by Kieran Scott
He reached out and tugged on the front of my cheerleading vest. I tripped toward him. Tingles all over. “I get to hang out with you more,” he said quietly.
Major heart swoop. Boy sure knew how to make a girl’s knees buckle. But he still had to pay for not telling me, and he’d just given me the perfect opportunity to collect. I stood on my tiptoes and leaned in like I was going to kiss him. His eyes got all droopy, making it really hard not to touch my lips to his, but I controlled myself. Somehow.
“Hate to break it to you, Healy, but I’m not sure you got what it takes,” I said cockily. He blinked, and I pushed him backward with both hands before strutting off.
“Hey!” he said, regaining his balance and jogging to catch up with me. “That was supposed to be romantic!”
“You want romantic?” I said, slipping out of my backpack. “Carry my books.”
I handed the two-ton bag over (we had midterms coming up) and kissed him quickly on the lips before sauntering away again.
“Wow! You really don’t like to be kept in the dark!” Daniel called after me with a laugh. I turned around, my pleats dancing, and walked backward.
“And don’t you forget it!” I said with a smile.
3
“Relegated to the cafeteria,” Chandra muttered as we shoved through the double doors into the large, airy caf, which was bordered by a courtyard full of outdoor tables. The room still smelled of overboiled hot dogs and cardboard pizza, with a slight oniony after-scent. “I mean, how do you win nationals and then get relegated to the cafeteria?”
“The boys’ basketball team has the gym, the girls’ basketball team has it after them, and the wrestling team has the auxiliary gym,” I said. “Thus, the cafeteria.”
“Yeah. And what has the boys’ basketball team ever done for us?” Chandra said. “Besides sucked all our energy dry, that is.”
The SDH basketball team didn’t quite measure up to the football and wrestling teams. Like, they weren’t even on the same ruler. Last year they had apparently gone 4-12 and been proud of themselves. Not a good sign. But I had experience with cheering for losing teams, thanks to my less-than-stellar school back in Jersey. Tons of experience. After dealing with a 0-9 football team, I could cheer for anything. Bring on the losers!
“As far as I’m concerned, this school should be kissing our accomplished butts,” Chandra said. She paused in front of the darkened window to the school store and checked her murky reflection, swiping her bangs out of her face with a sigh.
“Sheesh. Tell me how you really feel,” I said.
Chandra looked at me and her shoulders relaxed a bit. “Sorry. I haven’t had my three o’clock chocolate fix yet.”
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the mini bag of M&Ms I hadn’t felt like eating after lunch. Chandra’s eyes widened as she snatched it from my hands. Girl actually tore the bag open with her teeth.
“Bless you,” she said, then dumped half the bag into her mouth at once and closed her eyes, savoring the candy-coated goodness.
“Just try not to choke,” I told her, dragging her away from her reflection.
We turned around and paused for a moment to take it all in. All the tables and chairs had been folded and piled up at the far end of the caf, making space for the tumbling mats set up down the center. On the mats a bunch of girls attempted round-off back handsprings one by one, occasionally spazzing and flailing their way to the floor. Two janitors lounged in the corner, one of them leaning on his mop, both watching the proceedings with amusement. They were probably hoping enough people would fall on their butts and slide off the mats so that they’d have less stuff to clean up later.
“It’s a travesty,” Chandra said.
“You’re right. We do deserve a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” I said. “But it is only pre-tryout practice.”
“All right, people! Let’s get our butts in gear and line up already!” Tara Timothy shouted, slapping her hands together.
“Yeah. Tell that to Tara,” Chandra said, rolling her eyes and popping another M&M. She offered me some and I waved her off. She needed it more than I did.
Meanwhile, on the mats, Daniel, Steven, Joe and the other guys—seven of them in all—lined up at the end of the row of girls, looking a little sheepish and out of place. Terrell Truluck, clad in gray sweats and a Sand Dune Football T-shirt, put his hands on his hips and jogged over to Tara prissily, kicking his heels up.
“I’m, like, ready! Okay?” he said in a nasal voice, cocking his head to the side.
A bunch of girls giggled. Tara melted him into a Terrell-shaped puddle with her death-ray glare.
“This is gonna be interesting,” I said.
Chandra and I walked over to the wall on the right and sat down next to Autumn, Sage, Lindsey and Jaimee Mulholland, who were already camped out, munching on Baked Lays and watching the drama unfold. Technically, none of us had to be there since we weren’t trying out, but who could miss an entertainment opportunity as rare and promising as this one?
