Chapter 14 - I'll Be a Home for You

for my mental stability, i have to leave her on read

Aang

Over the next month, JJ comes to Mathletes early to stretch, but she does it at the back of the classroom. I listen to her reasoning for her math answers, and if I disagree, I do so calmly. She never disagrees with me. I start making atrocious mistakes on purpose, but she never calls me out on them.

She gives me a cheerleading tip sometimes, but now that she’s been relegated to being a front spot, she mostly just stands in front of our group during the stunts with hollow eyes and does whatever Paige and Emmy order her to do. Apparently, front spots are so low on the priority ladder that Coach forgets to give them something to do half the time.

Her cheerleading smile is still glued on. But when she was flying, her eyes were animated and sparkly, and even though she looked psychotic, it was weirdly endearing. Now, the combination of the smile and the empty eyes makes me feel like I’m in a horror movie.

But we haven’t fought in over a month, so the civil agreement is clearly working. Yet, somehow, I’m more drained and annoyed now than when we were arguing.

Maybe I can accuse her of violating the civil agreement by not warning me about what the last training before Regionals looks like.

Sweat drips from my forehead, and my eyes are blocked by wet lumps of hair. My hand shakes as I try to lift my water bottle to my mouth.

Coach forced us to recreate the competition-style warm-up, where you move from a general warm-up to jumps warm-up to tumbling warm-up to stunt warm-up to whole-routine warm-up, with intervals so precise they’d put a military camp to shame. Then came the full-outs, where we did the entire routine. We’ve done a couple of full-outs here and there over the last month. But not five. In a row. Without a break.

Anytime I think cheerleading is getting easier, a new level unlocks.

I gather enough strength to tip the bottle into my mouth, the icy water cooling off my overheated body.

Everyone on the team is tired. But there are levels to it. You have girls who do everything. They lift, jump, tumble. They’re the ones heaving on the floor, popping energy gels. Then there are non-tumblers. They’re sitting with their backs against the wall, drinking water, saying a word or two before deciding it’s too much effort.

Then there’s JJ. Standing with her arms crossed next to heaving Monique and Bryn, not a single bead of sweat on her forehead. As a front spot, she’s not doing much lifting. And it seems tumbling and jumping don’t tire her out.

And then there’s me, who’s doing only the stunting. And I look the worst out of everyone.

Coach whistles.

No. Not again. Please.

Everyone gathers around her. Some walk, some crawl.

“We’re going to take a break from full-outs for thirty minutes,” Coach says.

I would cheer if I had oxygen left in my lungs.

“We’ll work on the rest of the routine now. Let’s start with the jump section.”

Fifteen girls make an inverted pyramid with JJ at the front. Bryn and Emmy stand at her sides, slightly behind. Monique’s somewhere in the middle. Addy’s in the last row. Paige, like me, is not a jumper, so we sit on the floor to make the most out of our precious rest.

The first jump is the one I saw JJ do during my first training. Legs extended outward. Arms in a T position. A toe touch. JJ, Bryn, and Emmy kick their legs above their heads. The midsection’s jumps are solid with their legs at the height of their arms. The girls at the end are there to make up the numbers.

Immediately after they land, they spring up into a new jump, one leg extended in front of them, the other bent at the knee, tucked underneath the body. A hurdler jump. They land. One count break. Extend their hands again. Do another toe touch, and as they land, the front ten immediately throw a backflip.

Who knew observing could be so exhausting?

Coach is in her element, shouting orders.

“Standing tumbling!”

“Running tumbling!”

“Dance!”

“A three-minute break and we’re doing another full-out!”

I cry internally. Is it too late to quit now?

After three more full-outs, Coach gathers us around her. It takes everything in me to walk up to her on my jelly legs. This is what I get for partaking in American sports. My grandmother must be laughing at me from above. Is there even a Buddhist heaven? I need to buy a book on it.

“Thank you for your hard work. Meet on Saturday at seven a.m. in the school’s parking lot. Uniform on, hair and makeup done. Get a good night’s sleep.” Coach leaves the gym.

I collapse, pressing my face against the cold floor. My dad will have to carry me to the car. Or I’ll sleep here. Or I’ll die here.

A shadow looms over me. White shoes with pink socks. Something drops on the ground next to me. “It’ll hurt less tomorrow. And don’t stress about Regionals. We’ve won five years in a row. Nationals are where the competition is.” The footsteps retreat.

Packets lie in front of me, but I can’t read them. My glasses are in my backpack. I started taking them off for cheerleading because the harder the stunts got, the more they kept getting knocked off my face. I can see people just fine, but the writing on the packets is a blurry mess. I groan, holstering myself up.

