TWEEEEEEEET!
She spit out the silver whistle and started yelling at me.
“YOU VANT TO BE ON CHEER TEAM!!! YOU VERK TO BE ON CHEER TEAM!!!”
Aha. Bridget had taken on the role of scary Eastern European coach. I was the inexperienced gymnast she would mold into gold-medal material. The big difference between Bridget and me was that she could actually execute all the stunts she was challenging me to do.
“YOU DO BACKTUCK. LIKE DEES?”
Then Bridget effortlessly flipped herself backward through the air and landed on her own two feet.
I shook my head.
“YOU DO AERIAL. LIKE DEES?”
Then Bridget spun into a hands-free cartwheel. The baseball cap didn’t move. Nor did the mustache. How could she make something so impossible look so easy?
Again, I shook my head. No way.
“YOU DO… AH… DEE TOE TOUCH? LIKE DEES?”
Bridget jumped into a midair split and reached for the tips of her sneakers.
I didn’t shake my head this time. I just kind of glared skeptically.
“Come on, Jess,” Bridget said in her normal voice. “How are you gonna try out in front of a room full of strangers if you won’t even, like, try in front of your best friend?”
She had a very valid point. But before I could give her any credit for it, she was already back to barking orders at me.
“YOU DO DEE TOE TOUCH. LIKE DEES.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command.
“Okay,” I relented. “I’ll try the toe touch.”
So I tried the toe touch. And I crashed onto the grass and nearly cracked my head open. Even the ever-optimistic Bridget had begun to accept my limitations.
“You’re too tall to be a flier anyway,” she reasoned. “Maybe you can be a base.”
“A base?”
“The girls at the bottom of all the stunts.”
That didn’t sound like too much fun at all. It must have shown on my face because Bridget was quick to point out the importance of being a base.
“Sure, the fliers get all the glory,” she said. “But without the bases, there wouldn’t be any stunts for the fliers to do.”
So we tested my base potential. Bridget tried to climb up onto my shoulders using my legs and arms like rungs on a ladder. I Weeble-wobbled and tried to keep my balance. This stunt-in-the-making resulted in yet another grass-smacking, head-cracking tumble, only this time Bridget added injury to injury by landing right on top of me. At this point, Bridget was over it.
“Your parents are crazy,” she snapped, rubbing her elbow where it had gouged me in the rib cage. “Do they know you’re not just risking your life, but the life of every girl on the squad?”
I hadn’t really thought about it that way. And Bridget was looking so serious that I was a millisecond away from fessing up about Bethany’s IT List and the real reason I was trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!! But Bridget never stayed upset for very long. She once said her parents’ divorce taught her what’s legitimately worth getting upset about. Everything else is no big whoop. Sure enough, within a few seconds she was grinning at me again.
“That’s enough practice! You’ll be awesome, Jess! I just know it! You’ve always been mondo at everything!”
First of all, I’ve never been mondo at everything because Manda just made up that word. Second, Bridget has seen me “dribble” a basketball, heard me “play” clarinet, and tasted my “brownies.” I can’t decide if she’s my most loyal friend or my most delusional friend.
Probably both.
“VIGOROUS VERKOUT DESERVE REVESHMENT!”
Bridget half unzipped her BMB backpack just enough for me to see that it contained a fresh box of Cap’n Crunch and two bottles of Coke. With a whoop of glee, we ran upstairs to my bedroom, where we could sit on the rug and enjoy a junk food picnic in peace. Meaning, without my mother ranting against chemical additives and artificial flavors and all the things that make junk food taste so delicious.
We unscrewed our caps. The sodas made a satisfying whooshy fizzy noise.
“Cheers!” I said, tapping my bottle against hers.
“CHEERS!!!” Bridget shouted back. “And we’re trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!! Freaky!”
It really wasn’t freaky at all. We always said cheers during our junk food picnics. But Bridget seemed to enjoy thinking this toast had some cosmic significance and I didn’t want to spoil her mood.
