ll be fine,” he told me, but he walked very, very slowly toward Trish. He’d better be fine. There was no replacement Hank anywhere, and I was not going as a solo rat.
Damn! I meant Chipmunk. I had been thinking about Davis again.
Chapter 7
My phone was ringing. I sat up in the pitch darkness, confused. I always got up early on game days, but this was really, really early. And what was happening? Oh yeah, my phone.
It was Trish. Before I could even say hello, she was talking.
“Sam can’t go today as Hank and you’re stepping in as a Woodsmen Dame.”
I was…huh? I didn’t get a chance to speak before she was going again.
“All the retirees are out.”
“Retirees…” They were former Woodsmen Dames who stepped in, if needed, for missing cheerleaders on game days. My mind was slowly processing.
Trish barreled ahead. “No, no retirees. Brandy moved away, Corinna put on weight and can’t fit in her uniform, and Stacy has…acne.” The word dripped with disgust. She paused momentarily but before I could formulate a thought she was saying, “You have to come down here now to get a uniform fitted and go through the dances with Rochelle. We tried to re-work the routines, but Marie is sick also, and we can’t be two Dames down. Get here now.”
And she hung up. I just sat in my bed staring at my phone. Then I called Sam.
“What the hell are you doing waking me up so early when I’m down and out?”
“Are you really not going today?” I asked, feeling slightly sick myself.
He sighed. “I’m flat on my back and I have been since I got home yesterday. I can’t even get out of bed to take a piss. Dotty has to bring me a bottle.”
“Thanks for sharing. Sam, Trish wants me to fill in as a Woodsmen Dame!”
There was silence, then he started to crack up. “Oh, this is killing me! I can’t even move my back to laugh!”
“Then stop, you big jerk! What am I going to do? I can’t say no. She’ll fire me.”
“Maybe not. They wouldn’t have enough time to get a new Nutty before the first regular-season home game.” He paused. “But maybe Trish would be so pissed off she wouldn’t care and would fire you anyway.”
“Exactly! Oh, my Lord! I’m so, so screwed.”
“Sounds like I’ll be watching you in those tight little shorts today.”
I hung up on him. Sweet Jesus. I would be wearing those tight little shorts.
I showered and got down to the stadium as quickly as my new car could carry me. I thought that maybe, there might be an outside chance that I could convince Trish of my total unsuitability as a Woodsmen Dame. When I arrived at her office, seeing the crowd of people that she had assembled to complete my transformation from Chipmunk to cheerleader, I realized I was wrong. By showing up, I had tacitly agreed, and there was no going back. Ok. I could do this.
Or maybe not. Rochelle was scowling at me later on the field as we marked the dances. “How do you not know this? Trish was sure you would.”
“I’m sorry!” I had gone left instead of right, again. “Nutty goes left at that point. It’s just muscle memory.”
“Yeah, well, try using your brain right now, or we’re all going to look like idiots out there!”
If I killed her, the squad would be another cheerleader down. “Rochelle, reel it in, ok? I’m trying. I’m also doing you a favor, expressly so that you don’t all look like idiots out there. And believe me when I say that I don’t want to look like an idiot either.” I tugged on my spandex shorts. They had fit a uniform for me, and in all my years of dance, I had never worn less.
“You look so uncomfortable,” Rochelle told me, eyes narrowed.
“I feel uncomfortable!” I tugged again at the shorts. “All of you guys have practiced these routines for weeks, and you’re all…” They were all perfect looking, every male fan’s dream goddess. I was confident in myself, sure, but lining up with these women, performing dances I didn’t really know, it was enough to put a serious kink in anyone’s self-esteem.
“Let’s go from the top,” she ordered me, and the clock ticked inexorably toward game time.
My grandma was very religious, and was a big believer in prayer. I hadn’t been to church in a while, but the minute before I trotted out on the field in my debut as a Woodsmen Dame I was praying like I had never done before. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”
“Stop moving your lips when you pray,” the woman next to me said. She was just like a ventriloquist—nothing in her face shifted while she spoke. It was fascinating.
“Ready?” Rochelle called back from the front of the line.
No! But then we were moving.
