The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading (11 page)

Weight room
+
wrestling team = Rick Mangers.

She practically dragged me down the hall and toward the stairwell to the basement. The clank of metal echoed up the stairs. With the first step, the dank smell of earth surrounded us. Weights. Dirt. Rats.
This was better than doing laps?
In this part of the basement the hallway widened, but the ceiling lowered. I always felt like I had to stoop to make it through. What did Jack do when he came down here? Crawl?

The lights above went from fluorescent to bare bulb. “You think Rick’s down here?” Moni asked, her voice hushed.

“I guess,” I said. “What do you—?” The clanking grew louder, accented by occasional grunts. Boys, definitely. We halted at the same moment and gave each other a look.

“What do I
what
?” asked Moni.

“What do you think the chances are that anyone will find out about this?” I waved a hand toward the light filtering from the end of the hall.

“Who cares?” Moni said, louder now. Her voice echoed down the corridor—if we could hear the boys, then maybe they could hear us. I put my hand on her arm. Moni might think a short skirt and a set of pom-poms made us invincible. I wasn’t so sure.

“They deserved it,” she said, all defiant, but I caught the flicker of fear in her eyes. “Besides, if they do it again, Sheila will probably kick them off the squad.”

We reached the chain-link fence that separated the weight room from the rest of the basement. In a far corner, Coach Donaldson sat at a gray desk. He nodded at us, then went back to his clipboard. When the door clattered behind us, a dozen boys looked up. Then, from nowhere, Rick Mangers appeared at Moni’s side.

“Hey, spark plug, I could use someone to spot me. You up for it?”

Moni didn’t squeal. At least I had to give her that. But she did squeeze my arm so hard, the circulation was cut off.

“Go,” I said.

They really did make a cute couple. Rick was on the short side, and Moni barely skimmed his shoulder. Both of them blond, both with turned-up noses—Moni’d probably already thought up names for a dozen blond-haired, pixie-nosed kids. And Rick? Well, if Rick thought beyond the next wrestling meet, I would be surprised.

I heard the sound of shuffling feet behind me and turned to find five skinny freshmen. One pushed the other so that, domino-style, the boy closest to me stumbled forward. “Hey,” he said. “I was wondering, I mean, with—” He pointed toward Moni and Rick. “Do you need a partner?”

I imagined myself crushed beneath the weight of a giant barbell. “Sure,” I said. “I kind of lost mine.”

“We noticed,” one of the other boys said.

“Uh, I’m Andrew.” The first boy stuck out his hand so randomly that I had to jump back to avoid being stabbed in the stomach.

“Bethany,” I said.

“We know.”

Oh. They
knew
? What did that mean?

The other boys jostled one another like kids, but Andrew’s face looked serious when he led me to the Nautilus machine.

“Will you guys be at the meet tomorrow?” he asked.

We’d been to all of them so far. Besides, Moni had the book on wrestling memorized; it was her new favorite sport. “Why wouldn’t we be?” I asked.

He gave me a grin. “Bench presses?”

I didn’t really need his help to do that, and he didn’t need mine. Still, it beat lifting alone, I guess, even if his attention made me feel a little awkward. Actually, Andrew was fine; it was the other four boys gawking at us that creeped me out. They laughed when Andrew tripped on his way to the bench, all gangly arms and legs. I tried not to smile. He was sweet, and in a year or two, that boy would drive all the girls crazy with those high cheekbones—he just had to grow into them.

“Why don’t you go first?” he said.

That might be safest. I sat on the bench, but before I could adjust the weights, someone spoke on the other side of the room.

Rick sat, an arm braced against his thigh. In one clenched fist he held a weight larger than I could pick up with both hands. “See, spark plug?” he said. “This is the way you do a bicep curl.”

It wasn’t clear who admired that bicep more—Moni or Rick. I sighed.

Andrew heard Rick too. I could see his expression change, grow harder. He didn’t speak, but the way he shifted his posture left me feeling uncomfortable. I leaned back on the bench and grabbed the bar.

After a few up-down clanks, Andrew spoke. “That’s too easy. You need to move the setting up. Like this.”