“What are you gonna say tonight at dinner when your mom asks why you aren’t eating?” Bridget asked as she peeled off her fake mustache.
“I’ll just tell her I am too full of her ‘wonderful’ granola bars and ‘flavorful’ seltzer.”
Bridget laughed. I was definitely full of something, that’s for sure.
Then all of a sudden Bridget got quiet, and the munching of cereal became the only sound. When her ears turned pink, I was afraid she was going to start talking about her mom and dad. Uh-oh. I didn’t think I had it in me to be the positive pep-talker this afternoon. But it turns out that she had something else on her mind. Something that was even more impossible for me to talk about than her parents’ divorce.
“So!” she said, clapping her hands and sending cereal crumbs through the air. “Who do you like?”
This was not at all what I had expected.
“Who do I like?” I repeated dumbly.
“Yeah, like.” She paused. “Who. Do. You. Like?”
She asked the question slowly, as if we didn’t speak the same language.
“Well,” I began, “I guess I like Manda and Sara. They’ve been pretty nice to me so far. And I’m still getting to know Ho—”
Bridget playfully swatted my arm.
“Not other girls, silly!” She giggled. “BOYS! What boys do you like?”
She said it so matter-of-factly. Like there was no room for debate. There had to be not just one boy, but boys plural that I liked.
“Um,” I stammered. “I don’t know.…”
Bridget gestured for me to come closer.
“Can you keep a secret?” she whispered.
I nodded, relieved that Bridget no longer seemed interested in discussing my hypothetical crushes. Luckily for me, she wanted this to be less of a conversation about the boys I liked and more about the one very specific boy she liked.
“I think I like Burke Roy!” she said, squeezing her arms around herself in a dangerously tight hug. “And I think he likes me!”
Now, I’ve already made it pretty clear that I know very little about boy/girl business. And yet, even to my innocent eyes, it was clear that Burke had it bad for Bridget. And vice versa. So the only thing I could say to Bridget was this:
“No duh!”
This was not the appropriate response. Her face fell.
“No duh what part?” she asked anxiously. “No duh that I like him or no duh that he likes me? Because if it’s so obvious that I like him and he doesn’t like me that would be, like, so incredibly embarrassing because he’s, like, this totally popular eighth grader and I’m just this pathetic puppy dog of a seventh grader.…”
Her whole face had turned as red as a stop sign. And that’s what I needed to make her do.
“STOP!” I shouted. “Calm down!”
Bridget just kind of wheezed for a few seconds. It was like she had worked herself into preteen cardiac arrest.
“I meant, ‘no duh’ to all of it,” I said. “He’s obviously liked you since the first day of school. And you obviously like him because…”
Why did Bridget like him anyway? Because he was a cute football player? Was that all that mattered? Did she know anything else about him? Had they ever had a conversation? Or did he communicate solely through impressive armpit fart noises?
“I like him because he’s Burke Roy!” Bridget squealed. “He’s hot and popular and a football player. Who wouldn’t like him?”
“I don’t like him,” I said automatically.
Bridget cocked her hea
d to the side.
“Yeah, but that’s only because you knew I liked him and you’re such a bestie that you would never like someone who I was interested in because that breaks all the rules of best friendship! Otherwise you would totally have the hots for him because who wouldn’t?”
I had a feeling that denying this bogus accusation would only make Bridget feel bad for some reason. I just let her think it by saying nothing at all. This was okay, I guess, because for the next half hour Bridget talked enough for the both of us without actually adding anything new or interesting to the conversation.
“So I think I like him and I think he likes me, which is just, you know, wow, because he’s so hot and popular and a football player and I’m just, like, me, a little seventh grader and do you think he knows I like him and do you think he knows I know he might like me back?”
See what I mean?
She’d probably still be going on about Burke Roy if my mom hadn’t knocked on my door.
“Hellooooo? Girls?”
I’m so glad I had the door locked. We quickly stashed the cereal box and sodas under my bed before letting her in.
“Hey, Mom!”
“Hey, Mrs. Darling!”
