by Kieran Scott
“Tara, you are not my mother. Stop telling me what to do,” Phoebe said shakily as I walked by her, Tara and Whitney. They were gathered on the track at the foot of the bleachers, post–football team announcements, pre–hello cheer.
“I’m not telling you what to do,” Tara replied. “I’m trying to give you advice. As a friend.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked somewhat meekly.
Phoebe groaned. She looked like she was about to explode. “Can’t you mind your own business for five seconds?” she asked.
“She’s just worried about you, Phoebe. We all are,” Whitney put in quietly.
“Well, don’t bother. I’m fine,” Phoebe said before storming off to stretch by herself. At least she hadn’t burst into tears. That was an improvement.
“What’s going on with her?” I asked.
“Like she said, it’s really none of your business,” Tara snapped.
Whitney sighed. “She won’t even tell us what’s going on with her. That’s the problem. I think she’s doing the whole bottle-it-all-up-until-she-explodes thing.”
“Never good,” I said, my heart going out to Phoebe.
“Nuh-uh,” Whitney replied.
I kind of understood why Phoebe might not want to share her problems with anyone, though. Everyone was already gossiping about her father losing her house. Why fuel the fire? Sometimes people could really suck.
“The captains of the two teams will meet in the center of the field for the coin toss!” the announcer called out over the PA system.
Bobby Goow and Christopher Healy emerged from the line of players in front of us. They didn’t even shake hands with the West Wind guys at the center of the field. I was suddenly acutely aware of the void above our scoreboard.
Something bad was going to happen here. I could feel it.
“It’s heads! West Wind elects to receive!” the ref called out. He blew his whistle and the captains jogged back to their sidelines. All the Sand Dune guys huddled up and put their hands in the center of the circle. They bounced up and down on their toes, shouting and grunting.
“Win! Win! Win!” they all called out together. Then they ran to line up for the kickoff and both crowds went totally insane.
“Let’s go, Sand Dune!” I shouted out, cheering along with the rest of the squad as we started to take our spots for the hello cheer.
The ball was kicked off. Some guy on the West Wind team caught it and took a dive at the twenty-yard line. We all turned toward the crowd.
“Hello cheer!” Tara shouted.
Please, just let this go okay, please, just let this go okay . . .
“Ready?”
“Okay!”
“We’ve got the power!”
“To take control!”
Coach Holmes gestured at us manically. She smiled like the Joker and pressed her fingers into her cheeks, pulling her lips up. Apparently we didn’t look quite happy enough. Shocker. I grinned as hard as I could as my arms flew through the moves.
“To rock this joint!”
“To go for gold!”
Coach waved her hands in front of her with her eyes wide, the universal signal for “More energy!”
“We welcome you!”
“To our school!”
“Take it from us!”
“Sand Dune rules!”
This time it wasn’t me who missed the pyramid count. It was the other side that went down. Not as messily as it had at the pep rally, though. In fact, it seemed like it just never went up. Coach looked as if she were about to have a stroke.
“I missed a mark. One mark,” Phoebe said to Tara as we dismounted.
“Whatever.” Sage hiccuped. “I didn’t feel like going up anyway.”
“What the heck is wrong with you people?” Chandra hissed.
“What’s the matter, Chandra? Does everything always have to be perfect with you?” Autumn put in.
“Ladies! What are you doing!?” Coach Holmes whisper-shouted from under the bleachers. Her eyes were about to pop free of their sockets. “Call a cheer! Now!”
Tara jumped to attention and everyone moved lethargically back to their places. “Defense is hot!” Tara called out. “Ready?”
The “okay” sounded more like a lame “maybe” than a full-hearted agreement. Coach Holmes hung her head. This was going to be an interesting afternoon.
“When you go out there for your halftime routine, I had better see ten times the energy, ten times the spirit and ten times the precision that I’ve seen in the first half,” Coach Holmes lectured as the marching band finished up their Disney medley. “You look like a bunch of amateurs out there. I’m half tempted to let the freshmen finish the game. Do you want me to bring them in? ’Cause I will.”
