The Cheerleaders(3)

By the end of the season, everyone in it was dead.





A small crowd is gathered outside the main office, where Coach said she would post the list this morning. As we approach the bulletin board, a pack of freshman girls walk away, dejected.

Next to me, Rach sucks in her breath. We step up to the bulletin board. I scan the candy-colored papers tacked to it—a list of people who got callbacks for the fall play, a flyer advertising the girls’ soccer team car wash, information for a weekend SAT prep course.

“There’s nothing here,” Alexa says.

“Yeah, there is.” A familiar voice. I turn around; the Kelseys are behind us, iced lattes from Dunkin’ Donuts in hand. Kelsey Butler rattles the ice in hers. She points—her nails, painted apricot, popping against her dark skin.

I look where Kelsey is pointing—a sheet of paper tacked to the bulletin board. On it, a single line:


DANCE TEAM LIST WILL BE POSTED AT NOON



Kelsey Butler’s best friend, Kelsey Gabriel, sidles up next to her to get a better look. Kelsey G’s usually fair hair is sun-streaked even lighter, and her skin is freckled. “Ew. Why?”

“More people tried out this year,” Kelsey B says. “Maybe she needed more time to decide.”

The Kelseys walk off together. They’ll be on the list; they’re seniors, and both of them were in classes with me at the Royal Hudson Dance Studio when we were younger. The Kelseys, with their inhumanly high leaps and whip-fast pirouettes, are the closest things Coach has to favorites.

My friends and I stay close together and head for the second floor—we’re Rayburn, Santiago, and Steiger, and homerooms are assigned in alphabetical order. As we file onto the stairs, I catch a glimpse of Rachel. She’s picking at the corner of her mouth, where her lipstick is flaking.

“It’s fine,” I say, softly enough that only she can hear. “You’ve got this.”

She’s no doubt thinking about what Kelsey B said. Rachel is haunted by the triple pirouette she hasn’t mastered—the one Coach threatened to put in our competition routine this year.

Before I can find my seat in homeroom, my teacher says my name. “You’re wanted at guidance.”

My stomach plummets to my feet. “Why?”

“Dunno. I’m not your secretary,” he drones.

I take the slip from his grasp, eyeing my guidance counselor’s almost-illegible scrawl.

I choose the longer route to the guidance office so I can pass a bathroom. I dig out the plastic baggie of naproxen my mother left on the counter next to my Tupperware of veggies and ranch this morning. She’s doling out the pills to me four at a time, as if they’re Oxys or something. I open the baggie and knock them back with a sip of water from my bottle.

Mr. Demarco is sitting with his back to me when I rap on the doorframe of his office. He swivels around in his chair, his face brightening when he sees me. He’s in an ice-blue polo that makes his matching eyes pop. Rachel and Alexa call him a silver fox.

“There she is.” Mr. Demarco sets his Starbucks cup, marked PSL, on his desk. “Sit, sit.”

He drags a chair next to his desk. He moves a box of pamphlets off his seat; I catch a glimpse of a campus quad, bright with fall foliage. I sit down, pressing my chem textbook into my abdomen.

“So.” Demarco smiles without showing any teeth. “How are you?”

“Fine.” I grip the chem textbook. Press harder. Does he know? There’s no way he could have found out. Not unless my mother told him, and I made her swear, my nails digging half circles into her arm, that she wouldn’t even tell Tom.

Demarco takes a sip of his coffee. “I’ll cut to the chase. Mrs. Coughlin is trying to put together a memorial ceremony, in the courtyard.”

Mrs. Coughlin, the health teacher. Colleen Coughlin’s mother.

Mr. Demarco doesn’t give any further explanation; he doesn’t need to. Colleen Coughlin was in the passenger seat of Bethany Steiger’s car when she hydroplaned during a storm and drove into a tree. The car was so mangled that supposedly the coroner had trouble figuring out which girl was which. One of the paramedics at the scene vomited.

The first two cheerleaders to be killed that year.

“A memorial.” I take off the ponytail holder on my wrist and wrap it around my fingers, cutting off the circulation in the tips. “Like a religious thing?”

“No, not at all,” Demarco says. “Just a small ceremony in the courtyard. Mrs. Coughlin asked if you’d like to be a part of it.”

At my stricken expression, Demarco picks up his empty cup, taps the base of it against his desk. “Obviously you don’t have to say yes. Mrs. Coughlin did pick out some poems she thinks would be nice for you to read.”

He hands me a stack of paper held together by a butterfly clip. I don’t look at it. “It’s just…,” I mumble. “It would feel weird. I didn’t even know Colleen and Bethany.”

“Oh no, we’d honor all the girls at once. Everyone thought it would be best that way.”

In other words, get the memorial out of the way before homecoming, because my sister’s two best friends died five years ago the night before their homecoming. It wouldn’t be very nice to remind the crowd about the horrific way Juliana Ruiz and Susan Berry were killed when everyone just wants to watch some football. “Wow. Okay. Thanks. I actually think I have a quiz next period.”