“It doesn’t matter if you miss a day or two, though, does it?” Rack is saying. “The stuff is, like, in your system, right?”
“So long as you don’t do it on that day,” Grimshaw says.
“Oh.” Rack thinks. “Well, I should be safe, then.”
While they go at it with blow dryers and lipstick, speaking in code about the weighty issues of the day, I redo the vertical motion problem and come up with the same answer. Then I do every single extra-credit question with my new super-secret special power, the quadratic formula, and smile to myself. When I look up, the three of them are staring at me.
“So what are we going to do with her?” asks Rack.
“She won’t let you,” Grimshaw says. “I’ve tried.”
“Oh, Grimshaw.” I close my book. “You’re just afraid I’m gonna steal Mike.”
“Take him,” she says. “I broke up with him.”
“You broke up with him?” I repeat.
“You didn’t know that?” Rack asks me.
“No.” I cap my pen. “I was not informed. Why?”
“He kept pressuring me to go out to California.” Grimshaw bats her eyes at herself. “He has this job opportunity out there, but he says he’s not going without me. I used to really want to go, but now I don’t. I changed my mind.” She leans into the mirror and makes ducklips at herself. “He says he doesn’t understand people who change their minds.”
“Then what was he doing in the gym today, besides exuding his usual charm?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe he wants you now.”
“Who can blame him?” I spread my arms wide. “Okay. Do me.” So they do me. They put makeup all over my face and bark at me not to itch or wiggle or smile or move.
“I don’t know,” Angel muses as she wraps my eyelid halfway around my head and paints on some black trim. “Older guys are great. At least they have money. Will you hold still?”
“I can’t help it,” I squeak. “You’re torturing me.”
“Junior never has a dime,” Rack says. “If we go anywhere, I always pay. Not that we ever go anywhere, or do anything. I bought our prom tickets last year, and my corsage, plus I paid for his tux. Don’t tell anyone that, though.”
“What’s Junior’s family do for work?” I ask.
“The Arms. Or did.”
“His mom, too?”
“She cleans the church at night.”
“How about his grandparents? Do you think they are moving up, economically, from generation to generation?”
“How should I know that?”
“Is he going to college?”
“If he passes algebra.”
“What are you,” Grimshaw says, “the FBI?”
“It’s my independent study, remember? It’s why we’re cheerleaders. Jesus.”
“He wants to go to the same college as my brothers,” Rack explains. “They have a really good football team, and they’ve sent scouts to the games and seen his tapes and stuff. He has to pass algebra, though, or they won’t give him a football scholarship. This is the fourth year he’s taken it.”
“How’s he doing?” I ask.
“Terrible.”
“I could help him,” I offer. “I’m doing good in math.”
“God, that would be great. I don’t know if he’ll have the time, though, until after the season’s over. I’ll ask him.”
They talk about how romantic it is when someone loves you as much as Mike loves Grimshaw. “It’s not that I don’t love him,” she says, “because I do.”
“You’re just not in love,” clarifies Angel.
“Sometimes I am,” says Grimshaw. “But—we’re not going in the same direction anymore, you know? He has this path out of Colchis, and I’m staying here until I graduate.”
Angel gasps. “Did you give him back the laptop?”
“Yeah.” She grimaces. “It sucks. It’s where I kept all my ideas.”
“You can use mine,” both Rack and Angel chime at the same time. Then Rack remembers, no, she really needs hers on the farm, they keep records on there, so it’s decided that Grimshaw can use Angel’s. “Just stay here,” says Angel. Even though it’s too bad about the laptop, it’s still romantic that he got one for her.
“Do you think Mike is really gonna go to California?” Angel asks.
“Yeah.” Grimshaw says she started using Mike over the summer to get the hell off the hill and get down to Monique’s, and how Mike was always available to run her back and forth. “Sometimes there was a class in the morning, and I wanted to show up, just be around in case Monique was tired or wanted to watch TV.”
“You should have just come over here,” says Angel.
“Are you going to take over the bridal shop someday?” I ask Angel, still thinking about upward mobility.
“No. Nursing,” she says irritably, as though this was settled a long time ago. “I start night classes in January.”
“So I felt bad,” Grimshaw continues. “I felt that I owed him something.”
“Didn’t it create this pressure?” asks Angel.
“Yes!” says Grimshaw. “So I ended up, kind of initiating the relationship myself, because…”
“Because you had to,” says Rack. “What the hell were you going to do?”
“Yeah, he was doing so much for me, and my life would have been nothing without his help, like, I’d be dead right now, from boredom, or I would have killed myself, and I’m not even kidding. Instead, he showed up every day and drove me down to the Valley and then back up. And then Monique started a dance camp, which was my idea, which I ran, and then you know the rest.”
“That’s kind of romantic,” sighs Rack. “I mean, in my relationship, I’m like, the Mike. I bring him everywhere and kind of pay attention to what he has to do. I’m kind of like his mom.”
“Or his wife,” says Angel.
“Right. It’s not that romantic, trust me.”
“Ta-da,” Angel sings to me. “You’re done.” I put my hands up to my cheeks.
