Confessions of a Wannabe Cheerleader

by Zoe Evans

  Then it hit me: I’ve been so naive. The Titans were surely on the lookout for cheerleaders they can take to the Nationals competition this year. If that’s the kind of cheerleader the Titans want, it’s no wonder they picked right over me. (Well, that and the fact that I totally blew my tryout.) Like I said, I’m a good cheerleader—better than good. But to be a Titan? You have to be uh-mazing. A Nationals—worthy cheerleader doesn’t mess up EVER. She hits her stunts on cue perfectly and has flawless dismounts. She’s the kind of cheerleader Katie Parker, Clementine Prescott, and Hilary Cho are. The kind of cheerleader Mom was.

  And what kind of cheerleader am I? I’m SpazzMadstic Madison. Jazzhands Jared or no Jared, I would have messed up just fine on my own.

  By the time we pulled up onto our cobblestone driveway, I felt like ten tons of bricks had just fallen on top of my head.

  “I’m gonna lie down upstairs.”

  Mom just nodded and let me be.

  Along the stairwell, Mom keeps pictures of me through the years in all my dance and cheerleading outfits. My best friend, Lanie Marks, calls it “Maddy Alley” because it’s just pictures of little ol’ me straight through from the first stair to the last.

  Embarrassingly enough, Lanie has actually known me since the first picture, at the bottom of the stairs, was taken. I actually remember us at age four, both wearing our tuxedo outfits for our tap dance recital. It was one of those numbers where everyone got a top hat and cane for a very dumbed-down, toddlerized “Singin’ in the Rain” routine. Unfortunately almost everyone in our class was rather uncoordinated, being four and all. One girl poked the boy next to her with her cane repeatedly until he cried. A couple kids’ hats fell off their heads in the middle of the dance, and this one boy kept on picking them up and returning them to each kid like it was his job. Lanie and I were the only ones who stuck with the routine the entire time as the rest of our class fell apart around us. I guess that was the moment that brought us together: the whole world falling apart around us, and the two of us sticking together. Kind of funny, huh?

  That was also the first and last time Lanie had ever taken a dance class. She firmly believes that, ahem, and I quote, “the only kind of energy that one should expend is intellectual energy.” I also remember Lanie being excited about not having to wear a girlie costume to that recital—and to this day I can’t remember having seen her in anything other than pants or knee—grazing shorts. On the outside, Lanie and I are really different.

  Today, the pictures in Maddy Alley, which always used to give me a sense of pride as I walked past them, only made me furious. There’s me, age six, hands on my hips in a flapper dress right before I performed at my jazz recital. And there’s another picture of me at nine, when Mom let me dye a streak of my hair pink to match my pink leotard for my gymnastics competition. I tried to spring up the stairs past the pictures as quickly as possible. Nine-year-old me didn’t know that all those competitions would be for nothing.

  Around 8 p.m. I woke up to the feeling of weight shifting on my bed. I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep! Mom was sitting next to me, looking at me with a funny expression. She looked a little worried and a little sad.

  “You ok?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Want to watch Bring It On?”

  (Sidebar: Bring It On is my all—time fave movie in the entire world. So, she really was bringing out the big guns. Me refusing a Bring It On opportunity is like the Titans refusing new uniforms, which they would obvs NEVER do.)

  Mom picked up my journal from next to my pillow. I’d been leafing through it before passing out, trying to figure out what went wrong. She smoothed the back of the journal with her hand.

  “So, you’ve made your decision, huh, Madington? No Grizzlies for you?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not even considering it.” I turned my pillow to the cool side and lay down on it exasperatedly. “Mom. Seriously.”

  Then she started to get that lilt in her voice that tells me she’s going to try to convince me to do something I don’t want to do but she thinks will be good for me.

  “Well, it would be a shame if all these amazing cheers just sat here getting dusty.”

  I turned to look at her.

  “Just think, Mads. If these kids are as bad as you say they are, don’t you think they could use a real cheerleader on their team? Think about how awful they’ll look out there on their own without any guidance. Can these cheerleaders even do simple things? Like jumps? Or a pyramid? Who’s going to teach them not to ‘suck’ so badly?”

