Most Likely to Succeed (4 page)

Finally (regrettably) he pulled his hand away and looked at me. “Would I patronize you?”

“No, but you also would never be nice to me, even if you were faking.”

“That is correct.” He bent his head toward me. The lighter top layers of his hair fell forward, revealing the darker blond underneath. “Go ahead, touch my hair. It’s this strange, exotic thrill. Get your revenge.”

Any second he would decide he’d proven his point and sit up. I could be patient. But while I waited, my eyes fell on his nape, where his thick hair became light and fine. I couldn’t help wondering what it felt like.

He repeated, “Touch it,” which I now realized was going to attract some unwanted attention from the other girls in the van if they couldn’t see what we were really doing. He groped in my lap for my hand. This was dangerous. My cheerleading
skirt rode up so high when I sat down that my boy shorts underneath almost showed. His palm brushed across the top of one of my thighs, then the other. He found my hand and placed it on the back of his neck.

My fingers sank into his hair. I needed to pull them out. But as I did, they stroked his hair. It felt different from my own wiry hair or the coarse strands of Aidan’s. Sawyer’s was like warm water against my skin.

Over the sounds of girls laughing and the van’s air conditioner blasting, I heard a muffled beeping. The ringtone wasn’t mine.

“Excuse me, won’t you, darling?” Sawyer said in a British accent like a debonair spy. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, touched the screen, only glanced at it, and put the phone back.

“You don’t answer your phone?” I asked.

“I don’t answer
her
.”

I felt a pang that he was having a quarrel with another girl.

Then he eased the tension, moving his head into my personal space and shaking it so that his hair fell into his eyes. “You can touch it some more. You know you want to.”

I fingered a white-blond lock curving around his ear. “You have such a baby face. Do you even shave?”

He gave me a sideways glare.

“The guys on the football team make fun of you,” I ventured. Tentatively I traced my fingertip down the hard line of his jaw. He
did
have stubble, just golden and nearly invisible in the sunlight glinting across his face.

“Right,” he said, “I don’t need to shave. Let me show you.” He grabbed me, one hand cradling the back of my head and the other bracing my shoulder so I couldn’t duck away. He rubbed his chin across my neck.

“Ow, ow, ow, rug burn.” Normally I would have squealed, but I didn’t want him to let me go.

He stopped, eye to eye with me. Our faces had never been so close. This time I knew he felt the electricity buzzing between us as strongly as I did. His lips parted. His breath stroked across my cheek.

We couldn’t stay like this. The cheerleaders carried on around us like what we were doing was normal. It wouldn’t be long, though, before these gossip-hungry girls took notice.

He was thinking the same thing. Holding my gaze, he whispered, “If you were so mad at Aidan, why’d you run back to him?”

My friends had asked me this so often in the past few months, my answer came automatically. “I was looking at the long term. We’re applying for early admission to Columbia.”
I wanted to get off the subject of Aidan as quickly as possible, though. “Are you applying anywhere?”

“No,” he said.

“What are you going to do, live in a box underneath the interstate?”

Sawyer raised his head and backed away. There was no expression in his blue eyes. Sawyer
always
had an expression, easy to read. He poked fun at me. He laughed at me. He enjoyed the fact that he made me uncomfortable. That’s why I ribbed him right back. But this time his face was blank.

Without warning, he stood and moved up the aisle.

“Where are you going?” I called. The other cheerleaders turned to me in question. Too late I realized I sounded like I wanted him to stay.

He stopped in the open doorway and threw over his shoulder at me, “Back to my box.” He jogged down the steps.

I watched for him out the window. In a moment he crossed behind the van and headed for one of the football team’s buses. He disappeared up the steps. A few seconds later he came reeling down to the pavement again like they’d thrown him.

He walked over to one of the four band buses next. The door was closed. He knocked. The door folded inward. I
recognized Tia’s long auburn hair as she reached down and held out her hand to him. He let her pull him up the stairs.

The door shut.

I stared at that bus until the cheerleading coach, Ms. Howard, finally guided our van into motion, leading the school caravan across central Florida. Maybe Sawyer had planned to ride with the band all along, and he’d only been visiting me. Yet he’d dumped his pelican costume into the back like he planned to stay. I couldn’t help thinking I’d actually offended him with my comment about the box. But that wasn’t possible, when Sawyer acted like he didn’t have any real feelings.