Okay. Now
that
was heavy. A burn spread along my arms. Sweat sprouted on my upper lip. That had to be attractive. Between lifts, I fumbled for conversation. As the older woman, it seemed like my responsibility to provide some.

“Ever see a rat down here?” I asked.

Andrew raised his chin, and I saw the baby-smooth underside of his jaw. His gaze focused on something, or someone, across the room.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”

O
ver the next few days, I wouldn’t say things actually improved on the cheerleading squad. The invisible no-geeks-beyond-this-point barrier remained, as did the attitude, but the rest of the squad hardly got the chance to put it in practice.

I wondered if maybe Sheila owned a copy of
The Art of War
, because our coach was a master at countering the mean-girl tactics of the rest of the squad. At practices, she insisted that every girl treat the others with courtesy to the extreme. If she caught someone give so much as an eye roll, they paid for it in laps and push-ups. She showed up early for every practice—and waited until Moni and I were loaded in our parents’ cars before leaving the building.

She even crossed us off the cheer schedule for Thursday’s gymnastics meet because she couldn’t be there to monitor how the other girls might treat us. We didn’t have the heart to tell her that if we didn’t show up at gymnastics,
no one would
.

And during those same days, I wouldn’t say my standing with Todd, Brian, and the much-missed geek squad improved either. Moni and I were still on the Geek Night e-mail list, but cheerleading took up more hours than I ever thought it could. Between practices, games, and keeping up with homework, there wasn’t time for much else. What little headway I’d made with Todd over break vanished the second school started again. I worried my parents had been right. Taking on cheerleading was way more than I’d bargained for.

But Friday of that week, I found myself without Moni and without the mighty Sheila. To make matters worse, I wasn’t even in Prairie Stone. I wished cheerleading was on a pass/fail system—or that I could opt for an incomplete. Or that I, like Moni, had opted to use a “skip privilege.” Each cheerleader was granted two per season. Because really, cheering was bearable with Moni at my side. And for the past week, when Sheila was there too, keeping the rest of the squad’s attitudes in check, it could almost be…fun.

But tonight, where was Moni? In Minneapolis, of course, with her dad. And Sheila? Summoned to a hastily arranged school board meeting. And where was I? In cheerleading hell. Alone, at an away game. There was no one in the stands I knew, no one on the squad who didn’t hate me.

So it was left to me—and just me—to explain Basketball 101 to Cassidy.

“Think about it,” I said, working patience into my voice. “
Panther
territory would be, like,
our
gym. This”—I waved a pompom at the entire court—“is
their
gym.”

“It’s our end of the court,” Cassidy said. “
Our
basket.”

“But we switch at halftime,” I pointed out.

Cassidy frowned for just a second. “I don’t see why we can’t still do the cheer,” she said.

I let my pom-poms drop to the floor. “Cassidy, we can’t,” I said. “It’s a home-court cheer. We’ll look like idiots.”

“Then don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Cassidy pointed to the bleachers. “Don’t cheer.”

Had I just been benched?
All righty, then.
I scooped up my pom-poms and sat, with nothing but the familiar feeling of self-consciousness to keep me company. Wrong place, wrong time, just plain wrong. Really, whoever heard of a benched cheerleader? In front of me, the other girls spread out, arm-distance apart.

“Ready?” Cassidy called. “Okay!”

Together, the squad began to chant, “This is Panther territory. You! Be! Ware!”

A group of loyal fans jumped at the chance to cheer along. If the Panthers won, it would be their fifth in a row; everyone had the regional and state tournament on their minds. But by the second time through the cheer, a murmur of discontent rose up behind me. I turned in time to see the sharper fans give one another puzzled looks. By the third time through, all but the most rabid fans sat down. I was embarrassed—for the squad, for myself.

Someone should stop this. Okay, that someone was me. I stood, uncertain what to do besides tackling Cassidy and silencing her with the pom-poms—although that option was tempting. Definitely tempting.

Cassidy’s expression clouded, like she was having an actual thought. “We can’t cheer this,” she said.

Oh, so
now
we can’t cheer it. I reached for my pom-poms, ready to rejoin the squad.

“Stay,” said Cassidy, like she was talking to a dog.

“What?”

“You can sit out the rest of the game. And don’t even think about going all Miss Tattletale about it. My dad’s on the school board.”