“No, Coach!” we all said in unison.
Hiccup, giggle, Sage put in, earning an admonishing glance from everyone on the team. She’d been hiccuping for the past ten minutes.
“Good! Now go line up and get ready to go on!” Coach Holmes said.
We turned and jogged toward the sideline. Sage tripped and fell right into Mindy’s arms, laughing. What was her problem?
“Oh my God!” Mindy said, helping Sage stand up straight and holding her shoulders. “Are you drunk?” she whispered.
Sage hiccuped and shook her head, her ponytail whacking her in the face. My heart plummeted.
Holy crap.
Skull Punch.
“Mindy! What did she drink back at my house after I left?” I asked, pulling them away from the rest of the squad.
“Just some fruit punch,” Mindy told me as Sage giggled at nothing in particular.
“Rooty tooty fruity,” Sage said, and laughed.
“Oh my God,” Mindy said, finally catching on. “Was there leftover Skull Punch?”
Sage burped. Loudly.
“Apparently,” I said.
“And now, your Sand Dune High School varsity cheerleaders!” the voice on the PA shouted out. The crowd cheered.
“What are we gonna do?” Mindy asked, her skin as white as a sheet. “She can’t go out there!”
The squad was already jogging onto the field. Coach Holmes waved at us frantically with her clipboard. If we stayed behind, the squad couldn’t do the routine. There were too many formation changes. Too many stunts. And if we stayed behind, Sage would get caught and kicked off the squad and we would all be screwed.
“Get her other arm,” I said, gripping Sage’s biceps tightly. Mindy did as I instructed. I think she was too scared to think for herself. “Let’s go.”
We jogged out onto the field, Sage between us, and dropped her off in her spot. She stood there, her shoulders slumped forward, her eyes at half-mast. I crossed myself even though I’m not Catholic. We needed all the help we could get.
The music started up, and the rest is a blur. I did the best I could in my first public performance of the routine, but it wasn’t me I was worried about. Sage was all over the place, moving right when the rest of us went left, clapping off beat. Phoebe, meanwhile, was so out of it, she was one step behind on everything, if not more. Then, during the last formation change, Chandra actually hip-checked Autumn out of the way to get into place. It was mayhem.
At one point in the routine the whole squad turns around to face the visiting bleachers. When we did, the entire West Wind High cheerleading squad was standing on the sideline, doubled over laughing. I had never felt so utterly humiliated.
Somehow, when the music stopped, all the stunts were up like they were supposed to be. Our fans cheered halfheartedly and I knew they were as appalled as I was. We sprinted off the field, barely able to muster enough energy for a “Whaddup, Sand Dune!”
Coach couldn’t even look at us. We were as pathetic as pathetic can be. Then Sage decided to seal the deal by falling flat on her face on her way off the field. Her sister had to pull her up and over to the fence, where she promptly vomited on a pom-pom. A resounding “Ugh!” went up from the crowd.
We
were as good as dead.
“First down! All you need is a first down!” I shouted, half out of my head. “Let’s go, Crabs!”
My pulse pounded frenetically as Mindy clutched my hand. In the last few minutes, the squad had lost all semblance of order on the track and Coach Holmes was too wrapped up in the game to care. We all were.
I glanced at the scoreboard as Mindy squeezed my fingers near the breaking point. There were forty-five seconds on the game clock and the team had no time-outs left. The score was 23–19. We had held West Wind scoreless in the second half, but we still needed a touchdown here to win. It looked like it was in the bag if we could just get this first down and if the runner ran out of bounds to stop the clock. Then we’d be on the ten-yard line and have time for a shot at the end zone.
“I can’t take it. I’m gonna barf,” Mindy said, looking legitimately queasy.
“I think we’ve seen enough of that for one day,” I shouted back.