At least, not for me.

4

I SPENT MOST OF THE
drive with my forehead pressed to the window, staring at the orange groves flashing by beside the interstate, mulling over the homecoming dance. I was
trying
to brainstorm for an alternate place to hold it, but I kept getting sidetracked by my anger at my mother, and Ms. Yates, and Aidan, and a mass of confused feelings about Sawyer. Anger at him, too, for storming off without explanation, guilt that I’d really hurt him somehow, lust as I remembered his hand in my hair.

As soon as the van pulled to a halt in the opposing school’s parking lot, Sawyer climbed back up the stairs. He hardly glanced at me as he moved down the aisle. I peered nonchalantly over my shoulder, as if I were just curious about the view out the back windows. He was sitting beside the
pompons on the bench, stripped down to his gym shorts, pulling the bird suit up to his knees.

Sawyer had never had an ounce of fat on him, as far as I could tell. But the last time I’d seen him with his shirt off, after the Labor Day race, he’d looked drawn and sinewy, like he could kick anybody’s ass more through sheer force of will than bodily strength. In the two and a half weeks since then, he’d been working out with the football team, and I could tell. He’d gained muscle. Most guys going down that path would have gained confidence, too. Sawyer didn’t need any.

Grace grinned at him from the nearest seat. “Want me to zip you up?”

“Yeah,” Sawyer said with none of the teasing tone he usually took with Grace. After putting his arms into the feathered suit and flexing his bird gloves, he stood. Grace rose beside him and put her hands at the base of his spine, her fingertips probably brushing across his bare back. She moved the zipper all the way up to his neck. I wondered if he shivered at her touch.

Next she bent, flashing everybody her full butt in her boy shorts underneath her cheerleader skirt, and fumbled with his costume bag. She came up holding the huge pelican head. “Here, Sawyer,” she said, “I’m giving you head.”

Cathy and Ellen squealed with laughter. Sawyer, who
normally would have shot her a sly grin and said something even dirtier in response, only turned bright red and looked straight at me.

Suddenly I realized I’d been staring at him the whole time, and he’d noticed.

“Aw, he’s blushing!” Cathy exclaimed.

“Sawyer, blushing?” Ellen echoed. “Grace and Sawyer, sitting in a tree.”

Ugh. I faced the front and dove under the seat for my bag.

A huge white shape filled my peripheral vision. The pelican stood beside me in the aisle, holding out his gloved hand. He carried my pompons in the crook of his other wing. I took his hand, and he pulled me up like a feathered gentleman.

The rush I’d felt when he singled me out and paid me romantic attention—bird suit or not—was doubled when he escorted me into the stadium, already loud with crowd noise and brightly lit even though the sun wouldn’t set for another hour. My mother might tell me being head cheerleader was the
opposite
of Most Likely to Succeed, but cheering at football games was the most fun I’d had in high school so far.

Thirty minutes later our team kicked off. The stadium was crazy with excitement. The opposing team had beat us
last year, but this season Brody had led us to wins in our first three games. If he and the team could pull off a difficult victory tonight, our chances were good of making it all the way to the playoffs. Knowing this, our fans packed the smaller guest side of the stadium and overflowed into the home side. All the football parents and marching band parents were here, and every cheerleader’s parents except mine.

Most of the students from our school were here too. Aidan had driven to the game with a couple of other guys: our friend Quinn, whose boyfriend, Noah, was on the football team, and Kennedy Glass, the yearbook editor, who was self-important enough to think someone cared whether he attended the game or not. Come to think of it, Aidan had driven here for the same reason. He didn’t understand football, but he felt it was his duty to show up since he was student council president. That’s the way he’d explained the trip to me, anyway. He hadn’t said anything about wanting to support me personally or see me cheer.

So I didn’t scour the stands to spot him and wave. I just cheered. My fellow cheerleaders might annoy me with their weekend drinking and nonstop whining, but they were terrific athletes. We made pyramids—I was lightest, so I was on top—and I knew I wouldn’t fall, because they would hold me. We led the crowd in chants, and the students were great
about playing along. We hadn’t come in third in the state cheer championships last winter for nothing.

