Page 35 of The Fundamentals

“I’m not done with school yet,” I answered, but I felt a funny twist in my chest. Ward’s plan had always been that we would get married as soon as possible. I had been the one holding off, because I’d wanted to finish college first. Yes, that was what I’d told him, that the reason I didn’t want to do it was that I needed to complete my education. I would graduate in a few short months, and then my boyfriend would expect to become my fiancé, and he’d already told me (repeatedly) that we wouldn’t have some long, dumbass engagement. There wasn’t going to be a bachelorette trip for me, but maybe he and his buddies would do something fun for a weekend, and then we were getting married with a minimum of fuss and expense.

I looked at the ring with the little gold knot on my finger. It was a promise, one Ward had given to me and I had given to him. We were going to get engaged, get married, and spend the rest of our lives together.

“You’re talking to yourself again,” my dad pointed out, and I gripped the wheel and stopped imagining myself in a white dress, crying as I stood at the altar.

∞

“Are we ready, ladies?” Danni yelled from her place at the mouth of the tunnel.

“Yes!” we all hollered back.

“Let’s go, Wonderwomen!”

The sun was our spotlight as we ran out onto the turf of Woodsmen Field, and the crowd filling the stadium seats rose to their feet and cheered back to us as we waved our white pom poms. We took our places, our captain in the front and centered on the fifty yard-line. It was the first game of the preseason and this was it, time to show why we’d been picked to wear the iconic orange halter tops. I wanted everyone, and especially my sister, to know that I was here for more than just my family connections to the squad and my gymnastics skills. I danced my butt off and so did everyone else.

Our routines went off with only minor hitches, all of which I was sure Coach Rylah noticed, but I hit all my tumbling passes and I was thrilled for both myself and for Coach Sam. I tried to watch the game as much as I could, especially when the defense was on the field. I did see Bowie on the sidelines once, but his own eyes were on the game, intently watching the quarterback loft a throw to Kellen Karma that he ran in for a touchdown. I heard Karma’s wife, a former cheerleader herself, above all the other voices screaming from the stands.

“You girls were amazing!” our captain told us as she mopped her sweaty face with a towel. The first pregame had gone into the books with a Woodsmen win. We were still not allowed in the locker room, so we were using our dance studio to change and prep today. It was unfortunately a little small for us, plus the tables for hair and makeup, and our piles of gear.

“Sorry, Mia,” Danni said as the other woman walked a little too close to her sweaty towel. Mia was one of my sister’s old cheer friends, and she didn’t seem to accept the apology as she wiped off her arm with her other hand and glared.

Danni congratulated us more, and then Rylah and Sam did, too. I knew that they would save their critiques for our practice on Monday, but they did seem to be pretty happy with our performance. Rylah even said it was chimichurri, which turned out not to be correct.

We all felt good about it. The girls were running around taking selfies with each other and posting about the game. Sidney H. was our queen of social media and she was already organizing a quick video shoot, which was hard in the compressed space.

“You should say that,” I told her.

“Say what?”

I realized that she hadn’t been privy to the vision in my mind of ants wearing orange halter tops as they rushed through their cramped tunnels. “I meant that you should write about how we can’t be in our locker room, how we’ve been changing in the bathroom and how our studio doesn’t work as a dressing room,” I explained.

Sidney H. rolled her eyes. “If I posted that, I’d get hauled into the office.” She lowered her voice and made it creepy. “Someone is always watching!” she intoned.

“What if we made it funny and not just critical?” I suggested. “I could stand on my hands and someone could hang on your back. Girls could crawl between our legs and arms, like we’re that jammed in here.”

“We are,” she said, and laughed. “Yeah, maybe I’ll get some shit, but let’s do it. Quinn and Trinity, come here! Brielle!” She organized us in a pose, me upside down, and then showed us her screen. “What do you think?”

“That’s hysterical,” Quinn said, and Trinity laughed.

“I think we really are going to hear about this,” Sidney H. warned. “Do you girls care?”

“I care more that we don’t have a locker room,” I said. “I don’t think it’s fair.”

“That’s right,” Trinity told me, and Brielle nodded.

“And I care more that my best flat iron fell in a toilet last week because I was trying to do my hair in a stall,” Quinn said. “They need to fix this for us.”

“Then it’s going up,” Sidney H. announced, and did it. She smiled at her phone. “I like this one. Good idea, Sissy.”

My own phone was quiet. I hadn’t gotten any messages about the game from my family, my sister and my dad, or from Ward. I was pretty sure that Aubin had been in attendance because her husband could get her a free seat somewhere and my boyfriend never missed a game on TV. I wondered if they’d watched me and thought I’d done a good job. I didn’t need validation or atta-girls or anything, though. It just might have been nice to hear from them, or maybe to get flowers like some of the other Wonderwomen were receiving as we walked out of the side door of the stadium and they met their boyfriends, husbands, and families. I didn’t need validation, but I did wish that someone had been waiting for me when I walked out, too.

I got home before my dad’s shift at the stadium was over. He didn’t mention anything about the game when he arrived too and I only said that my foot had felt pretty good. “It didn’t bother me at all until the fourth quarter, and even then it was ok. Remember when I fractured my wrist? Now this hurts even less than that injury did.”

“Good.” He seemed distracted. “Have you talked to your sister?”

“No,” I answered, and it actually was a little odd, because Aubin liked to come and mingle with the cheerleaders after the games, and she definitely liked to text me things that she’d spotted as we performed, especially hair and makeup choices that she disagreed with and footwork mistakes. “Why?” I asked, suspicion in my voice.

He only shrugged.

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