Sage had been relegated to the first aid station, where she was currently sleeping it off. Coach had yet to deal with her, and I couldn’t think about it now. I was too busy having a coronary.
The team lined up. I could just hear Christopher’s audible. The ball was hiked and I jumped up and down to see what was going on. He dropped back. He handed it off to . . . Daniel! Daniel cradled the ball and ran for the sideline, gaining one . . . two . . . three yards! Enough for a first down!
“Get out of bounds!” I screamed along with half the crowd. “Get out!”
Some huge defensive end came out of nowhere and smacked Daniel into the ground. You could hear the crack of their helmets for miles. Everyone winced and groaned. Luckily Daniel got right up. Unluckily, he hadn’t gotten past the sideline. The clock was ticking away.
Christopher gestured at the team wildly, trying to get them back into position so he could run one last play. Everyone scrambled back to the line. All I could hope was that they had something to call. Something that would get them into the end zone.
The clock was at 20 . . . 19 . . . 18 . . .
Christopher took his place behind the center. 17 . . . 16 . . .
“Hut one! Hut two!”
15—
And then the whistle blew. The ref ran over to the line, waving his arms in the air. He called something out at the top of his lungs that I had to have heard wrong.
“That’s time! Game over!”
“WHAT!?!” (That was me screeching.)
The West Wind High players jumped up and down, hugging each other in celebration. The Sand Dune players gathered around the ref, demanding an explanation. A couple of them ripped off their helmets and got all up in the man’s face. Bobby Goow looked like he was possessed, his face purple and his dark hair clinging to his head with sweat. Everyone in the stands was stunned into silence. We looked at the clock. The lights didn’t lie. There were still fifteen seconds on it.
The ref blew his whistle manically, trying to get the guys to back off. He hit the button on his belt mic to connect his voice to the PA system. His words rang out over the field like a death knell.
“The clock on the scoreboard . . . the clock on the scoreboard is incorrect,” he said.
“What!?”
“He’s gotta be kidding!”
“This is bull—”
“The official game clock is kept on the field by the officials,” he continued, unperturbed by the thousands of people salivating for his blood. “The official game clock has run down.”
The Sand Dune High stands erupted with boos and jeers and cries of disbelieving fury. The West Wind High stands went wild. Their players ran off the field, shouting and screaming, arms raised in victory.
“West Wind has won the game,” the official finished, slamming the last nail into the coffin. “West Wind High wins by a score of twenty-three to nineteen!”
Coach Turcott and the assistants rushed the field, lacing into the ref with a few choice words. I heard someone shouting about misinformation. Then something about the bylaws of the league. The players all hovered on the field in disbelief, as if they were waiting to be told to get in that last play even though the Dolphins had long since vacated the line. I had never felt a sensation like this in my stomach before. This must have been what the phrase gut-wrenching referred to.
“They were bought off!” someone’s dad shouted from the stands. “The refs were bought off!”
“This is not right! It’s not fair!” someone else was crying.
Seconds passed . . . then minutes. Finally Coach Turcott grabbed his clipboard and stormed toward the school. Still, no one could believe it. No one could move. How could something like this have happened? And in this game, of all games.
Eventually we all came back to consciousness long enough to gather our things and trudge off the field. As we walked by the visitors’ bleachers, a bunch of kids leaned over the railings, singing at the top of their lungs.
“Na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey, hey, good-bye!”
Suddenly I saw the support beams under the bleachers give way, collapsing the stands and taking the bevy of bouncing morons down with them. If only I had the power to make my daydreams come true.
The auxiliary gym was full of colorful banners and signs and some streamers and balloons left over from spirit week, but it may as well have been decorated for a funeral. That was how we all felt as we sat there in front of Coach Holmes. Like someone had just died. It wasn’t enough that we had to lose the big rivalry game, but to lose it like that? It just wasn’t fair.