My mother sniffed the air, suspicious. I swear, to my fitness-obsessed mother, Cap’n Crunch and Coke are no better than booze and cigarettes.
“Bridget, would you like to stay for dinner?” my mom asked, still looking around the room for a sign to confirm her vague suspicion of rule breaking. “It’s kale casserole night!”
I have to credit Bridget for not gagging right in my mother’s face.
“Thanks, Mrs. Darling,” Bridget replied, “but there’s a microwave burrito at home with my name on it.”
Mom did her best to turn her disapproving grimace into a smile.
“Well, you know you’re welcome here anytime.”
Bridget thanked my mom and leaped to her feet. Then she offered one last bit of coaching before departing.
“When in doubt, Jess,” she said, “just smile, smile, smile!”
As Bridget bopped past her, Mom regarded her with something close to awe. She waited until Bridget was out of earshot before speaking.
“What a wonderful philosophy despite everything she’s gone through,” Mom said.
It’s true. For Bridget, putting on a happy face went well beyond the CHEER TEAM!!! tryouts. It was her life’s mission. But how often had Bridget’s sunshiny personality blinded me to the darker moods lurking beneath the surface?
Blinded everyone?
“Maybe you could benefit from such an attitude adjustment,” Mom suggested. “Have you noticed Bridget’s skin lately? She’s glowing!”
And before I could reply, Mom not-so-gently poked at my chin.
“Ouch!”
I rubbed the small, swollen bump I hadn’t been aware of until Mom literally pointed it out to me.
“Maybe if you were more positive like Bridget, you wouldn’t have pimples.”
As she headed back downstairs, I couldn’t help but think that my mom had it all backward.
Maybe if I were less pimply like Bridget, I’d be more positive.
Chapter Fourteen
CHEER TEAM!!! tryouts are tomorrow. But that didn’t stop major drama from going down today.
“Omigod!” Sara cried out when she saw me at our lockers before homeroom. “Where’s your cheer flair?”
Until that moment, I had never heard the term cheer flair. But one look at Sara and I knew exactly what she was referring to. She was decked out in red, white, and blue Pineville Junior High paraphernalia from the shiny bow in her hair to the sparkly shoelaces on her sneakers. In addition to her standard makeup job, she had a dancing chicken painted on her face.
“Nice chicken,” I said, pointing to her cheek.
“Duh! It’s not a chicken!” she snapped. “It’s our school mascot!”
Oops. I guess I should’ve known that.
“Ohhh. I totally see it now!” I said. “Flighty the Seagull.”
“Mighty the Seagull! Don’t you know anything? And where’s your cheer flair? Manda said we’re all wearing our cheer flair!”
Like I said, I never knew there was such a thing as cheer flair until about thirty seconds earlier in this conversation. Sara was too worried about herself to wait for an answer. She sneered at the offending bird in her magnetic locker mirror, then spit on a tissue and furiously rubbed her cheek. This didn’t remove the bird so much as just smear it from forehead to chin, which made Sara even angrier.
“Omigod! Omigod! Omigod!”
That’s when Sara ran to tell our teacher to mark her “present” and that she would be unable to attend homeroom because she needed to go to the bathroom to deal with “girl stuff.” And by that Sara meant going down the hall to the WXYZ homeroom to drag Weaver, Hope out of class and into the bathroom to fix her face.
Hope worked her artistic magic, all right. When Sara came strutting into first period, there was an exact copy of Mighty the Seagull where the funky chicken used to be.
“Good save,” I said to Hope.
“Don’t congratulate me yet,” she replied drily.
And before I could ask what she was talking about, Manda sashayed into the room.
“Sara!” she said in a chipper way that sounded rehearsed. “Your cheer flair is so mondo.”
Manda was conspicuously free of cheer flair.
“Omigod! Manda!” Sara screeched. “Where’s your cheer flair?”
Manda widened her eyes in innocence. “You didn’t get my message?”
“What message?” Sara asked through gritted teeth. Her cheek bulged every time her jaw clenched, making it look like Mighty the Seagull was flexing his feathery muscles.
