Fly Away (3 page)

Priya and Lucy giggled.

“I suck,” I whimpered, “and I'm an extraterrestrial.”

“Well, you've had better practices, Mar. But aren't you glad you got the kinks out in front of us instead of the whole team?”

I sniffled.

“Why don't we forget about the throws for today? Work on scorpion and liberty. Okay?”

“And if you don't mind,” Lucy piped up, “I could really use a couple of run-throughs of the drill parts in the seventies routine.”

I'd been so wrapped up in my own poor performance that I'd forgotten how new our choreography was to Lucy. “Let's do that first, then,” I suggested, getting to my feet. “Take my mind off the stunts for a bit.”

Arielle found our music, and we lined up in front of the mirror. Drill is the part of cheerleading that's sort of like dance— the part where you keep your feet on the floor and interpret the music. There's a lot of pressure, in competition, to do stunt after stunt. Some people even say drill cheerleading is dying and that in a couple of years it'll be extinct, like the pom-pom. But our coach always tells us that drill is the element that separates the good squads from the bad. If a team has a weak link or two, you can hide it on stunts—after all, how much grace does it take to hold up a leg? But when you watch a team do drill, your eye is drawn, like a magnet, to the girl who's half a beat too slow, or whose toes aren't pointed. Strong drill is a hallmark of our team.

Twenty minutes of drill left all of us sweaty and breathing hard. It's hard to be nervous when you're tired. When Arielle reminded me we still hadn't worked on the lifts, I lined up in front of the three bases without objection.

“One, two,” recited Arielle.

I lifted my foot off the ground for the boost.

“Three, four,” answered Lucy and Priya, bending their knees and taking hold of my left foot and right ankle.

“Five, six,” I said, pushing off the bases' shoulders on five and raising my arms above my head on six.

For “seven, eight”—which we count in our heads—I'm more than six feet above the ground, supported only by three palms under the sole of my right foot and one hand around my ankle. My left toe is pointed against my right knee, and my arms are in the air. The only thing that keeps me from falling in a liberty lift is the strength of my stomach muscles and how rigid and straight I keep my ankle and my knee. Any wobble anywhere, and the whole thing comes crashing down in a heap.

“Down,” whispered Arielle, and the web of palms below my foot collapsed, forming a basket to break my fall.

“Nice,” said Lucy, setting me down on my feet.

“Well,” I protested, “I kept my hands on your shoulders too long, but—”

“No,” said Arielle, “that was nice. Now, let's do a scorpion.”

chapter five

I was nervous during Monday's warm-up. Saturday's fiasco had proved that, even though my lifts were coming along, my flying skills were seriously rusty. I stayed quiet while we stretched, trying to focus on the task ahead.

I was new at flying, at least on this level-five team. I was well liked, so the girls would probably cut me some slack, but only for so long. After all, this was supposed to be our breakout year. Second place wasn't going to cut it. I had only a few weeks to go from crummy to perfect.

“Let's go,” said Coach.

We practiced the drill sequence first— the part that comes right after the opening stunts. Because it's on the floor, my part didn't change much. I just moved one row back to make way for Jada, who was taking my place as a tumbler.

When it comes to drill, timing and precision are key. Precision comes from positioning. Arms tight and straight, abdominal muscles taut, toes pointed. Each position must be held crisply, never drifted through.

Great music helps. Since I was friends with Arielle, I got to help choose our music, and I loved it. Many teams just pick whatever's popular at the moment, to please the crowd. This time we decided to go retro. One of our routines was a medley of seventies songs, from Led Zeppelin right through to disco. We called the routine “Groovy.”

Working on drill helped settle me down. By the time we moved on to stunts, I felt competent. There are three stunt groups. Arielle was on the other side of the room with her group. Lucy, who's in my group, shot me a nervous little smile as we got into position for the first lift. She was new too, I reminded myself. If we wobbled a little, it would be perfectly normal.

But we wobbled a lot. And Lucy wasn't the problem.

