The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading (22 page)

T
he gauntlet. A week had passed, but on the following Monday, it was still a pretty important bit of real estate. Sadly, the few sophomores who loitered there now didn’t seem to know what to do with it. I peeked through the cafeteria doorway, but that morning Jack Paulson wasn’t at one of the tables. It figured.

I stalled by Moni’s locker, hoping to catch her before the bell. Since the breakup with Rick, she was silent in class and invisible online. She’d used her last cheerleading skip privilege at Friday night’s basketball game. And, of course, she still wasn’t answering my calls. After a few minutes, I gave up and walked to the lobby.

In the corner by the trophy cases, the dance team was raising money for new outfits by hosting a rose sale. For three dollars you could buy a rose to be delivered on Wednesday, Valentine’s Day. Between the flower sale, Friday’s rematch with the Wilson Warriors, and the Sweetheart Dance planned for afterward, no one could talk about anything else.

Which was depressing.

I inched over to the table, snatched two note cards, and retreated to a quiet spot by the stairs—all before I could convince myself this was the worst idea ever.

I thought about Jack and his mysterious fight with Rick. Not once in this whole bet/joke thing did he ever really pull a move. Sure, there was some serious kissing.
Oh
—I tapped my pen against my teeth—
serious kissing.
But Jack never tried anything else. If it was really a race with Rick Mangers to see who could get the furthest the fastest…well then, Jack lost. Big-time.

On purpose? If that was true, then why hadn’t he tried to defend himself, or at least tried to explain?

Maybe it was hard to explain
anything
when you believed you’d lost your last chance at
everything
. I thought back to that night in the cold. Maybe Jack
had
tried to explain. Maybe it was in the way he pounded those baskets. Or in his desperate kiss.

There’s smart in your head, and there’s smart in your heart. I’d once wanted to tell Jack that, but maybe I was the one who needed to be told. I’d listened with my head all my life. Maybe it was time to give my heart an equal chance.

I looked down at my note cards. I could do this. Just like an essay test, or my Life at Prairie Stone columns. Only harder.

Could I write something that would bring Jack and me together again? Probably not. But if I could close just an inch of the space between us, then maybe, just maybe, it was worth it. After all—no risk, no reward.

The dance team wasn’t up to gauntlet-girl caliber in the mean-girl department. Still, anything sent to
the
Jack Paulson would be noted
(Oh, my God, what a total loser!)
, scrutinized
(Can you believe she really wrote that?)
, and subsequently spread around school.

I didn’t need the grief—or multiple sets of acrylic nails prying open any note I might write to Jack. But then,
I
wasn’t writing to Jack.

I pictured the entire dance team huddled over a yearbook, trying to determine just who this Elizabeth Bennet was. Good luck with that. Then I thought about my copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. Did Jack still carry it in the pocket of his letter jacket? Whether he did or not, I guess it didn’t matter. Even if no one else could figure it out, Jack had never been the dumb jock he pretended to be. He’d get it.

The second note was harder. I’d spent half the night brainstorming what to say, but all I kept coming back to was how stupid it was that Moni and I
still
weren’t talking. So I wrote:

I didn’t sign this one. I didn’t have to. Moni could do the math. I hoped whatever answer she came up with, it would be the right one.

On Wednesday roses sprouted all over Prairie Stone High. They bobbed in line in the cafeteria, were greeted with squeals in the classrooms, and seriously disrupted study hall. One rose wasn’t such a big deal. After all, girls banded together, made sure everyone in their group got one. It was something that, in the past, Moni and I vowed never to do.

But more than one flower? Then it was a sure thing. You were cool.

By noon I had collected exactly zero roses. I still hadn’t seen Moni. Coach Miller pulled all the basketball players out of class for extra practice. If the team beat the Wilson Warriors, they’d go to the regional tournament. But that meant Jack’s desk in Independent Reading sat empty.

I was walking down the hall, my mind on three-dollar roses—and what a deal that wasn’t—when I almost missed her. Moni stood near our old meet-up spot just down the hall from the cafeteria doors. She held a folder to her chest, a single rose in her hand. She looked like she was hoping I’d walk past and not look back.

“Hey,” I said.

Moni turned from me. She tried to slip away, but I grabbed her arm. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “The least we can do is talk. Come on, if it makes a difference, I know just how you feel.”

“Yeah right,” Moni said. “No one’s talking about you.”

Not now, of course. But the halls
had
been thick with gossip about Jack and how he’d dumped me. “They were,” I said.

“And half the guys were saying how dumb Jack was for doing it.”

“No way.”

“Way,” said Moni, and I glimpsed a sadder version of that Moni Lisa smile.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

Moni closed her eyes and hugged her folder tighter. Talking in the hall wasn’t getting us anywhere. The gauntlet was empty, and for now, the path to the girls’ bathroom was clear. “Come on,” I said. I walked across the hall and into the restroom, hoping Moni would follow.

At first she didn’t. But by the time I’d checked under the last stall—just in case—I caught Moni’s reflection in the mirror. I studied her face. Nothing about it looked right. Nothing about this whole deal felt right.

“Talk to me?” I said. “Please. If you don’t want to be friends, that’s fine.” Not really, but not knowing was worse. “At least say it.”

Moni slumped against the mirror. “You’re the one with everything to say. Why don’t you start with ‘I told you so’?”

