The Cheerleaders(73)

“What about Juliana Ruiz? Everyone says they were friends.” Everyone except Carly herself.

“Yeah. Sweet little Jules.” Patrice sighs. “It was honestly kind of sad.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“At practice, Carly would make it a point to talk really loudly about the parties she and Juliana went to over the weekend with these older guys Carly knew. I think Carly wanted to show off, like she was too cool for high school shit. But that, like, wasn’t Juliana at all. None of us really understood the power Carly had over her.”

“When you said Carly was only on the squad for a little while,” I say, “do you mean she stopped cheering before Juliana died?”

Patrice shakes her head. “She got kicked off the squad before.”

I glance at Ginny. Her eyebrows are raised, eyes on Patrice. “What did Carly do to get kicked off?” Ginny asks.

“There were rumors. But no one knows what really happened except Carly and Allie.”

“Allie?”

“Our coach,” Patrice says. “You never met Allie?”

A flash of my sister’s coach, in the bleachers at one of Jen’s regional competitions that my mother dragged Petey and me to. Cheerleader Barbie.

I shake my head. “What was the rumor?”

A gust of wind flies past us. Patrice zips her warm-up jacket to her chin. “That Carly slept with Allie’s boyfriend.”

“That’s nuts,” I say.

Patrice shrugs. “If it’s true, it’s the least scandalous thing that would have happened when I was in school. A girl in my grade had a threesome. When we were freshmen. God, I do not miss that place.”

Patrice picks up the box of pom-poms. “I’ve got to head out. Why do you guys care about Carly anyway? Can’t you talk to her yourselves?”

“I think she can tell me something that happened between my sister and her friends,” I say. “She wasn’t exactly cooperative when I tried to talk to her.”

Patrice balances the pom-pom box on her hip, looking thoughtful. “Maybe you should ask Allie.”

“She knew everything that was going on with us. She was always comforting some crying girl in her office.” Patrice’s voice suggests that she was definitely not one of those crying girls.

Some shrieking draws our attention to the other end of the football field; a handful of football players in navy-and-white uniforms are almost forehead to forehead with two guys on Shrewsbury’s team. I recognize the hulking kid in the center as the linebacker who got a nasty penalty off of Shrewsbury during the game.

There’s some cursing and scuffling, a crowd gathering around the guys, voices swelling like a melee is about to break out. Patrice drops the box of pom-poms and starts jogging toward them, shouting, “Are you for real right now?”

Something occurs to me. I call out: “Patrice, wait! One second!”

Patrice stops short. “What is it?”

“Did Carly have a pickup truck?”

Patrice blinks at me. “No. She couldn’t drive.”

Parents are hurrying down the bleachers, toward the fight. Patrice disappears into the chaos; Ginny and I hurry off the field and duck out of the stadium, wending our way through a crowd thick with tension. Jubilant people in green avoiding the somber throngs of people in navy and white.

When we get back to the car, the sky is a pearly gray with threatening-looking clouds rolling in. Ginny unlocks the car and I pour myself into the passenger seat, suddenly in a very foul mood. “So that was a huge waste of time. I dragged us out here to hear about locker room drama, and we were almost part of a football field brawl.”

“It wasn’t a waste of time,” Ginny says. “She did say that Allie was always listening to the girls’ problems.”

Would my sister open up to her coach about what was going on between her and Juliana and Susan? When Jen was happy—which seemed like almost all the time before that year—she spread her joy around like it was sunshine. Every other emotion, though—fear, sadness, and loneliness—she’d kept them locked up. After Jen died, one of the only times I heard my mother lose it was when she was on the phone with Grandma Carlino: She never told me anything. I tried so hard, but she would never tell me anything.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Jen was pretty private.”

Ginny turns the heat on. Wiggles her fingers in front of the vents. I glance at the side mirror; there’s still chaos in the parking lot. Too many people trying to leave at once, boxing us into our spot.

“Juliana, though.” I turn to Ginny. “If she was in some sort of trouble and couldn’t tell her mom or Jen, I could see her going to someone older that she trusted. Someone like Allie, maybe.”

Ginny turns down the heat so I can hear her over the air rattling in the vents. “Maybe Juliana found out something that she felt like she had to tell Allie.”

I look at Ginny. “You think Juliana told Allie her boyfriend was cheating on her?”

Ginny shrugs. “Juliana might have been more loyal to her coach than to a girl she only knew for a few months. Especially if she wanted to rid herself of Carly.”

I turn this theory over in my head. “If you were Allie, and Juliana told you that your boyfriend was cheating on you, and then Juliana was murdered a little while later…would you be suspicious of Carly?”