A Non-Blonde Cheerleader in Love (25 page)

“But you
like
the guys,” I said, thoroughly confused.

Sage clucked her tongue with obvious impatience. In the background I heard a doorbell ring and a bevy of familiar voices greet each other.

“Will you just get over here? Everyone’s either here already or on their way,” Sage said.

Figures she would have called me last. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The line went dead before I even had a chance to say good-bye.

Unfortunately, my parents were not, in fact, home. They had to go to some black-tie event at the upscale department store where my mother worked as a personal shopper. (In other words, my father was in his own personal hell.) There was only one other option if I didn’t want to be left out of this latest squad meeting. One neither of my parents would have liked.

I got up, walked down the hall and knocked on my brother’s door. He swung it open two seconds later.

“What’s up?” he asked. On the floor of his room were stacks of books and CDs. The kid was
organizing.
His break needed to end soon or he was going to lose it. Lucky for him he was headed back to class on Monday. And, I’m sure my parents were hoping, another brand-new makeover.

“Bored?” I asked.

“You have no idea,” he replied.

“That motorcycle of yours have a passenger’s helmet?” I asked.

Gabe’s eyes went wide. “You want a ride?”

“Just call me Biker Babe,” I said.

“Whoo-hoo!” Gabe shouted, grabbing his leather jacket and slamming his bedroom door as he emerged into the hall. “Let’s roll!”

 
By the time I got to Sage’s house, I was a total Harley hussy. That thing was
awesome.
It was so cool, leaning into turns, the wind in my . . . well . . . face. (All my hair was tucked under the helmet.) And my brother wasn’t kidding. He
was
a responsible rider. I wished my dad would cave in and go for a ride with him already. Then maybe he could stop worrying about Gabe. And, you know, let me ride with him.

“Now remember, if anyone asks how I got over here, I carpooled,” I said as I lifted off the helmet.

“You got it,” Gabe replied. He reached out his hand and I slapped it, but instead of letting go, he grabbed my fingers up and moved them through an increasingly intricate handshake that ended with a fist pound.

“Right on,” I joked.

Gabe rolled his eyes and I jogged to the front door as he revved up and roared off.

“Finally!” Sage said, whipping open the door before I could even ring the bell.

“Good to see you too, Sage,” I replied.

“Come on. Everyone’s waiting.”

She led the way into the living room, calling out to everyone that I had arrived and we could start. As soon as all the squad members—the female ones only, of course—were gathered in her white-on-white living room, Sage dimmed the recessed lights and stood up in front of us. Apparently, she really was serious about this revenge plan of hers. Deadly serious. Her attitude had even affected her fashion choices. Her hair was flattened and hung long and straight down her back, and she wore a no-nonsense black turtleneck. I had never seen Sage wear black before in my life.

“What is this?” Chandra asked, pulling her foot up on the couch. “Are we having a meeting or are you putting on some kind of play?”

A few people giggled.

“Feet off the furniture!” Sage snapped.

Instantly, Chandra’s sneaker hit the wood floor.

“Her mom is kind of a freak about stains,” Phoebe whispered.

I gulped. No wonder neither Sage nor Whitney had ever held a squad gathering before. The place
was
like a museum with all its glass cases full of vases and artifacts, strategic lighting and white walls. It must have been torture growing up in a place like this. When I was six, I had drawn a mural for my parents on the dining room wall with indelible ink. After an initial screech of shock from my mom, my parents had decided to leave it there as a conversation piece and had actually shown off about my creativity to their friends. I kind of had a feeling markers were verboten in this house. And Play-Doh and fruit punch. Pretty much anything with a color.

“Now, the reason I have called you all here is because of the shocking events of this afternoon,” Sage said, standing before us with her hands behind her back. “The men on our squad took what was once a beautiful tradition and made a mockery of it.”

A beautiful tradition? Had everyone forgotten that the first-ever SDH props box had been cracked open just
last
season? Apparently. Because angry murmurs filled the room. I felt like I was at some kind of union meeting. Were we going to form a protest or something?

“All they have done since joining our squad is disrupt it,” Sage continued.

“Talk about jumping ship,” Chandra whispered. “I just got splashed.”

I covered my mouth to keep from laughing. It seemed that if Sage was going to switch sides, she was going to do so full-force. And apparently no one was going to question her conversion. I think everyone was too livid at the guys to really care.

“And it is my feeling that we can no longer tolerate such behavior. We have to teach these guys a lesson,” Sage said, her blue eyes glinting. “And I have a plan.”

Tara sat forward in her seat in eager anticipation. I swear I heard several people panting. We waited for Sage’s evil mind to reveal its blackest depths. And waited. And waited.

“Well?” Tara said finally.

Sage slowly smiled, savoring her moment as the center of our tiny little universe.

“Wednesday afternoon is the pep rally for the West Wind rivalry games,” Sage said. “I suggest that if the guys think they’re so cool and fabulous, that we let them have it.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Have what?” I said finally.

Sage rolled her eyes in impatience, like I was sporting an IQ of ten. But to be honest, I don’t think anyone else in the room got it either. So who was the low-IQ chica here, I ask you?

“The pep rally!” Sage said, spreading her arms wide. “Let them get out there and try to run the thing on their own. They think cheerleading is so easy and mockable? They think they’re so freakin’ great? Let them show the whole school!”

