The Trouble with Emily Dickinson (17 page)

“Okay—I know—you’re mad,” Kendal huffed,
already out of breath as they made their way around the track.

“Mad?” Christine practically shouted. “I am
way beyond mad!”

They walked briskly, and Kendal couldn’t
concentrate on what she was saying because she was so focused on
keeping up with Christine.

“Can you—slow down— please?” Kendal
begged.

Christine reluctantly obliged. When their
pace slowed, Kendal organized her thoughts.

“I’m really sorry,” she said as genuinely as
possible. “I just lost track of time.”

“That’s it?” Christine asked in amazement.
“That’s your big explanation?”

“It’s the honest truth.” Kendal inhaled a few
quick breaths. “We were talking at the coffee shop, and then JJ had
this problem she needed help with, and since she’d helped me with
my Women’s Literature class, I wanted to help her out. I didn’t
want to just leave her hanging.”

“Leave her hanging?” Christine stopped
walking. “You didn’t want to leave her hanging? Right. So it was
perfectly all right to leave me hanging instead. Me! Your roommate?
Your best friend since freshman year? Or did you forget that as
easily as you lost track of time?”

Kendal didn’t know what to say, except,
“You’re blowing this out of proportion.” By the look on Christine’s
face, it was obviously the wrong thing to say.

“Kendal, you pinky swore with me!” Christine
screamed. “You can’t go back on a pinky swear!”

It was as if Kendal had signed a contract
without reading the fine print. “What are we, in first grade?” she
asked, bored and impatient with way the conversation was
heading.

At that moment she noticed the women’s
basketball team taking the court below. The raised track was built
on the second level of the athletic center, offering a full view of
the courts below. She spotted JJ, noted where she was, and then
somehow shifted her eyes back to Christine’s frustrated face. “I
just don’t see what the big deal is.”

Christine smacked her lips together and
appeared to swallow a scream. Her face contorted, and Kendal
wondered if she were experiencing some severe gastric pain, or if
she was just really upset by what Kendal had said. Either way,
Kendal felt amused.

“You are infuriating!” Christine shouted.
“You have no idea what this means, do you?”

“What are you talking about?” Kendal asked.
“What does this mean?”

“You stood up a member of the squad, Kendal.
You went back on a sacred oath.”

“Sacred oath?”

“The pinky swear!” Christine shouted
again.

Two other girls walking the track had passed
by at that moment. They turned to each other and giggled.

Christine cast icy eyes at them, and
continued with her rant. “I don’t know what’s going on with you
lately, but your priorities are all messed up.” She folded her arms
evenly across her chest. “Do you really think I’m the only one
who’s noticed?” Her voice sounded smug.

Kendal flung her hands to her hips, “What’s
that supposed to mean?”

“Everyone knows who you’ve been hanging out
with lately. That’s what it means. People are starting to wonder
about you, and they’re starting to talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Do I have to spell it out for you? When you
start hanging around a girl who’s gay, it’s assumed that you are
hanging around her for a reason.”

“They think I’m gay?”

Christine shrugged. “What do you expect?”

“But I’m not gay!”

“Some people on the squad don’t think you
care about your reputation anymore. They think you’ve lost your
devotion and interest in the squad.” She leaned in and whispered,
“And you know what that means.”

The color instantly drained from Kendal’s
face. She knew she hadn’t exactly been singing the praises of the
cheerleading squad lately, nor bearing the school colors. Yes, she
had her frustrations, and yes, she had her complaints, but that
didn’t mean she wanted out. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to be
a part of it anymore.

“That’s crazy!” Kendal screamed, a little too
loudly. She saw a few of the basketball players look up in her
direction, and wondered if JJ had been one of them.

“It’s the truth,” Christine told her. “They
are having a meeting. It was supposed to be a secret. They didn’t
want you to know. But I wanted to tell you because I thought you
should know. Unless you wake up and snap out of this phase you’re
in, you might as well kiss the squad goodbye.” She narrowed her
eyes and pointed her sharp chin and added, “You know how these
things go down.”

