Intrepid (4 page)

I leaned in and kissed his wrinkled forehead, but he was already in his own world. “Love you,” I said as I grabbed my bag from the floor. When I closed the door behind me, it opened up its own door of relief.
 

Chapter Four

I hated pep rallies. Copious amounts of spirit were being wasted with all that energy expanding and contracting over a mindless sport. Butcher-paper posters plastered the walls with:
Go! Hornets! Go!
,
Tear ‘em up Iago!
, and
GUNner has the GUNS to take us to STAT!
I especially loved the last one, because it reminded me that the creativity and spelling capabilities of this year’s cheerleaders were endless.
 

What I couldn’t bring myself to hate was the energy. I reveled in the way it ebbed and flowed as people connected over something and the way the multiplication of people intensified it around us. Energy made me both love and hate being in large crowds because there was too much chaos to the peace and too much peace to the chaos.
 

I scanned the gym and caught Lindsay’s eye in the fray. She balanced on top of the pyramid and wore a smile a mile wide. “Why do you want to be one of them?” I’d asked her once as she shoved her pom-poms into her duffle bag. The yellow strands were abnormally bright next to her coffee-colored skin before she closed them up under the zipper. “Mama was a cheerleader,” she answered. That was the only explanation needed. If cheerleading was the string that strung her to her mother, who was I to judge? Even if it meant she spent most of autumn amongst pom-poms, glitter, and unoriginal chants, I could try to be understanding. But I didn’t know what I’d do if my best friend’s brain splattered over the gym floor, and every time they tossed her up, I held my breath.
 

Yet another reason to hate pep rallies: the potential for Lindsay landing in a heap of broken bones on the gym floor. I sucked in a breath as she careened back towards the arms of her fellow cheerleaders, and exhaled loudly as they caught her.
 

When I first met Lindsay, her eyes flooded at the corners more often than not. “They were murdered,” she finally told Sully and me one day at lunch. A soggy fry was trapped between her fingers, and she said it in a way that did not invite questioning. Those three words were a confession, and once she admitted them out loud, she stopped deflating into sadness around us. At first, I ached to discover the hows and whys, but I learned to accept. She moved on, and I refused to bring her back into darkness with my questions. “My mom died in a fire,” I said, which prompted Sully to say, “My mom left when I was a baby.” From that moment on, we all had someone who understood, and that’s how patchwork-quilt families form. After a while, you get tired of being misunderstood or pitied, and you start looking for people who love you despite the tragedy following you around.

I leaned against the wall that separated the sets of double doors and played with the pendant in my hands. It was soothing as much as it was pretty, and I found myself fidgeting with it throughout the day. I was perfectly primed for a speedy exit, but it gave me a full view of the bleachers that bent under the weight of the entire student body. Black and yellow painted faces contorted in spirit-rage, and feet pounded to war songs as voices rubbed themselves raw with yelling.
 

Sully stood near me with a camera attached to his face. His life was half-spent looking through the lens, and his current exposé for
The Hornet’s Nest
, our school paper, was titled: “Cheer-world: Up Close and Personal.” So far, he had pictures of the squad picking wedgies caused by overeager bloomers, draping the hallways with overeager glitter, and doing an overeager football player’s homework. Currently, his camera was pointed at the STAT sign, and the click-click of his camera added to the sound of the drum-line’s thrumming.
 

I closed my eyes and felt the sway of energy. I found myself wanting to tap my toes to the music and get pulled into the roar, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Instead, I raced the pendant back and forth on the silver chain and tried to hear the zipper sound it made underneath all the other noises echoing off the gym walls.
 

I pried my lids back open and scanned the crowd. Black and yellow mums hung from nearly every girl, and I directed Sully’s attention towards Crystal Castle as she attempted to keep her top from sliding down too far. The massive flower was concocted of ribbon and laden with plastic bells, plastic teddy bears, plastic tractors, plastic shoes, etc. One string was stickered with CRYSTAL LOVES #54! The whole atrocity made it comically difficult for the poor girl to keep her shirt above the acceptable level of cleavage allowed in school, and Sully dutifully clicked the picture.
 

