A Non-Blonde Cheerleader in Love (27 page)

Suddenly everyone backed up. The doors were flung open and out stormed Coach Rincon. There were little flames where his pupils should have been, I swear. Coach Holmes was hot on his heels.

“What the hell do you girls think you’re doing?” he said through his teeth. “How could you do this to your teammates?”

“Leo!” Coach Holmes scolded, looking desperate.

“Why are you doing this?” Rincon asked, shoving his hands under his biceps. “What did they do to you?”

“Th-they crashed our slumber party,” Sage said timidly. “And then they—”

“That? Big deal!” Rincon said with a scoff. “That was just a little harmless fun. Boys being boys.”

“Wait a minute,” Coach Holmes said, approaching him. “You
knew
about this?”

His forehead wrinkled. “Knew about it? I told them to do it.”

“What?” about ten of us said in unison.

“What? Daniel and Terrell called me to talk and . . . I thought it would help!” Rincon replied. He turned to Coach Holmes. “Remember that year we went to the final four and no one was speaking? Remember how much fun we had together on that trip?”

“Leo, that was totally different,” Coach Holmes said. “I can’t believe you told a bunch of teenage boys to crash a teenage girls’ slumber party!”

He blinked. Apparently the “teenage” part hadn’t occurred to him before. “Well, did
you
tell
them
to do this?” he said, whirling on her.

“Of course not!”

“But you’re condoning it,” he said.

“Well, what do you want me to do? Shove them out there?” she asked.

“I want you to get control of your squad!” he replied.

Whoa. Smack all of us in the face, why don’t you? Coach Holmes stood up straight. She leveled him with a glare that could have brought whole cities to their knees.

“Are you really going to speak to me like that?” she asked, quaking.

“I don’t exactly have a choice,” he replied.

“Then get out,” she said. “Get out of my school, get away from my squad and get away from me,” she said calmly.

In the gym lobby there was complete silence. Out on the gym floor, Terrell and the others had finally,
finally
joined Daniel, but they sounded pathetic. “Go! Hey, here we go! Crabs! Go!”

A couple of people in the stands responded with a lame “Go!” but everyone else just laughed. My heart twisted tighter and tighter and tighter inside my chest until, moments later, it mercifully stopped.

“You really want to do this, Dee?” Rincon said.

“Just go,” she said weakly.

“Fine,” he said. Then he turned and stormed out, letting the door slam behind him.

“Uh . . . your mighty, fighting Sand Dune Crab cheerleaders!” Dori said into the microphone, her nervous laugh echoing throughout the gym. “Let’s hear it for them!”

We all looked at each other with dread as Coach Holmes stood there, catatonic.

A wave of lackluster applause trickled through the crowd in the gym and I closed my eyes against the humiliated and sad tears that threatened to overflow. I wasn’t even humiliated for the guys. I was humiliated for myself. How could I have thought this was a good idea? The guys were miserable, our coaches were miserable, we were all miserable. Didn’t get much worse than that.

“Thanks a lot, ladies,” Coach said, looking around at us. She ducked her head and walked back into the gym as if she were walking to meet her executioner.

“Well. That was the most pep-free rally in history,” Tara said.

I turned around and headed for the nearest bathroom stall.

 
“That can’t be a good sign,” Chandra said when we walked into the auditorium that afternoon after school.

We had found a note taped to the locker room door telling us all not to get changed and to meet here instead of at one of our practice locales. One look at Coach Holmes’ Unibomber scrawl and already we knew we were in serious trouble. When we saw Principal Buzzkill standing near the stage with Coach, their heads bent in conversation, we knew we were dead for sure. My legs turned to jelly as we walked down the center aisle. All four guys sat in the front row on the left side, facing resolutely forward. On the opposite side of the aisle, Jaimee and Autumn turned around in their seats, eyes wide, like lambs about to be sent to the slaughter.

“What’s he doing here?” Tara hissed, coming up behind us.

“My guess is, it’s not to offer us school spirit awards,” I told her.

I dropped into a seat near the center of the second row and gradually all the chairs around me filled in. Autumn sat in front of me, her fingertips and thumbs pressed together and turned toward the rafters as she tried to meditate. Chandra unwrapped a huge Snickers bar and chomped down on it. Tara’s pen tapped against her notebook at a frightening speed.

“All right. Now that everyone’s here, your principal would like to say a few words,” Coach Holmes announced.

Principal Buzzkill cleared his throat and stepped forward. He held one arm across his chest and crooked the other so that his fist was covering his mouth, like a man in mourning. His pose was that serious and contemplative. His blond hair glinted under the auditorium lights, which also highlighted his tan skin and handsome features. A man that good-looking was never meant to be a principal. Especially not such a strict, scary one.

The anticipation of a lecture is never fun. It’s even worse when you know you deserve it. Maybe if I admitted that I was wrong, he’d let me leave.

Yeah. And maybe tomorrow he’d take us on a free field trip to Universal Studios.

I took out a red pen and started drawing swirls on the cover of my history notebook. Anything to keep from mistakenly looking him in the eye.

