A Non-Blonde Cheerleader in Love (21 page)

And that was when I saw it. The real reason Tara was so irritated about the guys. In her mind she had led our squad to a national title. Coach Holmes bringing the guys onto the squad messed with her ego. It implied that all Tara’s hard work wasn’t enough. It implied that we could still improve. To Tara, she had already made us the best we could be.

Tara was taking the guys as a personal insult.

Still, no one could argue with her point. We
were
the number-one team in the nation. Without the help of any men. Even Karianna and Lindsey looked a bit moved at the invoking of our recent triumph.

“Whatever. Everyone at the other schools already saw us out there with the guys at the tournament,” Sage said. “West Wind is expecting us to bring them to the rivalry game. When we walk out there and it’s just us, we’re going to look like a bunch of idiots who talked a big game, but couldn’t get it done. Plus, we don’t even have a routine for a sixteen-girl squad. We’ll have to recycle something from
last season
.”

Everyone stared either at the floor or at each other. If Tara knew how to rile us, Sage knew how to hit us where it hurt. She was right. If we went out on West Wind’s court for the rivalry game with last season’s routine, against the former district cheerleading champs whom we had unseated, everyone was going to think our nationals victory was just a fluke. That we were phoning it in. That we were over.

“The West Wind Dolphins are going to laugh us off the court,” Sage said finally, looking at Phoebe. “And you and your big, fat tattletale mouth are going to be the ones to blame.”

She might as well have just dropped an A-bomb on the school. I watched as all the blood rushed to Phoebe’s face. “Who the hell do you think you are, sophomore?” she snapped, getting all up in Sage’s face so that their noses practically touched. “We’ll kick you off this squad so fast, it’ll blow your highlights out.”

“Phoebe! Come on!” Tara said, slack-jawed.

“Get away from me, freak!” Sage cried.

“Make me!” Phoebe shouted.

“Fine!” Sage replied.

And then she shoved Phoebe backward with both hands.

For a split second, no one moved, and then suddenly Chandra, Tara and I were holding Phoebe back, trying to keep her from clawing Sage’s eyebrows off. I had never seen her so wigged. Apparently all the pressure had finally gotten to her. Sage had picked the wrong cheerleader to pick on.

“Phoebe! Chill!” Tara shouted.

“Let go of me, Tara,” Phoebe replied, struggling. She managed to reach out and grab ahold of Sage’s T-shirt, tearing at the collar.

“What’s going on out here?”

The commotion had drawn the attention of the wrestling coach, Mr. Gallucci, who was now taking in the scene all baffled. Maybe there was no proper procedure in the school handbook for breaking up a catfight, because he appeared to be rooted to the spot. The door behind him opened and Christopher Healy’s head popped through.

“Sage! Phoebe! What’re you doing?” he shouted, running out to protect his girlfriend.

“You guys! You gotta see this!” another of the wrestlers shouted with glee.

The doors of the auxiliary gym were thrown open and the wrestling team emptied out, all sweaty and grimy, to watch the girl-against-girl festivities. Before I knew it, Coach Holmes was there blowing her whistle, Daniel was shielding me from someone’s flailing arms (my hero) and K.C. had grabbed Phoebe’s hands and was holding them behind her back. Christopher, meanwhile, had Sage pinned against the wall, trying to calm her down.

“You okay?” Daniel asked me, all concern.

“Yeah,” I said with a small, apologetic, grateful smile. As of that second, I was no longer mad at him. As of that second, I just wanted to do whatever I could to make sure everything went back to normal. ’Cause let’s face it, things had definitely gotten out of control. “Thanks for coming to the rescue.”

He grinned back. “Anytime.”

Apparently Daniel was on the same page as me—right smack in the middle of the forgiveness chapter of
Relationships for Beginners.

Behind us, Coach Holmes and Coach Gallucci attempted to sort it all out. Coach sent the entire squad to the locker room, minus Sage, Phoebe and Tara, whom she decided to keep behind for questioning.

“What the heck happened?” Daniel asked me, slipping his arm over my shoulders as we headed for the gym.

I sighed as Coach Holmes made Sage and Phoebe shake hands and make up. Though neither looked very happy doing it.

“Nothing good,” I replied.

12

All right, people! Let’s talk!” Tara shouted, calling the locker room to attention. Instantly everyone stopped whispering and speculating over what we had just witnessed and turned their attention to the live show. Sage and Phoebe huffed into the room ahead of Tara and dropped down on opposite benches, turning their knees away from each other. Sage crossed her arms over her chest and slumped like a little kid in time-out. Phoebe snapped the hair band she had wrapped around her wrist over and over again.

A gray cloud rolled in over the locker room, bringing with it a rather suffocating humidity. Our energy had officially been sapped by the drama. Tara, however, had a serious manic power coming off of her in bursts. Her eyes were unusually wide as she took us all in, like a spooked horse about to bolt.

Not a good look for her. And it didn’t bode well for any of us either.

“Okay, listen up,” Tara said, pacing back and forth in front of us. I watched her thigh muscles flex under her short-shorts to keep from making eye contact with her and drawing her ire. “This ends here. I will not have a redux of football season. This is my senior year. This is my
last
season. And I am not going out like this, you got me? There will be no infighting on this squad. From here on out, we are going to have fun, we are going to work hard, and we are going to conduct ourselves like mature adults.”

