by Kieran Scott
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Hey! I’m all kinds of stealth!” she said, looking hurt.
“Bethany! Why didn’t you just tell me? I would have brought you with us.”
“Please! And risk getting sucked into the popular crowd along with you?” she joked.
“Yeah, like you would ever let that happen,” I said, starting down the hall.
“Well, I’m over it, anyway,” Bethany said, falling into step with me. “I vented all about you on the website. It was very cleansing.”
She was starting to sound like Autumn.
“You did? What did you say?” I asked.
“Just how torturous it is to be friends with a cheerleader,” Bethany said with a shrug. “I titled it The Devil Wears Pleats. How kill is that?”
“Very,” I said. “So, we are still friends, then?”
Bethany blushed slightly. “Don’t get all weepy on me,” she said. “I reserve the right to revoke the title if you ever diss me again.”
I nodded. “Sounds fair.”
“So tell me, did they beat you with a telephone book in there or what?” she asked, walking backward as we turned the corner toward homeroom. “Can you describe any of them? ’Cause I know a guy who’s great at composite sketches.”
I laughed and opened the classroom door for her. Maybe today wouldn’t be all bad.
The entire squad gathered in the gym bleachers after homeroom. The mood was grim. I hadn’t been surprised to hear on the morning announcements that Principal Wharton wanted to meet with us, but I had been shocked that he wanted to do it so quickly. I figured it would take him at least a day to figure out our punishment and write an appropriately devastating speech.
“I’m grounded for a month,” Mindy told me quietly. “But my parents are still going to let me compete. I mean, if we even are.”
“That’s good,” I said, deciding to keep my own punishment to myself for now.
“What do you think they’re gonna do?” Mindy asked.
“I think they’re gonna bury us,” I replied.
The door to the gym opened and Principal Buzzkill walked in with Coach Holmes at his side. I could practically hear everyone holding their breath. Neither one of the authority figures looked in the least bit happy to be there.
“Ladies, I’m gonna make this short,” Principal Buzzkill said.
And sweet? I thought hopefully.
He stood right in front of us, legs spread, arms locked over his broad chest. Coach Holmes looked us over like we were sea slime. We were so very dead.
“We have not yet hammered out the details of the punishment for your behavior on Saturday night, and we’ll be meeting with the football team next to tell them the same thing,” Principal Wharton continued. “But we wanted to talk to you first because your participation in your regional competition has been called into question.”
I heard Tara Timothy blow out her breath. She shifted in her seat and I felt the blade on the guillotine descending.
“After deliberating all day yesterday, talking to a few of your parents and some members of the school board, I have decided . . . to let you compete.”
“Really?” someone squeaked.
“Omigod! That’s so—”
Principal Wharton held up a hand, silencing us. But Mindy clung to my arm and grinned. We were still going to compete! We were still going to regionals! It was a miracle!
“It’s the consensus of the school community that the football team suffered a crushing and unfair loss on Saturday and that keeping you girls out of competition would only compound that,” Principal Wharton continued.
I looked over at Whitney and Phoebe, who were both grinning. This was completely and totally unexpected. Even Tara was smiling uncontrollably.
“We will get back to you on your punishment,” Principal Wharton said. (I couldn’t think of him as Buzzkill anymore.) “In the meantime,” he said, “practice hard, and make us proud.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the gym. The second the door slammed behind him, we erupted with screeches and hugs and laughter. We were still going to regionals, which meant, among other things, that we still had a shot at beating West Wind at something. I couldn’t remember the last time an authority figure had had such a human reaction to a situation like this.
A sharp whistle cut the noise dead and we all turned to find Coach Holmes glaring at us.
“I’m sure you already know how disappointed I am in you, so I’m not even gonna go there,” she said. “If it were up to me, you would not be competing. Not after the way you all have been acting. But Principal Wharton and the Board of Education were adamant, so I had to go along.”
My heart took a little dive. Coach Holmes was mad.
“They’re doing you a huge favor here, so you had better be prepared to show them that they’re right,” she continued. “You will work your little butts off at practice this week and I mean work. No coming late, no leaving early. I want one hundred percent from you every second you are out there, you get me?”
My pulse was pounding in my ears. This was it. This was how I was going to die. But there was nothing I could do about it. I had to tell her what was going on.
“Um . . . Coach?” I said, my voice echoing through the gym. “I can’t come to practice for the next two days.”
“What?” Tara blurted.
“Excuse me, Gobrowski?” Coach Holmes said.
“I’m kind of . . . grounded until tomorrow’s geometry test,” I said, my mouth dry. “And if I don’t ace it, my parents may pull me from the squad.”
“I don’t believe this,” Coach Holmes said, looking at the ground. Her shoulders rose and fell as she sucked in a deep breath. She looked somewhere off to my left. “Timothy, you still the number-one math whiz in this county?”
Huh?
“Um . . . I guess so,” Tara said.
“Good. You’re tutoring Gobrowski today after practice.”
Okay, this was not happening.
