The Cheer Leader Read online

  “Hey Tricia, wait’ll you see what I’ve got,” Lisa finally said and reached into her beach bag.

  “Probably V.D.,” Tricia mumbled and opened one eye.

  “Oh, be serious. Voilà!” Lisa pulled out two cans of beer and handed one to Tricia. “They’re a little hot but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Thanks, where’d you get these?” Tricia sat up and opened her can. The silence was over.

  “From home.”

  “You’re going to get caught again,” Cindy said and started coating herself with suntan lotion.

  “Won’t be the first time.” Lisa took a big swallow. “Besides, I only took three. You don’t drink and we know that the chief cheerleader isn’t going to drink.”

  “That isn’t why I don’t,” I said. “Tricia’s a cheerleader, too. I smoke and that’s against the rules.”

  “Aren’t you the daring one?” Lisa asked and laughed. She maintained that she had outgrown cheerleading, that she would rather be sitting in the stands with a date.

  “Well, nobody ever even asks me if I want a beer,” Cindy said. “I’m a cheerleader and I want to drink.” She held out her hand and Lisa reached back into her bag. “You won’t say anything will you, Jo?” Cindy sat staring at me, either waiting for me to answer or waiting to take that first swallow.

  “Of course I wouldn’t,” I said and lit a cigarette. Now, he was sitting in the car, his leg sticking out of the open door. “I’m tired of being treated like a goody-goody,” I said.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it, Jo.” Lisa reached back into her bag. “You know I think it’s great you got chief. Look! I brought this just for our entertainment.” She pulled out a True Confessions magazine and stretched out on her stomach. “It’s hilarious.”

  I had just settled down to listen to Lisa’s reading, preferring that to her cheerleader jokes or when she gave real true confessions, when I saw him again. He was jogging along the shore, turning to yell and wave to those at the shady end, where there was still a blast of hard rock and faint traces of pot when the wind picked up. Then he ran towards Bobby’s crew where he was greeted by several loud yells. It was so strange to see someone who seemed to fit in with the distinctly different groups, but obviously he did, and I was impressed by that. I suppose I was staring and did not even realize it until Lisa interrupted me.

  “I didn’t buy this for nothing,” she said and put her hands on her hips. “I want total participation. The plot is difficult so pay attention.” We all, for some reason, found that hysterical and got ready for the story. I angled myself so that if he decided to make another run, I wouldn’t miss it.

  “This is called ‘Why I Can’t Settle for Just One Man,’” she read and held up a picture for us to see, a woman in a leopard suit with about twenty hands reaching for her. “Jo, who are you looking for?”

  “No one, just wanted to see what Bobby was doing.”

  “A likely story.” Tricia sat on her towel and carefully positioned her long, already tan, legs, one knee up and the other leg stretched out model style. “She’s waiting for Pat Reeves to get here.”

  “Really, Jo?” Cindy rolled over. Already the freckles were popping out on her nose.

  “Hell no!” I said, attempting forcefulness, so that they would not start with the Pat Reeves teasing again. They all found it hysterical that Pat Reeves and I had dated for over a year and had never made out, just quick kisses at the door after a date. Lisa enjoyed that subject more than cheerleading. “I told him that I didn’t want to see him anymore.” I hadn’t told him that, yet, but I was going to.

  “What did he say?” Now, Cindy had her hands cupped over her face to shield the sun.

  “He said that he was relieved that she finally knew that he was a queer.” Lisa shifted around and moved into the center of the group. “Now listen to this, ‘I am a love starved woman.’”

  “Quiet,” Tricia hissed. “Don’t read to everyone here. I would die if anyone knew what we were doing!” She slung her head towards the older crew. “They might think we’re serious.”

  “It’s very serious,” Lisa said and continued about this woman who got raped when she was working as a waitress at a truck stop. She did not tell her hayseed fiancé or the police because secretly, it was the most rewarding experience of her life. The scene was vivid with lots of panting and moaning and Lisa was reading more and more dramatically, hand to her chest then a wiggle of the hips.

  “This is really Lisa’s life story.” Tricia flopped back on her forearms and tilted her face directly into the sun.

  “Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it,” Lisa said.

  “And who says I haven’t?” Tricia just smiled and this brought Cindy’s face from beneath her shirt that she had covered up with.

  “So tell it then,” Lisa said. “Was it that jerk you met at the beach? Was it Tom Fulton in the flesh?”