“I don’t even know what to say to you girls anymore,” Coach Holmes told us flatly. Her fed-up detachment was even worse then her shouting. “Whatever is going on with all of you, you had better sort it out before regionals,” she said, shaking her head. “’Cause if you don’t, we are just going to get laughed off the mats. And that’s the truth.”
At that moment Sage, who had rejoined us in a state of semiconsciousness after the game, got up and ran from the room. We could all hear her heaving on the grass. Tara rolled her eyes and sat back on her hands. I kind of felt like ralphing myself.
“Excuse me,” Whitney said, quickly following after her sister.
“What the hell is up with Sage?” Coach Holmes demanded of the rest of us. I looked at Mindy and shook my head ever so slightly. Mindy looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry, Coach,” Whitney said, rejoining us. She smiled apologetically and bit her lip. “She has some kind of stomach flu. I told her to stay home this morning, but you know Sage. School spirit all the way.” She shrugged innocently, pressing her lips together like, What else can I say?
There was a prolonged silence as Coach Holmes took this in and mulled it over, but finally she just raised her hands. “Fine. Whatever you say. Everyone go home and get some rest. Over the weekend I want you to think about what this squad means to you. If you come back on Monday ready to work, I’ll be here.”
She picked up her bag and walked out. The rest of us slowly got to our feet and followed. Personally, I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of there and soak in a nice long bath, provided it wasn’t full of beer cans or something.
“What are you doing now?” Mindy asked as we headed for the door.
“I’ll probably just chill by the pool this afternoon and try to distract myself with geometry,” I told her. “Want to come over and study?”
Mindy opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, we both overheard something that caused us to freeze.
“It’s all Gobronski,” Tara Timothy said. “The girl is bad luck. Ever since she got here, everything’s been falling apart.”
That was it. Something inside of me just popped. All Tara Timothy had done since the day I arrived was pick on me and bad-mouth me. I was so tired of her and all her little friends watching me and criticizing every single move I made. Ever since my meltdown at tryouts, I’d kept my mouth shut and tried to fit in, tried to get them all to like and accept me. Well, I was done.
I
turned on my heel, stalked up to Tara and the three girls huddled around her and cleared my throat. Tara looked surprised when she saw me there, but not upset that it was obvious I’d overheard.
“You know what, Captain?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Maybe you should stop focusing on me and start focusing on the fact that your precious little squad is imploding! If you were any kind of a captain, you would do something about it instead of pinning it all on me!”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. It was all I needed to buoy me into a second round.
“Did you ever think about the fact that maybe this is all your fault?” I demanded, my adrenaline pushing me forward. “You’re supposed to be our leader, right? What kind of leader sits back and watches while things get this bad? Everyone is fighting, no one wants to act like a team and your best friend is a basket case! Maybe you should get off your ass and lead!”
Tara was stunned silent. Lindsey, Kimberly and Michelle all stared at the floor.
“And by the way, the name is Gobrowski! Go. Brow. Ski! It’s not that hard!”
I turned around again, grabbed Mindy’s arm and stalked through the doors out into the sunshine. For the first time in days I felt as light as air. I felt free. I felt like the weight that had been pressing in on my chest had been blown to pieces.
I felt like myself again.
“Why do I need to know the sum of the angles of a rhombus?” I asked Jordan that afternoon. “Why? Why, why, why?”
“Honey, no one knows the answer to that one,” Jordan replied.
The doorbell rang. “I gotta go, Jor,” I said. “Call ya later.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the news to see if anyone’s killed your referees yet,” she joked.
“Keep me posted,” I told her before hanging up.
I got up and sprinted for the door, grateful for another excuse to avoid geometry and salivating to see who it was. Maybe Bethany had gotten my messages and decided to come over for a makeup talk. Maybe Daniel was stopping by to weep on my shoulder over the injustice of the game. I slid over to the door in my socks and yanked it open. Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of Phoebe Cook standing on my front step, hair falling out of her long ponytail, her face blotchy and caked with dry tears.
