I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader

by Kieran Scott

  “Like you don’t know,” Phoebe scoffed.

  All I could do was blink. Suddenly my face felt puffy and warm as if it were embarrassed that I was drawing a total blank.

  “Come on. You know it was your fault that Kristen and Danielle got booted,” Tara said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You probably did it on purpose because you wanted to try out.”

  “As if you’re really gonna make it,” Sage said.

  “Kristen and Danielle?” I said, baffled.

  “You know, the two people you got thrown off the squad after you tattled on them last night at the store?” Whitney said. “What are you, anyway, a kindergartner?”

  “Okay, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  They all exchanged looks as if they were just at their wits’ end. Well, so was I! What had I done at the 7-Eleven other than purchase an unhealthy amount of ice cream?

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Tara said finally. “There’s this little thing called an Athlete’s Contract around here, and we all have to sign it.”

  “In the contract it states that we will not partake of any chemical substances during the season,” Whitney said. “No drugs, no drinking, no smoking . . .”

  Suddenly my brain caught up with them. Those cheerleaders who were smoking in the parking lot at the 7-Eleven. Mr. Cuccinello talking to them when I left. The looks of death they shot my way. They thought I’d told Mr. C on them. They thought I knew about this Athlete’s Contract and that I had gotten them thrown off the team on purpose. Did they think I was psychic or something?

  They were all glaring at me—waiting for me to beg for mercy. Not likely.

  “First of all, I would never tell on someone. You wouldn’t know this, because none of you have bothered to get to know me, but that is not my style,” I said, causing a couple of them to blink in surprise. “And secondly, how the heck would I know about the Athlete’s Contract after one measly day in this place?”

  “They gave you a student handbook, didn’t they?” Tara shot back.

  “Yeah, and I had so much time to read it cover to cover and formulate this diabolical plan of stumbling onto your friends at the 7-Eleven when Mr. Cuccinello just happened to be there. I somehow squeezed it right between my seven new classes, my stunning bubble-gum embarrassment and, oh, yeah, breaking your nose.”

  So much for apologizing. At that moment, I was glad I’d done it.

  “Whatever,” Tara said. “All I know is this was the first year we had a shot at beating the Dolphins at regionals and you blew it for us.” She stepped away from the door, practically flattening Phoebe into the wall in the process. “So enter the gym at your own peril,” she said with a wicked smile that made her grotesque bruises stretch. “Personally I can’t wait to see you fall flat on your face.”

  I hesitated for a split second. A vision of Tara’s foot jutting out and me tripping into the gym in a full sprawl assaulted me. But I wasn’t going to let them win. I pulled open the door, lifted my feet high and strode into the gym. I was going to show them I belonged on this squad no matter how many jumps and tumbles and stunts I had to do.

  I just hoped the Great Locker Room Standoff was their last-gasp effort to throw me off.

  “You people call those jumping jacks? My grandpa has more energy than that, and he’s hooked up to a respirator!”

  “Get your feet up, Annisa! That’s how you jog? God! Do they even have physical fitness in New Jersey, or do you just sit around eating pasta all day?”

  “Spaghetti arms! Spaghetti arms! Spaghetti arms! Ugh! Why do I bother?”

  These are just a few of the tidbits Tara Timothy screeched at us that day. We had only been through warm-ups and my shirt was already plastered to my back, my hair had fallen free of its clips and I was fairly certain that on my last attempt at a front hurdler I had peed in my pants just a little bit.

  “Take five!” Coach Holmes called out.

  We all instantly hit the floor, where the air was ten times cooler and the glossy boards felt like ice against our overheated skin. Tara, Coach and the rest of the squad all huddled at the front of the gym for a confab.

  “Was it like this last year?” I said to Mindy under my breath.

  Her chest was heaving up and down, but she was trying to keep it under control. “No way. It was bad, but not this bad.”

  “It’s all thanks to you, you know,” a random girl with kinky curls told me. She rolled over onto her side and rested her cheek on her hand. “They’ll do anything to keep you off this squad. Why don’t you do us all a favor and just quit now?”