Kendal knew exactly how these things went
down. She’d seen how these things had gone down. Last year, she was
in on one of the secret meetings about a sophomore who spent more
time hanging out with her skater friends on campus than she did
attending practice or other cheerleading-related activities. She’d
seemed like such a promising prospect during her freshman year, by
way of her 3.6 GPA, her involvement in the drama club, and her
participation in student government activities. But, as it
sometimes happens, she soon went astray and started hanging out
with what the squad thought was the wrong crowd.

Suddenly, the rest of the squad didn’t see
her as being so promising and wholesome anymore. She was dismissed,
cast aside, and her membership in the most popular organization on
campus ultimately revoked by a single, unsurprising, unanimous
vote.

The fact of the matter was that the
cheerleading squad had a reputation to uphold. They went after only
the most involved, the most athletic, popular, prettiest, and
smartest students on campus. Unless you carried at least a 3.0 GPA
and were part of some organization, be it academic or otherwise,
you had no shot at making the squad, no matter how good you
were.

Kendal had been lucky. She’d been the
exception to the rule. Her popularity outshined her GPA and lack of
involvement in campus activities. She had zero athletic ability.
But she could fake a good split and leg lift any day. Aside from
being pretty and popular, Kendal didn’t have much on her résumé as
far as school activities went.

Standing there in the athletic center,
arguing with Christine over something so trivial, Kendal felt small
and shallow. For the past couple of years she’d been doing to
others exactly what she feared others would now do to her. She’d
judged people, voted as to whether or not they were good enough to
be on the cheerleading squad, and she’d been happy doing it. She’d
been happy to belong to what she saw as a loving and supportive
organization that appeared now to be nothing more than a
superficial, stuck-up bunch of girls with meaningless friendships,
and future networking possibilities that would serve them well only
until the high school bubble burst.

It shouldn’t have mattered. Kendal shouldn’t
have cared. But for some reason, one that she couldn’t put her
finger on, it did matter. For some reason, she did care.

She felt her chest expand with panic. The
squad was all she knew at Sampson. What would she be without it?
Who would she be?

She’d have to make all new friends. She’d
have to start over, as if she were a freshman. And the thought of
that was too overwhelming to entertain.

“When’s the meeting?” Kendal asked.

“Tomorrow night, at the school lounge,”
Christine said. Her eyes instantly softened. “I told them you’d be
busy with tutoring, but if you skip that, then you can come.” She
uncrossed her arms and reached for Kendal’s hands. “It’s only going
to be a discussion, nothing final. Don’t even mention what I said.
Just tell everyone you’ve been working hard studying, that you
still care about the squad and your reputation, and that JJ is just
your tutor and nothing more. I’ll vouch for you.”

“You’ll vouch for me?”

“On one condition.”

“Which is—”

“Which is that you stop hanging out with
JJ.”

“What? She’s my tutor!”

“Get another one,” Christine said plainly,
“or how do you expect me to vouch for you?” If you continue to hang
around her no one is going to believe me, or you either for that
matter.”

Kendal glanced toward the basketball team
again. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw JJ sprinting from one
side of the gym to the other. “Okay,” she said without looking
away. “I’ll stop hanging out with JJ.”

CHAPTER 24

By Sunday evening, JJ still hadn’t been able
to get through the entire poem. It was discouraging, to say the
least, seeing as how she’d spent the greater part of the weekend
practicing in her dorm room.

She hadn’t heard from Kendal at all on
Saturday, and assumed she was busy smoothing things over with her
roommate. In the meantime, JJ had mustered up enough courage to
read a few lines of her poem to Queenie. But that wasn’t the same
as reading it out loud to her class, because JJ wasn’t exposing
herself. Queenie already knew everything there was to know about
her. Not like a classroom of strangers. Queenie wouldn’t judge JJ,
nor would she ever criticize her work.

