Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret? And I’ve got more than one!
Fortunately, I was only expected to keep the secret about Bridget making the CHEER TEAM!!! until she found out for herself. As it was, I almost spilled, like, a bazillion times on the bus ride to school! Bridget was in a full-on freak-out, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since getting her braces off had boosted her confidence. She was so agitated that she forgot to flirt with Burke Roy and totally ignored him when he flirted with her. For a short while, it was almost like the old Bridget was back.
“Do you think I made the team? I don’t know if I made the team! I hope I made the team! I really, really want to make the team! I think I was good enough to make the team, but there were a lot of girls who were good enough to make the team and maybe Miss Garcia liked those girls more than me and—oh! I wish you could have been there to see my tryout because I know you’d be honest about my chances.…”
Then she stopped talking, suddenly remembering the embarrassing face-breaking circumstances that led to my early dismissal from the tryout.
“Your face doesn’t look nearly as bad as I thought it would,” Bridget said brightly.
To her credit, she didn’t even try to assure me that I had a shot at making the team. Which was, you know, ironic because I TOTALLY HAD A SPOT ON THE TEAM BUT COULDN’T TELL HER OR ANYONE ELSE ABOUT IT.
The CHEER TEAM!!! list was posted on the bulletin board closest to the front entrance, where everyone in school was guaranteed to see it whether they wanted to or not. Bridget and Dori had promised to meet outside by the flagpole so they could find out together who made the team. They extended their arms, then sandwiched their hands, one atop the other, psyching themselves up to face their fate.
“ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!” they chanted. “WALK! THROUGH! THE! DOOR!”
And then they did. I followed.
I already knew Bridget made the CHEER TEAM!!! And yet despite knowing that Dori was a better gymnast than she was, I still held that grape jelliness against her, I guess. So I was shocked when both girls jumped up and down with joy.
“I made it! You made it!” Dori squealed.
“WE MADE IT!” Bridget squealed back.
It was a sweet moment and I wish I could have joined in. But I couldn’t. I had a secret to keep. So I felt kind of guilty when Bridget and Dori went out of their way to console me for not making the squad.
I made it, too, I wanted to say. 3ZNUF! 4EVA!
The sweetness was short-lived, however. Manda and Sara’s arrival on the scene brought it to a screeching halt. Ha. In more ways than one.
“Omigod! You!” Sara screeched, pointing at Bridget. “And YOU?”
That was directed at Dori, obviously. Sara’s screeching continued.
“Those were our spots! YOU STOLE OUR SPOTS.”
She said this as if the positions on the squad were no different from the table she’d claimed in the cafeteria: hers for the taking. But then I realized that my reaction to Bridget making the team had been exactly the same. It was not my proudest moment.
Bridget and Dori knew better than to stick around for Sara’s tirade. They escaped arm in arm as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Manda kept her hands cupped over her face and mouth and breathed deeply, like in the movies when someone tries to calm down by hyperventilating into a paper bag. Then she turned on her patent leather flats and walked away without saying a word, which was fine because Sara was OMIGOD-ing enough for both of them.
I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. It was Hope.
“This should be interesting,” she said.
“How so?” I asked.
We set off down the hall together, me taking two steps for every one of hers. It’s not that Hope is a speed walker or anything, it’s just that her legs are, like, twice as long as mine are.
“I’ve known Manda and Sara forever,” Hope said, weaving her way through the crowded hall. “There’s no way that they’re going to let this go without a fight. They’ll definitely seek revenge.”
Hope darted left and just barely avoided getting sticked in the face by a pack of chatty field hockey players.
“Revenge? On who? For what?”
“On Bridget and Dori for stealing ‘their’ spots.”
I cautiously sidestepped a kissing eighth-grade couple. What would make them do this right in the middle of the hall in front of everyone? Were they overwhelmed by the romantic atmosphere created by the trash cans and recycling bins?
“But they were dismissed from tryouts for being late,” I said. “It was their own fault!”
“They don’t see it that way. They see this as a wrong that was done to them. A wrong that needs to be righted. Right now. I guarantee they’re putting together a plan.”
“What do you think they’ll do?” I asked.
“That’s the only part I can’t predict.” She stopped and smiled slyly. “I don’t have a devious mind.”
Then Hope waved good-bye and continued down the hall, a full head and shoulders above everyone else in the crowd. I admired how she didn’t slouch or try to hide her height in any way. Hope wore her differences proudly while I didn’t even have the nerve to wear my sister’s “interesting” vintage T-shirts.
Anyway, Sara was conspicuously absent from homeroom. “Girl stuff” excuse again, I’m sure. I knew Hope was right. I bet I could find Sara in the girls’ bathroom with Manda. Planning. Plotting. Scheming.
But I didn’t go looking for them. I stayed put in my seat because I didn’t want to get any more involved than I already was. And first period would come soon enough anyway.
Scheme or no scheme, I figured there was no way they’d calm down before Language Arts. I was sure that they’d trick Miss Orden into thinking their psycho rants against “the suckiness of cheerleaders and the idiots who worship them” were actually about the Socs versus the Greasers in The Outsiders even though our class had already moved on to To Kill a Mockingbird.