“The message,” Manda continued, “where I said that it was a bad idea to wear our cheer flair today to psych out the competition because then everyone would totally copy us at tryouts tomorrow so it was way smarter to wait until right before tryouts so we stand out from everyone else. That message?”
Then Manda made a point of winking at me, as if we were in on this together.
“Omigod! So Jessica got your message and I didn’t?”
“I didn’t get any message about anything!” I protested.
“Then why am I the only fool walking around school with a dancing chicken on my cheek?!?”
“Seagull,” Hope and I said at the same time. Our spontaneous simultaneous response gave us the giggles. This was not an acceptable reaction.
“HAHAHA. EVERYONE LAUGH AT SARA. HAHAHAHA. OMIGOD, I HATE YOU ALL.”
Manda closed her eyes and rubbed her temples as if this conversation were giving her the huuuuugest headache ever.
“Puh-leeze, Sara,” Manda said dismissively. “You’re so paranoid.”
As Manda and Sara bickered about which of Sara’s many communication devices Manda had allegedly messaged, Hope rolled her eyes and gave me a “what can you do?” shrug.
“Did you know Manda had tricked her?” I whispered to her.
She glanced at their standoff and sighed knowingly.
“No, but I knew one of them would do something to psych out the other. I guarantee that Sara will wear her flair all day just so Manda doesn’t have the satisfaction of seeing her take it off. Some BFFs, huh?”
I thought about how Bridget had gone out of her way to coach me and encourage me and how lucky I was to have her in my life. I wonder if Hope has anyone like that in hers.
So Manda and Sara only spoke to each other through dirty looks the rest of the day. I’m sure they’d still be giving each other the silent treatment if they hadn’t been brought back together through a common enemy.
“Omigod!” Sara gasped as she slammed down her lunch tray. “Guess who’s trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?”
There was no question to whom this question was being addressed.
“Who’s trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?” Manda asked. She tried to sound bored, but I could tell she cared
very much about this information. She hated when Sara knew something she didn’t.
“Dori Sipowitz!”
My jaw dropped, though I didn’t know why. Back in the 3ZNUF days, Dori was an even better gymnast than Bridget. CHEER TEAM!!! made sense.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Duh! I checked the list! She must have just added her name!”
Manda was unfazed by Sara’s gossip.
“Who’s Dori Sipowitz and why should I care?”
Bridget had arrived at the table just in time to hear Manda ask this question.
“Dori Sipowitz?”
Bridget asked this as if she hadn’t said that name in years. Because she hadn’t.
“Dori Sipowitz.”
Like her post-orthodontic smile, once Bridget started saying Dori Sipowitz, she couldn’t stop.
“What about Dori Sipowitz? Does Dori Sipowitz go to this school? I didn’t even know Dori Sipowitz went to this school!”
That’s how invisible Dori Sipowitz was at Pineville Junior High School. She’d been in the same lunch period as Bridget for more than two weeks and her former best friend hadn’t even noticed.
“Jess, did you know Dori Sipowitz went to this school?”
I shrugged sheepishly. This turned out to be a sufficient answer because Sara was in full tell-all mode. Sara hadn’t acknowledged Dori’s existence since cutting her on the lunch line on day one. So I didn’t know when Sara bothered to learn Dori’s name, but I knew why. In the two weeks since we met in homeroom, I’d come to realize that Sara was a girl who lived for gossip about everything and everyone—even someone as insignificant as Dori Sipowitz—because she never knew when that information could be useful later on.
“Dori sits with that other Not at the square tables! Near the kitchen!” Sara rounded on Manda. “And that’s why you should care!”
This was all Manda needed to hear.
“Square tables! Near the kitchen! That Not thinks she’s cheer material? Puh-leeze.”
“Omigod,” Sara agreed. “I know.”
As Manda and Sara debated the attributes that makes one “cheer material” (not sitting at the square tables near the kitchen FOR SURE), Hope caught my eye.