“Ten to one Terrell doesn’t make it through the first practice,” Sage said, crunching into a chip, as we sat.
“I’ll take that action,” Chandra replied.
Out on the mats, Tara and Terrell were engaged in an old-school face-off. Neither one of them blinked for about two minutes.
“Take a lap,” Tara told Terrell finally.
“What?” Terrell barked.
“I don’t do laps,” Joe piped up behind Terrell. He had a deep voice that reverberated through my bones. I could only imagine the power it would have on the court.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not telling you to do one,” Tara told him before refocusing her energy on Terrell. “If that’s gonna be your attitude, Terrell, you can take a lap.”
Terrell blew out a scoff and backed up a few paces. “I ain’t takin’ no lap.”
Apparently he got all gangsta when challenged by authority. Coach Holmes stepped up next to Tara and eyed Terrell with obvious disdain. She had a brand-new whistle with a red strap wrapped around her hand. All the better to keep you in line with, my dear. Under Coach’s gaze Terrell finally had the sense to look intimidated. Momentarily, anyway.
“Mr. Truluck, are you disrespecting our captain?” Holmes said, raising her eyebrows.
Terrell’s mouth fell open. “I—”
“Because I can’t imagine you disrespected your football captain like that,” Holmes continued. “I wouldn’t even want to know what would happen to you if you did.”
I held my breath. Terrell looked from Holmes to Tara and back. Then he checked over his shoulder at Daniel, gauging whether or not this dare was worth going through with, I assume. Daniel shrugged. I hoped Terrell wouldn’t storm out. Not only because it would be a ridiculously uncomfortable scene, but because there was a chance that if Terrell left, Daniel might bail too. And I had already invested way too much daydream time in visions of Daniel and me on the squad bus together, doing stunts together, smooching behind the bleachers in our uniforms together.
I didn’t want to give all that up before I got a chance to actually do any of it.
“One lap around the cafeteria?” Terrell said finally.
“Yep,” Tara said with a triumphant smirk.
Terrell nodded. “You got it.”
Then he sprinted around the caf so fast, you would have thought the mystery meat had sprouted legs, busted free and given chase. He even hurdled right over our outstretched legs, causing Jaimee and Autumn to yelp and squeeze in toward the rest of us. He got back to Tara in 2.5 seconds and wasn’t even winded.
“Damn!” I said under my breath.
“He set the state record in the hundred-yard dash last spring,” Lindsey said.
“I think he just broke it again,” Chandra put in.
Terrell cracked his neck from side to side and put his hands on his hips. “How’s that for a lap?”
Tara cleared her throat. “Fine. That was . . . fine.”
Terr
ell laughed and turned toward the line of cheerleading hopefuls, throwing his arms wide, then giving a little bow.
“Aw, yeah!” Daniel said, reaching out his hand for a slap.
Terrell went down the line, smacking hand after hand as his buddies congratulated him, before finally falling in at the end.
“All right, all right, all right!” Coach shouted, quieting the guys down. She walked toward their end of the line and looked them all over. “You know, maybe when I put out the word that I wanted to try a coed squad, I should have specified that I wanted men, not boys,” she snapped. “’Cause all I see here is a bunch of immature clowns who wouldn’t know their asses from their elbows.”
The guys’ faces fell serious—even Terrell’s.
“Now, are you guys going to take this seriously, or am I going to have to reconsider my decision?” Holmes asked.
Total silence. Daniel looked like he was wishing he was seriously elsewhere. I looked at Tara. From the obvious hope on her face I knew exactly what she was thinking: Reconsider, reconsider, reconsider . . .
Apparently she’d decided she would make her college squad on her own, without any help from SDH’s male population.
“I said, are you guys going to take this seriously?” Coach shouted.
Whoa. There it was. The tendons in her neck strained, joining that throbbing vein in her forehead. Even my heart skipped a beat.
“Yes, Coach,” Steven Schwinn muttered, then looked at the other guys uncertainly. Steven had seen this routine from Coach before, having covered practices and the national competition for the Weekly Catch. He knew how to answer. But clearly the other guys did not.
“What!?” Coach shouted.
I seriously thought she might go supernova all over the place.
“Yes, Coach!” the guys said in unison.
“I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, Coach!” they all shouted. Joe’s voice nearly blew us through the wall. Chandra and I exchanged an impressed glance.