At this, everyone looked at Sage. She turned ten shades of purple, but didn’t look up.

“So, I’ve decided that this coming Saturday, I am going to host the first slumber party of the season so that we can all chill out together and have a little fun,” Tara said, still pacing. A quick murmur of delight swept through the room. Nothing piqued a girl’s interest like a good slumber party. And I, for one, was shocked that our no-nonsense leader was focusing any of her energy on fun-having. “We’ll watch a movie, we’ll make some cookies, we’ll stay up all night. It’ll be great. Just like old times.”

Actually she sounded more like a politician going over a platform than a girl psyched for a party, but I’d take whatever I could get.

“Like old pre-guy times,” Chandra put in, very much on board. In fact, most of the squad was jumping right on Tara’s positivity train.

Karianna pushed herself away from the locker she’d been leaning her shoulder on. “Wait a minute. What
about
the guys?”

Tara paused. “I don’t want to hear about them. This is about us. And therefore, they will not be invited.”

“Obviously,” Phoebe said, snapping that hair band. I wished she would stop already. She had a red welt growing on her skin.

“This weekend is going to be strictly girls-only,” Tara reiterated.

Challenge me and die,
her tone implied.

Had she forgotten that Coach Holmes had made it clear that she wanted us to be one cohesive team? Having an anti-testosterone fiesta wouldn’t go very far to promote that. In fact, it would pretty much obliterate it entirely.

“Uh . . . Tara?” Autumn said tentatively. “Do you really think this is the best idea?”

“Yeah. Coach is kind of all about the ‘one team’ thing,” I put in. “Leaving them out could be bad.”

“How about this?” Tara said. Her nostrils flared. “How about you guys let me deal with one crisis at a time? There are far more of us and
clearly
we are falling apart. I’d like to get this part of the team fixed. Then maybe I’ll worry about
them
.”

A few people murmured their agreement, but Autumn looked as skeptical as I felt. I had a feeling Tara would never deal with
them
at all, if she could avoid it. But then, I couldn’t argue with her one-problem-at-a-time logic. It seemed like a practical approach to a complicated issue. And besides, everyone was already chatting about the party, making plans. The gray storm cloud had officially lifted. This party could prove to be just what the doctor ordered.

I just hoped the guys would understand.

 
“What’s the Spanish word for ‘uneven’?” Bethany whispered to me the next day in the library. She paged through her dogeared and super-graffitied Spanish dictionary, flattening the spine on the table with a crack. “Any clues? Thoughts? Random guesses?”

Señorita Marquez, our young, desperate-to-prove-she-was-hip Spanish teacher, had allowed us to spend the class period in the library working on her latest sadistic assignment, translating popular songs from English into Spanish. I had a feeling she thought we’d all
love
the task—that we’d think it was cool and different and all—but really it was torture. We even had to find ways to make them rhyme and everything. Personally, I’d much rather be back in the classroom, asking Bethany,
“Invita usted a sus amigos a su casa?”
for the ten-millionth time.

Okay, so I was feeling a bit negative this morning. After yesterday’s practice and second period’s failed chemistry experiment (I was lucky I still had sensation in my fingertips, that’s all I’m saying), I just wanted
one
thing to be stress-free. And this was
not
it. But at least I was getting to spend an entire class period sitting next to Daniel, playing footsies under the table.

A silver lining to every cloud.

“What song are you doing?” Daniel asked her.

“’People Are Strange,’ ” Bethany replied, gnawing on a mushy candy-less lollipop stick.

“Your personal anthem?” he asked.

Suddenly the toe of her boot slammed into my shin.

“Ow! Bethany!” I cried, yanking my leg away from Daniel’s.

“Shhhh!” Señorita Marquez and the elderly librarian behind the counter hissed in unison.

“Sorry!” I whispered at them. I reached down and rubbed at my shin. “Ugh. That’s gonna leave a mark.”

“Sorry,” Bethany said, pressing her lips together. “I thought I was kicking
him.”
She gestured at Daniel with her lollipop stick and a wad of pulpy, mashed stick plopped onto the table.

“Ew,” I said.

“Might as well have.” Daniel took my hand and squeezed my fingers. “You kick my girl, you kick me.”

Awww. Pain erased. I loved it when he called me “his girl.” Bethany noticed my goofy grin and made a gagging sound.

“I need to be constantly mainlining Alka-Seltzer around you two,” she said, slamming her book closed. “I’m gonna go ask Marquez. Don’t be swapping saliva when I get back,” she said, pointing her black-gloved finger from me to Daniel and back again.

I sat back in my chair and sighed as Bethany loped away. “Where did she get this psycho idea to have us translate songs?” I asked, staring at the blank page in front of me. All I had so far was the title of mine, “Señorita Independiente,” a Kelly Clarkson classic. I was having a hard time concentrating, considering the ten billion other things on my mind. Like the fact that I had to tell Daniel about this weekend’s slumber party before he found out through the grapevine. The last thing we needed right now was another “why didn’t you tell me?” conversation. I wasn’t sure either one of us could take it.