“Don’t touch!” Rack slaps my hands down. My face feels chalky, like if I smile, it’ll fall off. They spin me around in front of the mirror. I look at a plaster replica of myself. She looks surprised to see me looking back at her.
“Oh my God,” Rack murmurs. “Tim is gonna go nuts.”
“Who?” I ask.
“You haven’t noticed the way Tim Marhaver stares at you all the time?”
“Tim Marhaver! What have I ever done to him?”
“She doesn’t notice things like that,” puts in Grimshaw. “She has no idea.”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Angel. “We’ll draw you a map.” The three of them burst out laughing.
“How far have you gone, anyway?” asks Rack.
“Not that far,” I admit. Better not tell them about the time Ruby Grimshaw grabbed my breast and gave it a painful squeeze and I responded by slugging him in the stomach.
“Well,” says Rack, “it’s something to look forward to.”
“Hey, Rack,” Angel says tentatively, “do you, like, you know, with Junior?”
“Of course I do,” she snaps. “What do you think I take pills for?”
“I know that, I just meant when…”
“Oh. That. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Junior doesn’t—I mean, I’m his first one. Before me, there was only football.”
“That’s what older guys are good for,” says Grimshaw. “You don’t have to draw them a map.”
The blonde girl in the mirror stares at me with bright eager eyes and soft pink lips. She is pretty, but she’s nobody I know.
* * *
After the Colchis Rockets win their first game, the Colchis Rockets win their next game. The Colchis Rockets have been losing football games for so many years that even winning two in a row makes headlines in the Valley Vision-Standard, and a front page story featuring Junior Davis. Their third game is away, against Bavaria. Colchis and Bavaria have a
common Main Street, and going from east to west, one town blurs into the other. Once you’re in them, though, they look completely different. Whereas Colchis’s factory looms gothically over us, Bavaria’s factory, a tool-and-die plant, sprawls quietly along the river, never getting more than one and a half stories tall. The school colors of Bavaria are orange and black.
The weather on game day is bright and sunny. Early in the fourth quarter, the game is tied, twelve to twelve, when Junior Davis comes pumping down the field, looks behind him, leaps, pulls a football out of the sky, trips, stumbles, and keeps running, while Bavaria screams that the ball is down. Junior gets tackled about ten yards from the enemy end zone under a pile of orange and black uniforms. For the longest time, the two teams stay right where they are, as Colchis tries to score a touchdown. Then Colchis tries for a field goal, which Bavaria blocks. Their star player gets injured and carried off the field on a stretcher, while both teams go down on one knee. Rack tells us to get our bleachers to stand and applaud him as he leaves the field, but then he sits up and gives the Colchis bleachers the finger, and our fans boo and throw empty soda cans onto the field. Coach Ellis screams for a penalty, and the referee screams that he didn’t see a thing. People in the bleachers on both sides are screaming nonstop. The cheerleaders are hopping up and down, and that includes me, but I am also trying to remember what Scot explained about downs, because I don’t understand why we still have the ball after all this time. I stick to my job as a cheerleader, though, which is to scream and keep screaming until we either lose the ball or score, and I will know when that happens by watching Rack. So the guys on the field heap on top of each other in piles, and the crowd screams, and whistles blow. Then the ball pops up, and an orange and black amoeba with many arms enfolds it, and then a bunch of gold and purple swarms on top of the orange and black. The ball squirts out to the orange and black, and they start heading down the field. Everybody screams except the members of the marching band, who sit in their section of the bleachers and read comic books. Coach Ellis starts screaming in the referee’s face again, who screams back that he’ll throw him out of the game. There’s a time-out. Bavaria tries to pass, but Lars Madsen intercepts and then the whole mass of bodies and colors and helmets and cleats ends up back in the enemy end zone. Then the whistle blows, Junior dances backward, jumps up to avoid a tackle, spins in midair, and fires the football into the end zone. It hits Brian MacAlery, a sophomore, in the chest and knocks the wind out of him. He bobbles it for a moment before he gets both arms around the ball and clings to it, looking terrified. Gradually, it occurs to people that it’s a touchdown and Colchis has won the game. The fans spill out of the bleachers, a couple of fights break out, the cops intervene, and everybody goes home on the school buses, screaming insults out the windows as we roll through Bavaria.
After the win against Bavaria, a virus starts, then Colchis wins another one and it’s a fever. Even people who dropped out of school start coming to the football games. Then Junior Davis wins a big game against last year’s champion with a touchdown—a real one, this time—in overtime, and Coach Ellis breaks down in sobs. Self-esteem in Colchis soars to dangerous levels. Cars honk. Stores hang out banners. Anonymous nerds high-five each other in the halls. The school board chairman announces he’s running for state office. Rack parades around the halls like a queen, daring her teachers to expect any homework out of her. Scot decides the reason he’s not making any money in real estate is he’s not taking enough risks. He plans another spec house. My mother slides into a grim depression. She comes home from her prayer sessions more irritable than ever. One night, she asks me if I want to drive to Maine with her the last weekend of October to visit Allegra in college.
“But, Mom! That’s homecoming weekend!”
“I know,” she says quietly. “That’s the point.” She sighs. “That’s all right. I’ll take a couple days off and drive out with Nora and Zack.”