“How much did that one cost her? Hundred? Hundred-fifty?” He came up for air, postponing the shutter-stop frenzy to comment. I loved the way his chocolate eyes bloomed under dark eyebrows. They were brown in the way that fall leaves sound when they crunch underfoot, and I heard them in more detail whenever he smiled and his cheeks dimpled on his caramel skin. “Should I have gotten you one?”

I slapped him on the shoulder and faux-gagged.
 

“What? Come on, Tex. How can you
not
love this? It’ll be fodder for all your jokes for at least five more years,” he said before disappearing back behind the lens.
 

“Sullivan Oliverez! What do flowers made of ribbon have to do with football? It’s just jocks marking territory… or trying to weigh shirts down so they can see some cleavage. Think about all the money wasted on ribbon alone! It’s gotta be enough to feed an entire city in southeast Asia.”
 

“Hey. Don’t knock cleavage. Perhaps the world could do with a bit more of it.” Sully laughed as I punched him in the arm. “Besides, since when did you become a philanthropist?”
 

“Since when did you start using big words?” I replied.
 

Sully’s response was cut off by Coach Mathenson roaring into the microphone. “Don’t mess with the Hornets, or you’re gonna get stung!” The cliché induced more frenzied yells from the crowd, and it drew my attention to the bleachers. The loud pounding that came from the football players in the reserved section rumbled louder than trains on a track, and the boys sat broad-shouldered and full of self-importance. When my eyes landed on Iago where he sat between Gunner Proctor and Jose Gonzalez, I was surprised to see that he wasn’t staring hungrily at the cheerleaders or growling on demand the way the rest of his teammates were. Instead, his eyes were closed and his face pointed towards the rafters. It was an action that felt familiar, although I’d never seen him do it before.
 

As if he felt me looking at him, his head lowered and his eyes zeroed in on mine. Part of me wanted to look away, but if I did, he’d know I’d been looking at him. Instead of admitting that, I held the stare as if I was looking through him and not at him. Looking at him reminded me of the way his fingers rubbed on my temples and scalp last night. He knew just what to do in order to smooth the wrinkles out of my brain, and after I left Papa this morning, the same type of headache returned. They showed up periodically throughout the rest of the day, trapping electricity like a lightning storm inside the caverns of my skull. I’d sheepishly been trying to mimic Iago’s movement on my temples without much success.
   

As if just by thinking about them, pain decided to approach right then and there. Iago still held my stare. He cocked his head slightly as something that looked like worry coursed through his expression. This only made me glare harder, because it wasn’t his place to worry about me. Then the jerk crossed his eyes in Coach Mathenson’s direction and twirled a pointer finger around his left ear. It was an old signal we used as kids when we thought Ringo was being ridiculous. I didn’t find it as amusing anymore, and reached my hand up to extend the middle finger, but before I could, Sully interrupted. “What are you looking at?”
 

“Nothing.” I jammed my hand into my pocket, thankful I hadn’t given in. Last thing I needed was someone telling Ringo or Mrs. Ortiz that I’d flicked off the entire football team in an attempt to single out Iago.
 

Then the sharp part of the pain hit, and I removed my hands from my pockets to rub my temples.
 

“Headache again?” Sully asked.
 

I nodded. “They’re nothing, really.” My lack of concern didn’t stop Sully from looking at me like I was about to fall apart. He’d witnessed three of my headaches today, and each one sent him into a flurry of questions about my health. “Dude. I’m fine. Seriously.”

“If you say so.” He dropped the camera so that it hung from the sling and put his arm around my shoulder. It only made me notice how he must have grown a foot in the past month and how hard his chest was as my head landed in the crook where his arm connected to his body. “You look like crap.”