For short stints I turned around with my hands on my hips and my back to the crowd, watching for Brody’s big plays. Dad loved football. I’d spent many weekends curled up on the couch with him while he explained the rules to me. Now, even from field level, I could watch our formations and warn the other cheerleaders that we needed to get ready to make some noise.

In short, I felt like a successful head cheerleader—way more of a success than I was as student council vice president. If only my mother thought this counted.

But my favorite parts of the night were the dances we’d choreographed. Whenever the opposing team had the ball and it looked like our team would slog through the next several plays without much movement, I pointed at Tia, who was drum captain, up in the sea of band uniforms in the stands. She consulted with Will about what jam to play next, then gave me a hand signal to tell me which one. I passed this along to the cheerleaders. The next thing we knew, we were dancing to a groove. I felt high. Little kids held on to the chain link fence separating the crowd from the field, shaking their bottoms, dreaming about being cheerleaders themselves one day.

And for the whole game, Sawyer acted like he always did with me on the field. He could flirt all he wanted and Aidan would never say a thing as long as Sawyer was in costume, because it was a big joke. He danced right behind me and missed the turns, bumping into me on purpose. Several times I slapped him away when he tried to look up my skirt (which wouldn’t have mattered anyway with my boy shorts underneath, but it was the principle of the thing). During halftime he always disappeared to take his suit off in the locker room and pour cold water over his head, but this time he returned a few minutes early. He sat beside me on the players’ bench, slipped his feathered arm around my waist, and watched the end of the opposing marching band’s show.

Sawyer might be angry with me in real life, but the pelican always loved me.

After the game, exhilarated from our big win, I dumped my pompons in the van and snatched Sawyer’s bag for his costume. I wanted an excuse to wait outside the locker room for him. I needed to know whether he was still mad, or the drive back would kill me.

I stood to one side as the football players filed out of the locker room. Brody gave me a high five. Noah shook his freshly shampooed head very close to me, spraying me with water. Then Sawyer emerged in his gym shorts only, carrying
the huge foam bird head in one hand, with the rest of the costume draped over his other arm like something dead.

“I brought your bag,” I called.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he walked over. “Hold this.” He handed me his costume and his head, trading for the bag. He fished a Pelicans T-shirt out of the bag and dove into it, biceps flexing as he pulled it over his head. I was sorry to see his bare chest go. Strangely silent, he took the costume from me and stuffed it into the bag.

I ventured, “You could come back to the cheerleader van for the ride home. I’m sitting with Harper, but we could all three move to the back.” As if we were all close friends, and this was the most normal suggestion in the world.

He slung the strap of the bag over his shoulder and eyed me. “That’s okay. I’ll ride with the team.”

“No, you won’t,” a football player called as he passed.

“The fuck you will,” another voice agreed.

Sawyer’s eyes never left my face. He said more quietly, “I’ll ride with the band. Thanks, though.”

“All right.” I stood there uncertainly. He shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other, looking past me at the football players and marching band members milling around the parking lot, not quite ready to board the buses for another long drive. Finally I burst out, “We need to talk.”

“Or,
you
need to talk,” he said, “obviously.”

I crossed my arms. “That’s exactly what we need to talk about: this attitude of yours.”

“Oh, my
attitude
,” he said bitterly.

“You’re in the costume and you’re nice to me. You . . .” I glanced at the football players limping by and lowered my voice. “You come on to me.”

“You like that, do you?” he sneered. “When I’m dressed up like a giant bird? That is completely illegal in the state of Florida.”

I held my hands out flat. He was proving my point for me. “Then you get out of the suit, and you’re an asshole, like now. I don’t want to do this dance with you anymore. If this is how you feel about me, stay away from me and keep your hands off me, suit or no suit.” I turned my back on him and stomped toward the van.

As I went, my head was swimming with what had just happened. I wasn’t even sure where my sudden anger had come from. It was just
so frustrating
for Sawyer to embrace me like I was his favorite—and the instant I tried to show him I felt the same way, he lashed out at me. I wasn’t going to do it anymore.