In the locker room, I put on my glasses and read the labels. She gave me a protein bar and an electrolyte powder. I unwrap and bite off half the bar. Chewing, I pour the electrolytes into my water bottle and then take a sip. Of course, it’s vanilla flavored. I inspect the protein bar packaging. A no-sugar, nut-based recipe. I take another bite. It’s actually tasty. I should bring her another Bounty for Region—

No.

This isn’t, and won’t be, within the remit of the civil agreement.

But I’m scared that the hurt and anger are now being kept alive only by the sheer force of my will.

At Mathletes Invitationals, I realized there was a weight pressing on my lungs, and it lifted with one sentence from her. She had come to see me compete. Breathing became so much easier, you’d think I’d been choking for the past year.

Immediately, I was back to being the freshman with a massive crush. A crush on a girl who kept talking about how she’d love to do cheerleading but was late for the tryouts. From that moment, I knew she’d abandon me for the all-American high school experience I’d never have or want. And she did leave. Like I knew she would. I just sped up the process.

Everyone’s better for it, and there’s no going back to how it was.

I repeat my mantra as I finish the protein bar.

On Saturday evening, I lie in bed, twisting the gold Regionals medal in my hand. The second-place team scored eighty points out of a hundred. We got ninety-three. I’ve won stuff before, but never like this. Never showed complete dominance. Never obliterated the competition.

I stand up and hang the medal on the corkboard above my desk. Between the map of Hong Kong, tone charts, and a poster showing one thousand digits of pi, I have some space, so it might as well be there. I adjust the medal so I can read the engraved side when I sit at the desk. Actually … if I move the map a bit to the left, I’ll have space for the State medal as well.

When we get it.

As I reorganize the board, my phone pings. It’s the video of our routine. I don’t need to look at the sender to know who it is. For all her English-language perfection, she makes five spelling mistakes in a four-letter text.

trouitine.

I imagine it means routine, but it could easily be the mating call of an endangered bird species.

I chuckle. She’d find that funny. I type out the message, but my thumb freezes.

You need to stop this right now.

I delete the message and focus on the recording instead. I put my headphones on and sit at the desk. There’s no need for my mom to overhear and discover there’s a recording of the performance.

My finger hovers over the play button. So far, I’ve avoided watching the videos from trainings. I’m already cheerleading. I don’t have to witness myself doing it. I shouldn’t watch this. I’ll cringe too much.

My gaze drifts to the medal hanging on the board, and I press play.

My headphones fill with cheers from the crowd as we skip onto the mat. I’m sandwiched between Paige holding my left hand and Emmy holding my right, with a scowl on my face. They didn’t let me just walk onto the mat.

We take our positions, and the music starts.

Cheerleading music is what I imagine they listen to at raves on other planets. It’s a mix of a dozen pop songs played at five times the normal speed, propelled by EDM drops and “Let’s go, Cardinals” voiceovers, drowning in enough laser-beam effects to be the soundtrack of a particularly long space battle.

And fuck does it hype you up.

And there’s a method to its madness. Every laser beam hits at the same time as a stretch or a flip, making the routine look even better and all those moves more impressive and more synchronized.

Two minutes and thirty seconds go by so fast, I can’t focus on anything. I play it again. I’m barely visible behind my stunt group, but I see enough. I lift Addy into the stunt. I hold her thigh as she switches legs, and I catch her after we throw her up into the air. My muscles still hurt, but in the video, it looks like it’s no effort for me at all. I look like an athlete.

I am an athlete.

The routine ends with a fifteen-second dance, which I spend lifting Alexis at the back. Coach threatened me, saying I’d have to perform some dance moves for State. She enjoys torturing me in the name of gender equality.

I play the video again. And the third time, I look at her. JJ’s running in with Monique and Bryn, the red glitter on their cheeks matching the shining red bows that hold their ponytails. My eyes follow her throughout the routine. Her massive smile on the tiny screen as she helps lift Addy. As she runs from one tumbling spot to another. As she pats Monique on the back before she tumbles. As she touches my shoulder and shouts.

Touches my shoulder?

I rewind the video and zoom in. Her hand squeezes my arm when she runs past me to the front of the group. Her lips move. I zoom in even more. I can’t decipher what she’s saying. But as I rewind and rewind, the tiniest part of my brain thinks it’s something like, “You got this.”

The smile happens before I can control it.

Civil teammates.

There’s no going back to how it was. There’s no going back to how it was. There’s no going back …