The Cheerleaders(14)
Susan and Jen eyed Juliana and Carly. Juliana said something that sent Carly’s head back in laughter. Jen felt unease settle over her, followed by a primal urge to yank Carly away from Jules.
“I don’t trust her,” Jen said to Susan. What she really meant was Carly scares the shit out of me, but Susan didn’t even seem to be listening. The gears in her brain were probably turning over the homework she had to do when she got home, mentally organizing her binders with those colored tabs Jen and Juliana made fun of her for getting excited about.
“Please, Allie.” Carly’s manufactured baby voice carried across the gym. “Just let us show you!”
“Show what?” Jen found herself across the mat from Juliana, Carly, and a pocket of seniors who had Allie surrounded.
“A swan dive.” Carly’s gaze raked over Jen like she’d never seen her before in her life. “Our group leader at camp taught us how to do one.”
“Well, that was super irresponsible of her,” Allie said. “They’re illegal at the high school level.”
A chorus of just let us try it/it’s not like we’d do it in competition/come on, Allie, pleeeeease from the rest of the girls. Allie, fearing mutiny, held up her hands.
“We can maybe try it after we run through the routine.”
“Yaaaaaas!” Carly grabbed Juliana, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Juju was so good at it.”
Juju? What the hell? Jen tried to catch Juliana’s eye, but the other girls were already crowding her.
“What even is a swan dive?” one of the seniors asked.
“I’ll show you guys,” Carly said. “There’s videos on YouTube.”
Allie sighed in defeat, backed away to let the girls scramble onto the mat. Carly lay down at the head of the pack, holding her phone so everyone could see the video she’d pulled up.
The cheerleaders in the video formed a basket. At the end of the line, a girl climbed onto the shoulders of two of the bases. Launching herself forward into a front tuck, she dove Superman-style and landed in the outstretched arms beneath her.
“This is so dangerous,” Allie muttered, over gasps of Holy shit, that was insane.
Juliana was beaming, sitting cross-legged on the mat with her shoulder touching Carly’s. Jen pictured Juliana sailing through the air as if she weighed nothing, and her stomach knotted up.
She thought of Susan standing behind her, living in a world devoid of basket tosses and swan dives and filled with applications to Brown and Stanford.
Jen thought of her friends slipping away from her and how it felt like she was hurtling toward the edge of something they couldn’t be pulled back from.
When I wake up, my last message is still unanswered.
Be careful of what?? Read at 9:03 p.m.
I rub my eyes and look at the time. I stayed up too late, staring at the screen of my phone, waiting for a response. The faint sound of the shower from the master suite next door means I slept through my first alarm; Tom gets into the shower every morning at 6:30 on the dot.
I throw a clean pair of dance clothes into my gym bag and stuff myself into a pair of jeans. The SUNY Binghamton T-shirt Matt gave me before we broke up is at the top of my dresser drawer; I grab it and guide my arms through the long sleeves, fumbling my way into the bathroom to brush my hair.
Once I’m dressed, I sit on the edge of my bed and unplug my phone from the charger. I don’t have time to be dillydallying, but I pull up my thread with the mystery number and reread the messages. I tried searching the number online last night, but all Google could tell me was that the cell phone was registered in Ulster County—which I already knew from the area code.
I can’t get the owner’s name, but Tom definitely can.
Did. Tom must have had Jen’s phone for years. He would have seen that Jen spoke with someone the morning she died, and he would have used his omnipotent cop powers to look up the number’s owner. If he didn’t already know who it was.
But why did he keep Jen’s phone in the first place? Did he also think there was more to her death than the coroner’s conclusion—a nonsuspicious suicide?
Or is there a more fucked-up reason?
My mother’s voice carries up the stairs. I open my bedroom door and shout back. “What?”
“Rachel is here.”
I glance at my phone; Rachel is ten minutes early, today of all days. I grab my stuff and fly downstairs.
Chaos is waiting for me. Petey forgot about a sheet of math problems in his homework folder, and he flips a shit over his Cocoa Puffs.
“I’m gonna get a demerit!”
Mom is supposed to be at the playhouse early today, but she drops her toast and coffee and sits down next to Petey to help him with multiplying by six. Upstairs, Tom is stomping around, yelling about how Mango peed on the carpet and he’s going to be late for work. The whole scene makes me wish Jen could come back just so I could ask her why she left me with these people.
Even though she’s early, I don’t want Rachel to wait, so I grab my breakfast to go and head outside, travel mug of coffee and a cider doughnut in hand.
Once I’m buckled in, I take a greedy bite of the cider doughnut, feeling Rachel’s eyes on it.
“What is that?” she asks.
I imagine her breakfast of black coffee and half a cup of fat-free yogurt. The Unofficial Dance Team Diet. “A doughnut,” I say.