On the school board?
Before I could process that, Cassidy pulled out a copy of Sheila’s cheerleading guide from her bag and flipped through the pages.

“Besides,” she said, “the captain has the right to, um, to make anyone I want sit out, okay?” She flashed the guide at me. “It says so, right here.”

No, it didn’t. I would’ve bet my pom-poms—okay, so pom-poms weren’t a biggie—I would have staked Jack’s next three free throws that there was nothing in the guide about that. But what could I do? Cassidy was in charge. Her dad was on the school board. And she was reveling in it.

I sat on the sidelines for the rest of the game. Sometimes I called out, “Offense,” or “Defense,” to clue the rest of the girls in. No one listened.

The Panthers won by a single point, a last-second, center-court shot by Jack that left me breathless. I smiled, even though the rest of the squad still shunned me. After the buzzer, I congratulated the other team’s cheerleaders (by myself), slunk off to the restroom (by myself), and headed to the cold, dark bus.

By myself.

The rest of the girls already sat in the back. I found a seat closer to the driver—once a geek, always a geek. It was too dark to read, not that I’d thought to bring a book. Instead, I listened to the whispers and giggles behind me and crushed the pom-poms to my chest.

A few minutes later the boys stomped, high-fived, and laughed their way onto the bus. The seniors headed for the rear, and a squeal went up from the cheerleading squad. It echoed in the narrow aisle and made my ears ache. I swallowed the urge to roll my eyes. Instead I shut them. Maybe I could shut everything out that way.

“Anyone sitting here?”

I opened my eyes to find Jack Paulson grinning down at me. I shook my head and stuffed the pom-poms down by my feet.

He sat, easing his legs into the aisle.

“Good game,” I said.
Lame, lame, lame.
But this time it didn’t matter. We’d won. “That last shot,” I added, my voice sounding as breathless as I’d felt earlier. “Wow.”

He shrugged. “I got lucky.”

A lone senior, Ryan Nelson, plopped down across the aisle from us. Jack stared at him.

“What?” Ryan cocked his head and peered past Jack, at me. “Oh, I get it,” he said. Ryan stood and clamped Jack on the shoulder. He looked back at the squealing mass of cheerleaders and cringed. “I’ll take one for the team, man, but you owe me.”

I was still trying to translate the exchange between them—from jock-speak to geek—when the doors clanked shut. The lights flickered out. The driver pulled from the parking lot, and darkness filled the bus. A cry rose from the back, prompting Coach Miller to yell, “Pipe down, or I’m separating all of you.” He sat in the seat behind the driver and muttered, “Christ almighty.”

Jack and I sat in the dark. It was quiet except for the rumble of the bus and the whispered chatter from the back seats. Then Jack leaned forward and grabbed a pom-pom from the floor. “So, this cheerleading thing,” he said, “kind of controversial.”

“Who knew?” I certainly hadn’t.

“I appreciate it.” He rattled the fringe and let the pom-pom slide back to the floor. In the dark, his face was all planes and shadows. “I mean, that someone cares enough to actually follow the game.”

“I wish I could—I mean, follow it better.” I glanced toward the back of the bus and lowered my voice. “I always thought cheerleaders were—”
Were what? Dumb? Brainless? Completely without a clue?
“But it’s not that easy to keep track of what’s going on when your back is turned.” Babbling. Again. Someday I might manage a conversation with Jack without either clamming up or blathering like a total idiot. But that probably wouldn’t be tonight.

The bus pulled onto the highway, heading west toward Prairie Stone. An hour’s drive. A whole hour sitting next to Jack. And not a thought about what I could say to him or how to sneak my ever-present list of “Witty Things” from my coat pocket and hold it up to the light. What good was having a ginormous brain if it shut down the moment Jack Paulson came within fifteen feet? The drone of wheels against the road lulled everyone, even the rowdiest in the back. Quiet conversations popped up, a word here, a name there. Mine. Jack’s. Together.
Did he hear it too?

“You know,” Jack said, “I finished
The Lord of the Rings
over break. Wilker said I might even get that A.”

“That’s great.” More than great, really, if you considered the basketball team’s grueling practice schedule. “I’m impressed.”

