What Happens Next (9 page)

Kirsten still has me blocked and I’m too gutless to try to talk to her in person. She and Paige avoid me as though I were carrying typhoid. To chase after them, especially spouting on about the woes of cheerleading, seems desperate and wretched. I sit in my cubicle, stunned. I want to talk to somebody about this, but I can’t. I know cheerleading is stupid. I know this. Why should I care, right? I mean, it’s cheerleading, for god’s sake. You might even wonder why I would do such a stupid thing as try out for cheerleading in the first place. True, I did it because Kirsten dared me to, but I also did it because…

… well…

… I did it because I wanted to be a cheerleader.

Ugh.

So there you have it. I wanted to be a cheerleader.

And I’m good at it. You might think a bigger girl like me wouldn’t be capable of a back handspring or a toe touch or a double side split, but you’d be wrong. Because this one is very capable of it. Liam’s dad taught me how to do a back handspring in the fifth grade, and I never forgot it. So sue me. I wanted to wear a cute uniform and shake pom-poms and possibly have a boy or two look at me for a change. A fat lot of good it did me. No boy has ever looked at me in my uniform and thought anything but,
Wow! That’s one big-ass cheerleader!

It’s so stupid, I know. Especially now, after what’s happened.

But still, it irks me that I’ve been kicked off. Not because I won’t get to cheer anymore; I’ll get over that. In fact, I’m already over it. I was over it three games into football season when the sparkle wore off and I realized that the view from the pyramid was exactly the same as the view from the bleachers. I stayed in it because I couldn’t give Starsha and her coven of harpies the satisfaction of seeing me quit. So losing the actual cheering isn’t what’s bothering me. What’s bothering me is that
he
took it from me.

He took my most precious thing, and now he’s taken my most stupid, idiotic thing, too. And I get to hear Starsha remind me about it every day for the next eight weeks.

I look over the cubicles, at the tops of people’s heads—at Starsha, Kirsten, and Tate.

I cannot sit in this class for the next eight weeks.

I’m throwing up the white flag. I’m embracing something I’ve always despised: I’m quitting. I am quitting this class. I am dropping web page development.

“I want to drop web page development for pottery,” I say to the guidance counselor, hoping to god he will say yes.

“Sorry. Pottery’s full.”

He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. His carefully groomed soul patch and ornately shaped sideburns cry out to me for acceptance.
See, kids… I’m just like one of you….

“Okay, then cooking.”

“No dice. Canceled—not enough people signed up.”

I go moist in the armpits. I cannot sit in that class every day for the next eight weeks. I will go completely cuckoo, rip my hair out, and be hauled out of the computer lab, bald and screaming.

“Well, is anything else available?”

He looks over the catalog on his computer.

“Nope, sorry.”

“Is there anything at all that I can do for the period? Office assistant? Writing tutor?”

Long pause.

“Well…”

“What? What is it? I’ll take anything.”

“Well, all I have available is an open position in the audiovisual department.”

“You mean like an aide?” I say, and instantly conjure images of those creepy burnout guys in wifebeaters, the guys who push dusty TVs around the halls, reeking of cigarettes.

“Yes, but you have a pretty good GPA and I don’t think that, with the college prep track you’re on, AV would be appropr—”

I interrupt him. “I’ll take it.”

“Yes. Well, while we have almost two thousand kids here at Lakewood and while the audiovisual aides provide a valuable service to the student body—”

He stops abruptly, then continues. “Please, who are we kidding here? We both know they sign up for AV to get out of taking real classes and the school calls it a service because it keeps troublemakers out of their hair for an hour. Computer science courses are much more suited for you. Besides, you’ll be stuck down there the whole grading period with only one other student, and you might not like—”

I lean forward and look into his eyes.

“I said, I’ll take it.”

I head to where the audiovisual department is located. Basement level. A land I’ve not yet ventured to in my two and a half years at Lakewood High. I pass several storage closets; a service elevator; and then, peering in through a little window, what appears to be a sad little “Faculty Only” exercise room containing mismatched free weights and an antiquated treadmill. Finally, at the end of the corridor, I find another door that reads: AUDI ISU L DEPT, and underneath the sign, someone has carved KNOCK OR DIE.

I rap lightly, which causes a flurry of activity on the other side. The door creaks open, and standing before me is Corey Livingston, the biggest stoner at Lakewood High, all six-foot-three, two-hundred-plus pounds of him. He’s bleary-eyed, and his tousled, longish hair is sticking up on one side. He’s wearing about fifty T-shirts, and the top one, which says sdmf, while technically clean, looks like it was pulled from a Dumpster. He’s not fat—not yet, anyway. He’s just big and tall, and you know that those love handles he doesn’t have yet, they’re in there somewhere, waiting patiently for a six-pack of beer or pizza slice too many.

He mumbles while rubbing at his eyes and yawning.

“All the video recorders are signed out until tomorrow.”

“I don’t need a video recorder. I’m supposed to come down here and help.”

“Help what?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what it is you people—I mean—what an audiovisual aide does exactly.”

He finally takes a good look at me. His face perks up a bit, like he recognizes me or something. He looks me up and down. Not in a creepy way; more like he can’t believe it’s me. I get self-conscious of the way I’m dressed: jeans, Abercombie & Fitch hoodie, Chuck Taylors.

I cross my arms over my chest to conceal the big A&F logo emblazoned across the front of me—the “A” and “F” stretched out by the width of my chest, and the “&” sitting all tiny and shrunken in the middle. He probably thinks I’m some bourgeois poser. And why shouldn’t he? I’m wearing the uniform, right?