And I wasn’t going to stop and peer back at him, either, because that would show him how much I cared—
again
.
Five steps later, I couldn’t help it. I looked over my shoulder.

He stood where I’d left him, gazing down at his shoes like he was trying to figure out one of Ms. Reynolds’s calculus equations.

And now I was caught between
Good, I’ve hurt him
and
Oh, no, I’ve hurt him
.

Disgusted with myself, I trudged up the steps of the van, only to see that some strange girl had taken the seat next to mine. It took me a split second to recognize Harper.

She was like a hand-knitted scarf. Breaking up with Kennedy and dating Brody over the past month had unraveled her, but she was made of gorgeous yarn. Now she was knitting herself back together in a new pattern. This meant I did a double take sometimes when I saw her, because she wasn’t always wearing her signature glasses with a retro dress. Without them, she was a pretty, dark-haired girl I’d never met.

Tonight her long hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She wore a simple tank top and a few crazy necklaces with olive cargo pants. She looked as beautiful as ever, only with a lot of the effort taken out—as if she was finally more concerned with her photography projects and her sweet boyfriend than her own self-image. I envied her.

The first thing out of her mouth was “Where’s Sawyer?” She stood up to let me into the seat.

Flopping down next to her, I grumbled, “On the band bus, I guess. Why?”

“Brody told me the football team kicked him off their bus, and Sawyer said he was going to hitch a ride with the cheerleaders. That’s the main reason I wanted to ride back with y’all. I thought I could get some candids for the yearbook before we leave, while the lights are still on. Sawyer is a walking, talking photo op.”

“He was going to ride with us to the game,” I said, “but he rode on the senior band bus.”

She gave me a skeptical look. “But he was all over you during the game.”

“That’s because he loves me with his costume on, and he hates me when he takes it off.”

“I don’t think he hates you when he takes his costume off,” she said.

I shrugged through the first part of her sentence and talked through the rest. “I don’t care anymore.” As the van’s engine rumbled to life and the overhead lights blinked out, I turned to the window and watched the distance grow between us and all our school buses. I had no idea which one Sawyer was on, or whether he was staring out his own window as our van pulled away into the dark.

I turned back to Harper. “How are things with Brody?”

She eyed me. In her pause, I realized I’d jumped from complaining about my relationship with Sawyer to asking her about her relationship with her boyfriend. Basically, I’d admitted I liked Sawyer way more than I should.

If Harper read my mind, though, she kept it to herself, as usual. She said enthusiastically, “Things are
good
with Brody.”

“Have you . . .” I winked at her.

She looked around us—with good reason. Half the girls on this van had dated Brody in the past. Satisfied that they were involved in their own confabs, she said quietly, “Not yet. I did get on the pill, like I told you, but I still don’t think I’m ready.”

“That’s okay,” I assured her. Harper had never dated anyone for long. Suddenly becoming the steady girlfriend of one of the most popular guys in school must have been a shock to the system.

“But we’ve . . .” She bit her lip and looked guilty.

“You’ve
what
?” I insisted.

“Done stuff I can’t tell you about on the cheerleader van.” She raised her eyebrows knowingly.

“Sounds serious.”

“I guess we’re pretty serious. But
serious
makes it sound like we’re under pressure, when we’re the opposite. My dates with other guys have been ex-cru-ci-a-ting. So awkward.
Now”—she shrugged—“I’m just making out with my cool new friend. And really enjoying it.”

“Have you thought about what you’re doing after graduation?” I asked. “Will you try to stay together?”

“We’re both applying in state, mostly. Oh!” She gripped my arm. “A scout from the University of Florida came to the game tonight to see Brody and Noah play.”

“That’s fantastic!” Brody was the best quarterback our school had scored in years. Noah was the right guard who kept him from getting sacked—or tried to. The opposing team tonight had been tough. Despite Noah’s efforts, Brody had landed on his ass a couple of times. “What did the scout think?”

“He told Coach he’s impressed. What if Brody got to play for the Gators? And I’m sending Florida my portfolio. They have a killer journalism department. Maybe I’ll get a scholarship out of it.” She held up her hands. “It might not work out, but we’re trying to go with whatever happens. It’s not a definite plan, like you and Aidan applying to Columbia together.”