“My God, not again,” Donald said, flopping down on the floor while his friend queued up the music for the thousandth time. He and Lauren were in the middle of a powwow on how to make Caroline play the rear on the dance squad—a four-hour session that involved three strawberry-banana smoothies, several packages of Ritz crackers with American cheese slices, two humongous bags of gummy bears, a pack of grape Now and Laters, and at least thirty rewinds of a TiVoed episode of 106 & Park featuring throwback videos by Beyoncé, OutKast, and Thug Heaven, meant to provide a little inspiration and more than a couple of moves for Lauren’s choreography. “It’s hot already, goodness. If you do the damn thing one more time, you’re not going to be able to shake it fast at practice tomorrow.”
“Okay, seriously? I’m gonna need you to stop acting like you’re the one doing all the work,” Lauren snapped, pushing the PAUSE button on her Bose stereo.
Lauren was on a mission—a righteous one, indeed. Word on the curb was that Caroline, the sophomore basketball dance squad member with the hots for Sydney’s ex, was coming for Lauren’s Number One spot, and she would be damned if she was going to just let somebody come in and steal her head cheerleader-in-charge title. About this much, Lauren was clear: She wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
“You’re going to need me to walk into practice and show those girls a thing or two if you want to continue riding on the team bus to the games,” Lauren snapped at Donald, who, though he’d graciously agreed to watch and give feedback, was now too overloaded with sugar to put in critical work. “Stay. Focused.”
“True,” Donald said, popping a red gummy bear into his mouth. “You know how I feel about the backseat of the squad bus. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I’m bouncing around back there.”
“Easy,” Lauren laughed. “That was a mental image I just don’t need.”
“Okay, okay,” Donald giggled. “Let me fix the mental, then. Caroline? With the squad captain’s bullhorn? Not good.”
“I know, right?” Lauren said, huffing and rubbing her sore knee. “I’m going to need to do a little bit more than go in there with jacked Beyoncé moves to get the team to vote for me—that much I know.”
“Come on,” Donald insisted. “They’d be fools not to vote you captain.”
“That’s the problem,” Lauren said. “They are fools. Haven’t you read YRT lately? My entire existence is under question now that stories about Altimus’s business are being downloaded directly onto the site. I swear, don’t people have anything better to do than get in my family’s business?”
“Um, not really,” Donald deadpanned.
“Exactly,” Lauren said. “Just today, Elizabeth Chiclana raised her hand in Econ and asked Mr. Siegret to explain the difference between the penalties people and businesses get when they fail to pay their taxes. I swear, if I wasn’t walking with King Jesus? The devil would have won today.”
“Mmm, well, I didn’t want to tell you this, but since you’re already having the pity party…there was an entire conversation over chicken wraps in the lunchroom today about how much intel you had on the Dara and Marcus situation.”
“See what I’m saying?” Lauren said, snatching another Now and Later out of the package. “How am I supposed to get past all of that? I mean, we’re still on Dara? Damn.”
“You know how you get past all of it?” Donald asked without hesitating. “You go in there and you show them why you’re still the one who should be in charge. Look, your skills on the dance floor are undeniable, and no one can choreograph like you. Shoot, if you ask me, you should get back with your agent and see if you can try out for a few more video features—give those scalawags something to really talk about.”
“Uh, yeah, about the video ho tryouts? I’m so not there,” Lauren said. “The last thing I need is another YRT post about my after-school exploits.”
“Okay, then give them something to talk about. Go into that practice tomorrow and do what you do best: Show your ass.”
“I do know how to do that, don’t I?” Lauren giggled. “Okay, but you gotta pay close attention, young ’un. Should I toss in a front twist after the jump or leave this part as is?”
“Come on, girl, you know I don’t know nothing ’bout birthin’ no dance moves!” Donald said, chewing lazily on another gummy bear.
“Whatev, just pay attention,” she said, punching PLAY on her stereo.
Lauren tiptoed to the tiny refrigerator tucked in the corner of the hot-pink Duke cheerleading clubhouse lounge and opened it as gingerly as possible. But still, the sound of her Nikes squeaking across the pristine white tile and the shifting of the water bottles in the refrigerator door made her headache pound even harder. She’d been fighting the migraine all day, but four bathroom passes, two Aleve, a cup of herbal tea, and a visit to the nurse’s office later, and Lauren was still rubbing her temples and sending up silent prayers to God begging him to “take the pain away, so I can show these wannabes how a true dance captain gets down.” Under normal circumstances, she would have sent a text to her mom, imploring her to put in a call to the school nurse; an early release, an afternoon nap, and an episode or two of Law & Order: SVU would have been fitting recompense for the trauma her body was going through, and Keisha, God bless her soul, would have been too preoccupied with her Wednesday afternoon nail salon visit to care if Lauren dipped out of a couple of classes. But there was no time for the zone-out.
Lauren reached into the refrigerator and grabbed the Tupperware container full of cucumber slices she kept stashed for occasions such as these. A twenty-minute power nap in the plush recliner with the cucumber slices on her eyes would work wonders on her headache and surely take away the puffiness that had settled just under her lower eyelids; she’d wake up refreshed and ready to show those heifas just why she was, and needed to remain, the dance squad captain.
Lauren settled into the recliner and set her iPhone alarm for 3:20 P.M.; that would give her about ten minutes after she woke up to change into her gear and go over the new steps in her head before the rest of the team hit the locker room to get ready for practice. But no sooner had she placed the soothing cucumbers on her eyes and rested her head on her special pillow than she heard a stall door in the bathroom slam shut.
