Read Between the Lines (22 page)

My brother is not the kind of brother who loves and adores and protects his little sister. My brother wishes I didn’t exist. The feeling is mostly mutual.

“Where’s Claire?” I ask.

Sammy sighs. “I heard she went home sick.”

Heard.
It seems strange that she didn’t get a message from Claire.

“She thinks she’s too good for us,” Grace had said this morning in a dismissive way. And that was what Claire was, I guess. Dismissed.

“I like your hair,” I tell Sammy. She always waits to pull her hair back until the last minute. She seems to know she looks best with it down. Long and wavy and perfect.

“Yours too!” She smiles and touches my braid.

“Are you excited for the game?” she asks. Sammy is always so perky.

I smile and nod.

“I’m glad you’re on the team, Lace. Everyone is. We really needed” — she pauses, and I see her realize that what she was about to say would come out wrong — “you,” she finishes.

Me.

I know what that means without the missing phrase before it. What they need is
someone like me.
And what that means is someone my size. Every cheerleading squad needs a few girls
like me.
Strong girls. Big girls. Girls who can hold the others up.

Sammy’s expertly curled hair whips my face when she twists around to slap Jacob for making a kissing sound in her ear from behind. I squirm.

He gets up and pushes his way into our seat and practically sits on our laps. This seat is not meant for three.

I slide closer to the side of the bus, pressing my shoulder against the cold metal.

Sammy angles her knees into the aisle like they are a swinging door. Jacob wedges himself between us even more tightly. He makes a point to push his muscular arm against my soft one. Hard.

He is carrying a basketball, as if he needs it to define who he is. A player. A jock. An asshole?

Or just a message:
I’m the star.

Like we all don’t know that already. Like his stupid letter jacket with all the pins and patches doesn’t spell it out. MVP.
Most Valuable Player.
I like
Most Vile Prick
better.

This doesn’t make me sound like a very good cheerleader. But I’m not here for the boys. I’m here because the Girls asked me to be. Me. No one ever picks me for teams. No one ever picks me for anything. They just pick
on
me.

My ex–best friend, Stephen, said the Girls are only friends with me because of Ben. He said Grace was desperate to save their relationship and she could keep better tabs on him if she had me to help.

She’s just using you, Lace.
Why else would she want to be friends with you?

Sometimes I think if he hadn’t said that, we would still be friends.

Even though he apologized, I know he meant it. How can you stay friends with someone who would say something so mean, even if he was just being honest?

But then there’s the other matter. The
other
matter. Of Stephen and Ben. And I’m not sure what to think about that.

Jacob strums the ball with one hand as if he’s playing an instrument. The hollow sound makes me feel empty. Like he is tapping
me
, and there is nothing inside.

With his other hand, he reaches for Sammy’s perfect pink knee and taps that too. She flashes her polished-white teeth at him. His hand slides farther up her thigh.

He is chewing Trident gum. The blue package flavor. It’s my mom’s favorite. There is no other reason I would recognize his breath. It makes me feel sick.

He looks at me once. Just once. His eyes travel from my face, down my chest to my lap, and my legs. I try to raise my knees up to make my legs look skinnier and erase the dimples, but he’s already done looking. Being disgusted.

Tap-tap tappity-tap.

Hollow. Empty.

Sometimes I think my mother was right. This skirt. This sweater. This outfit. Is not the right costume for me.

But the Girls told me that I would “be great.” And that they could “really use me.” And that they “needed a strong girl” to help with formations.

“You’re the foundation,” Grace told me. “You have the most important job of
all.
”

I believed her.

At practice, I let the size zeros climb up me. Tiny feet on my thighs leaving red imprints. I brace my elbows and place my hands out flat for another step, up to my shoulders.

I am a human jungle gym. A stepladder. Every day.

But I am part of a squad, too. And that’s what I like. I like having the same “costume” as everyone else. I like hearing my voice, mostly in unison with all the other girls. I like that Claire always whispers
sorry
as she climbs up me, as if she senses the humiliation I might feel.