“But Coach—”
“You really wanna mess with me right now, Timothy?” Coach Holmes demanded. The sheer width of her nostril flare really was quite something. She had such a cute little button nose when she wasn’t seething at us.
“No, Coach,” Tara said.
“Good. Now all of you get your butts to class,” Coach Holmes said. “And please, ladies! Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, do not do anything stupid for at least five days.”
By the time Tara showed up that afternoon, I had already been studying for three hours. I’d read the first two acts of Othello, answered all my homework questions for Spanish, plodded my way through a chapter of biology and was staring blankly at my history textbook when the doorbell rang. I sighed and went downstairs to welcome the Queen of Torture into my home.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she replied. “Practice was pointless without you. We can’t do any of the stunts and all the formations are off.”
“Nice to see you too. Can I get you anything? Soda . . . water . . . arsenic?”
She rolled her eyes and tromped by me, heading for the stairs. “Let’s just get this over with.”
This was gonna be fun.
An hour later, after going over three chapters with Tara explaining various concepts to me carefully and slowly, like I was a coma patient, we were both working in tense silence. Tara was doing her calculus homework while I did a few problems for her to check over. She kept sighing every two minutes and each time she did, I tensed up, wondering if she was going to launch another verbal assault.
Finally her arm slapped down on her book and she looked over at me. “What the hell was Phoebe doing here the other night?” she asked.
I took a deep breath and kept writing. “You should really ask her.”
“I tried that,” Tara said.
Why did Phoebe want to be best friends with a person who was so clueless?
“Look, she’s just really sad
,” I said. “She wanted to get out of her house and I guess she just felt like she couldn’t go to . . . her friends.”
“But why?” Tara asked, concern lining her face. “It’s not like we’re not trying. She won’t talk to us, she won’t let us help her. I just want her to snap out of it already.”
“Maybe it’s not something she can just snap out of,” I said.
Tara sighed again and closed her heavy text with a bang. “Well, now she’s basically not talking to me, and Autumn and Chandra are ready to strangle each other over no-one-knows-what, and you and Sage hate each other.” She sighed and pushed her hands over her face and through her hair. “I don’t know what the hell to do anymore, I really don’t.”
I sat there through this little speech, dumbfounded. It was not only the first time I’d ever seen Tara act and talk like a human, but it was the first time she had willingly displayed any kind of weakness. Maybe there was something in the air in my room that just got people talking.
“It’s gonna be all right,” I heard myself saying.
“No, it’s not,” Tara said. She picked up her pencil and doodled a dark swirl into the top of her notebook page. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am a sucky captain.”
Holy crap. It was a miracle. Had Miss High-and-Mighty really just said that?
“You’ll figure it out,” I said. But it sounded totally hollow. I really didn’t see how we were going to pull it all together by Saturday even if I did somehow manage to ace the geometry test.
“I should’ve known better,” she said, getting up and walking over to the window. “Whenever I really want something . . . like, whenever I think I’m actually going to get it, everything just falls apart.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Tara looked at me as if gauging whether or not to keep talking. Then she sat down on the edge of my bed and leaned her elbows on her knees.
“Okay, first? Last year I had the lead in the school musical. We were doing Bye Bye Birdie and I was Rosie, and they never give a lead to a junior,” she said. “And then, the day before opening night, I get laryngitis. I just lose my voice completely. And I have to sit there for three straight nights, drinking lemon tea while Connie Christiansen, the überbitch of the century, plays the part. Badly, by the way.”
“Well, that sucks. But those things happen, right?”
“I’m just getting started!” Tara said, her eyes wide. “Then, at the beginning of this year I’m all psyched for select choir.”
“You sing?” I asked.
“Hello? I just said I was the lead in the musical!”
“Right. Sorry. My bad.”
“So I’m all psyched for select choir. I mean, I’ve been looking forward to it for three years. And when I get my schedule, I’m in concert choir. That’s the choir where they throw all the shower singers and tone-deaf freaks,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m in that choir,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
I wasn’t sure if she was sorry for insulting me or sorry for me because I was stuck in concert choir, but I didn’t ask. She was on a roll.
“So I go to Mr. Crouch, the head of the music department, and he says I did get into select, but it doesn’t fit in my schedule. It turns out that no matter how they rearrange my classes, they just cannot fit me into sixth-period choir unless I want to drop calc or A.P. English, and I can’t do either if I want to go to any kind of decent college. So you wanna know what elective I’m in? Home ec! My first exam was baking brownies—from a mix!”
“That kind of sounds like fun,” I said.
“Yeah. If you’re brain-dead,” Tara told me. “And then! Then we finally have a squad that has a shot of beating West Wind at regionals and Kristen and Danielle go and get themselves booted. I mean, what did I do to offend the gods!?” She flopped back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “It’s my senior year. All I want is for one thing to go right. Just one. Is that so wrong?”
Damn. I had no idea Tara was born under such an unlucky star. Suddenly I could see why winning was so important to—
Wait a minute.
“Did you just say Danielle and Kristen got themselves booted?” I asked, my spirits rising.
“Those two boozers were bound to get snagged eventually.”
