Cracked Up to Be (7 page)

“One of you should take him for a walk soon,” I call down the hall to my parents. “I would, but I can’t on this foot.”

Mom and Dad decide to make it a family outing and walk him together.

It’s already working.

I have to sneak out later that night. I lock my bedroom door and crawl out the window. The trip to Chris’s takes longer with a sore ankle and sneaking around his house becomes less graceful, but I wind up in the woods all the same, on my hands and knees, digging while the ghost music thrums in the background. I don’t throw up this time, but there’s a feeling in the pit of my gut that tells me I could.

After a while, I stop looking. There’s nothing here. I know that.

I
know
that.

But there was something here.

I rub my wrist and let my fingers drift over the bracelet. This was here. Delicate, thin and gold. It should’ve been impossible for me to find, but I found it. Weeks and weeks after the fact. I did a terrible thing and I get to wear it on my wrist. And I guess I sort of hope there will be more of these kinds of things here, waiting for me to find them even though I know, logically, there won’t be. Still, I have to come out and look because the feeling that there
might
be won’t go away until I do.

And then it goes away.

Until it comes again.

Monday, my foot
feels fine. I stave off zoning out on the bus just so I can see Jake get on. Our eyes meet when he climbs aboard. He shrugs his book bag over his shoulder and it kind of seems like he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. He finds his spot in the middle.

“Got a dog
, huh?”

I pause and look down at Chris. He looks up at me. His math homework is open on his desk, half done. He pulls out the chair beside him.

“I saw your parents walking it. Sit.”

I raise an eyebrow.
“Sit?”

“Would you please sit down?”

I toss my books on the desk and do as I’m told.

“I’m so behind in math,” I say, staring at his book. “A full unit behind, almost two. I haven’t even bothered trying to catch up. Maybe I’ll just drop out. It’d save me the trouble of working this hard to graduate.”

“That’s always one option,” Chris says. “Heard you fell out of a tree last Friday.”

“Heard you were at Finn’s. High times?”

“Not all visits to Finn’s end in drug use. There were a lot of us there. Just shot the shit, introduced Jake to some people. Good party, I guess.”

“You used to throw good parties.”

“Didn’t I, though.” He looks away. “I could get used to Becky. I was thinking about it. Wouldn’t be so bad. Just for senior year.”

“Lucky Becky.”

“Like I said, I’m thinking about it. It’s ill-befitting someone of my popularity to go as long as I have single, which is your fault.”

“You think you can make me feel guilty?”

“I’m trying.”

Just like that, I’m tired of this conversation. I grab my books and stand even though it’s not like I have somewhere else to go. The bell will ring in ten minutes.

But in ten minutes I could be far away.

“Sit,” he says again. I sit and reach for his pencil. Twirl it between my fingers.

“You can’t make me feel guilty,” I tell him. “About any of it.”

And now it’s not just about Becky anymore.

He opens his mouth and closes it. Opens it. Closes it again.

“Or sorry,” I add. “You can’t make me sorry about any of it either.”

“Okay,” Chris says, “but whether or not you’re sorry or guilty doesn’t change the fact that I forgive you anyway. And I don’t blame you.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You’re just saying that because you want to—”

“I
don’t
blame you, Parker. You weren’t thinking clearly—”

“Why are we talking about this?”

I have no patience for this kind of bullshit. It’s like now that I’m seeing Grey everyone’s all,
Oh, she must have her head on straight, so I can move in again
, which is what I was afraid of, but no one gets to move in ever again because it’s better for everyone this way. People are so stupid. They don’t even know when you’re helping them.

“You brought it up,” he says, and then he smiles. “You know, we could work something out. You be my girlfriend again, I give you my math homework . . .”

“Right.”

“Okay, skip the girlfriend thing and let’s make it sexual favors.”

I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“Do I look that cheap to you?” I ask.

When Becky enters the room, he moves to the back to sit beside her.

“WIN OR LOSE!