* * *
One Sunday, I practically collide with Mike Lyle coming out of the front door of Al’s Superette.
“Oh! Hi, Mike,” I say, very surprised and friendly.
He grunts at me and walks away.
“Hey, Mike.” I hurry after him back to the parking lot. “You must be off to California soon.” He stops. “Are you?”
“When the time is right,” he says. “Timing is everything.” He’s been working on his image. His hair is shorter, shinier, and a shade blacker than it used to be.
“What do you do out there, anyway?” I ask. “For work?” Mike and I stand very close, face-to-face. We’re about the same height. In addition to being very light blue, his eyes have an interesting crystalline pattern to them.
“Entertainment.”
“Entertainment?” I parrot.
“Adult entertainment,” he says. “Not for kids. Video production.”
“Oh! That’s really impressive,” I babble.
He opens the car door. “I’m glad you’re impressed. I didn’t think it was going to be so easy.” He’s lost weight, and the features of his face have gotten chiseled-looking. But he’s still massive, which gives him an eerie gravitational pull that makes you feel like you’re falling into him. There’s a stillness about those light eyes, too, like he’s not really looking at you, but just using them to sense heat and motion. I’ve never stood this close to a man who would just as soon crush my head like an empty beer can.
“What does your dad do now?” I ask him.
This takes him by surprise. I don’t explain, though. I wait for the answer.
“You know,” he says, “here’s why I don’t like your mother: when I had her for English way back when, she made us read fairy tales. One time she asked us, why do all the little girls in the fairy tales have golden hair? I said, because gold is the color of money.” He laughs, then he takes a lock of my hair and tucks it behind my ear. “I’ll never forget the look of shock on your mother’s face. She thought I was pretty dumb.”
He points at me and winks. “But I might be smarter than you think. So don’t underestimate me.”
I meet his gaze and challenge. “I don’t estimate you at all,” I tell him, “one way or the other.”
He puts the key in the ignition and starts the car. “Maybe you should. Maybe I’m giving you fair warning not to start what you can’t finish.”
“Is your father on disability?” I ask. “With the back injury?”
“Not him. He’s got too much pride to coast on the government.”
“So what’s he do now?” I ask again.
“You really want to know?” he asks. I nod.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he says. “Then you can think about it in your little blonde head. You walk all over his work, every day. But you don’t see it.”
“A farmer?”
“You see him every day,” he says again. “But you look right through him.”
Then he backs up and drives away.
* * *
At the next practice, there’s another problem we have to deal with: Nanci Lee has an issue with Grimshaw’s dance innovations to the squad. She wants to know where the “cheer” came from at the pep rally, which had nothing to do with the football team, or Colchis. She doesn’t care if the crowd liked it. It’s not up to the crowd what teams do.
“We’ve kind of made her a tri-captain,” Rack explains to Nanci Lee.
“Yeah,” chimes in Angel. “She knows a lot more about it than we do.”
“Ummm…” Nanci Lee smiles. “That’s not really your choice, is it?”
“But you said at the beginning that this was our team, not yours.”
“Yeah, that we needed to take ownership of it, remember? That we ‘needed to put our big-girl pants on’?”
“It is your team”—Nanci Lee concedes—“but we have two cheerleaders that aren’t even qualified to be on the squad, and you’re making them captains now? That might be owning something, but it’s not the team.”
So instead of letting us g
et more dance-y and choreographed, Nanci Lee, out of spite, is going super traditional, humiliating us with the dumbest cheers ever.
Ricker-racker, ricker-racker, sis-boom-bah
Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, rah-rah-rah.
We talk about it the next morning at the graveyard.
“If we do those cheers,” says Grimshaw, “they’ll throw a lot more than Dixie cups at us.”
“So just do what you want to do,” Angel advises Grimshaw, “but we’ll do it as a separate team.”
“Like start our own dance team?”
“Yeah. For next semester. That’ll be better, anyway. Then we don’t have to deal with their stupid rules. We don’t have to deal with them at all.”
“And we can pick the girls we want anyway. I mean, ask them.”
“And can we still be cheerleaders, too?”
Rack shrugs. “Sure. The cheers are so old and so stupid anyway, and we know them all, so there’s nothing to practice.”
“And then we do halftime shows as the dance team.”
“Not her, though,” Grimshaw says, nodding in my direction. “She won’t have time.”
“You have to do your homework,” Angel tells me.
“I’m doing it.”
“You have to keep pulling down those big fat sexy As,” says Rack.
“I’m pulling them.”
“So make us proud.”
Grimshaw looks at me. “Do you think your mom would let us do it? Set up a separate dance squad and just get away from Nanci Lee?”
“Why wouldn’t she? She’s been pretty useful so far.”
* * *
Grimshaw gets even more excited about her idea for a new dance team than she was about reupholstering the dead old Colchis cheerleading. She also starts talking about how founding a high school dance team might be her shot at getting to New York City next year. Knowing she’d have to convince my mother the principal, Grimshaw outlines how exactly we could be both cheerleaders and start the dance team, and how it might help her get into a real dance school.
The Spaces Between Us Page 10