After I bailed out of a basic split throw for the second time, Shona Bart, the flyer from the center group, turned and stared at me. “What's wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Huh?”

“This is, like, a level-two throw. What's the matter?”

A hot blush crept up my neck.

“She hasn't done this in two years,” Priya retorted. “She's just rusty. And Lucy just joined us.”

Shona turned her back to me and said something to Ruthie that ended in “…get her act together in time for provincials.” That didn't make me feel any steadier.

“What was that all about?” I complained when Arielle and I got into her car.

“You mean Shona?” Ari asked. “You know what she's like.”

Anyone who's ever done a “girl sport”— figure skating, gymnastics, whatever—has met a girl like Shona Bart. The type who thinks a little talent gives her the right to criticize girls who've been doing the sport longer. That was what bugged me the most. Shona was only fourteen—she looked about nine—and I was sixteen.

“Yeah, well,” I continued, “the problem is, she's right. I can't even do a stupid split throw! What's wrong with me?” I put my hands over my face.

Arielle laughed.

“Oh, nice,” I said. “Laughing makes it so much better.”

She shrugged. “Nothing's wrong, Marnie. You're rusty. Sometimes Shona flubs throws too, you know.”

“When?” I asked. “When was the last time you saw Shona miss a throw?” Shona was a dependable performer. Rock solid.

“If you want,” said Arielle, “I could sabotage her. Bump one of her bases at exactly the right moment…”

I wasn't sure I liked Ari making a joke out of my problems. But maybe I really did need to shake it off. Maybe I was being self-centered. Arielle was a very good listener. It's easy to dump on her and forget that she might need to talk about her own stuff too.

“So what's new with you, Ari?” I asked. “Any decisions about residence?” Arielle still hadn't made up her mind where she wanted to live at U of T.

She shrugged. “I guess Woodsworth. Unless I like the Lorretto house better when I take the tour.”

“Isn't Lorretto girls-only?” I stuck out my tongue. “Bleah. When do you go for the tour? Want me to come?” We were hoping to live together when I got to U of T. Assuming I got accepted.

“Sure,” she said. “Remind me to find some time to go.”

“You don't seem too excited.”

She shrugged again. “It's months away.”

I wondered if having to leave cheerleading was one of the reasons she wasn't excited. But Arielle hardly ever talked about herself, and I didn't want to pry. Would I miss cheerleading too when it was time for me to go to Toronto?

“So, Liam canceled geek night again,” I told her. “He's mad at me for walking out on him before that party. Want to get together and watch last year's DVD from the provincials? Scope out the competition?”

But she told me she couldn't, that she had stuff to do. Then she dropped me off at my house.

I wondered what “stuff” Arielle was doing on a Monday night. Probably painting. I sat alone on my bed for about ten minutes. What was I going to do? There was a social studies essay I could start. I could try to talk my mom into watching the provincials DVD with me, but it wasn't as though she'd have much to say about it. My mom always likes to tell me she was a science nerd in high school. She doesn't come right out and say that she thinks cheerleading is a waste of time, but she rarely has the energy to fake much interest in it. It's just too girlie for her.

I picked up the phone. Might as well see if I could patch things up with Liam.

His mother answered. “Marnie!” she chirped. “You haven't been over in ages.”

She hadn't been home when I'd been at Liam's on Thursday, but I didn't want to argue. “Yeah.” I said. “I guess it's a busy time of year.”

“Really? I feel like Liam never leaves the house these days. I guess football's over, and…” Her voice trailed off. “Aren't you two supposed to be at Eliza's tonight? Playing that game?”

I heard Liam in the background. “Mom! Gimme the phone.”

“Liam wants the phone,” she said. “Come over soon, okay, honey?”

“I will,” I promised.

“So,” Liam said.

“We're gonna get kicked out of Blood Plain, you know,” I said, “if we never show up.”

“Whatever.”

“Nice.”

“Look, Marnie,” he said, “I'm tired. If you feel the need to give me grief, it's going to have to wait.”

