The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away (6 page)

Kate nodded. Singing would be good too. Maybe next year she’d do both, sing and play
basketball. Not at the same time, of course, although thinking about it made her laugh. She wondered what her dad would think if she became the singing point guard. The rock-and-roll rebounder.

I don’t know if that’s the right path for you, Katie,
her dad would probably say. But Kate didn’t care. She was pretty sure the right path was the path she was on this very second, walking down the hall with Flannery, in this totally awesome world.

smiles, everyone!

When Marylin got to cheerleading practice on Friday afternoon, she was surprised to see Benjamin Huddle sitting on the bleachers, waiting for her. It was a “What’s Wrong with This Picture?” moment, where you had to look around for what didn’t fit in. Benjamin Huddle definitely didn’t fit into cheerleading practice. He wasn’t an athlete, for one thing. Sometimes a bunch of football or basketball players would stand around and watch the first few minutes of practice before the cheerleading coach, Ms. Wells, shooed them away, and that didn’t seem strange. After all, if it weren’t for the athletes, why were the
cheerleaders practicing in the first place? Who would they cheer for?

Not for the Student Government leaders, that was for sure, though thinking about it, Marylin could see how that would be a nice thing. After all, athletes didn’t actually contribute all that much to the school, but the Student Government leaders got stuff for students, like extra parties and more pizza days in the cafeteria. Didn’t that deserve a cheer or two?

But that wasn’t how things worked, and so it was strange to see Benjamin Huddle in a world where he didn’t quite belong. But the strangeness of the situation didn’t keep Marylin from feeling as though she’d just been injected with helium. Every part of her suddenly felt lighter and slightly tingly. When Benjamin caught sight of her and broke into a huge grin, Marylin wanted to snuggle in beside him on the bleachers and inhale the wonderful smell of him, which mostly came from the fabric softener his mom used on their laundry (Downy, which Marylin knew because she’d asked Benjamin
the other day and then made her mom go buy some right away).

“What are you doing here?” Marylin asked, trying to keep the giddiness out of her voice in case any of the other cheerleaders were close enough to hear. “I thought you had to go help your mom with her art class.”

“I do,” Benjamin told her. “She’s going to pick me up in ten minutes. So I thought I’d come watch your practice until it was time to meet her.”

“Really?” Marilyn asked, amazed. “You don’t think that would be boring?”

Benjamin grinned. “It’s only ten minutes.”

Marylin couldn’t think of anything else to say, so she just stood there, smiling. She’d never liked a boy this way before, not in a real kind of way that was more than a crush, so she hadn’t had any way of knowing beforehand how much time she would spend with a big, dumb smile plastered across her face. Of course, as a middle-school cheerleader, she did a lot of automatic smiling, but it wasn’t the sort of smiling where her whole face played a
part in it. It was strictly lip smiling when she walked down the hall in official cheerleader capacity.

“I also wanted to run an idea by you,” Benjamin said. “I just had a meeting with Mrs. Calhoun about Student Government stuff, and she said we actually have extra money in the budget this year to fund a new project, or to give more money to an extracurricular activity, or whatever. I was thinking we should have some sort of contest. You know, let the students decide how we should use the money. I mean, it
is
kind of their money, if you think about it. It comes from their parents’ taxes.”

“We could use new cheerleading uniforms,” Marylin said, smiling her best enthusiastic Student Government representative smile. “The ones we have now are getting shabby. It’s bad for school spirit when the cheerleaders look sloppy.”

“Sure,” Benjamin said, not sounding all that convinced. “That could be one of the suggestions students vote on.”

“Or we could just not vote, and give the
cheerleaders the money,” Marylin said in a sing-songy, I’m-sort-of-joking-but-sort-of-not voice.

Benjamin shook his head and laughed. “We could. That would make it easier, for sure. But I don’t know. I think it’s better if everybody gets to make suggestions.”

Marylin shrugged. “Maybe. But think about my idea, okay? Because it’s really important to me. And it would make me happy.”

Benjamin reddened and looked down at his shoes. “Okay. Yeah, sure.”

“Let’s get going, Marylin!” Coach Wells called over, and Marylin gave Benjamin an apologetic look.

“I don’t think Coach is going to let you watch practice,” she warned him. “At least not for long. She’s pretty strict about keeping practices closed.”

“I’ve got to go anyway.” Benjamin stood up. “My mom’s probably waiting out front. She’s always early. I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay,” Marylin said. She watched as he climbed down the bleachers, then called out, “Bye! Call me!”

A tiny seed of worry planted itself in her brain. Was Benjamin mad at her? Hurrying over to the other side of the gym, where everyone was warming up, Marylin tried to shake the idea out of her head. Why would he be mad at her? All she did was make a suggestion.

“What were you talking to Benjamin about?” Mazie asked her as she pulled a knee to her chest. “You looked idiotically cheerful over there.”

“Nothing,” Marylin said, running a hand through her hair, trying to sound casual. “He was just telling me there’s some extra Student Government money, and I was saying that we should definitely use it to get new uniforms.”

Mazie bent over at the waist and reached for her toes. “You’re sure it’s not because you were talking to Benjie-wenjie? Take my advice, Marylin, and don’t become emotionally attached to Geek Boy over there. Believe me, he’s not your type.”

Marylin tried to smile in a way that suggested this wasn’t a problem at all. “Don’t worry about me. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Are you sure?” Mazie reached back to grab
her foot in a hamstring stretch. “Because you looked a little too happy over there, talking to him. Like maybe you’re interested in something besides new uniforms.”

