The Cheerleaders
Kara Thomas
In loving memory of Kezban Mustafa
This house was made for someone without a soul. So I guess it makes sense that my mother wanted it so badly. I can imagine how her eyes lit up when she walked through the five-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath new construction. I’ll bet she thinks this house is the answer to what’s wrong with us.
When Tom, my stepfather, showed me the bathroom attached to my room with its own Jacuzzi tub, he said, Bet you feel like Cinderella, because he’s an idiot.
I should be happy for my mother and Tom, because the old house took so long to sell that it nearly destroyed their marriage. I should be thrilled I don’t have to hear the words terrible real estate market and bad location ever again. Neither they nor the listing agent had the balls to come out and say that no one wanted to buy a home on the street of horrors.
The worst thing about the new house is that there’s no way to sneak into my room. The dining room is right off the front hall, so when I get home from dance team tryouts, I can see my mother at the table eating Chinese takeout with Tom and Petey, their “oops baby.”
Petey is ten now. Mom married Tom when I was five. When I was a kid, I overheard her telling my grandmother that she and Tom both were done with children. Mom had Jen and me, and Tom had a college-aged daughter with his ex-wife. Four months later, Mom was pregnant with Petey.
So, totally an oops baby.
“Monica,” my mother calls. “We’re eating dinner.”
In other words, Don’t you try to disappear upstairs.
I plod into the dining room, the smell of the takeout souring my stomach. Everything hurts: standing, walking, sitting.
At the table, Petey is sucking up lo mein noodles. One slips from between his lips and falls on the screen of his iPad, because God forbid he perform a basic function such as eating without playing Clan Wars.
“Petey,” Mom says, “please put the game down.”
“But I have to harvest my crops.”
“Do you want the iPad to go in the garbage?”
“You wouldn’t throw an iPad in the garbage.”
“Peter.”
Petey’s eyes go wide, because Mom only uses his full name when she’s really about to lose her shit. I almost want to tell the poor kid it’s not his fault that Mom is acting like a psycho.
“Monica.” Tom looks up from his phone, finally noticing me. He takes off his reading glasses and breathes on the lenses. Wipes them on his shirt. “How were tryouts?”
“Fine.”
“The new Chinese place gave us extra fortune cookies!” Petey says, and I say, “Cool,” which pretty much sums up the depth of my interactions with my half brother.
Mom’s eyes are on me. I keep my own eyes on a carton of white rice. I grab a plate and spoon some onto it.
“What’s wrong?” Petey asks. It takes a second for it to sink in that he’s speaking to me. Tom is watching me now too. My mother makes a face as if she just swallowed down vomit.
“Can I go lie down?” I ask.
“Go ahead,” she says.
When I get to the hall, I hear Petey whine, “How come she gets to do what she wants?”
I practically have to crawl up the stairs to my room. The over-the-counter painkillers my mom picked up for me are seriously garbage. I would call Matt, my ex-boyfriend, because even though he denies it, he’s friends with people who can get the strong stuff. But Matt graduated and he’s not in Sunnybrook anymore and we haven’t spoken since July.
My heating pad is still packed in one of the storage tubs Mom and I bought from Bed Bath & Beyond before the move. I dig it out, biting my lip. The nurse at Dr. Bob’s office said it would be like bad period cramps. But it hurts so much I want to die.
I break into a sweat from plugging in the heating pad and flop onto my brand-new bed. King-sized, like my mom and Tom’s. She insisted—a queen would have looked too small for the room.
They say you’re not supposed to put the pad directly on your skin, but I do it anyway and curl up on my side. I’d gladly take my flesh melting off over the pain in my gut.
A knock at the door. I grunt and Mom pushes her way in, holding a bottle of naproxen and a glass of water. “When was the last time you took painkillers?”
“Lunch,” I lie. I popped four before tryouts.
“You can have two more, then.” Mom perches at the edge of my bed. She might as well be a mile away. It’s really obscene, how big the bed is.
I groan and pull my legs up tight to my body, into the fetal position.
“I told you that you should have stayed home today.” My mother taps the naproxen bottle to her palm, shakes two pills out.
“Coach would have cut me from the team.” I accept the pills. Swallow them greedily.
Mom is quiet. She drums her fingers—the nails rounded and coated with clear polish—on my comforter. Her anxious tic. Finally: “Have you told Matt?”
“No.”
I can’t tell what she’s thinking—whether she actually wants me to call Matt at college and tell him.
“He could support you,” Mom says, after a beat. “You don’t have to go through this alone.”
“It wasn’t his anyway.”
I stare straight ahead so I don’t have to see the look on her face.
When she stands up, her profile comes into focus. She looks sad for a moment before she catches herself. “I hope you learn something from this pain.”
My mother shuts the light off on her way out—or at least, she tries to. She can’t find the switch at first, because it’s opposite where it used to be in my old room. Finally, she gives up, leaving me under the glow of the top-of-the-line energy-efficient LED bulbs.
She’s wrong, I think. Pain isn’t supposed to teach you anything. It only exists to hurt you. And she should know that better than anyone.
* * *
—
I’m camped on the porch, rain plinking on the overhang, staring at the house across the street when Rachel pulls up in her cherry-red Volkswagen Beetle the next morning. No one lives there. The contractors had to abandon construction inside the house because the people who bought it ran out of money. Since we moved in, the empty house has been the subject of my mother’s bitching. All the house is doing is existing, not bothering anyone. It’s exactly the type of thing that offends my mother.
Rach and I have been best friends since we were kids. She turned seventeen in July, which means she got her license over six months before I will. Rachel had to repeat kindergarten, and kids used to make fun of her, because what kind of moron can’t pass kindergarten? Then in the eighth grade she got her braces taken off, discovered a hair straightener, and grew B-cups, and everyone shut up.
Rachel lowers her sunglasses to look at me as I duck into the passenger seat.
“Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lie. “I woke up too late to do my makeup.”
“I hope the list is up,” Rach says, putting the car into reverse to back out of my driveway. She actually sounds nervous.
Of course we’ll be on the list. Rachel, our friend Alexa, and I were the only freshmen to make the dance team two years ago. Rach’s mom drove us all to school that morning so we could look at the list together. Arms linked, knees knocking under our new jean skirts for our first week of high school.
Seeing our names on that list made us feel unstoppable. I was na?ve and thought being one of the dance team girls meant I wouldn’t be known as the sister of one of the cheerleaders. But our particular tragedy isn’t the type people forget easily; being Jennifer Rayburn’s sister is like having an enormous scar I have to dress every morning to hide.