“Until when?”

There was a long pause. “Tomorrow. We can get together tomorrow. It's cheap night at the movies. Work for you?”

I didn't seem to have much choice.

chapter six

The next morning I turned on my computer to print my social studies notes. There were no email messages from Liam, but there was one message pending, something that was taking forever to load. With my luck, it was a computer virus. I left it loading while I dried my hair. When I came back, I saw it was a note from Arielle, with several attachments. I opened it.

Hey Mar!

Can you take a look at this stuff? It's
a portfolio of my recent stuff. It took me
forever to get the images all the same size.

But mostly I want you to look at the bio,
see if it's okay. I want to sound like a
serious artist without coming across like
I'm full of myself…

Check it out and write back
ASAP
!

Ari

I checked the time of her email. 2:49 AM. So this was the “stuff” she had been so eager to work on. She must have stayed up half the night doing it. I reread the email to see who she was sending the portfolio to.

She didn't say.

I checked my watch. Ten minutes before I had to leave. I sat down to look at the images.

The first one was the carnival painting that she'd finished the previous week. I didn't recognize some of the other images. One in particular caught my eye. It was a painting of a guy on a skateboard, shoulders hunched, chin tucked into his jacket collar, hurrying away from something. He was looking down—you could barely see the side of his face—but you could tell by his posture that he was afraid. I shuddered. Arielle's work was getting creepier. But it seemed to me that it was also getting really good.

The bio Arielle had written seemed okay to me. She made no mention of cheerleading or the debate team or any of the other things she did so well. It was all about her art. The courses she'd taken. The shows she's been in. It seemed like she was trying to sound older than she was, more mature. Maybe she had to do that to be taken seriously.

I dialed her number on the way to school.

She answered right away. “Did you get my message?”

“Yep. The skateboarder painting is amazing.”

“That's my cousin Doug,” she said. “He posed for it.”

“Was he being chased by zombies at the time?”

She laughed. “Did you read the bio though? I'm worried it seems sort of…brief.”

“You're eighteen. What do they expect?” It was freezing out. I pulled my hood tighter around my face. “Who's this portfolio for anyway?”

“Oh, well,” she said, “you know. Nobody in particular. It's good to have something prepared so I can send it if anyone asks, right?”

“I guess,” I said. Who stays up until 2:00 AM to prepare something just in case?

I knew that Arielle had wanted to study fine arts at university, but her parents convinced her that a Bachelor of Science was the way to go. She gets great marks in science. There was no reason why she couldn't keep painting, arts program or not. But Ari had seemed disappointed.

Was she planning to apply to the fine arts program after all? Her parents would freak. And the deadline had to be soon, if it hadn't passed already. But why wasn't she talking to me about it? What was wrong with everybody these days?

My bad mood lasted the rest of the day. I kept quiet, riding next to Liam on the way to the movies. If he could be moody, then so could I.

But the movie was really funny, and it was so good to hear Liam laugh. He's really the sweetest guy when he's not depressed. He almost always made time for me when I needed it. And he's so cute. He has the biggest, brownest eyes you've ever seen, like melted chocolate. I squeezed his hand in the darkness.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I whispered.

He squeezed my hand back.

We took the long way home and parked in the empty golf course lot. We got out to look at the stars. It was one of those windless midwinter nights, when it seems like you can see the whole Milky Way. We stood there for a long time, his arms wrapped around me.

“This cheerleading stuff, Marnie, it's all going to be fine. You know that, right?”

I nodded.

“It's your year,” he said. “And it's going to happen just like you want it to happen.”

I could tell, when he said that, that it wasn't really me he was thinking about. About a month ago, Liam had finally realized that the football scholarship he'd been counting on wasn't coming through. When he said good things were going to happen for me, I knew he couldn't say the same thing about himself. I squeezed his hand. Poor Liam. No wonder he'd been so down lately. But I didn't say anything about it. We'd had such a nice night together. I couldn't bring myself to wreck it.