  I thought about the squad and its current roster of cheerleaders. From what I saw at tryouts today, the situation is grim. Jared is as scrawny as a kindergartner. He can’t lift an iPod, let alone a one-hundred-pound flyer. That is, if there are any flyers on this sorry squad. And Tabitha Sue (better known as Toxic Tabitha to most of the school ever since an unfortunate bathroom—related accident in elementary school), well, she’d started sweating and puffing by the fifteen—second mark of the dance routine. Katarina did an awesome job on all the tumbling and stunt parts of tryouts, but she couldn’t follow the cheer at all. When we were all cheering together, Coach Whipley scrunched her nose as if she smelled something foul, and asked, “Is someone speaking Russian?” I have to give it to Katarina for cheering despite the odds. Now that’s dedication. But still. That wasn’t reason enough for me to get involved in a motley crew of bad cheerleaders.

  I sat up in bed. “Ok, so I’d be teaching them how to cheer, like, out of the goodness of my heart? I don’t get it. What does this do for me?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  Seriously, what was Mom expecting me to be, the Mother Teresa of Cheerleaders?

  Mom looked at me, her eyes wide with optimism. “Just think how much you would stand out from the crowd. You would be the best cheerleader on that team, no doubt. And at every game, you’d be the one everyone would notice. Don’t you think the Titans would eventually notice?”

  And that’s when Mom’s plan actually started sounding halfway decent. I’ll easily be the best Grizzly on that team, and during practices the Titans will be able to see what I’m really made of. I might not be ready for Nationals, but I’m definitely ready to be a Titan. And maybe if I just work a little harder, split a little wider, cheer a little louder, I can even get noticed and recruited by the Titans—possibly even by spring!

  I picked up my journal and started sketching out a plan for the first week of practice. I looked up and saw Mom smiling at me. She bounced up from the bed and announced that she was going to make some popcorn with hot chilies in it.

  “Your favorite,” she said, winking before she walked out of my room.

  I guess on Monday I’ll be a proud member of the Grizzly Bears. Just don’t expect me to stop shaving my legs or anything.

  Lanie met me in the “Lounge” after second—period classes. The “Lounge” is a designated hangout spot for our grade. The grades above us have their own designated areas, too, but this is the first year we’ve ever had a space of our own. If you value your life, you will never be caught sitting in, stepping foot in, even breathing on, any grade’s turf before you’re officially allowed.

  (BTW, the “Lounge” consists of a corner near the cafeteria entrance, where two blocks of concrete covered in some kind of felt form benches. It’s not like there are any fancy throw pillows or mood lighting. But it might as well be a VIP club, for the amount of anticipation everyone feels waiting for that one day that he or she is finally able to call it their own.)

  We arranged ourselves on the highest of the benches to get the best view of everyone walking by.

  “Have you seen Alison Bunker yet?” asked Lanie, leaning back on her palms.

  “No, should I have?”

  “Looks like she’s decided to leave the prepsters behind and join the goths. I can’t stand when people think they can change teams just because they’ve changed clothes, like all it is is a fashion statement. Lik
e, ‘Oooh, now I wear black nail polish! I’m so hardcore. This is the real me!’” Lanie rolled her eyes. As much as she pretended not to care at all, Lanie seemed to be in the know about all the different social groups within our school—who was emo, skater, punk, goth, preppy, jock, you name it. She was an expert, also, on what group each person had previously inhabited. One of her biggest pet peeves is the poseur. Another pet peeve is people who try to label Lanie Marks.

  “Hey, whatever floats her boat,” I said. “Maybe she’s always been a goth kid trapped inside a prepster’s body.” I know how to egg Lanie on. She was about to get started on another rant when she realized I was just trying to annoy her on purpose. Hee, hee.

  “Oh, don’t even start with me Cheer-Pants,” Lanie said, slapping my leg. “So,” she continued, focusing her eyes on my journal. “You still going all Grizzly on us?”