Marylin suddenly had a crazy impulse to tell the truth.
I am in love with Benjamin Huddle,
she wanted to declare.
He’s nice and funny and smart and cute. If you had any sense, you’d be in love with him too.

But Mazie was staring at her with that steely-eyed look that made Marylin feel like she was a five-year-old in a room full of sophisticated teenagers. So instead of declaring her love for Benjamin, she just said, “I don’t get why you care so much. It’s sort of weird.”

Which was maybe the wrong thing to say.

Mazie put her hands on her hips and leaned toward Marylin. “Are you saying you
do
like Benjamin Huddle?” she hissed. “Because that’s a problem that I definitely care about. It’s my
job
to care about it.”

“Your job?”

“Yes, my job.” Mazie took a step back and sighed deeply. “You’re so dumb sometimes, I
can hardly stand it. Look around you,” she said, waving her arm at the cheerleaders in various stages of warming up. “We all have jobs. Your job is to be pretty. My job is to make sure you don’t mess up and have a geeky boyfriend.”

Marylin stood very still. She felt like she was standing on a very narrow ledge and could fall off if the breeze shifted the slightest bit. The weird thing was, she could feel herself sort of wanting to fall. “Well,” she started slowly, “I guess what I don’t know is, who hired you? I mean, how did you get this job?”

Mazie stared at her. “Watch out, Marylin. You’re about to get in very serious trouble.”

Ruby Santiago sauntered over to where they were standing. “What’s going on?” she asked, smiling even though she sounded worried. “You guys seem kind of stressed out.”

This is the time to act like everything’s fine, Marylin told herself. This is the time to pull yourself together. “I was just telling Mazie there’s money in the school budget for new uniforms. That’s what I was talking with Benjamin Huddle about.”

Ruby’s face brightened. “I am
so
sick of the uniforms we have now, aren’t you? They’re totally fourth grade.”

Marylin nodded. “Exactly. That’s what I’ve been saying all year. We should start getting input from everybody about what they want the new uniforms to look like.”

“Ruby’s captain,” Mazie said, inserting herself between Ruby and Marylin. “She should decide.”

“Well, me and Coach Wells,” Ruby said agreeably. “But if other people have ideas, I’d love to hear them.” She patted Marylin on the shoulder. “Nice work.”

Marylin shrugged and smiled modestly. “Anything for the squad, right, Mazie?”

Mazie harrumphed, but left it at that.

Marylin trotted over to where several of the cheerleaders were stretched out on the floor and sat down next to Caitlin Moore. “How’s your knee?” she asked Caitlin, whose knee had been hurting for several days now. “Any better?”

Caitlin glanced over at Ruby, who smiled and waved, and then turned and smiled at
Marylin. “I’ve been icing it a lot, just like Coach said to. It’s definitely less sore.”

“That’s awesome!” Marylin said, feeling pretty awesome herself. Things with the other cheerleaders had been feeling strained, but now she felt like she was in again. Ruby was more powerful than Mazie, and if Marylin got new cheerleading uniforms, she could probably be Ruby’s second in command. Normally Marylin wasn’t someone who was all that interested in power, but she was starting to see how it could come in handy.

She stretched out her legs and leaned over them, reaching for her toes. Marylin imagined the squad in cute new uniforms, the skirts slightly shorter than the ones they had now, the tops barely skimming their belly buttons. She imagined Benjamin gazing adoringly at her from the stands, and her parents waving from where they sat at every basketball game, two rows behind the home bench, Petey in between them, cheering the cheerleaders. That was Marylin’s favorite part of every game—seeing her family looking like a family again.

All she had to do was get those new uniforms. Then everything else in her life would fall into place.

Marylin was surprised to find Kate riding home on the activity bus that afternoon. Kate wasn’t an activities person, for the most part. She was the sort of person who liked to get home as soon as school was over.

“What did you stay after for?” Marylin asked Kate, sitting down beside her. “Did you have Creative Writing Club today?”

“That’s on Tuesdays,” Kate said. “I had play rehearsal today, only we weren’t doing any of my scenes, and so I helped Matthew in the audio lab. He’s doing this whole
World of Noise
project for extra credit in science. It’s really cool.”

“Is it all noisy and screechy?” Marylin asked, shuddering a little, imagining the sort of noises she hated, like Styrofoam cups being torn apart and microphone feedback.

Kate nodded. “Pretty much. It’s better not to listen to it with the volume up too high.”

“So are you and Matthew still hanging out a lot?” Marylin asked, hoping to get the conversation on a more interesting track. “I mean, are you a thing?”

“No, we’re not a
thing
,” Kate said, sounding sort of defensive about it. “We’re friends. We have a lot in common.”

“But you wish you were a thing, right?” Marylin prodded. She knew she was making Kate mad, but sometimes Kate’s don’t-make-such-a-big-deal-about-everything attitude got on her nerves. Since when was it against the law to ask your friends if they liked somebody?

“I don’t wish anything.” Kate frowned and looked out the window. “Not everything is about hearts and romance, Marylin. It’s okay just to be friends with people.”

Marylin nodded. “Definitely. But it’s okay to be in love with them too. Even if you’re just friends. I mean, no one’s going to arrest you if you say you’ve got a crush on somebody.”

“Maybe they should,” Kate muttered, but now she didn’t sound so mad. “Maybe it would be a good idea if people talked about something else
for a change. I mean, we’re in seventh grade. It’s not like we’re going to meet the person we’re going to marry. So why not just hang out with other people instead of having to put a label on everything?”