How to Be Brave(6)

“Nada, my friend.” Liss throws her hands up.

“Do Everything Be Brave, my friend.”

“Aw, shit. Fine.” We pass by the WHS Go-Karting Club table, and Liss grabs a brochure.

“Go-karting? Seriously?”

Liss smiles. She would choose go-karting. I bet she’ll even go.

Liss has always been feisty and unpredictable. When I first met her, she had supershort fire-red hair. We were only in the eighth grade, but she would wear bright red lipstick, and her translucent skin was thick with powder. She was almost as thin as Avery Trenholm but much more badass and unforgiving. She refused to play the game, to follow the pack of animals.

When she first transferred from the suburbs, we didn’t speak for the entire year. I was somewhat of a loner, trying my darndest to be nice to everyone but friends with no one in particular, and she was new and messy and bowlegged and she limps a little when she walks for no other reason except that it’s how she was made, and it was reason enough to displace her in No-Woman’s-Land with me. That, and perhaps her choice.

But the last week of June, we somehow ended up walking the parameter of the playground every day for the fifty minutes of lunch, munching on our sandwiches and dropping crumbs for the birds and the squirrels. We bonded over music and movies and TV and whatever else mattered most that year. We confided our life stories. She told me that her parents divorced when she was five. When they fell in love they were both free-spirited potheads, and Liss was most likely an accidental product of a drug-induced haze. But then after college, her dad went corporate (tax attorney), and her mom (a medical social worker) finally drew the line when he bought a BMW. Liss has since split her weeks between them. She described her parents as young and lenient; I said mine were older and overprotective. I think we both wanted what the other had.

We traded numbers and e-mail and ended up spending the whole summer together, my mom carting us around town, shopping and movies and the beach and whatever else we wanted. We stayed side by side as much as possible once we started at Webster, choosing the same electives and languages (photo, culinary arts, French) and deciding not to join anything beyond that, until today.

Bodies swarm around us. “Do you see cheerleading?” I’m really ready to do this.

“No…” Liss strains her head over the bustling crowd. Her hair has since grown out past her shoulders, and today it’s tied in two French braids with wisps escaping in every direction. “But I see Soccer Club.”

“They have a club? Aren’t they just a team?”

“Technicalities, my friend. I think they’re like fans, not players. Anyway, what I do know”—she eyes the members—“is that they are some of the most scrumptious young men. And it looks like they’ve all been caught in one net. Rawr.”

“Eh. They’re okay.…”

“What? Okay? Come on, let’s go over there. Look at them. They’re really hot. Like all of them.”

“They’re no Daniel Antell.…”

“You’re obsessed.”

“You go. I’ll meet up with you. I want to find the cheerleading squad.”

“Okay, but be careful out there.”

I make my way through the traffic down to where Avery is sitting in her tiny little skirt surrounded by other tiny skirts. I stop at the Earth Club table two doors down and pretend to read a pamphlet about global warming. I spy the cheer table. A gaggle of skirts are all smiling coldly at the passing crowd, with Avery Trenholm leading the brigade. What am I doing?

I have a plan, though. I’m going to be the most real cheerleader they’ve ever seen. I’m going to draw energy from my mom, and I’m going to smile and trust and beam with as much joy as I can muster, just like she used to do.

And I’m going to do a cartwheel.

I love cartwheels. I love the sensation of hurtling through the air, upside down, an unstoppable wheelbarrow of motion, armslegsfeet out of control, defying gravity, if ever so briefly, blood tossed through veins, a shock to the heart.

When I was twelve, I made the commitment to do one cartwheel every day for a year. It was part of my very first diet plan. I took the Special K Challenge: Eat Special K for breakfast, Special K for lunch, and a low-fat dinner. They said: Lose six pounds in two weeks! I figured if I could quadruple it, I could lose twenty-four pounds in eight weeks. Plus, I decided to start running. And do a cartwheel every day for a year.

Needless to say, I lost the cereal challenge, but not the weight. (And I lasted only four days. I was freakin’ hungry.) After pulling my hamstrings during my one wild attempt to be a marathoner, I made a new commitment to run only if being chased by a bear or some other frothing wild animal. However, I’m extremely proud to say that I kept my promise to the cartwheel.

I can still do it, even today. And a round-off. There’s a tiny courtyard behind our apartment building where there’s just enough room for one full gymnastic move. Every few days, I hoist my one-hundred-and-blah-de-blah-pound self (the exact number is irrelevant and supersecret) across the concrete.

But really, what I can’t say aloud to Liss for fear of breaking down completely is that I want to try cheer first to honor my mom. She used to show me pictures of her with her friends when they were in high school—she said it was the best time of her life. She was actually a cheerleader, which I couldn’t believe when she first told me. Last year, when she came home from the hospital after her last stent procedure, we’d flipped through the faded Polaroids and laughed at how short their skirts were, how they’d feathered their hair so stiff. She said that even though her best friends were all sizes 4 and 6 (and she clearly wasn’t) and that she secretly felt self-conscious most of the time, they still accepted her. They still let her stand in front of the entire school with pom-poms and a short skirt, and she absolutely loved it. She said she loved doing cartwheels every day with people, for people. She loved pumping the crowds with joy and energy.