  I’d told her last night on video chat about my big plan for the year. How I am going to stick with being a Grizzly Bear so I can be the best cheerleader on the team and get noticed by the Titans. She’s not a huge fan of girls like Clementine, Katie, or Hilary—the Royal Triumvirate, as she calls them. But she totally supported my decision when I told her about it, like she always does when it comes to cheer stuff.

  “Yep, still going Grizzly. Rawr.” I made a claw at her face.

  “Sweet,” said Lanie. “I’ve got to say, you’re a trooper. From what you told me last night, the team sounds kind of rough.”

  “I know,” I agreed. To me, it’s a small price to pay, ultimately, in order to realize my biggest goal in life. “Think you could stop by today during practice for moral support?”

  “Oh, I am so going to be there!” exclaimed Lanie. “I need to report back to Evan and let him know if this situation is as grizzly as we think it is. Wink wink . . . get it?”

  Evan Andrews is our best guy friend. He joined our little crew in kindergarten, when Lanie and I were playing house at recess and needed a husband to complete our family. Since this was much more enticing than being “it” during games of tag, he immediately agreed to play the part, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. These days, when he’s not buying a comic book, talking about a comic book, or researching one online, he’s usually reading one. Every year, Evan spends the money he earns at his summer job (Wait for it . . . working at a comic book store! Big surprise ) on going to this giant comic—book convention in San Diego. It’s like Disneyland for dorks—the kind who make up their own alien languages and who have crushes on blue women with three eyes.

  “Ha-ha. He’s been sending me these dumb texts all morning with stupid jokes about it being hunting season, and saying stuff like, ‘Watch out for bears!’” I told Lanie.

  “Yeah, when I told him you were joining the Grizzly squad, he laughed so hard that he nearly squirted milk out of his nose.”

  I don’t know why this annoyed me, but it did. I guess maybe I’m a little hurt that he was making fun of my decision. I thought Evan, of all people, would understand what it means to commit to something utterly and entirely, even if people think it’s kind of nerdy. I mean, seriously. Comic—book conventions? Who is he to laugh at me?!

  Here’s another important thing to know about Evan: Even though he dresses like a slightly messy male librarian, I think that if he tried just a little harder, he really could have potential. There have been times, and I can’t say exactly why, when I’ve felt a tiny bit more than “just friends” about him. Like, I’ll look at him and be like, “Hmm. Kinda cute!” and then the moment passes, and I’m like, “Whoa! Where did that come from?” and he’s back to being just Evan, my guy friend, again. It’s really weird.

  “Well, he’ll have to slurp that milk back up when he sees me standing on the top of a Titan pyramid this time next year. Or maybe sooner. Who knows?” I said smugly.

  Just then, Lanie caught a scrawny seventh grader walking too close to the perimeter of our “Lounge.” (In his defense, I think he was just trying to throw a soda can away.)

  “Excuse me,” she said, clearing her throat loudly. The scrawny kid looked up at her with his soda can frozen above the trash can. “Your foot?” she said, pointing to how close his toe had gotten to a punishable offense.

  “I-I-I’m sorry,” he stuttered before scuttling away, still holding the can.

  “Lanes!” I exclaimed. “That was just mean. You’re just as bad as the people we used to hate.”

  “The people we used to hate did EXACTLY that to us when we were his age,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “That so doesn’t make it right,” I said, smiling at my friend.

  Lanie exhaled. “No, but it does make it fair. And did you see the look on his face? Priceless, huh?”

  I laughed. “Can’t deny it. That was pretty funny.”

  OMG, OMG, OMG. THIS WAS THE WORST IDEA EVER! This squad is pathetic! They’re not even good enough to cheer on the debate team. Seriously, we’re so sad, we make the math league look cool.

