Flying (3 page)

Lyle's voice interrupts my thoughts. “And
then
I professed my undying love to her and Mana just stared at me and said, ‘But I only love khaki-wearing koala bears who are into drumming and rolling up their sleeves to show off their forearms, Lyle. You would never do. You are far too manly-macho.'”

I open my eyes, blinking away all these random thoughts of Lyle and me growing up together, and sputter, “What?”

He starts laughing and punches me in the arm. We pass a school bus on the right—totally illegal, totally Seppie.

“She's really out of it.” Seppie turns off Back River Road and onto the highway. “What is up with you today?”

I shrug. My shoulders bump against them. “I didn't sleep much last night.”

“What, were you out late partying?” Lyle asks. “Partying on a Sunday night?”

“Funny.” I punch him. He punches me back. “I'm just tired.”

“Do you want some of my coffee?” He picks up his metal no-spill thermos.

Seppie snarks at him. “You know she can't have caffeine. It makes her wild. You're just tormenting her because you know she loves the smell.”

“I don't actually remember ever having caffeine,” I say, whiffing in the warm, nutty scent. “Is that hazelnut? Wow. That smells good. I mean, that smells really good. I grab it and take a micro sip. It's warm and sugary and nutty.

“Well, you're not starting now.” Seppie reaches across me, takes the thermos, gulps, and says, “Yep. Hazelnut.”

“And you call me cruel?” Lyle snatches back his thermos and turns his attention to me. I swallow hard, which is ridiculous. My pulse rate seems to be getting higher. I lick the coffee off my lips as Lyle asks, “Why didn't you sleep well? Are you getting sick?”

He puts his hand on my forehead. It feels nice, like all the tension is just oozing out of me and into his hands. We slow down, pull off the highway, and head toward the school parking lot.

“No fever,” he announces, and then goes into nerdy speech. “I declare this specimen devoid of fever.”

“No fevers. I just had more nightmares.” I stretch up. Lyle moves his hand away and I want to snatch his wrist and pull it back to my forehead. I kind of miss it. Seppie turns into the school parking lot and pulls the visor down to check out her reflection in the mirror instead of actually trying to find a parking space or anything like that.

I rub at my forehead. All the tension is back. And I swear I feel sweaty, like I've just run a marathon. “I don't want to go to school.”

“Does anyone?” Lyle asks.

Seppie clears her throat.

Lyle goes, in a too-high, fake Seppie voice, “School is a magical place to find potential mates, enjoy learning, and practice my social networking skills that don't involve the actual Internet.”

We all start laughing. The truck hits a frost heave in the parking lot. Lyle bashes his head against the ceiling because of the bump. This makes us laugh more, for some reason. By the time we get to school, my bed feels a long way away.

Lyle helps me out of the truck. It's pretty high, and he and Seppie always take care of me because I'm shorter—and the whole flyer thing. “You seem better.”

His hands linger on my waist for an extra second and I
so
do not know what to think. “I feel better, except I think the coffee made my pulse rate go up.”

“The magical power of coffee. I don't think you're actually allergic. You're probably just hypersensitive to it or something,” he says.

“Mm-hmm,” I say. “Right.”

“What? Do you want me to say it's the magical power of friends that makes you feel better?” He smiles and lets me go.

But the truth is, that is it. It
is
the magical power of friends. I stand there, full of energy, so much energy suddenly, and jump into the air, possibly performing my highest back tuck ever.

“Whoa … that was almost—unnatural,” Seppie says, eyeing me.

“I feel so hyper!” I giggle, hugging her.

“And this,” she says, “is why your mom probably never wants you to have coffee. You didn't drink any, did you? You were just pretending, right?”

“Right!” I shout a little too loudly.

She cocks her head and speed walks toward the school, yanking me along. “You are the worst liar ever.”

“I don't think it even counted as a sip,” I say. “Just a taste. And now I'm all hyper. Coffee is wonderful!”

We make it into the building just as the first bell rings, and Seppie bolts off, Lyle following after her. They have to go to first period in the language wing, which is pretty far away. I watch them go and try not to feel all alone. Hyper and lonely is an unusual combination. I close my eyes and try to will myself to calm down. I already want more coffee. Maybe the real reason my health food nut of a mom doesn't want me to have coffee is she knows that I'd be addicted after one tiny sip.

