I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader (11 page)

“Wow,” I said. “You’ve won a lot of competitions.”

Coach Holmes looked over her shoulder. “Oh, yeah, I guess. But I’ve lost as many as I’ve won.”

“It doesn’t look like it,” Mindy said.

“Take a closer look,” Coach Holmes said as she came out with a few skirts and tops. “Those pictures in the middle, there’s no trophy. We still had fun, though.”

I smiled. It was nice to know our coach wasn’t just about winning. Especially since it seemed that was all that mattered to our captain.

“Here. These should work,” Coach Holmes told us, handing each of us a uniform. She added a white SDH Cheerleader
T-shirt and a pair of blue shorts with a little white megaphone on the leg to each pile. “Don’t drive yourselves nuts with those cheers tonight. I’m sure you’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Mindy and I said in unison.

“So wear your uniforms to school with white ankle socks. You both have white cheerleading sneakers, right?” she asked.

“I have Sage’s extra pair,” Mindy said.

“Mine have red and black stripes,” I said.

“Well, they’ll have to do for now, but I’ll order you both some new ones tonight,” she said. “What size?”

“Oh . . . uh . . . five and a half,” I said, surprised. “How much are they?”

“They’re considered part of the uniform, so the school foots the bill,” she said. “But you two are going to have to buy competition uniforms, ribbons, practice uniforms and sweats.”

Holy shopping spree, Batman. Number signs floated through my head like I was some crazed Scrooge McDuck cartoon.

“Don’t worry,” Coach said with a laugh when she saw our faces. “We’ll figure it all out over the next couple of days. Now, when you’re in uniform, it’s no nail polish, no jewelry, and hair goes up.” She paused and looked at my forehead. “Got any good, soft headbands?” she asked.

“I’ll get some,” I told her.

“Good. Make sure they’re light blue, white or yellow. Ask Whitney where she gets hers. She’s been wearing them ever since she chopped her hair off last year.”

“Okay,” I said. At least the only other short-haired-girl on the team was the only other girl on the team who was talking to me. Maybe it was short-haired-girl solidarity.

“See you tomorrow,” Coach said, dismissing us.

Mindy and I turned and headed for the door, clutching our uniforms to our chests. My head felt like it was bursting with information. It was exhausting. And I still had to go home and practice for hours. What was I thinking?

“Oh, and ladies?” Coach Holmes called out, for the first time showing the infectious smile that I’d seen in all her pictures. “Welcome to the squad.”

“We are the Crabs! The Mighty Sand Dune Crabs! Stand up and shout for the Mighty Sand Dune Crabs!”

You know, the more times you say the word
crabs
the weirder the word starts to sound.

“Crabs,” I said to myself, staring into my full-length mirror, which I had been practicing in front of for an hour. “Crabscrabscrabscrabscrabs.”

My bedroom door, which was already ajar, creaked all the way open. My father stood in the hall, eyeing me warily.

“Michella!” he called. “I think all the cheerleading has finally gotten to her brain.”

“Say crabs, like, ten times and you’ll understand,” I said.

“Twenty-five cents, please,” he said, holding out his hand and smirking.

I tipped my head back. “Oh . . . 
crabs.
” I shook a quarter from the South Park bank where I keep my like-quarter stash and handed it to him. Sometimes I think if I could just stop saying
like
, I could have a wardrobe that rivaled Gwyneth Paltrow’s.

“So listen, UNLV called and asked me to come out and give a guest lecture,” my father said as he pocketed my cash. “Your mom and I are going to Vegas!”

“Vegas, Baby! Vegas!”

My dad looked at me blankly, like he always did when I made any kind of pop-culture reference. Mom, Gabe and I
had given him a DVD player last Christmas and so far all he’d watched on it were IMAX movies.

“When?” I asked.

“Sunday. We’ll be gone for a little over a week,” he said. “They wanted us to leave on Saturday and attend a reception, but I said no way. I was not going to miss my daughter’s first game as a Fighting Crab.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said with a grin.

His brow furrowed. “Crab,” he said. “Crabcrabcrabcrab. . . . You’re right. That’s an odd word.” Then he turned and walked down the hall. I heard him muttering the crab mantra until his office door closed behind him.

I returned to my reflection. Those pink walls were still glaring at me, stark and cotton candy–esque. With my parents leaving, I was going to have to put off the paint job a little while longer. Unless, of course, I did it myself. But my mother would kill me if I robbed her of the bonding artistic experience and the obligatory paint fight. I sighed. This place was never going to feel like home.

The phone rang and I dove for it. I had already called Jordan to tell her the good news about the squad and I knew it would only take her five minutes to call everyone I knew. This had to be one of the crew calling to congratulate me.

“Hello?”

“Dude! Wassup?”

It was Gabe.

“First of all, I’m not a dude. Secondly, ‘wassup’ was over, like, five years ago,” I said, sitting down on my bed.

“You said ‘like’! Twenty-five cents!” Gabe announced.