  My mouth dropped open, but there were no words. Was this girl serious? Were they running a tougher practice just to weed me out?

  “Don’t listen to her,” Mindy whispered. “She’s just upset because she tries out every year and never makes it.”

  “All right, everyone, on your feet!” Coach Holmes shouted, clapping her hands together. “The squad is now going to demonstrate the cheer that you will be expected to perform at tryouts. Pay attention. You only have one day to get this down pat.”

  We scrambled up and the squad lined up in front of us, Tara Timothy front and center.

  “Ready?” she shouted.

  “Okay!” the team replied.

  They were so loud, I swear my hair blew back.

  “Fighting Crabs up in the stands, let’s—hear you—shout!”

  Whoa. Those were some serious moves. Did their arms ever stop?

  “Fighting Crabs up in the stands, let’s—hear you—now! All you fans yell ‘Go’!”

  “GO!”

  My heart hit my throat. Every prospective cheerleader standing around me had just shouted “Go!” at the top of her lungs and thrown her fists into the air. Clearly they had heard this cheer before.

  “All you fans yell ‘Crabs’!”

  “CRABS!”

  This time I managed to get in there and raise my fist too. But I felt completely conspicuous. No one had this kind of spirit where I came from. Not even at games. Of course, that may have accounted for the football team’s stellar 0-and-9 season last year. Or vice versa. It’s a vicious cycle, really.

  Suddenly the cheer became a back-and-forth. The cheerleaders shouted “Go!” We shouted “Crabs!” Back and forth three times.

  “Go!”

  “Crabs!”

  “Go!”

  “Crabs!”

  “Go!”

  “Crabs!”

  Then the cheerleaders finished it off with “Let’s go, Crabs!” And every other one of them did a standing back tuck. It was, I have to say, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. (Except maybe for that time I ran into Carson Daly on the street in New York City during a class field trip and he asked me what time it was.)

  Anyway, the words may have been simple, but the movements had looked utterly complex. Still, as the squad broke us up into smaller groups so they could teach us the cheer, I was fairly confident. I could learn this with an entire night of practice. And maybe a few hours in the morning. . . . Oh, hell. I was going to be up all night. But who cared? If I could be on a squad that performed like that and got that kind of response, I’d forgo sleep for a week. A month even.

  My little group got Whitney as a tutor. Mindy already knew the cheer from last year’s tryouts, so while Whitney seemed content to ignore my existence, Mindy taught me the cheer in the corner. It wasn’t so bad once it was broken down for me.

  “I think you’ve got it,” Mindy said proudly. “You pick this stuff up fast. It took me the whole week of pre-tryout practice last time.”

  “I’m a quick study,” I said with a shrug.

  Mindy’s eyes darted over my shoulder, and when I followed her glance, I saw Whitney looking me up and down like I was totally conceited. Why, oh, why did I have to say something so cocky? The second Coach Holmes left the room, Whitney walked over to Tara and Phoebe and whispered something to them. I knew enough about catty girls to know that something bad was abo
ut to happen.

  “Okay, everyone, let’s see what you’ve learned!” Tara shouted.

  We all gathered in front of the squad and Tara whipped out the clipboard with the sign-in sheet on it.

  “Each of you will demonstrate the cheer for us and then we’ll tell you what we think you need to work on,” Phoebe told us.

  “Let’s see, let’s see. Who should go first?” Tara said, running her finger down the sign-in sheet. Like she was really mulling it over. “Annisa Goborkowski?” She said my name with a laugh and completely bastardized the pronunciation. All the cheerleaders smirked at me. Well, not all of them. A couple kind of glanced away uncomfortably, which basically meant they thought Tara was a bitch, but would never stand up to her. Still, even if they were nonvocal, it was nice to know they weren’t all cookie-cutter evil.

  “It’s Gobrowski,” I said as I stepped out in front of everyone, my knees quaking.

