A Non-Blonde Cheerleader in Love (2 page)

No wonder half the girls in school seemed so ready to swoon at the sound of his name. He was definitely drool-inspiring.

“Let’s hear it for K.C.! Junior Olympic champion!” Tara shouted.

K.C. stopped in his tracks, trapped in the metaphorical spotlight. He clutched the strap on his backpack and stared at us all, stunned.

“K.C.! K.C.! K.C.!” everyone chanted, clapping to the beat.

Finally K.C. ducked his head, waved, blushed and smiled. Then Tara beckoned him over. “Speech!” she shouted. “Everyone wants to hear how you’re going to lead the wrestling team to states this year!”

Cheers everywhere. K.C. looked like he’d rather do anything but address the crowd, and my heart went out to him. Some people were just not down with public speaking. (Myself not included. But I guess that’s obvious or I wouldn’t be a cheerleader, choir member and spring musical hopeful.) Still, it seemed like a better idea to do what the masses wanted than to contradict dozens of shouting teenagers hopped up on Starbucks and sugar cereal. Eventually he walked forward and stood next to Tara. The crowd was rapt.

“Uh . . . how am I going to lead the wrestling team to states this year?” he said, looking around. We waited anxiously. “Uh . . . I guess we’ll just win.”

He shrugged and everyone cracked up laughing, cheering some more. His teammates loved it and clapped louder than anyone.

The crowd started to disperse as the wrestling team practically carried K.C. out of the room. Daniel went along with them, all caught up in the testosterone of the moment, I’m sure. Tara looked at her friend and our teammate Phoebe Cook and her shoulders slumped.

“Well. That was worth all the effort,” she said sarcastically.

Just then, my best friend Bethany Goow loped through the front doors, her eyes hidden behind her dark sunglasses, her hair freshly dyed a psychedelic shade of red for the holidays. She looked around at the pom strings on the ground and the banner above.

“What’d I miss?” she asked, yanking the earbuds out of her ears. I could hear the loud wail of electric guitar from ten feet away.

“Nothing you would’ve wanted to be a part of,” I told her as we walked toward the front hall and our lockers.

“What?” she shouted.

“I
said,
‘Nothing you’d want to be a part of! ’ ” I replied. “You’re going deaf with that thing, you know.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll take that into consideration,” Bethany told me, reaching into her bag to shut off her iPod.

“Hey, guys!” Mindy McMahon, another friend and member of the football cheerleading squad, fell into step with us.

“Barbie,” Bethany greeted her with a nod.

“Elmo,” Mindy shot back.

Bethany smirked. “Touché,” she said. “Someone’s learning.”

Mindy shook her head, but I could tell she was proud of herself. It wasn’t every day Mindy was able to come up with a comeback and I was glad that she had. If she had tried to argue the similarities between her physical self and the most famous doll in the universe, Bethany would have definitely won the debate. Tall, naturally beautiful and healthfully tan, Mindy wore a light pink sundress with a blue sweater over it, looking like she’d just stepped out of a 1950s commercial for clothing detergent.

“I kind of feel bad for K.C.,” Mindy said, twirling her blonde hair tightly around her index finger until the tip turned red. “I mean, all that pressure. Everyone counting on you to go undefeated? I don’t think I could handle it.”

“That’s what that was all about? K. C. Lawrence?” Bethany said, incredulous. “I can’t believe I missed it.”

Mindy and I exchanged a confused look. “Are you going all school spirit on us now?” I asked.

“Hardly. But even I can get behind a sport in which hot guys in onesies toss each other around on the floor,” Bethany said as she unwrapped a fresh Blow Pop. “It’s both sexual
and
ridiculous. That’s entertainment.”

Bethany shoved her lollipop in her mouth and grinned. Mindy paused to study her.

“You know, just when I think you might be semi-normal, you go and say something that totally freaks me out,” Mindy said matter-of-factly.

“Intriguing that way, aren’t I?” Bethany replied, picking at a scab on her forearm.

Mindy kept walking. “So, Annisa, are you ready for cheerleading tryouts?”

“I think so. Should be interesting,” I replied.

“Tryouts! Didn’t you just try out? I gotta go through that again?” Bethany whined.

“I’m not trying out,” I told her. “We need to find three new girls to replace Mindy, Whitney and Erin for basketball season.”

“Yeah. We can’t cheer
and
play,” Mindy said.

“No. ’Cause that would be, like, hard,” Bethany said in a Valley girl voice.

We ignored her. Sometimes that’s the only way we can carry out a normal conversation with Bethany around. I loved the girl, but she had this whole “I don’t know when to quit” problem. Especially around Mindy. The two of them had been getting along lately for my benefit, I think, but sometimes Bethany just could not stop herself from picking on Mindy, her polar opposite. Luckily Mindy had proven more than capable of letting the jabs glance off her shoulders.

“Who do you think’s gonna try out?” Mindy asked me.

“I don’t know. But I hope some of the girls from last time come back,” I said. “A few of them were pretty good.”

“Can we please talk about something else?” Bethany interjected. “Anything else other than cheerleading?”

“Yeah! Like that girl Shira,” Mindy said. “She could definitely make it.”

