I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader (9 page)

I grabbed my pen and scrawled a message back.

After all, I’d just gotten to this humanity-forsaken school. Mindy had other friends—people she’d known a lot longer than she’d known me. Let them be her moral support. I tossed the note back. It took Mindy a little bit longer to respond. The return note read:

I glanced back at Mindy and lifted one shoulder. I liked the girl and all, but I had made my decision.

Maybe.

It was just . . . 
Sage.
Why did she have to come up to me and get my blood boiling all over again? I had been about ninety-nine percent comfortable with my decision right up until she got her little pug nose in my face. She was so smug. Wouldn’t it be worth trying out just to show these people they couldn’t get to me?

You know, I was starting to think that maybe I was a kind of proud person. I would love to say I could rise above it all and let their crap roll off my back, but the idea of cheering my heart out, making the squad and shoving their faces in it was growing more and more appealing.

Hey. Nobody’s perfect.

Mrs. O’Donaghue picked a few people to read aloud from
Romeo and Juliet
and, thankfully, I was not one of them. As the play was recited around me, I found myself spacing in and out, trying to envision myself at tryouts. I saw myself doing the cheer, saw myself executing a back tuck and surprising the judges. I glanced across the room at Sage, who was blithely scribbling in her notebook. She thought she was so much better than me. Just imagine the look on her face if I made the squad. Just imagine how shocked they would
all
be.

“Where be these enemies?” a guy a few rows ahead of me read, knocking me back into the present. “Capulet! Montague! See what a scourge is laid upon your hate/That Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!”

It was the Prince’s big speech at the end. The part I like to call the “Neh neh neh neh
neh
neh!” speech. He gathers Romeo and Juliet’s fathers together over their children’s dead bodies and basically tells them they’re idiots and that their
feud killed their kids. I always loved this part. It was when the old farts learned their lesson, two deaths too late.

Even though Romeo and Juliet’s situation was entirely different than mine, hearing that speech made me realize what a coward I was being. This wasn’t about pride. It was about courage! Conviction! Standing up for myself! Was I going to stand by and let a bunch of blondes intimidate me? No! I was not! Thank you, Big Bill!

As soon as the bell rang, I got up to deliver a “Neh neh neh neh
neh
neh!” speech of my very own.

“Sage!” I called out before she could get out the door.

She turned around, surprise in her big eyes. Mindy walked up behind me.

“I changed my mind,” I said firmly. “I’ll see you after school.”

Then I slipped right past her and headed off down the hall, my heart pounding. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a speech, but for once she didn’t have a loud whisper for me as I walked away. The “Neh neh neh neh
neh
neh!” had done its job.

“You do realize that just by wearing that outfit you’re seriously jeopardizing the fate of your eternal soul,” Bethany told me. We were standing outside the gym after school and Bethany was giving me a last-minute anti-pep talk. “Honestly, have you ever considered the concept of eternal hellfire? It doesn’t sound like fun.”

I was starting to think that Bethany Goow was a bit of a drama queen.

“Thanks for your concern, but I think I’m gonna be fine,” I told her with a laugh.

And I would. If all those butterflies that were currently
slam-dancing in my gut would take five already. On the other side of the wooden doors, Mindy was going through her routine. I said a quick prayer to whoever might be listening that she wouldn’t mess up. Best-case scenario here? Mindy and I would both make the team, thereby making my daily life slightly less heinous than it needed to be. Unfortunately there were about twenty girls trying out for two spots, so the odds were against us.

“Are you sure this isn’t a joke?” Bethany said. “You’re going to go in there and moon them, right? You have ‘cheerleaders blow’ written across your butt.”

Before I could respond to that lovely visual, the cheering inside stopped. Mindy was being scored. And I was next.

Oh, God. I was going to hurl.

I heard pounding footsteps as Mindy jogged out and then the door opened. She was smiling, but somehow still looked nauseous.

“How did you do?” I asked.

“Okay, I think. You’re next,” Mindy responded. Then she lowered her chin and looked around at the other waiting girls. “They have half the football team in there in the stands to respond to the cheer. It’s so weird.”

The butterflies dispersed, leaving a hollow feeling. Half the football team? I almost wished she hadn’t warned me.

“Annisa Gobrowski?” someone called out from inside.

“Break a leg,” Mindy said.

“Literally!” Bethany called after me.

I rolled my eyes at her before stepping into the gym. I would just have to deal with Bethany if I made the squad. I just hoped she didn’t really make me choose between her and cheerleading. I’d only known her a few days, but somehow the girl felt like home to me. I didn’t want to lose her.

I jogged into the center of the gym, hands on hips, skin-busting grin in place. I made eye contact with each of the five judges, none of whom were my teachers. Coach Holmes was in the room, but no other cheerleaders were present. (Big relief.) Daniel Healy was there, however, front and center and surrounded by at least twenty guys in varsity jackets. He flashed me a thumbs-up.

“You can begin whenever you like,” Coach Holmes said.

And so I did.