The Girls are nice to me. I know I make them look even better than they already do. Stand next to me and you will feel like a supermodel. My presence makes everyone feel better about themselves.

It’s not that I’m obese. Just chunky. When I was younger, my mother called my folds “baby fat” and said as long as I ate healthy, I would outgrow it. But I think she was just trying to convince herself. After all, she never outgrew hers.

When the Girls saw me staring at the cheerleading tryouts flyer, they told me I should try out. Grace actually hopped up and down.

“You’d be a great addition to the squad!” Sammy agreed. Sammy is my favorite.

I felt my cheeks get hot. I shook my head and laughed.

“Why is that so funny?” Grace asked.

At first I thought she was offended. “Me?” I asked. “A cheerleader?”

“Why not?” She seemed to genuinely want to know.

“Look at me,” I said.

She shrugged. “You’re beautiful!”

I looked down at my stomach. “And fat.”

“Don’t say that,” Claire said.

“Besides, we need all body types,” Grace added.

“Yeah,” Sammy said. “You should come to tryouts. We’re not like TV cheerleaders. We’re nice.”

We’re nice.

It seemed like a promise.

“It’s a big commitment, though,” Grace said. “Joining the squad is like joining a second family. We practice every day after school. We spend a
lot
of time together.”

She made this sound like it could be a good thing or a bad thing. But to me, it sounded all good. Time away from my mom. Time with my new friends. Time with
nice
people.
Family.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“They’ll destroy you,” Stephen told me.

But I didn’t listen.

“A real friend would be supportive,” I said.

“A real friend tells the truth,” he replied. “Because I care about you.”

“You care more about Ben,” I said. “Even though you know he treats me like dirt.”

I was a real friend telling the truth too.

But neither of us wanted to hear it.

Jacob shifts on the seat so his body angles away from me. His last name crawls across his back in fuzzy letters:
Richarde.
French for Dick.

Someone snickers behind us.

“Do it.”

“Do it, man!”

A car honks its horn. I turn to see a line of middle fingers sticking out the row of windows behind us. They look like a formation of angry soldiers. I check to see if Ben is part of this stupidity, but he’s just staring miserably out the window. Grace sits next to him, also looking miserable. I’ve tried, but I just don’t understand what it is about Ben that Grace is so in love with. I know he’s my brother, but he treats her like crap. Not to mention the other thing I know about him.

The brakes on the bus screech at the next traffic light.

“Hey!” the bus driver yells. “The next finger I see is mine!”

More snickering.

“She wishes,” Jacob mutters.

“I’ll give her my finger,” someone toward the back says suggestively.

Sammy laughs uncomfortably. “Gross.”

Jacob’s fingers walk higher up her thigh. “What about you?” he whispers at her, loud enough so I’ll hear, too.

She looks confused. “What?”

I turn away. Press myself harder against the cold metal. I do not want to be part of this conversation. I do not want to be in this seat. But Jacob elbows me, as if he wants me to pay attention.

He presses his middle finger into Sammy’s thigh and makes a swirling motion, then moves the finger as if it’s a person walking up her thigh. It peeks under the hem of her skirt.

“Stop it.” Sammy pushes his hand back down toward her knee. But the finger person comes back. It hesitates at the hem. Waits. For permission?

Sammy shoves his hand away again. He whispers something in her ear I can’t hear.

I study the back of the seat in front of me. There are six different-size pieces of petrified gum stuck to it. Two pinkish-gray. One brownish-red. One light green. One bright purple. One baby blue. I guess the flavors. Strawberry. Cinnamon. Spearmint, obviously. Grape, also obvious. Winter mint.

Each one is squished flat. You could probably see the person’s fingerprint on them. I wonder if they were all put there by the same person. A kid? A boy? A girl? I wonder what the person was thinking as he or she pushed the gum onto its final resting place. I’m going to guess it was a girl. A mad girl. Or a sad girl. Who likes gum.