Jack tapped his skull. “Who’d a thunk it, huh?”

I shifted in my seat, enough to face him. Should I go on the offensive? Guys like him understood that, didn’t they? “You, Jack Paulson”—I poked him in the chest—“might be many things, but I’ve heard you in class. You’re no dumb jock.”

I didn’t mention that I sometimes eavesdropped on his one-on-one sessions with Mr. Wilker. That would have been right up there with admitting I had his address and phone number memorized. Which I did. Cue the scary stalker-girl music.

“It’s your fault,” he said.

“My fault?”

“Yeah.” He looked down at my finger, still poked in his chest. Before I could yank my hand away, he slipped his palm under mine. Our hands dropped so they rested half on his thigh, half on mine. All I could think was:
Jack Paulson is holding my hand
.

Holding.

My hand.

God, I am such a dork
.

“I took that class because of you,” he said. “I heard you talking to Moni about it. And I—I watch you sometimes when you read.”

Oh, yeah
, I thought.
Reading as a spectator sport.

“You get this look,” he continued. “It’s like you go somewhere else, like reading isn’t a colossal pain in the ass.”

“It isn’t,” I said, surprised I could still form words with Jack attached to my hand.

He didn’t let go, but something changed in his grip, a new tension, and not the good kind. I needed to say something. Preferably something not stupid, but one good soul-baring confession deserved another.

I drew a breath. “I kind of did the same thing.” I couldn’t read his face, so I went on touch alone. “Last fall I heard you talking about running, about liking the sound of your own footsteps.”

Jack snorted. “I took some major crap for that. You should’ve heard Mangers.”

I was glad I hadn’t. “I wanted to know what that was like, so I started jogging. I had to stop with all the snow, but I really liked it.”

“Want to help me get in shape for track this spring?” He glanced down. “You got the legs for it, and I already know you’re fast.”

I gulped a breath, and then another, remembering my dash for the dropped note. “You’re a lot faster than me. I’m usually pretty slow.”

“Slow’s not such a bad thing.” His grip tightened on my fingers. “I mean, you got to start somewhere.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Right?”

We rode in silence for a while, but it wasn’t the panicked, agonizing silence that generally passed between us. This time the silence was…nice. And a dark bus with Jack Paulson holding my hand—that was
really
nice.

“You tired?” Jack asked a few miles later.

“I’m okay.”

“Seriously. Are. You.
Tired
?” he said, enunciating each word. He drew his fingers along my face, urging me, just slightly, toward his shoulder.

Oh! Was I
tired
? For a nerdy girl, I was a little slow picking up on the new vocabulary word. “Maybe a little.” I sank against him gingerly at first. He was all lanky muscle and bone through the letter jacket’s leather and felt.

“Bethany?” The word brushed against my hair, and his breath sent shivers across my scalp.

“Yes?”

“I…never mind. It’s—” He laughed softly and pressed his lips to my head. “It’s nothing.”

Maybe. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the way Jack said my name and the touch of his lips against my hair.

There were three drawbacks to sitting with Jack on the bus: The sudden stop in the Prairie Stone High School parking lot, the glare of overhead lights, and the shouts that rose up behind us.

“Whoo, Paulson!”

I winced against the brightness and the taunts. By Monday, the entire school would know. I groped for my pom-poms with my free hand and grabbed Jack’s ankle instead. Unfazed, he led me into the aisle, his grip still tight on my hand. He scowled toward the back of the bus. “Chill,” he said.

And they did.

Wow. If only I could do that.

Outside, a shiver ran through me. Students streamed from the bus behind us, some fanning out through the parking lot while others headed toward the school. I yawned. The cold made me feel stupid. Or maybe it was Jack, who still held my hand. Neither was helping me form words.

“I need to—” I waved the pom-poms at the school. “I mean, my dad.”

Jack slung his gym bag over one shoulder. “I can drive you home.”

“I don’t want to be too much trouble.” I couldn’t tell. Was Jack just being polite? “I can always—”

“No problem.” He led me to a battered Toyota pickup truck. “I mean, if you don’t mind the ride. It’s not exactly new.” He paused and stared at the truck. “It was my dad’s, from a long time ago.”

“Really? That’s cool.”

“You think so?”