I kept quiet, not because I didn’t have a right to say those words, but to prove to her that I wouldn’t.

“I thought…” Moni closed her eyes. “I thought this was it. You had Jack. I had Rick. Everyone else had a sparkly new life, my mom, my dad. Why not me? But it was all…”

A joke
, I thought. “I know,” I said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” Moni said. “Rick said you sent Jack after him—”

“I did what?”

“You didn’t know?”

“It’s pretty sad. My source for gossip these days is Todd.”

That got a half smile, but it didn’t last.

“Everything’s just so screwed up,” Moni went on. “I don’t know what’s true anymore and what’s fake. Except Rick. That was pretty much all fake. And the ironic thing is,
real
is the reason I started liking him in the first place.”

“I thought it had to do with that wrestling uniform,” I said, but my lame attempt at a joke made Moni’s eyes turn watery.

“That’s what everybody thinks. But it wasn’t because he was so hot. I thought
Brian
was cute. And it wasn’t because he was popular or whatever. I really
liked
hanging out with the kids in Math League and the debate dorks…and you. It didn’t take me very long on the cheerleading squad to figure out I didn’t need new friends. I needed…I don’t know. Something to hold on to, I guess.”

I wanted to be supportive, to say the right thing, but I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“I needed skin,” she said finally. “And bones. And yeah, the muscles didn’t hurt either. Do you know that in all the time that I was Brian’s online girlfriend, he never touched me, didn’t even try to hold my hand, not even once? And then there was Rick. The minute I met him he had his arm around me. It felt solid.
Real.
Like something that couldn’t just disappear. But now, poof.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. And I was. If anyone deserved the real thing, it was Moni.

“I wish we’d never tried out for cheerleading.” She turned the rose by its stem. “Oh yeah. It paid off. Big-time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “At least once a week, we don’t have to worry about what to wear.” I shimmy-kicked and shook invisible pom-poms. “And I don’t know about you, but my school spirit is really shiny these days.”

Moni snorted. It wasn’t a laugh, but it was close.

“So?” I tried. I thought we were almost there, almost back to what we had been. But a look at Moni’s face told me:
Not yet.

“What you did for me with Chantal…,” she started.

“What about it?” I asked.

“The thing is, if it was the other way around?” Moni shut her eyes for a moment. “I’m not sure I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Maybe you would,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know until I did it.”

Moni laughed. That was good, except it didn’t sound so happy.

“So why
did
Jack go after Rick?” I asked, partly out of curiosity, but mostly just to change the subject.

Moni shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I do know I was supposed to be ‘grateful’ to Rick because he fought over me.”

The way she used those air quotation marks around the word “grateful” confused me. “Oh.
Grateful?
” I said when I finally plucked the alternate meaning from my mental vocabulary list.

“Yeah,” Moni said, “really grateful.”

“And…” I looked away. “How grateful were—?” As soon as the words came out, I wished I could stuff them back in.

Moni closed her eyes. “Don’t worry.”

“You sure?” I said.

“Rick Mangers can really be a prick.” Moni opened her eyes. And for the first time, I thought I saw a spark there. “But at least he’s a prick who understands the word no.” A single tear slipped down her cheek.

I pushed past the folder, past the rose, and gave my best friend a hug. The rest could come later. But right now, she needed something real.

Sheila canceled cheerleading practice that afternoon. Then I remembered it was Valentine’s Day. Anyone with glossy red hair and perfect nails probably had better things to do. Besides, Moni and I would’ve been the only ones to show up anyway. I’d spotted most of the other girls on the squad—collectively they could have opened their own flower shop with all the roses they’d received.

For the first time since November, I didn’t have much to do once school got out either. Girls’ basketball, the gymnastics team, and the wrestlers all had away meets this week. The boys’ basketball team wouldn’t play until the rematch with Wilson High on Friday. My homework was caught up. I’d even finished my latest Life at Prairie Stone column.

I did have to fix dinner for Shelby, though. Mom and Dad had taken the day off to eat piroshkis and catch a matinee at the Guthrie Theater. Only in Minnesota could oniony Russian hamburgers be considered a romantic meal.

Shelby and I polished off our reheated tuna noodle hotdish and she headed to her room to categorize the valentines she’d received at school that day. I turned on my laptop and opened my IM program. Moni pinged me right away.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled about watching Moni’s mom and her boyfriend make goo-goo eyes at each other. The probability of bad love poetry didn’t excite me either. But if it meant spending time with Moni (and it didn’t start until after my parents were due home), then…

The poems were at least as agonizing as I’d guessed they would be. Who knew so many words rhymed with hearts? Well, if you count K-Marts and Descartes, that is. The goo-goo eyes between Moni’s mom and Starbucks Boy—as well as the other couples there—were at least as painful. But if Valentine’s Day had to suck it sucked a little less sitting beside my best friend. And hey, we finally had the chance to drown our sorrows in white chocolate mochas. We even ordered the extra whip.

Thursday, the worst possible thing happened. Coach Miller did
not
pull the boys’ basketball team for extra anything, and Jack’s desk did
not
go empty in Independent Reading.

For the past two weeks, the only decent thing about the class had been watching the
Pride and Prejudice
miniseries. One hour each day, the lights were low, the show took my attention, and if I never really forgot Jack was sitting next to me, well, at least I could pretend to. On some days, the miniseries was the only decent thing about school, period.