“I know who you are. You’re that cheerleader who—”

He stops. His mouth hangs open. I can see the unspoken words ballooning out:
got into all that trouble on the ski trip.

God, and he smells like cigarettes, too. Gross.

I grunt with disgust, then turn and walk back down the hall. Forget this crap. No way am I spending the next eight weeks with this loser, what with him towering over me in judgment, reeking of Marlboros.

“Wait!”

I stop and turn. He ducks back inside the room, like he needs to get something, and comes back out holding a DVD and a broom.

“You need to take this movie on global warming or some bullshit up to room 208.”

He pulls a dollar out of his wallet and tucks it inside the cover of the video. Then he sets the case on the floor and swats the whole thing down the hall with the broom. It almost slides past me before I stop it with my foot.

“And hit the cafeteria on your way back. I need a Dr Pepper.”

He walks back into the AV room, shutting the door behind him.

My disgust morphs into rage. I stomp up the steps to room 208 with a thin trickle of steam pouring from my ears. Over my dead body is a hulking loser of the Living Stoner’s magnitude going to strip me of my last shreds of self-respect. I bang on the door of room 208, ready to toss the DVD into the room like a Frisbee.

I’m thrown for a loop when Paige opens the door.

We stand looking at each other.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says.

And then the apology comes rolling out.

“I’m so sorry, Paige. What I did was really stupid. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

She looks behind her at the teacher, who is busy shuffling papers at her desk. The class is working in groups, and it’s noisy. Paige steps outside into the hallway to talk to me, leaving the door slightly cracked.

“Look,” she says. “I get that you’re sorry. But my parents flipped their shit, Sid. I’m in total lockdown.”

“Maybe my mom or I could talk to them?” I offer, wincing.

“No, that’s not a good idea,” she says, looking down, embarrassed.

Then the truth sinks in. The truth about how Paige’s parents have never really cared for our friendship. I’d never given them a reason to dislike me, but I’ve always had this feeling that they’d prefer that Paige ditch me. It has more to do with my mom than anything. Oh, the drive-by digs that Mrs. Daniels has lobbed about my mother being “twice-divorced,” about Liam and me being “latchkey kids.” Every time I see her, she makes a point of asking if my mom’s dating anyone new, chipper-like, as if she cares a particle about my mom and her happiness. She’s just digging for dirt. She even referred to Liam as my “
half
brother” once—“How’s your little
half
brother doing, Sid?” Paige is mortified by her mom’s sneaky little barbs, so she rarely invites me over.

Well, Mrs. Daniels may have not had a legit reason to despise Sid Murphy before, but now she sure does. I practically wrapped that reason up with a shiny bow and a handwritten card that says,
You were right. Like mother, like daughter. Skanks to the bone.

The teacher calls for Paige, asking who’s at the door.

I take the money out of the DVD and hand the video over to Paige.

“Maybe when things cool off,” she says timidly, stepping back inside.

I don’t say anything back. I walk away, fighting back the tears that are pricking my eyes. As I walk down the hall, I harden my heart and think,
Fine. Be that way. I don’t need friends. I don’t need anyone.
My determination not to cry grows into anger on the way to grab the Living Stoner’s pop from the vending machine. I head back down to the basement—while shaking his Dr Pepper up like a can of spray-paint.

I open the AV door and see him leaned back in a chair, practically sliding down out of the seat with his head thrown back, mouth open. The sdmf shirt is now off, rolled up and covering his eyes. The top shirt is now vintage Billy Idol. I slam the door, and the Living Stoner jumps in his seat. His earbuds are jerked from his head and his shirt mask falls into his lap. Thrash metal is playing so loudly I can hear it from across the room.

“
Let’s just get it all out now,” I say. “Make your comments, your jokes. Get it all out of your system. Let’s talk all about how Sid Murphy slept around on the ski trip and is such a big, fat whore, how she was so hell-bent on getting laid and is such a raving slut…. Woo-hoooo!”

I throw my arms over my head and wave them around like a lunatic.

“I don’t mind, because I like to talk. In fact, I have lots to say. Like how you, for instance, took a little vacation last year to go to juvie and spent ninety days at Club Cuyahoga for dealing drugs.”

He looks at me and starts smiling. He’s getting a charge out of my tirade, which makes me even more nuts.

“Oh, you think it’s funny? Who are you to judge me, anyway? A half-baked, pothead, ex-juvie thug?”

I rear back to launch the Dr Pepper at him and he throws his arms up over his face.

“Whoa! Killer! Calm down!”

I stop mid-throw and wonder why it is that I’m unloading on this stoner I don’t even know. Why him? Why not hunt down the person I really hate, the one who caused all this, and unload on him?

“No. I don’t think it’s funny. I think
you’re
funny,” he says. “You wanna try and fight me or something, Murphy? Jesus, settle down.”

He clears his throat and his chuckling tapers off.

“Relax, Irish. I mean, we’re all guilty of something, right?”

I walk over and set the can of pop in front of him on the table.

“Your Dr Pepper,” I say with bitter contempt, “and don’t call me Killer, or Irish, or anything that isn’t my name. My name? Is Sid.”

“Fine, jeez, whatever,
Sid
. Why so much hate? Personally, I think it rocks that one of you cheerleaders finally put down the Kool-Aid and joined the rest of us plebes in our lowly quest for fun.”