But they didn’t make any rants. They didn’t even make any ranty faces.
There was just the petition.
“Omigod! Hope! Jess! You have to sign the petition.”
Now when I heard Sara say “the petition” I assumed that she was asking for the signatures of all Pineville Junior High students who wanted Bridget and Dori kicked off the CHEER TEAM!!! so she and Manda could have those spots—SPOTS STOLEN FROM THEM—instead.
But it wasn’t that kind of petition at all.
“The Pineville Junior High Spirit Squad?” I asked.
Hope arched an eyebrow but said nothing.
“It’s a new club we’re starting,” Manda said casually. “We need a minimum of twenty-five signatures from interested students included in our application. We already got twelve names and first period just started.”
I was… surprised. And sort of impressed, to tell you the truth. Manda and Sara had turned anger into action in under fifteen minutes.
Hope looked at the paper on the clipboard.
“The Pineville Junior High Spirit Squad,” Hope read aloud. “An all-new, elite, invitation-only organization of…”
She stopped reading, bit her lip, and shoved the petition in my face for me to finish.
“An all-new, elite, invitation-only organization of…” I stopped, then struggled to get the last two words out, to succeed where Hope had failed. “… of…”
“ATHLETIC SUPPORTERS!” Hope yelped.
Okay. Manda and Sara should have put a little bit more thought into the petition before moving forward.
Athletic supporters?
We died laughing.
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Seriously, we died. And we died again when Manda and Sara totally couldn’t understand what we were laughing at or why. They didn’t take too kindly to this and threatened to ban us from their club that didn’t even exist yet.
“Go ahead and laugh, you two,” Manda said. “Just because you don’t have what it takes to be an athletic supporter…”
Seriously. How many times could a person die of laughter in one day?
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to be”—I tried so hard to keep a straight face—“an athletic supporter.”
“I am not the stuff,” Hope said, trying equally as hard, “an athletic supporter is made of.…”
I swear we would have kept this up all day if Scotty Glazer, G&T’s top athlete, hadn’t told Manda that “athletic supporters” are more commonly known as “jockstraps.”
“The thing we wear under our uniforms to protect our”—he paused—“you know.”
“Ew!” Manda said.
“OMIGOD!” Sara said.
And Hope and I died laughing all over again, which really did not make Manda and Sara happy at all. So we made it up to them by signing the petition even though neither one of us had any intention of actually joining this club.
“I kind of hate sports,” Hope whispered conspiratorially.
“Me too!” I confessed.
“If we’re lucky,” Hope said, watching Manda and Sara flit around the room for more signatures, “they’ll stay mad enough, long enough, and decide we’re not worthy of an invitation anyway.”
Before today Hope had never spoken so openly about how… well… different she was from Manda and Sara. I was curious.
“How did you all become friends?” I asked.
“Manda lives on my block,” she said with a shrug. “Sara’s family used to live close by, too. Until her parents made all that Boardwalk money and moved to a fancy house.”
She used a funny fake accent for the word fancy. Hope was funny. Really funny. I appreciated her sense of humor.
Anyway, after a slight editing of the mission statement that changed “athletic supporters” to “sports lovers,” Manda and Sara had no problem getting more than enough signatures for their new club. They were already getting drunk on their power. They loved the idea of being the ones to decide who was cool and who was uncool. Who was in and who was out. The crazy thing is, the more exclusive they made the Spirit Squad sound to potential members, the more potential members were willing to sign.
By the time eighth period rolled around, Manda was vowing to “end the CHEER TEAM!!! monopoly on school spirit and take them down once and for all.”
Because nothing says school spirit like declaring war on your fellow classmates.
So I was really dreading the inevitable scene when Bridget joined us at lunch. But that’s because I wasn’t giving Bridget enough credit to handle her own business. She had figured out how to deal with the situation for herself.
“Would you be, like, mad at me if I sat with Dori during lunch?” She had caught me in the hall just outside the cafeteria doors. Her ears were bright red. “Not, like, every day! Just some days. Um, today.”
I thought it was great that Bridget and Dori had rekindled their friendship. 3ZNUF! 4EVA! And yet I couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t invited me to join them. Before long, Bridget answered my unasked question.
“You can totally join us if you want to, but we’ll probably be doing a lot of CHEER TEAM!!! talk and… well…”
And as far as she knew I had tried out for the CHEER TEAM!!! and gotten nothing but an accidental nose job for my troubles. She had no idea that I was on the team, too.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I understand. Go.”
It maybe came out more sharply than I had intended. Bridget took a few steps toward Dori’s table, then stopped.
“Are you sure?”
And I said I was totally, totally sure even though I wasn’t. I don’t know what I was feeling at that moment exactly.
In between.
I didn’t say much back at the round table. I could sense Hope trying to catch my attention whenever Manda or Sara made a snide remark about Bridget sitting at the Not table with Dori… but I concentrated on my lunch instead. This was hard to do because I’d lost my appetite.
Is this the IT clique I’m supposed to stick with?
I’d ask Bethany, but I already knew what her answer would be.