  At first I was somewhat hopeful. I was jogging up toward where the Grizzlies were assembled on the sports field and saw, off in the distance, a large figure lifting another solidly built person up in the air. “Oh, cool,” I thought. “Two new guys joined the Grizzlies, and they’re actually strong. Maybe they’ll make good bases.” But as I got closer I realized that these weren’t just any two guys. These were Ian McClusky and Matt Herrington, aka the Testosterone Twins. They’re two of the biggest football jocks in the school, and last year they thought it would be har dee har har funny if they duct taped a couple of dorky Grizzly guys to the benches inside the locker room after practice one day. Apparently, as punishment, their coach banned them from football this year and sentenced them to join the Grizzlies to see what it felt like. Of course, until that moment I had been too busy thinking about my quick ascent to Titanhood to remember certain important details—like who I’ll have to whip into shape in order to make it there.

  “You’re so dead!” Ian said as he punched Matt’s chest with a thud.

  “Hey!” I snapped, coming into the circle of my new teammates. Ian wiped the back of his hand across his wide forehead, his eyes narrowing in on me. “Last I checked, you were on a cheerleading squad, not a football team,” I said to him.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Ian replied, giving Matt a halfhearted noogie.

  UGH. Eye roll.

  Ms. Burger (or Ms. Booger, as everyone prefers to call her), the faculty adviser for our team, was desperately trying to organize the team into a warm-up. Ordinarily she is a Life Studies teacher—the kind that’s notorious for making each girls’ class watch the same cringeworthy Your Changing Body DVD each year. Ms. Burger is the kind of person who collects desk calendars with pictures of bridges on them: bridges over waterfalls, bridges along a small country road, city bridges. I don’t really know exactly what kind of person that makes her, because I’ve never met anyone else who collects bridge desk calendars. All I know is that when she takes a liking to something, she gets totally fixated. Last year, Lanie and I bought her a calendar with horses on it, just to see if she’d switch it up. She didn’t.

  My point: Whoever decided Ms. Burger was the right person to coach a misfit group of coed cheerleaders must have been kidding.

  “All right everyone, this pamphlet says here that we should start with a series of basic stretches,” Ms. Burger said, lowering her glasses down on the bridge of her nose and holding the yellowed and dog—eared pamphlet an arm’s length away from her body. I glanced at the cover of it. It actually said, “How to Run a Cheerleading Practice” and was dated 1958-which might as well have been the Stone Age of Cheer, if you ask me.

  “Hey, Ms. Burger, I’ll just lead the team, if you don’t mind,” I said. I think I heard a collective sigh of relief. I don’t think anyone wanted to see our Life Studies teacher doing a front split in the short shorts she decided to sport that afternoon.

  Ms. Burger gratefully took a seat on the bleachers and read a book for the rest
of practice. Guess what was on the cover. That’s right, a picture of a bridge!

  During knee touches, Matt shouted, “Gross, man!” and began waving his hand around his face like tiny killer wasps were attacking him.

  “Naw, dude. Wasn’t me!” said Ian.

  I glared at both of them.

  “Sick,” mumbled Matt.

  Everyone immediately had this look of “Hey, it wasn’t me,” including Katarina. (Note to self: I guess there is a universal gesture for “Hey, something smells gross.”) Tabitha Sue was the only one left looking a little guilty. Her face started to get really red, and the top of her forehead was beaded with sweat. Poor Tabitha Sue.

  “All right, guys. Lunges,” I told the group, hoping to distract the team with a more painful stretch. I could see the Titans across the field, doing their own stretches in their perfect—looking uniforms, with their crisply pleated skirts and flattering tank tops.

  The colors on their uniforms never seem to fade since, of course, they get new ones every year. Which also means that their uniform keeps up with the latest in cheer fashion. Translation: Their skirts get shorter every year. The Grizzlies have been inheriting the same ones for who knows how many years. If I had to rate ours on the looks scale, they would fall somewhere between “butt” and “ugly.” Oh, and let’s discuss the smell for a second. Picture this: Grizzlies in the past must have let a bunch of smelly truck drivers use their uniforms to dry their sweaty armpits, then they must have cleaned a couple of toilets with them. Then I’m imagining they hung them to dry in a barn. And that’s my not-so-horrifying version of the story. I had to douse mine in Victoria’s Secret Live Pink body spray, even though I’ve already washed it ten times in a row.