“Whatev,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”

“I just called to tell you I’m coming home for a few days to chill with my li’l sis.”

“You mean you heard Mom and Dad are going to Vegas
and you want to abuse our pool with your friends,” I shot back.

“You know me far too well,” Gabe said. “You don’t mind if me and a couple of the guys crash, do ya?”

“No, as long as it’s just a
couple
of guys. You are not turning our new house into party central,” I said.

“Annisa! You hurt me! I would never—”

“Do I need to start listing your many offenses? Okay, how about the weekend Mom and Dad were in Boston and you had all those people over and my stereo mysteriously disappeared? Or when you were in tenth grade and you wanted the seniors to think you were cool, so you invited the entire school over and the back deck collapsed. Need I go on?”

“Don’t you realize I’ve grown?” Gabe lamented.

“Please. It doesn’t matter what personality you adopt, there’s always a party animal lurking underneath,” I said. “The difference is, I have to live in this house. You destroy it and I suffer the consequences.”

“Okay, killjoy. No parties!” Gabe said.

“You swear?”

“I swear!”

“Great! Then I’d love to have you,” I said brightly.

I hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, staring up at the stucco swirls in my ceiling. It would actually be kind of nice to have Gabe around for a few days. He has this way of making everything fun, except, of course, in those moments he feels the inexplicable need to torture me. But he was bringing home friends. And whomever he was hanging out with these days, I was sure they were beyond hot. Somehow they always are.

The phone rang again and I sat up straight and grabbed it. This time, it was Mindy. My first phone call from a new
Florida friend. I had to write this down in my journal.
October 15, 8:46 PM. I officially reclaim my blip on the social radar.

“Are you freaking out? I’m freaking out!” she said.

“Why are you freaking out?” I asked.

“There are so many cheers! And we don’t even know the pyramid yet!” Mindy said. “Sage just told me we’re going to have a practice during third period to learn it. What if I mess it up?”

“Hey, if anyone’s gonna mess it up, it’ll be me,” I told her, attempting to calm her.

“That’s true,” she said.

I blinked. “Hey!”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Mindy said. “Okay, I need more practice. See ya.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

I sat there for a moment, my heart pounding. Tomorrow the entire student body and all the teachers and administrators were going to be watching us cheer. It would be the first time most of them laid eyes on me. If I did screw up, it was going to be the first impression to end all first impressions.

I stood up shakily and returned to the mirror. More practice seemed like a good idea.

The next morning, I could barely move. Every muscle in my body ached thanks to Coach Holmes’ insane workouts and all the new stunts I’d learned. Plus, I could barely keep my eyes open after practicing half the night. I dragged myself up to school in my Sand Dune High cheerleading uniform with clashing cheerleading sneakers, wondering how I was even going to be able to lift my arms for the pep rally. Then, when I walked in the door, the weirdest thing happened—some guy said hi to me. He just walked by and said “Hi” and kept walking
like he’d known me my entire life. I had never set eyes on him before.

Must’ve been a mistake
, I thought.

Oh, yeah. He mistook you for one of the other hundreds of short brunettes walking around the school.

Then a pair of younger girls said hi to me as well. And a couple of guys in soccer jackets walked by me and said, “Whaddup, Sand Dune!” They turned and walked backward until I lifted my hand (ouch) and waved. I heard that a few more times on my way to homeroom: “Whaddup, Sand Dune!” Apparently it was some kind of battle cry.

Each time someone acknowledged my existence, I felt my chin rise a little higher. It was like now that they saw me in their uniform, I was suddenly one of them. “Dress the part,
be
the part.” That was what my drama teacher Mr. Creech used to say.

Bethany lost what little color she had when she saw me in homeroom, but she still spoke to me, which was a good sign. Sage wouldn’t even look in my direction. I just hoped she and the rest of the squad would keep an eye on me later when I was flying over their heads.

The third-period practice got me out of Spanish class, which was good because we were conjugating irregular verbs that I had never even heard of. The practice went fairly well. Even though I was aching, once I stretched out and started moving, the pain wasn’t so bad. I didn’t forget any of the words to any of the cheers, and if I missed moves, I was able to fudge them over well enough to escape notice.

In a few weeks you’re going to know all this backward and forward
, I told myself whenever I started to sweat.
All you gotta do is get through today.

The pyramid was the toughest part. I was going up in a
liberty on the left side with Mindy, Chandra and Autumn basing. My right foot was supposed to land on the shoulder of this girl Kimberly, who was going up in a double-base stand in the middle. On the other side of the pyramid, Phoebe was mirroring me with her left foot landing on Kimberly’s other shoulder. Until that day I had never done a liberty in my life, so I lost my balance the first couple of times. Chandra drew actual blood from her tongue from biting it, but I was grateful for her efforts. The last thing I needed was another public bashing. Mercifully, by the end of practice, I had nailed the stunt at least ten times.

“Not bad,” Chandra said reluctantly. “For a spaz.”

I beamed. That was high praise from a member of this team.