 

CHAPTER 2

I need an entirely new body. This becomes obvious to me at cheerleading practice, when even doing a squat jump feels like a big deal to my sleep-deprived muscles. No wonder my mom doesn't want me to have coffee if this is what it feels like after you come crashing down from the caffeine high.

School was basically hellacious all day. I managed to get through Latin and SAT Prep class and Computer Science before practice this afternoon, but it has all made my stress levels so high. It's unfair to put my three hardest and most boring classes after lunch. Still, that's no excuse for how tired I feel after our tumbling drills. It's weird. It's like ever since my mom got that random crank call, my body has just not been able to catch up with sleep.

“Are you still tired?” Seppie asks. She stands there without breaking a sweat, which is because she's not much of a tumbler. Her drill is doing cartwheels across the mat. My drills are back tucks and back layouts, front layouts and twists. Doing one tumbling run is fine, but doing them over and over for an hour kills my shins and jars the tiny bones on the outsides of my ankles.

“More stressed.”

“Maybe you shouldn't go up so high.” She grasps my shoulders and does a tiny rub. “Loosen up! You're so tight! Did you fail your computer science test?”

“Yes. I mean—possibly. I got a D, but then he'll let me make it up at lunch, but I'll probably still fail.” I sigh dramatically for effect. “I am a failure.”

I make a giant F shape with my fingers and put it on my forehead for extra emphasis.

“You are not a failure; you just suck at computer science.”

“And Latin.”

Seppie wiggles her lip, which she always does when she is trying to decide if she should lie. “And maybe a little at Latin. But you're so good at other things…”

Mrs. Bray, our coach, eyes us. She's always worried everyone is gay. She's pretty homophobic, but she doesn't tell Seppie to stop rubbing the knots out of my shoulders. Instead, she says, “It's Mana's height that makes her runs exceptional, and those muscles. That's lift. It's Olympic caliber. We're so lucky you never went off into the gymnastics world.”

“Mana doesn't like competitions,” Seppie answers for me. I don't. I mean, obviously, I'm a cheerleader and I want my team to win, but I feel so badly for the other team when they lose. I hate making people lose. She drops her hands, and another cheerleader, Kristen Bean, does a series of back handsprings. It's almost my turn again.

“Lucky for us!” Mrs. Bray smiles at me. “Will Lyle be here for the game? I'd like to practice the stunts for regionals during halftime.”

“He texted he would be here,” I answer.

As soon as Mrs. Bray turns away, Seppie says, “She thinks you're a thing.”

“A thing?”

“A couple. You and Lyle.”

“Oh…”

“Do you want to be a couple?” She stares into my eyes. “Oh my God! You do … don't you?”

I try to answer. “D-Dakota? He has nice forearms.”

“You're stuttering!” She starts laughing. “And I asked about Lyle. And you know it.”

“Mana! Your turn!” Mrs. Bray yells, and I am saved from answering Seppie by having to do another tumbling pass full of back tucks and twists. I am actually grateful, and at the end, Mrs. Bray enthuses, “Solid landing! Solid! Girls, we should pay attention to how Mana lands. Beautiful, Mana! Tight!”

And then we move on to jump drills, which are so labor intensive and cardio heavy that nobody can talk. You use a basic eight count, where you set a high V, hold it, start jump, get the height of the jump, land, hold the land, stand, and then hold the final standing position. Girls are sweating by the time we have finished our jumps in sets of five, which include T jumps, tucks, right hurdlers, left hurdlers, pikes, toe touches, doubles, and then doing it all in reverse.

The away team arrives for the game and heckles us, which is normal. A couple girls manage to give them the finger when Mrs. Bray is not paying attention. It is pretty much an additional hour of hell before we're allowed to go shower and change for the game.

“Cheering is hard,” I moan.

Seppie's hands go to her hips. “You love it.”

“I do?”

“You know you do. You kick ass at it. You could totally be a professional if you wanted,” she says as we walk into the locker room off the gymnasium. “Have you decided yet what you want to do when you must be gainfully employed?”