An hour later, it was over. Everyone had done the routine and we were all sitting on the floor in the gym, waiting for the verdict. I felt oddly calm while Mindy sat next to me, chewing her nails into oblivion. I had done the best I could. And I had nailed the back tuck. Now it was just up to the numbers.

Performing for the judges was a lot easier than performing for the squad. And Daniel and the rest of the guys had at least responded to the cheer. All of them except one big, lumberjack type that I had pegged as Bethany’s brother, and therefore Tara’s boyfriend. He had just sat there with a bored expression. At one point, he’d even yawned.

“Okay, as far as I can tell, there are only three people who might have scored higher than us,” Mindy whispered.

I looked around the room furtively, wondering if anyone had heard. It didn’t matter, however. There were little clusters of whispering girls all around us, undoubtedly hypothesizing about the same thing.

“I’ll bite. Who?” I asked.

“Wendy Stewart? The girl with the wavy hair and the super-white teeth?” Mindy said, tilting her head in Wendy’s direction.

“Yeah. She’s pretty good,” I said, recalling her performance from the day before.

“Then there’s Shira Citron and Ally Stevenson,” Mindy said. “I think they almost made the squad last year.”

“What about that girl with the thick hair and the freckles?” I asked. “She was pretty good.”

“Trista McCarthy?” Mindy said, biting her lip as she pondered the possibility. “I don’t know. She seems kind of without energy.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’re definitely above that chick in the spandex. She was all left feet.”

“Christy? Yeah. I feel bad for her. I think her mom wants her to be on the squad. She’d rather be in the library, writing romance novels,” Mindy said.

I glanced at Christy from across the gym. She was sitting by herself, her nose buried in a book called
Hearts Aflame.

The sound of the gym door opening was like a nuclear bomb blast. Everyone sat up straight and there was an intake of air that could have created a black hole. Coach Holmes walked in, clipboard in hand, followed by the rest of the squad. I stared at Tara and Sage, trying to read their faces. Did they know anything?

“Okay, everyone, I want to thank you all again for your hard work,” Coach Holmes said, standing at the front of the room. “Many of you had incredibly high scores, but only two of you could make the team. I’m not one for dramatics, so those two people are—”

I reached out and clasped Mindy’s hand.

“Mindy McMahon and Annisa Gobrowski.”

She said my name! And wait! She said Mindy’s name! We both jumped up and screeched and hugged like the little cheerleaders we were. I couldn’t believe it. We’d beaten the stupid odds! We’d both made the team!

Then I realized we weren’t the only ones shouting.

“Her!?
She’s
on the team!?” Tara Timothy screamed. “She’s the one who narced on Kristen and Danielle! We wouldn’t have even had to go through this whole thing if it wasn’t for her!”

Mindy and I stopped jumping up and down and looked at Tara. The rest of the squad was standing back near the wall, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

“Tara, Kristen and Danielle made their own beds,” Coach Holmes told her. “No one is to blame for their behavior but themselves.”

“Oh,
please!
” Tara screeched, in complete tantrum mode. “The girl broke my nose. I’m gonna look like the Elephant Man for regionals because of her. And besides, she’s a total klutz! She’s going to bring us all down.”

Okay, that was totally uncalled for. She had no right to rag on my cheerleading skills. She hadn’t even
seen
them yet. And maybe I could be a klutz sometimes, but that was
sometimes.
I wasn’t a walking disaster area.

“This can’t be happening,” Tara continued. “Can’t you recount the scores?”

“Hey! Wait a minute,” I broke in.

“Was I talking to you?” Tara snapped.

I felt like I had been slapped.

“No, you weren’t,” I said. “But you
were
talking
about
me like I’m not even here. Don’t I get a chance to defend myself?”

“Girls,” Coach Holmes said in a warning tone.

“I’m sorry I broke your nose, but it’s not like I did it on purpose,” I said, looking Tara in the eye. Then I turned to Phoebe, who was glaring at me from the wall. “And it was not my fault you had to move. It is, however,
your
fault that I have to live in a puke pink room.”

Phoebe’s mouth dropped open and I felt a smidge of regret, but I was on a roll.

“And you!” I said to Sage. “I don’t know what I did to offend you, but you can loud-whisper about me all you want. The last thing I need is the approval of a superficial brat like you.”

There was a moment of silence and I took a step back. I looked around at all the closed-off faces. Yeah, my first day had been an abysmal comedy of errors, but I hadn’t done anything on purpose. I was a good person. And I didn’t deserve all this.

“I’m sorry, Mindy,” I said, raising my hands. “I can’t do this.”

Then I turned and jogged out of the gym, slamming through the back door. I ran past the football field where the guys were practicing, past the cross-country team that was finishing their cooldown. I even cranked it up a notch and sprinted past the last few mailboxes to try to flush all the voices from my head. Voices telling me to go back—that Coach would never let me back on the team if I didn’t. I had to ignore them. If I didn’t, I would end up spending the next few months hanging with a bunch of girls who would make my life a living hell.

No way. It was over. When I got to my house, I realized I had never once looked back.