Meanwhile, Coach narrowed her eyes, staring each of the guys down until they looked away, then finally turned and walked by Tara.
“Teach them the cheer,” she ordered.
Then I knew she was really pissed because she kept right on walking and slammed through the doors. Holmes never missed a minute of pre-tryout practice when I was trying out. She wanted to keep an eye on everyone and assess their progress. If she needed a breather, she was set to pop.
So she would have definitely exploded if she had seen what happened next. The second she was gone, the guys all doubled over in laughter.
“This is very not good,” I said quietly, echoing Mindy’s thoughts upon first hearing about the change.
“Don’t worry. Coach will whip them into shape sooner or later,” Chandra said confidently.
But as I watched Terrell mimicking Coach’s words, Daniel, Joe, and the others struggling for breath, and Tara trying in vain to get their attention, I wasn’t quite so sure. Even Steven—who had seen the Wrath of Holmes—was having a hard time controlling himself. He kept working his face into straight submission, then cracking up all over again. As of right now, Coach Holmes was just a big joke to them, and she was off somewhere hunting down a punching bag. This whole experiment could be over before it ever got off the ground.
“What do I get my dad? I never know what to get my dad,” Daniel said as we strolled along the pathways of the Beachfront Mall that evening.
The whole place had been built to look like an old-time village with tall torch lights, cobbled walks and palm trees in iron planters. They had gone all out with the Christmas decorations too, stringing fake evergreen garlands, white lights and red bows over the pathways and hanging a wreath on almost every door. Christmas carols were pumped from hidden speakers and fake snow lined some of the buildings. It was quaint, but no matter how much you dressed up a Gap, it was still just a Gap.
Plus, looking at fake snow when it was 75 degrees out was oddly disconcerting.
“I don’t know. Maybe a Dolphins jersey?” I suggested.
“He already has, like, ten. Marino, Duper, Williams, Taylor, everyone,” Daniel said with a groan. “What do you get your dad?”
“Books. I always get him books,” I replied, swinging my little Victoria’s Secret bag back and forth. I had picked up a small bottle of my mother’s favorite scented moisturizer there while Daniel had waited outside, avoiding looking at the sexy windows with all his might, his face burning brighter than the suit on the rosy-cheeked mall Santa. “We tried getting him a DVD player once, but he almost never used it. Actually, he used it as a base to stack more books.”
My father was an English professor at Miami University, and even though it seemed like he had already read every novel and nonfiction tome known to man, he always produced a wish list at least a page long every Christmas, birthday and Father’s Day. It made gift buying easier, but also a little bit boring, so I usually gave him something silly too. Like the Hemingway bobblehead that had been stashed under my bed since I had found it back in August at a random gift shop back in Jersey.
“Okay, forget about Dad,” Daniel said, pausing in front of the wishing well, which was now centered by a humongous pile of garishly wrapped fake gifts. “What do you want for Christmas?”
Ah, the perfect opener. I loved it when people gave me the perfect opener. It made me feel all smart and stuff.
“I want you to make the cheerleading squad,” I said.
Daniel smiled. “Done.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.
“Is this going to be another knock on my ability? Because I don’t think my ego can handle it,” he said.
“No. Not at all,” I told him. “It’s just . . . Coach Holmes takes the cheerleading squad seriously.”
“I know,” he said.
“Very seriously,” I added.
“I know.” He was getting a little impatient. “I think we all know that after this afternoon.”
“So that stuff Terrell pulled today? That was not good,” I told him. “And you guys laughing?”
“She didn’t even hear that!” Daniel protested.
“Yeah, but Tara did,” I told him. “And she is very anti-male.”
“Tell that to Bobby Goow,” Daniel said with a smirk.
Tara and Bobby had been going out since before puberty set in. How she, with her volatile temper, handled the big doofball, I will never know.
“That’s not what I mean,” I told him. “She’s anti-you guys. And if you think she’s not going to tell Coach Holmes every single thing you do, then you don’t know her as well as I do.”
“Girls,” Daniel scoffed. Like we were all such huge gossips.
“Hey! Don’t lump me in with her,” I said. “The point is, you guys have to at least act like you care about it or Coach is going to pull the plug on the whole thing. Trust me.”
Daniel just looked at me with a blank expression that made my stomach turn. He was getting irritated. A couple of little kids ran toward us, then parted around our legs and kept running, headed for Santa’s throne. Daniel softened slightly and smiled as he watched them shriek and squeal.
“I’m just trying to help,” I told him.
