Part 2 (1/2)

What it means, we soon see, is no more hours whiled away talking about the lemonade diet and who had an abortion during summer break.

Coach has no interest in that, of course. She tells us we'd best get our act together.

End of that first week, new regime, our legs are loose and soft, our bodies flopping. Our moves less than tight. She says we look sloppy and juvenile, like Disney tweensters on a parade float. She is right.

And so it's bleacher sprints for us.

Oh, to know such pain. Hammering up and down those bleacher steps to the pulse of her endless whistle. Twenty-one high steps and forty-three smaller steps. Again, again, again.

We can feel it in our s.h.i.+ns the next day.

Our spines.

We can feel it everywhere.

Stairwell to h.e.l.l, we call it, which Beth says is just bad poetry. we call it, which Beth says is just bad poetry.

By Sat.u.r.day practice, though, we're already-some of us-starting to look forward to that pain, which feels like something real.

And we know we will get a lot better fast, and no injuries either because we're running a tight routine.

4

WEEK TWO

The bleacher sprints are punis.h.i.+ng, and I feel my whole body shuddering are punis.h.i.+ng, and I feel my whole body shuddering-pound-pound-pound-my teeth rattling, it is almost ecstatic-pound-pound-pound, pound-pound-pound-I feel almost like I might die from the booming pain of it-pound-I feel like my body might blow to pieces, and we go, go, go. I never want it to stop.

So different from before, all those days we spent our time nail painting and temp tattooing, waiting always for Cap'n Beth, who would show ten minutes before game time after smoking a joint with Todd Grinnell or gargling with peppermint schnapps behind her locker door and still dazzle us all by rocketing atop Mindy's and Cori's shoulders, stretching herself into an Arabesque.

Back then, we could hardly care, our moves so sloppy and weak. We'd just streak ourselves with glitter and straddle jump and shake our a.s.ses to Kanye. Everybody loved us. They knew we were s.e.xy beyotches. It was enough.

Cheerutantes, that's what they called us, the teachers. that's what they called us, the teachers.

Cheerlebrities, that's what we called ourselves. that's what we called ourselves.

We spent our seasons prowling, a flocked flock, our ponytails the same length, our matching nfinity trainers, everything synchronous, eyelids gold-flecked, and no one could touch us.

But there was a sloth in it, I see now. A wayward itch, and sometimes even I would look at the other kids who filled the cla.s.srooms, the debaters and yearbook snappers and thick-legged girl-letes and the band girls swinging their battered violin cases, and wonder what it felt like to care so much.

Everything is different now.

Beth is tugging at her straw, the squeaking grating on me.

I should be home, drawing parabolas, and instead I'm in Beth's car, Beth needing to get out of the house, to stop hearing her mother's silky robe shus.h.i.+ng down the hallway.

Beth and her mother, a pair of impalas, horns locked since Beth first started speaking, offered up her first cool retort.

”My daughter,” Mrs. Ca.s.sidy once slurred to me, slathering her neck with creme de la mer, ”has been a delinquent since the day she was born.”

So I get in Beth's car, thinking a drive might do some kind of soothing magic, like with a colicky baby.

”The test's tomorrow,” I say, fingering my calc book.

”She lives on Fairhurst,” she says, ignoring me.

”Who?”

”French. The coach.”

”How do you know?”

Beth doesn't even give me a shrug, has never, ever answered a question she didn't feel like answering.

”You wanna see it? It's pretty lame.”

”I don't want to see it,” I say, but I do. Of course I do.

”This isn't about the captain thing?” I say, very quiet, like not quite sure I want to say it aloud.

”What captain thing?” Beth says, not even looking at me.

The house on Fairhurst is not small. A ranch house, split level. It's a house, what can I say? But there is something to it, okay. Knowing Coach is in there, behind the big picture window, the light tawny and soft, it seems like more.

There's a tricycle in the driveway with streamers, pink and narrow, flittering in the night air.

”A little girl,” Beth says, cool-like. ”She has a little girl.”

”Don't think of a pyramid as a stationary object,” Coach tells us. ”Don't think of it as a structure at all. It's a living thing.”

With Coach Fish, when we would do pyramids, we used to think of it as stacking ourselves. Building it layer by layer.

Now we are learning that the pyramid isn't about girls climbing on top of each other and staying still. It's about breathing something to life. Together. Each of us a singular organ feeding the other organs, creating something larger.

We are learning that our bodies are our own and they are the squad's and that is all.

We are learning that we are the only people in the world when we are on the floor. We will wear our smiles, tight and meaningless, but inside, all we care for is Stunt. Stunt is all.

At the bottom, our hardcore Base girls, Mindy and Cori, my feet on Mindy's shoulders, her body vibrating through mine, mine vibrating through Emily above me.

The Middle Bases in place, the Flyer rises not by climbing, not by being lifted, it's not a staircase, a series of tedious steps. No, we bounce and swing to bring everyone up, and the momentum makes you realize you are part of something. Something real.