“Who’s that?” Lauren said, bolting upright. The cucumbers tumbled between the chair’s arm and seat cushion.
There was no answer.
“Who’s there?” Lauren demanded, her heart racing. She stood up slowly; her eyes darted around the room in search of something—anything—that could serve as a fitting weapon against whoever was creeping around in the bathroom. She settled on a baton that lay on a counter not too far from where the noise had come. She grabbed it and headed for the bathroom, half scared, half amped to beat down any intruder.
Holding the baton like a bat behind her left shoulder, Lauren pushed open the bathroom door with her foot; it slammed against the wall. “Whoever you are, you better come out now!” she yelled.
“Just give…me…a sec.” A girl’s voice came between breaths from behind the adjacent stall. And then she hurled. Hard. And coughed. “If you didn’t notice, I’m…a little…preoccu—” She couldn’t finish. More hurling.
Damn. Gross. Dara.
Lauren rolled her eyes at the mere thought of her former best friend. What was she doing here anyway? She’d quit the squad and then embarrassed both Sydney and herself by showing up with a megaphone to the twins’ holiday party to announce her baby bump. Specifically, Marcus’s baby bump. And she still had the nerve to show her face in the House that the Dukes built?
Dara flushed the toilet and slowly walked out of the stall, making a beeline for the sink. Without so much as a side glance in Lauren’s direction, she splashed cool water into her mouth and then dried her hands with one of the crisp flowered hand towels in the basket gracing the counter. And then she picked up her purse and started heading for the door. “Excuse me.”
“Yes, excuse you,” Lauren snapped. She didn’t budge from her position in front of the door, leaving Dara little room to squeeze by. “Maybe next time you can keep your nasty baby business in the main building and out of my locker room.”
“Look, I came here because I didn’t think anyone would be here,” Dara said, her eyes stuck on the baton Lauren rested on her left shoulder.
“What’d you do—throw up all over the bathroom stall so we have to tiptoe around your mess?” Lauren demanded. “You’re not slick.”
Dara shook her head and looked down at her Cole Haan ballet flats. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she said quietly.
Lauren gripped the baton a little tighter; her former best friend was really trying to test her today, and she was so not in the mood.
“You do understand that, right?” Dara questioned.
“Understand what, Dara? That you deliberately slept with my sister’s boyfriend, bragged about it to the entire school, and crashed my holiday party with the news that you and Marcus are about to become proud, teenage, unwed parents? What else is there to understand, sweetie? Oh, hold up—I know: You’re a tramp-ass hooker who has no idea what it means to be a true friend. But I didn’t need you to come here to tell me that.”
Dara rubbed her hand over her brow; Lauren noticed that it was shaking. Dara’s tears were inescapable.
“Look, I know I deserve everything you’re throwing at me and then some,” she said, swiping away the tears.
“Uh, you think?” Lauren snapped.
Dara started to answer back but instead let out a sob.
“Are you kidding me, Dara?” Lauren seethed. She could feel her head getting hot. “You know what? You’re pathetic.”
“You’re right,” Dara said. “I’m not going to argue with you about that.”
Lauren cocked her head to the side and looked quizzically at Dara. What in the world was she up to?
“I betrayed your trust, your family, and, above all else, our friendship,” Dara continued, swiping at more tears. “I lay awake at night thinking about what I’ve lost—how important you are…were to me. How much I miss us. I’m carrying around this baby, and everytime my stomach flutters or I get nauseous or I see you in the lunchroom, I’m reminded about how my hooking up with Marcus so wasn’t worth it. You, Sydney, even I deserved better than this. I just wish…” Dara continued and then stopped herself.
Lauren stared at Dara, gape-jawed. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond—what to say. Her anger was still palpable, but another emotion subtly and unexpectedly started creeping in: empathy. Lauren didn’t know what was coming over her.
“You know, all the character flaws you said made him a crappy boyfriend—his sneakiness, his lying, his better-than-thou/playa attitude—are all of the things that he used to convince me that I was the one he wanted,” Dara reasoned. “I fell for the hype. I really believed him, Lauren. I guess a big part of me still wants to believe it,” she added, rubbing her burgeoning belly.
“But that was my sister’s man,” Lauren said quietly. “My sister.”
Dara nodded and, after a beat, said just as quietly, “But you always made it seem like he didn’t matter—like what they had didn’t matter. And honestly, I didn’t think it was going to go this far.” Lauren shook her head and looked away. “I’m about to become someone’s mother,” Dara said, her voice trembling. “And, quite honestly, I don’t know what to do, who to turn to, how to get through this. And I’m too tired to fight anymore. I miss you,” she added quietly. “I miss us.”
Lauren loosened her grip on the baton and slowly placed it on the counter. She looked hard into Dara’s eyes, unsure of what to do—what to say. She had to admit that she missed her best friend, too. Nobody, after all, knew as many of her secrets—well, except Donald and her sister.
Just as she got a mental image of Sydney in her brain, Lauren’s iPhone pierced the silence, startling both her and Dara; Lauren looked in the direction of the ringtone. Keisha Cole’s “Let It Go,” bounced off the concrete walls. It was Sydney.
Lauren gave Dara a slow, toe-to-head once-over with her eyes and sucked her teeth.
“You know what? That’s my sister calling,” Lauren snapped. “I’m going to take that. But I want to thank you for sharing your come-to-Jesus tale. It was, um, inspiring. Do me a favor, though, will you? Save the talk about how Marcus talked his way into your boomchickiwawa for someone who gives a damn.”