  “I care,” Tara said sarcastically. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I held my head high, squeezed my butt cheeks together and stood up straight. It wasn’t easy to look confident when ninety-nine percent of the people in the room were silently rooting for me to fail. But I did my best.

  “Ready! Okay!

  Fighting Crabs up in the stands,

  let’s—hear you—shout!

  Fighting Crabs up in the stands,

  let’s—hear you—now.

  All you fans yell ‘Go’!”

  “GO!”

  I felt as if the world had come screeching to a stop. Maybe three people had responded to my cheer—Mindy and two girls on the squad who were now turning purple under the hateful admonishing gaze of Tara Timothy. I paused for a split second, but then my brain kicked in, telling me I had to keep going. They wanted to throw me off. I couldn’t let them see they’d gotten to me.

  “All you fans yell ‘Crabs’!”

  “CRABS!”

  Mindy. Solo Mindy was yelling now. She was red from the exertion of going against everyone else, but her eyes were locked on mine. She wasn’t going to back off.

  “GO!”

  “CRABS!”

  We sounded pathetic, just the two of us in that big gym. But we kept it up.

  “GO!”

  “CRABS!”

  “GO!”

  “CRABS!”

  “Let’s go, Crabs!”

  I finished the cheer with my arms in the air and my eyes burning with tears. I didn’t even attempt the back tuck for fear I’d spaz out and break my neck. Somehow I made myself rejoin the crowd and faced the cheerleaders. Mindy slipped her arm around my back and the tears almost let fly, but I held them in.

  “It was really good,” Mindy said. She practically sounded like she was going to burst into tears too.

  Slowly, Tara walked over until she was standing right in front of me. She looked down at her clipboard and sighed in an exaggerated way, shaking her head like she was just at a total loss. Up close, her bruising was a thousand shades of purple.

  “Everything,” she said finally in a pitying voice. “You need to work on just . . . everything.”

  Walking home, I was crying so hard, I could barely see three feet in front of me. I felt like a weak little loser, but part of me was also quite proud of the fact I’d held it in for so long. At least Tara and her friends weren’t around to witness this.

  How could people be so completely awful? I had only seen behavior like that in movies and on TV and I had always thought those things were ridiculous—that no one would ever treat another human being that way in real life. I mean, yeah, I’d suffered minor humiliations in middle school—that time I sat in a plate of spaghetti Johnny Mikelson had put on my chair, that summer everyone called me Underpants Gobrowski because I’d left my plaid cotton jockeys in the dressing room at the pool. But this? This was taking it to entirely new heights.

  Tara and her friends were never going to accept me. They weren’t even going to try. There was no way I was setting myself up for that kind of humiliation again. Who knew what they would do to me if I showed up for tryouts? They’d probably pants me in front of the judges or dump a bucket of pig’s blood on my head.

  No way. Nuh-uh. Not this girl. Tara Timothy had won. I was not going back. I mean, wasn’t there something kind of admirable in admitting defeat, in knowing when to give up? The thought made me sick, but I clung to it anyway. I didn’t have much else to cling to at that particular moment.

  I had just reached our mailbox and was already dreaming of a nice hot bath when I heard Daniel calling my name. Or, more precisely, my nickname.

  “Hey, Jersey! Wait up!”

  I almost ran directly into the house. When I cry, I get all blotchy and my eyes turn this psychedelic blue-green color and I was in desperate need of a tissue. But it was too late. He had seen me and if I bolted now, he would see that too. I wiped both hands across my face, sniffled hard and turned around.

  Daniel was wearing a pair of football pants and a white SDH T-shirt that was hugging his body so tight, it showed the outline of every last muscle. His hair was darkened with sweat, his face was red from exertion and there was a streak of dirt across his right cheek.

  “Hey!” His smile quickly faded when he saw my face. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said, trying not to stare at his chest. “I just . . . had an allergic reaction.”

  “To what?” Daniel asked.

  Your girlfriend and her idiot squad, I thought.

  “I’m not really sure,” I said, inching toward my house. Daniel was very, well, perfect, but I really just wanted to be alone.