Why can’t she just put it back in the wrapper and throw it away later? Because she doesn’t want to make the effort. Because she doesn’t care. Or maybe she is trying to be the “bad girl.” Maybe she is trying to make a statement. It’s probably not the best one. Right now, the statement is telling me this girl doesn’t have a gum preference and she doesn’t mind staring at her own disgusting petrified chewed-up gum day after day. And she doesn’t care that the rest of us have to look at it. And she isn’t worried about brushing her backpack or sleeve against the gum when she stands up. So that must mean . . .

She doesn’t care about herself. And maybe no one else does, either.

Maybe she feels like a chewed-up, spit-out piece of gum herself.

I feel sorry for this girl I don’t know. If I knew who she was, I would try to be her friend.

“I said stop it!” Sammy says louder than before.

Jacob is trying again to reach up Sammy’s skirt. I don’t want to see, but the movement from the corner of my eye distracts me.

Jacob sighs in an exasperated way.

I don’t know why she lets him sit next to her.

Jacob
Richarde.

The Dick.

I snicker. I can’t help it.

“Freak,” Jacob whispers at me before he gets up and moves back to the seat behind us.

Sammy sits quietly and stares at the gum.

I wonder if she feels chewed up now, too.

The away team’s school gym is smaller than ours. The bleachers are creaky. Jacob sits down and rocks back and forth, making a rude gesture that is supposed to be him having sex with the air. The rest of the boys crack up as expected, even Ben. The cheerleaders roll their eyes. I just stare. When Jacob notices me, he widens his eyes and rocks toward me, like I’m the one he wants to have sex with. Only, I know he doesn’t, so I look away while all the boys laugh even harder. I don’t check to see if Ben does.

The coach walks over and tells the boys to suit up in the locker room. I am glad to see them go.

Across the gym floor, the other team’s fans shake cowbells at us like an angry mob. They stomp their feet to the song playing through speakers on the ceiling.

“We Will Rock You,” by Queen.

It’s such a weird way of saying,
We are going to win.

I bet that’s not even what the song is about.

Grace gathers us into a huddle. “Remember to smile,” she tells us. “And enunciate your words.” She says this last very slowly, stressing each syllable and moving her mouth in an exaggerated way. Like her lips have a life of their own. Then she hands us each a lemon drop. I don’t even know why. Something to do with
e-nun-ci-a-tion
? I unwrap the clear plastic and put the drop in my mouth. The outside is sweet and sugary but then turns sour. The other girls make faces as they reach their own sour middles. But no one complains. We just keep sucking.

Even though all I taste is sour, in this moment, being part of this circle with our arms tight around one another’s shoulders, I feel the sweetness of being part of something.

“Where’s Claire?” one of the girls asks.

“She went home sick from school,” Grace explains. “So, Megan, you’ll take her position.”

Sammy makes a sad face. I can tell she misses her.

I wonder if Claire was really sick, or just sick of us. The way we ignored her this morning, I wouldn’t blame her.

When it’s time to introduce the teams, we follow Grace in a perfectly formed line with our hands on our hips and our red-and-white pompoms shaking at our sides. Each step is a double swish.

Swish-swish.

Swish-swish.

If anyone goes out of step, the rhythm will break. I concentrate on my swishing and try to ignore the way my thigh fat jiggles to the whisper-beat of the pompoms.

Jiggle-swish.

Jiggle-swish.

When we get to the corner of the gym where our team will make their grand appearance, we form two lines facing each other. We raise our pompoms in the air and join them with the girls across from us to make a red-and-white tunnel ceiling for the boys to run through. My bridge partner is usually Claire, so now I get the skinniest of the skinny girls, Megan. She is chewing gum, which is against the rules. For a brief moment I imagine she is my Gum Girl. I imagine she is more than what Stephen used to say about the cheerleaders and especially the Girls. That they’re empty. She smiles at me and I smile back. We press our pompoms together, sealing the tunnel roof.