“Gainfully employed?”

“Well, I'm not going to say ‘when you're a grown-up,' because that makes us sound five.”

“True.” I think for a second, press my hand into my heart, and say brilliantly, “Not be a cheerleader.”

“No. Really.” Seppie the Sarcastic yanks off her T-shirt and throws it in her locker.

The thing is, I have no idea. Seppie and Lyle have their whole lives planned out, days organized in lists on their phones, and I forget that I even have tests. “Save the world?” I kid.

“Lofty goal,” she teases back, and leaves me for the shower.

“Fine! How about a penguin refuge? Like a shelter! I could save penguins for a living!”

“This,” she calls after me, “is why you and Lyle are soul mates. Savior complexes. I have no clue why I love you two martyrs.”

“But you do?”

“I do!”

*   *   *

The game itself is a no-brainer. First Seppie, Lyle (who arrives just in time and still wearing cross-country clothes—he hates cheer uniforms; says they're not manly enough), the rest of the squad, and I raise our pom-poms and hold banners as they announce the players. Dakota is drumming, looking like the male model he probably should be. He points a drumstick at me. I try not to swoon in a fangirl way. Then we cheer along the sidelines during the plays. We are a peppy kind of squad, so we cheer a lot. This is supposed to be a good thing, but some people always have a hate on for cheerleaders. Sometimes, they start young.

To prove my point, some arrogant little brat kid sitting in the bleachers yells, “Will you just shut up?” He has pretty massive cojones for someone who is like, oh, I don't know, in first grade. “I'm trying to watch the damn game.”

“D-E-F—E-N-S-E. It spells
defense,
” we keep cheering, because if you stopped cheering every time someone heckled you, there would be no cheers. Although, to be fair, that is probably the hecklers' goal. “Defense. Let's play defense. Woo!”

To continue to be fair, this
is
a really dumb cheer. However, I am a pro here. I point my pom-pom at the kid and think about giving him a not-so-subtle salute with my middle finger. I am so not in the mood.

The kid stands up and glares at us. His little button-down dress shirt seems ridiculously out of place. Everybody else under ten has T-shirts on. I almost feel bad for him, stuck here under the yellow gym lights, stuck between sweaty grown-ups in their maroon high school spirit sweatshirts smelling like cigarettes, body odor, and popcorn. Almost.

“D-E-F—E-N-S-E. It spells
defense
.”

“Beyotches, I know you can spell. Just shut up,” he yells. He brandishes his floppy blond-haired head at us.

I glance at Lyle. He raises his eyebrows, because no matter how secure in his manhood he is, he is not into being called a beyotch by some brat kid. Lyle's cheek twitches like he's about two seconds away from running up the old, wooden bleachers and pummeling the boy, which would not be good, obviously. Dakota just bangs his drum. I don't think he can hear anything over that.

I try to catch Seppie's eye, but she's oblivious, as is basically everyone else. The mom next to the yelling boy is fixing the bra strap beneath her ancient black Metallica T-shirt. She has no clue. Neither do the rest of the four hundred or so people crammed into the gym. They're watching the basketball game. They're watching each other. Nobody is watching this weenie kid.

Nobody except me and Lyle and the guy sitting diagonally behind the boy. That guy is wearing sunglasses inside, but you can still tell that half his attention is on the kid and not on the game, which is slamming on behind me and Lyle and the rest of the varsity squad. He also seems to be staring at Dakota a lot, which is kind of weird because Dakota is just sitting there, occasionally playing drums when the pep band crashes out another rah-rah support-our-team song. Then again, I'm pretty much constantly staring at Dakota too, so who am I to judge?

Someone in the bleachers yells, “Go, Thomas!”

Thomas is the point guard and crowd favorite. He is incredible. Judging from the cheers, he must have stolen the ball. Obviously, our cheer worked. Take that, kid.

Other people start jumping up and down. I turn to see it. A shot from way past the three-point line, almost at half court, right at the halftime buzzer. Swish. It is all net and all beautiful. The crowd screams. All the cheerleaders scream, except Lyle, obviously. He yells. I do a couple herkies to show my support. Everything reeks of popcorn.