I felt a thrill of excitement sprout up in my chest. Talk about an ego check. Terrell, Daniel, Joe and Steven would have no idea what to do out there without us. This would totally show them how difficult cheerleading really was—that we’re not just a bunch of silly girls with no brains. Sage really
was
an evil genius.

“Oh, this is perfect!” Jaimee said, clasping her hands together. “They won’t know what hit them!”

“They’re gonna be totally humiliated,” Tara said gleefully. “I love it.”

And then, I felt a little squeeze of doubt. They
would
be totally humiliated. The entire school would be watching as they fumbled and stumbled and were completely confused. And as a person who had humiliated herself publicly on more than one occasion, I knew how horrible that felt. Was that really a fair punishment?

“They deserve it after everything they’ve done,” Chandra said in my ear, sounding very much like my shoulder devil. All around us people schemed and planned and laughed. “Don’t go soft on us now.”

“What are you, a mind-reader?” I asked, startled.

“It’s written all over your face,” Chandra told me. “I know he’s your boyfriend, but do you think he had you in mind when he crashed our party and let Terrell take all those awful pictures? No. We have to get them back.”

Damn. Chandra would make a
fab
shoulder devil. Because she was right. After everything, the guys really did need a wake-up call. They couldn’t continue to disrespect us and everything we cared about and get away with it. And public humiliation would definitely be a fine wake-up call.

Besides, it wasn’t like
I
was doing something to
Daniel.
It was all of us, together, teaching all of
them
a lesson. And if I wanted to further rationalize it (which I did), Daniel had been avoiding me for the last forty-eight hours—averting his eyes, walking away from me in the hall. I was pretty sure he didn’t even want to be my boyfriend anymore and yet he was keeping me hanging. He didn’t even have the decency to
tell
me. So what exactly did I want to protect him for?

“So? Whaddaya say?” Chandra asked.

I say . . . I say . . .

“I’m in,” I told her with a resolute nod.

“Yes!” She wrapped her arm around me and gave me a squeeze.

Too bad I wasn’t quite as excited as she was. Even though part of me knew the guys deserved what they had coming to them, I knew it was going to take every ounce of self-control I had in me not to warn Daniel, and not to die of overwhelming guilt in the process.

 
When Bethany opened the door on Wednesday morning to find me standing in front of her in my blue, yellow and white uniform, she looked like she might throw up.

“Hi!” I said, waving my dance pom.

“Okay. It’s too early for this,” she said. Already the door was swinging in toward my face.

“Wait! I’m having a crisis of conscience!” I said, stopping the door with my pom. It got a little crushed, but nothing unfixable.

“And you came to me?” Bethany asked, then laughed. “Interesting choice.”

She waved her hand to invite me in, then trudged through her gorgeous, high-ceilinged living room to the breakfast bar in the kitchen, where she was working on an overflowing bowl of chocolate Lucky Charms. Upstairs, hard rock music blared and heavy footsteps pounded around, shaking the chrome pots that hung from the rack above the center island. Her brother Bobby was definitely a big guy.

“Want some?” she asked, shoving a spoonful into her mouth. Milk dribbled from the corners of her lips.

“No, thanks. I’m good,” I said. “So, listen, the squad is planning on boycotting the pep rally today.”

Bethany dropped her spoon. “Oh, come on!” she said, upset. “You guys are good for one thing
—one thing—
and you can’t even give me that!?”

My forehead crinkled in confusion. “I thought you’d be happy. You once said that going to pep rallies was like sliding naked down a sandpaper waterslide into a vat of lemon juice.”

Bethany smirked at her old joke, but then her face dropped. “Yeah, that was before it was getting me out of my oral report eighth period,” she said.

“Oh. Well, don’t worry. We’re still gonna have a pep rally,” I said. “The idea is to make the guys go out there alone and try to cheer.”

“Omigod, you’re kidding,” she said. “Whose idea was that? It’s
brilliant
!”

“Sage’s,” I said morosely.

Bethany grimaced. “Ugh. Why am I not surprised?” She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and pushed away from the counter.

“Wait! Where’re you going?” I asked.

“To get my video camera,” she replied. “There’s no way I’m missing this.”

I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “Hello? Crisis of conscience, remember?”

“Oh. Right,” Bethany said. She turned to me and fixed me with a studious expression. “Okay. Hit me.”

“The question is whether or not I should warn Daniel,” I said.

“No,” Bethany answered automatically. “Are we done here?”

“No!” I cried, grabbing her arm as she turned to go again. “That’s it? Just no? You don’t even want to think about it?”

“I don’t
need
to think about it,” Bethany said, throwing her hands up. “First of all, you and Daniel aren’t even talking and you don’t even know if he wants to go out with you anymore, right?”

Wow. Hit a girl where it hurts, why don’t you? Of course this was exactly the argument I had been repeating to myself for the last two nights, so why
did
it still hurt?

“Right . . . ,” I said slowly.

“Second, if you warn him, he’s going to tell the other guys and then all the blah-rahs are going to be mad at you for foiling their devious little plan, right?” she said. “And Athena knows you don’t want
that
to happen, right?”

“Right ...”