It's a Wonderful Death - Sarah J. Schmitt Page 0,11
and move toward the door that leads to the quad. My destination is the back stall in the girl’s bathroom.
“You can’t take that out of the cafeteria,” someone says behind me. I turn around and see Marcy Hampton. She’s a seventh grader. She’s also a cheerleader.
“I was just going …”
“To eat lunch in a stairwell?”
The stairs. Why didn’t I think of that? Much more hygienic.
“Come sit with us,” she says, gesturing to a table full of girls dressed just like her.
My eyes widen in terror. I remember thinking, Is she joking? This has to be a trick. I can’t just sit down with all the popular kids. They’ll know I don’t belong there and will probably eat me alive.
“Hey, everyone. This is …” she turns to me and whispers, “What’s your name?”
“Rowena,” I answer.
She shakes her head, a look of disapproval in her eyes. “Okay, what’s your middle name?”
“Joy,” I say, wishing the floor would open up under my feet and swallow me whole.
To my surprise, her face lights up and she turns back to her friends. “Sorry. This is RJ. I told her she could eat with us.” It isn’t a question. With that one simple statement, Marcy deems me cool enough to be seen with and gives me a new name. Talk about power.
I watch as the girls pepper me with questions about which teachers I like and the ones I don’t. Apparently I give them the right answers because no one laughs at me. By the time the bell rings, I’m in, and insecure Rowena is a ghost. I get the irony.
On the way out of the cafeteria, Marcy says, “You know, they’re having tryouts for the sixth grade cheerleading squad next week. You should show.”
“Really?” I ask in surprise. “But I’ve never cheered before.” What I don’t tell her is I think cheerleaders are a bunch of stuck-up snobs.
She beams a blazing white smile at me. “Well then it’s a good thing you know me. I can teach you all the routines. Maybe you can get your parents to hire my gymnastic coach. She can give you a crash course in tumbling so you’re ready for tryouts.” When I hesitate, she adds, “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
And then the fuzzy screen fades once more before flickering back to life at my eighth grade graduation. After the principal reads off the names of all the recipients of a ton of worthless awards and the fake diplomas are safe in the hands of our doting parents, everyone rushes back to the quad to pick up the yearbooks. All around me, classmates are passing their books around in a frenzy to make it seem like they have more friends than they really do.
“Just a minute,” I say to someone waving their picture in front of me. Before I sign anything, I have to see the superlative page. During the last round of voting I’m on the ballot for three titles: most outgoing, most popular, and most likely to take high school by storm. To win all three is next to impossible, but I want it so badly.
I lean forward, a silly grin spreading across my face. In about three seconds, I’m going to shriek and all heads will turn in my directions, but I won’t care. It’s the trifecta. All three honors are mine. They even put the photos on the same page. I’m an instant legend.
I pull out a metallic gold marker. Now I’m ready to sign yearbooks, but only on my page. No way am I using the signature sheets in the back where everyone signs. I snap the lid of my pen and jot down so many DON’T EVER CHANGE! and SEE YOU NEXT YEAR! that my hand is cramping by the time I climb into my mom’s BMW.
Looking back, I have to admit, this was a pretty cool day.
The disc fast-forwards a few months. It’s a week into my freshman year of high school and I’m trying out for the Junior Varsity cheerleading squad. After three years cheering in middle school, I’m actually pretty good. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Marcy is captain of the JV squad. She’s spent the summer putting me through brutal practices so I can sail through tryouts. A bonus of Marcy taking me under her wing is that I’ve been hanging out with a lot of the high school cheerleaders. After a particularly grueling pre-tryout workout, just after school starts, we’re all at the Smoothie Shack sucking down protein