How to Be Brave(10)

Nine minutes. Nine excruciating minutes until I give Avery et al. my very best self.

I throw my phone in my bag and pull out the copies of cheers they gave us last week that we’re all supposed to have memorized. I practice under my breath.

Hey, hey, hey,

We’re Number One

We’re the Lions from Webster

Doing it Together

Y’all know that it’s true

So everybody fight

for the Yellow and Blue!


The smarty pants in me wants to stand up during tryouts today and point out the abysmal lack of attention to rhyme and meter. But then I take myself back to the image of being up there, a real, honest-to-goodness cheerleader, smiling and moving and getting a crowd riled up. I actually do respect what they do. I crave their positivity, their energy.

And I think about her letter.

I want this.

“They’re all so tiny.” Liss sneaks up from behind, pulls on my braid, and gives me a hug. “When did everybody get so small? Don’t these girls know how to eat?”

“A friendly face.” I hug her back. “Hallelujah.”

“How are you feeling?” She whispers this in my ear. Then she speaks more loudly so as to announce her presence to the room, to intimidate the girls. It’s what she’s good at. “It’s like the Land of the Lilliputians in here.”

“You’re wasting your breath with that reference, my friend.”

A passing mini, who is trying to reach her locker, frowns at Liss. “Um, excuse me. I need to get my brush.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m in your way. Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.” Liss lets her pass and then mouths in a tiny voice to me, “So little!”

They are quite small, both in age and in body type, but thankfully, I’m not the biggest one here. There’s one other girl who’s not a miniature; she’s a normal like me. She might actually be a little bigger than me, a size 20, I’d guess, maybe even a 22. But it’s clear she’s a freshman. She has that typical blank stare of shock combined with fear mixed with absolute ignorance. She’s cute, though. She’s wearing white Keds, black socks, white leggings, and a shredded black sweatshirt, white bow under her high bun.

Liss catches me eyeing her. “She looks like an Oreo cookie cupcake,” she whispers. “Or a zebra on parade.”

I can’t help laughing, even though I disagree with Liss’s snap assessment of her. Liss is being mean, but she’s just trying to make me feel better. To lessen the competition. To build me up. “I like her,” I say. “I’m rooting for her.”

“You would.” Liss smiles. She gives me a kiss on the cheek. “’Cause you’re a good person. Gregg’s waiting for me.” Gregg’s her new soccer beau. Turns out she likes the game. She used to think it was boring, but now she claims that she gets it. She says she likes the tease of the goal, the long drawn-out wait. She says it’s like making out. She would know better than me. She’s already had a couple of boyfriends—Aaron Sykes for two months freshman year and Paul Licata for all of three months last year. Neither was serious. She calls them “short-term escapades.” She went to second base with Paul. (Her: “With a last name like Licata, you know what he’s good at…” Me: “Ew.”) But that’s all. Still, she knows way more than me. I haven’t had one boyfriend, ever.

“We’ll be up in the bleachers. And we’ll be rooting for you,” she says, waving.

The minis all start to flutter toward the gym behind her, and suddenly, I’m alone. I check my phone. Two minutes.

I walk over to the mirror. I smile, a wide, toothy one. I crinkle my eyes to make them look happier. I bob my head side to side in rhythm with the rhymes that are pounding in my head.

I could be a cheerleader. I can do this.

I relax my face, close my eyes, and take a deep breath.

I throw my bag into a locker, roll the lock closed, and head toward the door.

Here we go. Showtime.

*

The gym is reverberating with heavy bass and the echoes of girls laughing and chanting and already giving it their all. The minis are lined up on a yellow line at the front, a veritable rainbow of fluorescent leggings, all except for my fellow normal, who looks like a deer caught wild-eyed in front of a semi. I run over and stand next to her. I figure she’ll be my camouflage.

Avery, Chloe, and a few other cheerleaders are sitting at a table near the bleachers, looking very official with clipboards in hand.

Behind them, I see Liss on the bleachers with Gregg. They wave and throw a thumbs-up my way.

I smile and wave back, but I’m ready to escape out the door.

I can feel the knots. Huge knots. A giant, gnarly, tangled mess in my stomach.

What am I doing here?

Okay, breathe, Georgia. Think.

Positive Thought #6: I’m not a freshman.

Positive Thought #7: I’m not dressed like an Oreo cookie.

Positive Thought #8: I’m taking a line from the cheerleading packet: #YOLO.

Shit. That last one’s actually not very positive. It’s pretty damn depressing when you take a minute to really think about it.

My nightmarish reverie is interrupted by Avery’s shrill voice in a microphone. “Okay, you guys! Let’s go! It’s time to do this thing!” She instructs us to come up closer to her to another yellow line and to group ourselves according to height. We arrange and rearrange, and I end up at the farthest end. My fellow normal has moved toward the middle, and instead, I’m next to a tall, svelte blonde in lime-green leggings with the word SASSY imprinted on her ass.