“And I’ll need a new base with you gone,” I said. “She would be great.”

“You guys,” Bethany said, desperate.

“I almost feel bad for whoever makes it, though,” Mindy said. “I mean, the whole Tara Timothy breaking-you-in process?”

We both shuddered. That had not been fun. For anyone.

“I know! I know!
I’ll
try out!” Bethany announced, jumping in front of us and throwing her arms up. Actually, girl had a pretty solid high V going. “I can be a base! Here! I’ll throw you right now!”

And something told me she would do it too.

“Bethany—”

Mindy and I both stopped in our tracks. At the exact same moment we had seen a colorful flyer on the wall behind Bethany. A flyer that took the breath right out of me.

“Ha! I
knew
that would get your attention!” Bethany cheered, taking the lollipop out of her mouth and pointing at us with it. “Like I would ever join the lemming brigade. Ha!”

Mindy and I looked at each other, then looked at the flyer again. Finally Bethany seemed to realize that our eyes were not on her.

“What?” she said, and turned around. I watched the glee slowly register on her face as she read. “Guys? They’re letting
guys
try out for
cheerleading
? Oh, I
love
this school!” Her ensuing laughing fit could have woken the dead.

“This is very not good,” Mindy said.

The sign read, “Tryouts for the basketball cheerleading squad this Friday. All interested girls and BOYS are invited to try out! Informational meeting today at 3:00 P.M. Lecture Hall #210.”

Talk about a holiday surprise. Had Coach Holmes already ODed on eggnog?

“Why didn’t Coach warn us about this?” I wondered.

“This is going to change everything,” Mindy said.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or barf. “It . . .
could
be fun . . . ,” I attempted. After all, with guys on the squad we could do all kinds of new stunts. Huge pyramids, jaw-dropping tosses. It might be exactly what we needed to take our game up a notch.

“Oh, come on, guys! Be serious,” Bethany said. “No male in this school is ever going to show up for that meeting.”

“What makes you so sure?” I asked.

“These gutless wonders?” Bethany said, spreading her arms wide as if to encompass the whole school. “Please. If any of the guys in this place showed even one iota of originality, there would be mass hysteria. We’re talking rain of toads. Cats with nine tails. Babies born with inside-out eyeballs. The whole nine.”

“Nice imagery,” I said.

“Trust me. You have nothing to worry about.”

Down the hall there was a burst of laughter. Bethany’s older brother Bobby—whom I fondly called Lumberjack Bob because of his massive size and impressively dark stubble—was strutting around in a little circle, wagging his hips and flailing his arms comically while chanting “SDH! SDH!” in a high-pitched voice. His friends were practically rolling on the floor with laughter. Like this was such an inspired and original performance.

Yeah. A guy trying out for the cheerleading squad would pretty much be signing himself up for endless public mockery. That much was clear.

“I rest my case,” Bethany said. “Your precious squad is gonna be fine.”

2

“I think it’s going to be so cool having guys on the squad,” Lindsey Ryan said that afternoon.

“As long as they’re the
right
guys,” Sage put in.

Good old Sage. Always reminding us there were right people and wrong people. What would we ever do without her? Tumble into complete and total social oblivion, I suppose.

It was five minutes after three and the entire squad—minus Mindy, Whitney and Erin—had gathered in front of the blackboard in lecture hall #210. We were supposed to be lined up in height order, but instead we were huddled into a clump, speculating about this whole guys-on-the-squad thing. So far, of the twelve or so cheerleading hopefuls seated in the room, not one of them was sporting a Y chromosome. It looked like Bethany was right. The guys of SDH were just not ready to take on cheerleading.

“Please. If a single guy has the guts to walk into this room, I’ll pay each of you a million dollars,” Chandra Albohm said in her gravelly voice, checking her newly dyed brown hair for split ends. Up until nationals I had been the only non-blonde on the squad—yes, Sand Dune High is the Official Land of the Blondes (we’re thinking about having bumper stickers made up)—but then Chandra had decided to dye her stressed strands back to their natural color. And believe me, two was
definitely
company.

“I think you’re going to be surprised,” Autumn Ross protested. “There are a few enlightened males in this school.”

“Oh yeah? Name one,” Chandra demanded.

Autumn stared back at her blankly and a slight crinkle formed between her two white-blonde eyebrows. Autumn was very into New Age stuff like meditating and crystals and aromatherapy and chakras, but she wasn’t yet all-knowing. Although I think she was working on it in her spare time. Still, she couldn’t seem to come up with an answer.

“Yeah. Didn’t think so,” Chandra said.

“I’ll think of one! You know I don’t like being put on the spot!” Autumn said, pouting her lips.

“I just can’t believe she would do this without telling us,” Phoebe said. “This is our squad. Don’t we get to have an opinion?”

“Apparently not,” Tara said flatly.

Her expression was even more pinched than usual. Everyone had assumed she, as captain, had known about the change, but she had already confessed that she was as clueless as the rest of us—something that clearly caused her great pain to admit. By not trusting Tara with her plans, Coach had lumped her in with the rest of us lowly minions, and Tara
loved
to be above us all. I think she lived for it, actually.