IT’S ALL THE SAME!

WE DO OUR BEST!

WE’VE GOT GAME!”

I’m dreaming again. I pinch myself. Ouch. Not dreaming. It’s lunchtime in the gym and Becky is actually leading the cheerleading squad in that stupid cheer.

“—Unity and disparity. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’m totally confused—”

“Did you hear that?’

Jake looks up from his spot beside me on the bleachers.

“What?”

“The cheer about losing. Did you hear it?”

“Uh, not really,” he says, annoyed. “See, I was talking about our
art project
—”

“Shut up; they’re doing it again. Listen. It’s really awful.”

The girls resume triangle formation, Becky at the point of it.

“One, two, three!”

The cheer starts up again. Jake and I watch, transfixed. The beat is painfully off, the dance steps contrived and awkward. Cardboard cutouts of cheerleaders operated by arthritic monkeys would move more fluidly.

They finish and Jake—bless his heart—says, “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

“You suck, Becky!” I shout.

The cheerleaders twitter. Becky places her hands on her hips and turns to me. I’ve heard around the halls there’s nothing more terrifying than being glared at by St. Peter’s High’s cheerleading captain, but that was when
I
was the captain.

When Becky glares, it’s just funny.

“There was a reason I wouldn’t let us do that cheer, you know,” I say.

She frowns.

“You’re not captain anymore. You don’t get a say in it.”

“Yeah, and you might not be captain for much longer. They’ll oust you from the squad if you perform that at the next game.”

The girls twitter some more, but I can’t tell if it’s agreeable twittering. They should know from past experience I’m always right about stuff like this.

Becky orders them to take a break and storms up the bleachers to me.

“Uh-oh . . . ,” Jake says under his breath.

“Fuck off, Parker,” Becky says when she reaches me. “That’s my squad out there.
My
squad. Not yours,
mine
. How
dare
you humiliate me in front of the girls—”

I burst out laughing.

“It’s an awful cheer and you know it. You think you’ll prove me wrong by performing it? You think I actually care? Because I don’t—”

“Then why did you feel the need to mouth off while we were practicing it? You wouldn’t have tolerated that from anyone, and if I remember correctly, you
didn’t
—”

“Jessie would’ve vetoed that in a second if she was here, and she
did
the last time you tried to get us to do it. Remember?”

“Jessie’s not here, you bitch.”

She storms back down the bleachers.

“Becky, I lied!” I yell. She doesn’t turn around. “I do care. The squad will look like total douche bags if they perform that cheer.”

She returns to the girls. I rest my chin in my hands.

“Are you ready to talk about our project now?”

“No,” I say.

“Okay, good,” Jake says exasperatedly. “So basically, Norton is fucked. Unity and disparity is . . . ridiculous. But I was thinking we should do one side really, really, really dark and the other side really, really, really light—”

“But how do you connect that? It has to connect in the middle.”

“Right. Damn it.” He groans and stares longingly at the game of basketball Chris & Co. are having on the court.

“Let’s make it subtle,” I say. “Maybe one side can be spring and the middle can be summer and the other side can be fall. . . .”

Jake nods eagerly. “I like that!”

“Oh, really? I thought you wouldn’t. We can’t do that. That’s what Mindy Andrews and Cory Hall are doing. I overheard them.”

He rolls his eyes and checks out the cheerleaders.

“Do you miss it?” he asks.

“No.”

It’s not true. I kind of miss cheerleading sometimes. The squad. Just for something to do, to distract myself with. I know they don’t miss me. I was a nightmare captain and they had to be perfect. But I was like that about everything. My grades, my relationship with Chris, my friends. Everything perfect.

The bell rings.

“You didn’t get to play,” I say.

Jake sighs. “Yeah.”

“You should try out for the team.”

“Can’t. My knee’s all fucked up. I hurt it during the most important game of the season at my old school. Little games at lunch are about all I can stand. I miss it a lot.” He sounds wistful. “I love basketball.”