  “Oh. So I hear you’re going out for the cheerleading squad,” he said, smiling again.

  “Um . . . yeah . . . well . . .”

  “That’s so cool! You’re gonna love it.”

  He must have been sucking down the same psychedelic soda Mr. Cuccinello was drinking. Didn’t he see there was no way I was ever going to fit in with those people?

  “We do so much cool stuff with the cheerleaders,” Daniel said. “The parties, the away games, the pep rallies, the team dinners, the kidnap breakfasts. You should have seen the getup Tara Timothy was wearing last year when we kidnapped her. She looked like a wannabe porn star or something.”

  Suddenly Daniel seemed to realize he was babbling and he snapped his mouth shut and grinned sheepishly. Meanwhile, I found myself practically salivating for the life he had described. Well, except the Tara Timothy as sex goddess part. It all sounded like so much fun. And added bonus? Daniel would be there for all of it.

  “Anyway, it’s gonna be great,” he said. And I believed him.

  A car horn honked and I looked up to find a convertible full of kids barreling toward us. I jumped up onto the curb, yanking Daniel with me.

  “Sand Dune High sucks!” the driver shouted.

  A bunch of green-and-white pom-poms shook out the window as everyone in the car screamed and jeered and shouted insults before they peeled away. So obnoxious.

  “Freakin’ West Wind,” Daniel said, staring after them.

  “Wow. I can see why you guys hate them so much,” I said.

  He shrugged. “We’ll show them on the field,” he said. Then he knocked my arm with his shoulder, which pretty much sent a shiver all over my body. Twice. “And you guys will show them at regionals, right?”

  “I’m not exactly on the squad,” I said, looking down at my feet.

  “Oh, you’ll make it. I can tell,” Daniel said.

  “How?” I asked.

  “There’s just something about you, Jersey,” he said.

  Omigod. Was he flirting with me?

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that Tara Timothy and those girls really like me that much,” I said. The understatement of the year.

  Daniel laughed. “Please. They’re just trying to intimidate you. It’s like hazing. They want to see if you can handle it.”

  Well, I hadn’t exactly passed that test, considering I had bee
n blubbering about two minutes ago. But Tara and her friends didn’t know that. And actually, I was feeling a little better now. A lot better. See what some cute-boy interaction can do?

  “So, can you?” Daniel asked.

  “Can I what?” I asked back, hoping I hadn’t spaced out and missed yet another direct question.

  “Can you handle it?” he asked. His blue eyes were so full of confidence and ease I suddenly felt as if I was reflecting it all back at him.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think I can.”

  “Cool,” he said. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time, same mailbox?” he said, patting the flamingo on the head.

  “Sure,” I told him.

  I turned and walked into my house, feeling more and more confident by the second. If I could survive pre-tryout hell, why not go back for tryouts? Coach Holmes had said that a panel of teachers would be the judges, not the squad. So unless they did, in fact, pants me, what could they do? If I could just wow the judges, I could have the life Daniel had described and everything that went with it.

  Including more time with Daniel.

  “So . . . I don’t think I’m going to try out,” I told my mom, trying to sound upbeat about the decision.

  We were shopping for Sand Dune-appropriate clothes, but I was too busy trying to sort my thoughts to pay attention to the splashes of color all around me. One minute I was totally confident and could imagine myself walking into that gym and blowing the competition away. The next minute I felt terrified and couldn’t remember what the point was supposed to be. Even if I triumphed and made the squad, I was going to have to hang out with fifteen me-haters every day. Where was the fun in that?

  “I thought you missed being on a team,” my mother said. Her eyes were focused as she studied top after brightly colored top.

  “Yeah, but they all hate me already. What’s the point?” I asked.

  Instantly the hangers stopped scraping and my mother looked up. “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?” she asked.

  “Mom—”

  “Don’t ‘Mom’ me. You are not Annisa Gobrowski,” she said, coming around the clothing rack. She put her hands on the side of my face and studied me with a mock-serious expression. “The resemblance is remarkable, though. How do you pod people do it?”