“What happened this afternoon was unacceptable,” Principal Buzzkill began. As usual, the man pulled no punches. Right to the point, like an arrow to a bull’s-eye. “Pep rallies are an important component of student life at this school. They are meant to engender school spirit and pride. What you people pulled today undermined everything that event stands for. Now, your coach has been trying to explain to me the reasoning behind your actions, and as far as I’m concerned, those reasons are unacceptable. As cheerleaders, your first responsibility is to this school, not to your own petty arguments.”

The longer he spoke, the further my head bowed. My skin felt like someone had lit a Bunsen burner beneath it. My pen dug deeper and deeper into my notebook cover with each new swirl.

“Now, I need to meet with the vice principal and the director of athletics to decide what, if any, punishment we’ll hand down for this sorry display,” Buzzkill continued. “But let me just leave you with this one thought. Pep rallies are a privilege, not a right. And privileges can easily be revoked.”

No. No way. My head snapped up at this and, of course, I looked right into his cold, dead eyes. The man didn’t so much as flinch. I glanced at Tara, who looked like someone had just told her Paul Mitchell was discontinuing her favorite line of hair care products. Damn, Buzzkill was good. He knew exactly where and how hard to twist the screws. I mean, taking away our pep rallies? Why not just drive a stake into our hearts already?

“Coach Holmes? They’re all yours,” he said.

Then he walked out, head held high like a man who’d just severely beaten down the enemy.

“He can’t do that, can he?” Tara said as soon as the door was closed. “We have to have pep rallies.”

“Like you care,” Terrell said.

“Yeah, we didn’t exactly have one today,” Daniel said. “And whose fault is that?”

“Yours,” Sage replied vehemently. “If you hadn’t been such total a—”

“That’s enough!” Coach shouted, silencing everyone.

For the first time I realized how unlike herself she looked. Normally the most powerful woman in any room, Coach now looked small and skinny and wan. Her cheeks were slightly sunken and her eyes were tired and makeup-free. Weird. I could have sworn she’d been wearing her usual liner and shadow earlier, which meant that either she had taken it off between the pep rally and now or . . . or she’d been crying.

Gulp. Apparently these arguments between her and Rincon were pretty serious.

Coach Holmes took a deep breath and ran both hands over her face. I exchanged a disturbed glance with Chandra. This was not the Coach we knew and loved and sort of feared. This was someone else entirely.

“Okay, listen, I am willing to admit that I made a mistake here,” she said finally.

Double gulp. Seriously?

“I should have never opened up the tryouts to guys because
clearly
this group is not yet mature enough to handle a coed existence,” she said, staring us down.

Zing. Okay. There was a little bit of her left in there.

“But we have a bit of a problem,” she continued, crossing her arms over her chest. “This school needs a cheerleading squad, so as much as I might like to after today’s debacle, I can’t disband the team.”

Um . . . ouch!

“But I also can’t throw the guys off the squad,
or
the girls, without a lawsuit,” she continued. “So here we are,” she said, throwing her arms wide and then letting them slap down. “We are stuck together. And I am out of ideas.”

I glanced across the aisle at the guys. For once they looked as shamed and small as the rest of us did. Daniel’s face was blotched with red and Steven was leaning his elbow on the armrest, holding his hand over his mouth.

“So I put it to you,” Coach said finally. She started to gather up her things—her jacket, her bag, her clipboard. “You all need to find a way to fix this and you need to do it fast. Otherwise this season is going to be a total wash.” She started up the aisle, then paused right at the end of our row and turned halfway around. Like she couldn’t even bear to fully look at us anymore. ”I expect to see all of you here tonight at seven for the pregame warm-up. You can give me your solution at that time.”

As soon as Coach was gone, the room was filled with sighs, like someone had just let the air out of two dozen balloons. We shifted in our seats. Sage and Karianna whispered to each other. Everyone was waiting for someone else to say something first. But what?

We’re sorry?
Did anyone other than me want to say that? And even if we did, would the guys care?

“Well?” Terrell said finally, turning in his seat and hooking his arm around the back of the chair.

“Well what?” Tara replied.

“You really got nothing to say,” Terrell said. “Nothing at all.”

Tara simply sat there and stared straight ahead, shaking her head in disbelief. Could she really not see that the guys deserved an apology?

“We’re sorry, all right?” I blurted, standing up.

“Annisa!” Chandra said.

“No! We’re not!” Sage put in, whipping around to face me.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” I asked, feeling desperate enough to pop. “If someone did to us what we just did to them, you’d be freaking out.”

“They need to apologize to us first,” Tara told me, standing as well. “That’s the way it works.”

“Like we’re really going to apologize after what you just did to us,” Daniel said.

He looked so hurt, I just wanted to go over there and hug him. But there was a giant force field between us, keeping me from moving a muscle.

“Wait a minute, apologize for what?” Terrell asked, incredulous. “What the hell do we need to apologize for?”

Tara let out an indignant laugh-squeal that echoed through the room.

“Uh . . . I don’t know . . . for the slumber party, for the props box?” Sage said. “Or how about for your very existence?”

My head fell forward. Sage had just gone one too far.

“That’s it. I’m outta here,” Daniel said, grabbing his varsity jacket.

He stormed out, slamming into the wooden door so hard, it flew open and crashed back against the outer wall.

Terrell slowly gathered his things, shaking his head and chuckling derisively. “Nice work,” he said as he paused in the center aisle. “Hope you girls come up with something good to tell Coach tonight, because I’m gonna have nothing to say.”