Eureka! I was absolved! “Do you think you could, like, put that in writing and . . . I don’t know . . . post it on the bulletin board in the main hallway?”
“Maybe we should just get back to work,” Tara said, standing up. “We’re screwed if you don’t pass geometry anyway, right?”
She pulled my book out from under my nose and opened it up in front of her. “All right, Gobrowski, it’s quiz time,” she said.
I didn’t bother pointing out that she’d just pronounced my name right for the first time ever, but I think we both knew we’d just made some sort of breakthrough. The question was whether or not it was going to hold up. Especially in public, where everyone basically expected me to be her whipping boy.
We were just gonna have to wait and see.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mindy was waiting for me outside of geometry class. I had that sort of before-the-dentist’s-office dread in the pit of my stomach.
“You ready for this?” she asked.
“Who knows?” I replied. “The good news is, my mom convinced my dad to let me go to practice for the rest of the week, so if Loreng takes a while to grade the tests, I’ll get to go to regionals no matter what.”
“He’s gonna grade ’em tonight,” Sage said as she passed us by. “He always does.”
“I think we should start calling her Buzzkill,” I told Mindy.
Laughing, Mindy followed Sage into class. Before I could join her, I felt a hand on my back.
“Kick ass, Jersey,” Daniel said, his lips practically touching my ear.
Major tingle waves, people. Major.
“I just hope I’m ready,” I said. I had told Daniel all about my parents’ geometry ultimatum on the way to school that morning.
“You are,” he said confidently. “Want some added incentive?”
“What, not having to quit cheerleading isn’t enough for you?” I said.
“Forget that. How about if we both pass, we go out and do something crazy Friday night? Something we’ve never done before,” he asked, his eyes sparkling.
Omigod. Was he asking me out on a date? It felt like he was asking me out on a date. But it was contingent upon me passing geometry? Talk about pressure! How was I even going to concentrate now?
“Actually, I kind of have to hang with the squad Friday night,” I said. “It’s a night-before-regionals bonding thing.”
“Okay. How about Thursday, then?” Daniel asked. “Is it a deal?”
I smiled slowly, equations and formulas scrolling through my head. I was so going to pass this thing. I had to.
“It’s a deal.”
That afternoon, nothing could flush my good mood. Not even going through the routine for regionals five hundred gazillion times. I was hyper and happy and felt free as I could be. I had worked my butt off for the past two days and had caught up in all my classes. Not only that, but the geometry test had gone well. I could feel it. And if all went according to plan, this Thursday I would be on a date with Daniel and Saturday I’d be at my first cheerleading competition.
“All right, ladies! One more time, then we’ll call it a day,” Coach Holmes said.
Sweat poured down my face as I got into position. Next to me, Chandra and Autumn were locked in an icy silence. Phoebe was on the other side of the formation, looking like she was about to pass out. Sage had stepped on me at least four times. But at the moment I didn’t care. I just wanted to put whatever energy I had left into this last run-through.
Coach Holmes started the music on the portable stereo and we all jumped into action. The routine is only three minutes long, but it is a loooong three minutes. In that time I get tossed twice and go up three other times. In between all the climbing an
d flying there are twelve formation changes, a billion eight counts of high-energy dance moves and one back handspring, back tuck. By the time I went up in my last stunt, a scale, the room was spinning around me.
I came down and threw my arms up to hit the last beat, then lost my balance and tripped sideways a few steps. Oops. Leave it to me to fall over when I’m standing on solid ground.
I flattened my feet again and smiled. The three stunts that were up at the end came down and we all looked at Coach Holmes and waited. I gotta say, she didn’t look too pleased.
“Good job, ladies,” she said finally. “Definite improvement. Let’s hit the showers.”
She walked out and everyone collapsed to the mats with a general groan.
“I’m so tired, I can’t even remember my name,” Felice said to the ceiling.
Erin fought for breath. “I think I’m actually dying over here.”
Karianna reached a hand over and dragged her bag toward her by the handle. Without ever picking up her head, she fished through it until she came out with a Gatorade and handed it to Erin, whose head was on her thigh.
“I love you,” Erin said.
“You guys, we need to talk about some things,” Tara said suddenly.
More groaning. I turned my head and saw her struggling onto her elbows. “I’m totally serious. We can’t avoid it any longer. Coach Holmes didn’t say it, but I could tell by her face. We’re not there yet.”
“Yes, we are,” Whitney said.
“No. We’re not,” Tara said. “We’re better, but no way are we ready to compete.”
“Well, what do you suggest we do about it, oh, Captain, my Captain?” Chandra said sarcastically. “The competition is three days away.”
“You don’t have to attack her,” Autumn said.
“Was I talking to you?” Chandra said.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” Tara exclaimed, pushing herself up farther. “We’re all biting each other’s heads off all the time. Maybe we can hit all our moves and all our stunts. Maybe we can even fake smiles. But if our hearts aren’t in it, it’s going to show. The judges . . . they’re going to know.”
“So, like, what’re we supposed to do?” Jaimee asked. “We already tried the whole kumbaya thing and, hello? It only got us jailed.”