When JJ had finished reading a few lines,
Queenie said, “That’s awesome!” and went back to charging more
clothes online at her parents’ expense. Every thing she’d written
that JJ had ever shared with her, which wasn’t much at all, Queenie
loved. JJ could probably scribble out the alphabet, and Queenie
would love it.

JJ paced nervously across the floor of her
dorm room, as Queenie looked on in amusement. Time was running
out.

“What do you suppose they were arguing
about?”

JJ stopped pacing, noting Queenie’s smirking
face.

“Who are they and what are you referring
to?”

“Those two cheerleaders. They were involved
in quite the heated discussion, don’t you think?”

“So what? What’s your point?”

JJ had seen Kendal and her roommate arguing.
How could she have missed them when Queenie had poked her hard in
the side to get her attention? She hadn’t cared then, and she
didn’t care now. There were other, more important, things on her
mind. Like the fact that she had fewer than twenty-four hours until
she had to read her poem in front of her entire class.

“My point is that it’s quite the coincidence
that they were arguing so soon after your late night study
session.” Queenie made sure to enclose her phrase, study session,
in quotes with her fingers. “Don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.”

JJ immediately regretted telling Queenie how
she and Kendal had stayed up practically all night together talking
under the scorers’ box at the soccer field.

“Rumors are starting to circulate,” Queenie
said. “You know how this school is a hub for gossip.”

“Since when have I cared about rumors?”

“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about
THE Kendal McCarthy. Once she gets wind of the fact that people
think she is batting for the other side now, she might not like it
so much.” Queenie let out a long-winded whistle. “My guess is that
her cheerleader friends aren’t going to like it much either.”

“I’m not playing this game with you right
now,” JJ warned.

“It isn’t a game, JJ, that’s the point.”
Queenie stood up, the playful smirk gone from her face. “This is
reality. And it’s about time you came back from the wonderful world
of make believe.”

JJ resisted the urge to argue, because in a
way she knew Queenie was right. She’d been fooling herself for a
few weeks now, convincing herself that she wasn’t enamored with
Kendal, when she was all JJ could think about.

“All right, I’m in love with the girl,” she
confessed. “Are you happy now?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Queenie
said. “I know you’re in love with her. I’ve known since the first
night you tutored her.”

“How?”

“Because you’ve been walking around in this
dizzy haze ever since.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you actually
believe she could be in love with you. It’s a fantasy, JJ, and it’s
never going to happen. Once Kendal realizes she can’t play with the
lesbians any longer because of what the rest of the school might
think, once she realizes the weight of it, she’s going to stop
talking to you.”

“She’s not like that,” JJ maintained.

“You think so? And you’ve known her how
long?”

“Why are you doing this?” JJ asked, a lump
forming in her throat. “Why are you saying these things?”

Queenie shook her head, “Because you never
learn. You keep falling for girls you can’t have. I hate watching
you go through this. I want you to get out this time before it’s
too late.”

“I appreciate what you’re saying, really I
do. But you’re wrong this time,” JJ said. “And you’re wrong about
her.”

“Am I?” Queenie checked the clock on her
iPhone. “You have a study date with her in an hour, right?”

“Right.”

“I bet you a hundred bucks she doesn’t
show.”

“That’s absurd,” said JJ.

“Why? Because you know I’m right?”

“No, because neither of us has a hundred
bucks and I won’t accept your parents’ credit card!”

“Fine. I’ll bet you a pizza instead.”

Now this was a bet JJ could afford. It was
high time that she put Queenie in her place. Queenie was the kind
of person who thought she was right about everything and everyone.
It was time to show her that she could be wrong just as easily as
everyone else.

JJ extended her hand.

Queenie shook it.

The deal was sealed.

* * *

When JJ returned to the dorm an hour and a
half later, she was carrying a pizza in one hand and a six-pack of
Pepsi in the other. She casually walked into the suite where
Queenie was sprawled out on the couch watching television, wearing
a pair of boxers, wool socks and a T-shirt that asked “Why are all
the cool girls lesbians?”