I shivered when his breath landed on my skin. Sully’s face was closer than normal, and his eyes widened like he was seeing something new in mine. When his expression softened he looked a little scared, and his arm tightened around me as he leaned in closer so that our foreheads nearly touched and our eyes nearly went crossed. The gym disappeared around the moment, as if the energy of the crowd dissolved into nothing, and the only thing I could feel was the movement in my veins. I moved my face in closer, and waited for it to happen, but then the crowd began to chant on repeat, “Sting, baby, sting!” Sully turned his head towards the commotion, and I tried to slow my breathing. Did Sully almost kiss me in front of the entire school?
 

I stepped out from under the fold of his arms and felt the headache hovering in the background of my skull. “I’m fine. I promise,” I said.
 

“If you say so.” He shrugged his shoulders just as time skipped a beat, and the whole ordeal was over. Not just the moment that he may or may not have tried to kiss me, but the entire pep-rally was finished and disappearing into the past. The drum-line rumbled to a stop, the cheers crescendoed, and the bleachers emptied person by person. With the dimming of the noise came the dimming of the pain, and I escaped out the double doors with all kinds of feelings raging in my heart.
 

Chapter Five
 

The fresh air helped shove the remnants of my headache back as Sully and I raced out of the gym. We always beat the swarm of glee that flooded out behind us, and we hopped into Sully’s Jeep to avoid the rush of traffic out of school.

I pulled my legs up onto the seat and hugged my knees.

“Want to switch things up?” Sully asked as he turned on the engine and shifted into gear.
 

 
I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out at the question.
 

“You realize, your face can get stuck that way.”
 

“Rebecca teach you that line?”
 

Sully’s jaw tightened at the remark. “Rebecca has a big mouth.”
 

“You know, she called you a hottie. You totally have a chance with her if you’re into older women.” I examined the cracks in the leather of my boots, and I traced the weathered veins with my pointer finger. I loved the way they molded to my feet. They were used. They were comfortable.
 

Sully was comfortable too. Together, we had routines. We had habits. Both were things I’d always taken for granted because lately our comfort felt uncomfortable, and he didn’t bite at the joke like he normally would have. We drove the rest of the way trying to navigate small talk. I couldn’t remember a time when talking to Sully felt so forced, and I felt it splintering our friendship in strange places. I could tell something weighty was on his mind, but whatever it was he was keeping to himself.
   

When we pulled up to the plot on the river, I felt a buzzing in my pocket. I fished the phone out and shook my head at the message.
LINDZ: C U @ the game. Wear the dress I left in UR locker or else.

“You okay?” Sully asked. “Is it another headache?”
 

I tried not to let the overly concerned expression on his face bother me. “No. Just Linds being pushy, is all,” I said as I got out. My thumbs sped over the screen to reply:
It’s not Halloween yet, jerkface
. The dress she left me was ridiculous, and it was currently gathering a million wrinkles in the bottom of my backpack.
 

“Can’t wait for football to be over so she can join us after school again,” Sully said. I felt a twinge of unnecessary jealousy that he missed Lindsay as much as I did. I bit my lip and tried to stomp it out. We were all best friends, and I had no right to that reaction.
 

The buzzing replied.
LINDZ: U have no idea what style is.
 

Sully grabbed two beers from the small cooler he kept in the back of his Jeep, and we sat down on the logs that faced the fire pit, although there was no fire in it at the moment. Behind it ran a river that never seemed to be in a rush unless it rained, and rain was something Geronimo hadn’t seen in months. Whenever the sky did decide to open up and dump huge, plopping drops down, we always sat in his Jeep to watch it plink-plunk on the surface of the water.
 

That same plink-plunk played on the roof of my mouth as I took a sip from the bottle. I could almost roll the carbonation with my tongue, and the bubbles were warm, as always. Sully never got ice.
   

“You ever think this is a little morbid?” He pointed the top of his bottle towards the fire ring.
 

“What brings up that question? I was fully expecting a breakdown, play-by-play of how many times Crystal Castle had to pull up her shirt today!”

Again, he didn’t laugh. “It’s just that your parents’ house used to sit right
here
. Just think. Where we are sitting now? This could have been the living room you grew up in. We come here all the time, and we never talk about it. It’s kind of weird, right, the way we come here all the time and drink a beer where your mother, you know…?”