I didn’t try out for cheerleading.
I had planned on it. I wanted to be a cheerleader. I wanted to be popular and date a soccer player—that what’s cool at McClure High instead of football—and everything that went along with staying in The Clique. But I couldn’t make up my own routine and perform it alone for tryouts, so that was that.
Alexis and Taylor and Victoria all made it onto the squad, but Sasha didn’t. Officially, we weren’t kicked out of The Clique, but all they talked about at lunch was cheerleading camp and the older girls on the squad who had seemed soooooo nice.
On the last day of school, Alexis and Taylor and Victoria all came to class with their hair in braids. They hadn’t told us that it was going to be a braid day. We always wore our hair in braids on the same day. At lunch when we asked them why they didn’t tell us, they just looked at each other and giggled. I figured they had finally realized the truth I had kept hidden; I was a Pretty Girl, but I wasn’t a Popular Girl. I was different. I was strange. So I decided to give up and be the Weird Girl again, and Sasha followed me.
***
On the bus, Sasha leans toward me and says, “You look cool.”
“So do you,” I say. I turn to face forward and I see a girl walk down the aisle wearing the blue and red uniform. Her blond hair swishes back and forth in a ponytail. I am still feeling the pang of rejection when I see that she is sitting down next to Finny. By the end of the month, they will be going out, and my mother will tell me that Finny met Sylvie Whitehouse on campus while he was at soccer practice and she was there for cheerleading.
“What do you think people will say?” Sasha says. I almost tell her not to be so dorky.
“I dunno,” I say.
4
For the first few days, Sasha and I eat lunch alone on what I start to call The Steps to Nowhere. The cement steps descend from the front courtyard down a hill to a field of grass and weeds that is used for nothing.
Alexis and the others wear their uniforms and smirk every time they see us, as if our new look is hostile to them. A new girl, Sylvie from St. John’s Catholic School, sits at their table. Nearly all of the freshmen are from Ferguson Middle, but there is a sprinkling of these new Catholic kids whose parents could not afford the higher cost of the private high schools. These kids have been with the same classmates since kindergarten and are lost and awed in the vast sea of McClure High. It is awkward the first few days as everyone tries to figure their places out. Then, slowly, everyone slides into new alliances and a pattern begins to be set that will be followed for the rest of the year, possibly for the rest of high school.
Sasha has met a girl from St. John’s who wears a crucifix and a skull on the same chain. They have gym class together and walk the track side by side for a few days before Sasha invites her to eat with us. Her name is Brooke and she brings her boyfriend Noah and her cousin Jamie with her. The next day, more people show up—so and so’s friend, someone from somebody’s class who seems cool. Soon we have a group hanging out on The Steps to Nowhere. Some leave after a few days, finding other groups; a few stay. By the end of the second week, a group of friends emerges from The Steps to Nowhere.
There are four girls and three boys in our group. Brooke and Noah are already together, and they are devoted to each other. They even look alike, brown hair and freckles, and when they laugh their eyes crinkle.
That leaves me, Sasha, and Angie for Jamie and Alex. Angie, blond and a little bit chubby, still has a crush on some guy from her old school. Alex has pretty eyes, but he is short and the goofy, silly type, still a little immature. I can see by the way she looks at him that Sasha is my competition for Jamie.
I got butterflies in my stomach the first time I saw Jamie’s face; his eyes are green and fringed with impossibly long eyelashes. Above that, his hair is dark, a little curly, and very messy. He is tall, skinny, and pale.
Jamie is animated and funny and he smirks a lot. He reminds me of Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jamie leads the other boys into mischief that the girls sit back and watch from The Steps, giggling. They play football in the field with Brooke’s shoe, toss balls of paper inside open classroom windows, and sing songs in a style mocking the school’s a cappella group. Jamie throws his head back and laughs when his mischief turns out as planned. I watch him and think of Peter Pan telling Wendy that he just has to crow when he is pleased with himself.
Sasha and I each try to hold Jamie’s attention in our own way. Sasha teases him and displays her tomboy cuteness. I am alternately demure and flirtatious. She runs down the steps and participates in the boy’s games. I smile at his jokes and look up at him from under my eyelashes. Sasha holds her hand up for a high five. I cheer for him from the steps. It is a battle, but we never cut each other. Sasha and I know that when it is over we must still be friends.
Slowly, yet at the same time suddenly, because it happens in only a matter of days, I pull ahead of Sasha. She makes a valiant effort for a few lunches, but it becomes obvious that Jamie is now courting me. He sits next to me on the steps. He offers me the rest of his French fries. He tickles me. He smiles up at me on the steps while he and the boys are playing shoe-ball, and my stomach flutters. Jamie. Jamie. James. Jamie.
One Monday afternoon on The Steps to Nowhere, Jamie takes my hand in his, as if it has long been settled that it is his hand to take whenever he pleases, and everyone acts as if this is normal. I hold his hand and look down at the concrete steps to try to stop from grinning and giving away my feelings. Inside, I feel like I am trembling; on the outside, I stay as casual as he is. Of course we’re together, of course. Of course.
That day, Alexis and the others look at me with interest when Jamie and I walk down the hall past them, then turn away as if they couldn’t care less. But they have to have noticed. He is undeniably gorgeous. Jamie is a dark-haired Adonis, a gothic prince. And he is now mine.
5
Jamie wants to go farther and I tell him that I’m not ready. We’ve been together since the third week of school, but it’s only early November and I’m surprised that we’re having this discussion already. A few days ago on the phone, he said that he loved me; I said I wasn’t ready to say that back, and now, lying next to him and staring at the ceiling, I’m wondering if this is why he said it.
“Okay then,” he says, and takes my hand in his.
We’re both fully clothed still, and dressed in the eccentric uniform adopted by our group. We’re not goths or hipsters, just odd. The girls dye their hair unnatural colors and the boys make an effort to look like they just rolled out of bed. We all wear boots and bite our fingernails. I know that we’re just conforming in a different way, but this is not something that I have said out loud. What binds our group together is the shared statement that we are different—and therefore somehow better—than all of the “normal” kids at school. Especially better than the popular kids.