Really, the game went by in a blur. I was so focused on not going the wrong way, remembering to smile, remembering my spots, to point my feet, etc., etc., that I didn’t remember to be nervous. Almost. At one point, a cameraman got right up in my face while I was in a split, and I had to smile big and say “Go Woodsmen!” right into the lens. I reached up and brushed my left ear with my hand. Afterwards I turned to the girl next to me and tried to speak without moving my face. “Do I have lipstick on my teeth?”
“You’re good,” she said through her smile, lips frozen.
Then, before I knew it, the game was over. The Woodsmen Dames were very, very nice. “You did great!” “Katie, that was awesome!” “You should be on the squad!” Even Trish came into the locker room and hugged me so hard she nearly broke a rib.
“I’m impressed,” she said. “I won’t forget you doing this. You’ve got nerve, Katie Bell.” It sounded like she meant it, and I smiled at her.
“Thanks, Trish. I appreciate it.”
She turned and spoke to the locker room in general. “Everyone else did…wonderfully,” she finished, that scary smile pinned back on her lips. That sounded awful. The happy looks fell from the faces of the other women there. “We’ll definitely talk more tomorrow at practice! Yay!” One cheerleader started to cry already. I got dressed as fast as I could and got out of there, and went right over to the Lakeview retirement home to see my grammy.
“Come here, my Katie-bug! I was never so surprised to see you in that little outfit instead of your chipmunk suit. You were wonderful! Such a nice thing to see your smiling face on the TV. Everyone else here was so jealous.”
“I didn’t watch,” her nasty roommate, Mrs. Lusk, said.
My grandma just turned and gave her major stink eye. “Let’s go somewhere else where we won’t be interrupted.”
“I’m allergic to your perfume, anyway,” Mrs. Lusk put in.
“She’s just upset that her own granddaughter was recently released from juvie,” my grandma said loudly, as I wheeled her out of the room.
“Shh! Don’t make things worse. You have to live with her.”
“If it comes to it, I can take that woman out. Now, Katie-bug, tell me how this happened!”
I did, from start to finish. “Did you see me touch my ear? I still wanted to say hi to you.”
“I did, and I waved right back. What a day for you! To get up there and go for it like that… Katie, you have moxie,” my grandma said approvingly.
Next I told her about my date with Mason. “I had fun,” I summed up. “He’s a cool guy.”
“I always liked him. I was sorry when you didn’t see him anymore, in high school.”
“I had met Julian,” I reminded her.
A funny expression crossed her face. “Yes, you had. And that was it, no more dances, no more parties.”
“Gram
my, you know he didn’t like that kind of thing! But he would have gone, if I’d wanted him to. We went to the prom.”
“His prom.”
“Well, by my senior year, he sick. We found out right after his senior prom, remember? Hey, what are you trying to say?” I asked her.
She put her hand on top of mine, then squeezed. “I’m saying that I’m glad you had fun with Mason, and I hope you go out with him again. And I was so proud of you today. You’re my shining star.” I leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
“Thank you. I’m pretty proud of myself.”
I wished Julian could have been there to see it, too.
∞
“Davis?”
He wasn’t in the kitchen when I arrived at his house on Monday morning, and he wasn’t in his bedroom. “Davis?”
I looked through the French doors out into the back and I saw him. He was standing on the edge of the deck in his bathing suit, hands clasped behind his head. His shoulders were relaxed, and even from the back, he looked so peaceful. I carefully opened the door and leaned against the frame, watching him for a moment.
He turned and saw me, and held up his hand. He made his way back to the house, slowly and carefully, but surefooted and without his crutches. “It’s the former rat,” he said.
I pulled my eyes up from his chest. “What? Oh, ha ha. Yeah, I was costume-free.”
“I didn’t know you could dance like that.”
“Did it look ok? Could you tell I didn’t know the routines that well?” I asked anxiously. I had gotten a bunch of calls and texts telling me that I did awesome, but they were all from my friends. I thought Davis would shoot from the hip.
“You’re shorter than all of the other women.”
My heart sank. “Yeah. I knew it would look weird.”
“No, it didn’t look weird. You stood out because you looked so…” He trailed off.
“Dumb? Ridiculous? Nutty?” I paused. “Get it?”
“Cute,” Davis finished.
The Checkdown Page 9