Great. Just more useless information I won’t be able to forget.

seven

By Wednesday, word around the halls is Chris and Becky are a couple. By Thursday
, it’s confirmed. They’ve got the Public Displays of Affection thing down pat and I have to hand it to them, they look pretty happy for two people who have absolutely nothing to be happy about. He’s with her because he can’t be with me and she’s got to suffer every kiss knowing that, and boy, does she know that.

By Thursday night, Bailey knows how to fetch Dad’s slippers.

“Look at this!” Dad says, after he calls Mom and me into the living room. He’s stretched out in his recliner and Bailey’s sprawled out on the floor at his feet. Dad snaps his fingers. “Bailey!”

Bailey raises his head.

“Fetch, Bailey; fetch me my slippers, boy!”

It’s terribly exciting. Bailey rises slowly, totters out of the room and totters back in with Dad’s slippers in his mouth. Mom squeals a little and claps her hands.

This dog is mad talented.

“Good dog!” she gushes, patting Bailey on the head. He looks pretty satisfied with himself, for a dog. He nestles back into his spot at Dad’s feet and Mom rushes into the kitchen to get him a treat.

“Good job, Bailey,” I say.

But I’m not talking about the slippers.

The party starts at eight, but I show up early so Chris and I can have sex. Another year at St. Peter’s is almost behind us and we’ve already slept together eight times. This will be the ninth and there’s going to be a lot more sex in our future
.

We go to his bedroom. The speakers are mounted against his window and he turns on some sweet-sounding music really low and kisses me and I kiss him back and then, I don’t know, I kind of seize up
.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. He’s breathing heavy
.

We separate and I wipe my mouth.

“What have you been eating?”

“What does it matter?”

“Were you eating something with garlic in it? I told you not to eat garlic before you kiss me anymore. It’s gross.”

He sighs. “What’s wrong, Parker?”

“You know I hate garlic breath and you eat it anyway, that’s what’s wrong.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I untie my ponytail and retie it. I think every so often, Chris should have to work for sex by listening to me
.

“Jessie thinks I’m coming down on the other girls too hard.”

“We stopped making out for that?”

He leans in for another kiss and I push him away.

“Fuck off, Chris. I’m serious.”

“You’re always serious.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It can be.” He flops back on his bed. “You should loosen the fuck up every once in a while; the world wouldn’t stop. No one would die.”

He’s such a bastard. I loosen up, sometimes. And even if I didn’t, it’s not like there’s something wrong with being focused. Some people are focused
.

That’s what they do
.

“She says I’m coming down on the girls too hard,” I repeat.

“Is she right?” he asks. “I bet she’s right.”

“I may have let them know how much they suck lately.” The memory of their total suckiness gets me pissed off about it all over again. “But I want us to be good, you know? Is that too much to ask? I work my ass off thinking up cheers and dance moves and if they can’t get them right, what, I’m supposed to congratulate them for it?”

Chris stares
.

“It’s just cheerleading.”

“Oh, really? And if I said that about one of your basketball games
—”

“That’s different.” He sits up and wraps an arm around me. “I’ve seen you captain. You’re anal. You’re anal about everything, though.”

“I like things a certain way.”

“You’re a perfectionist. You like them perfect. There’s no margin for error or you go crazy.”

“If I can do things right, I don’t see why everyone else can’t.” I untie my ponytail again and do it back up. “She called me a Cheerleading Nazi in front of the entire squad. We got into a screaming match in front of everyone
—”

“That’s so cute,” Chris says, laughing. I glare at him and he stops. “Look, you’ll see her in a couple of hours when the party’s in full swing. Get her after she’s had a couple shots and she’s mellow. You can make up, no biggie. You’re best friends. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

He kisses my neck.

“God, you’re tense,” he murmurs. “Maybe you should quit the squad, take a break or something. You’re, like, this close to the edge
—”

“That’s funny, Chris,” I interrupt
.