  “I better wait for you to get a little older, Lisa.” They bantered back and forth for awhile, bordering on their real true confessions, and then Lisa went back to her reading. The crux of the story was that this lily white totally innocent country bumpkin virgin thoroughly enjoyed the abuse that she received from the dark foreign trucker. I had just lifted my head to ask Lisa to please take a break, when I saw him again. He was walking that time, digging his toes into the sand, and then he turned and entered the water right near where we were. It was then that I noticed the hairs on his chest and his legs, noticed that his eyes were brown, that he had a full bottom lip that made him look like he was sulking. There was a moment when he looked directly at me, or I thought he did and it made me look away. Then, in that split second, he was under the water and all I could spot was his bright green bathing suit. Lisa was still reading and I turned back over on my stomach so that I could watch him. He was a graceful swimmer, long steady strokes, his arms clearing the water, his head turning for a breath in perfect rhythm. He was swimming out to the center of the lake to the tower where people went to dive or to escape the crowded piers.

  “‘Her breasts exploded, heaving mounds of flesh.’” Lisa thrust out her own and panted. By then, he was at the tower, shaking his head. He sat on the edge with his feet in the water. It looked like he was staring over at our pier and I stared back.

  “Jo Spencer, how can you not laugh at ‘exploding breasts’?” Lisa yelled. “Have you ever in your life seen a boob explode?”

  “How could she?” Tricia laughed and slapped me on the back. “She doesn’t have any.”

  “Well, the trucker’s loins are throbbing,” Lisa said and held her hand to her mouth like a microphone. “Tell us, have you ever seen throbbing loins?”

  “No,” I said and without even thinking of the teasing that may be ahead, I continued. “Who is that guy over there?” I realized then that I was setting myself up. “I can’t figure out where I’ve seen him before.”

  “Pardon me, but haven’t we met somewhere before?” Lisa was still speaking into her fist. “Wasn’t it you whose loins throbbed when my breasts exploded?”

  “I can’t believe it.” Tricia shielded her eyes and looked over at the tower. He was standing with his back to us, looking out to the other side of the lake where there was a row of homes. “Jo has actually seen a guy. This girl who always asks ‘who’ when we see good-looking guys.”

  “The space queen has landed,” Lisa said and waved her arms. “Ahoy, stranger!” Luckily his back was still turned.

  “I think his name is Red,” Cindy said, at last, a serious answer.

  “Red Williams,” Tricia said. “My God, don’t you notice anything? He graduated with your brother.”

  “Well, that’s probably how I’ve seen him before.”

  “That and the fact that he was All State track and has throbbing loins.” Lisa threw her magazine onto my towel. “You better read this and if you have any questions, just ask.”

  “Give it to Cindy when you’re through,” Tricia said but Cindy was already back beneath her shirt and
was too lazy to give any more of a response other than “bull.”

  “So you do want the scoop on Red Williams?” Lisa asked and I shrugged. “You have to say yes or no.”

  “I guess,” I said. “You won’t be happy until you tell it.”

  “In a nutshell.” She started with the microphone bit again. “He’s a runner; his real name is Claude; used to go with Snot Queen, Buffy Paige, and rumor has it that the affair ended when Buffy went to visit her aunt in New York to get rid of Little Red.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Tricia said.

  “Well, still,” Lisa continued, “he has a devious reputation in that sense.”

  “What sense?” Cindy mumbled.

  “In the sense of making breasts explode, singly, jointly, repeatedly.” By that time, he was back in the water and swimming towards the older group, where Bobby I noticed was still talking to Nancy Carson. I hoped that Lisa would shut up but she was on a roll. “Buffy Paige has got the kind that explode regularly. Look, Jo, there he is.”

  “All I asked was who he was,” I said. “I’ll never ask again.”

  “Come on,” Tricia said, finally getting a serious tone in her voice, “you asked because you think he’s cute, right?”

  “Right?” Lisa repeated.

  “Right,” I said finally to which Lisa clapped her hands, and for the first time all day, shut up.

  Then he was gone, up through the trees, a lingering “See ya, Red,” trailing behind him. The rest of the afternoon, I waited for him to come back, saying that I didn’t have enough sun though my shoulders and nose were already touchy. Cindy, by then, was completely wrapped in her towel so that no skin was exposed, and Lisa, who, thank God, was on the last story, was unable to use her hips for dramatic effect because they had gone from snow white to lobster red. Tricia had merely tanned a shade darker, and since several of the college guys were still around, she wanted to stay, too. That night I was somewhat sorry, as I coated layer after layer of Noxema on my nose and shoulders, but not so sorry that I would dare miss going to Moon Lake the next day or any day. I invested in a large supply of sunscreen, deciding that Red Williams was worth it.

  There were very few days that we did not go to the lake. We were there when it was overcast or chilly. Some days, we were the only people there except for those at the other end of the lake, for whom good weather was not a factor. The only days that we missed, as a matter of fact, were those when it was raining and then we spent the afternoons riding around in Tricia’s car, smoking cigarettes, and talking about who had been at the lake the day before. During this time, I had learned several other things about Red. He worked construction off and on; he lived right on the lake all year in this little cabin that his parents owned. On Saturday mornings, he worked part-time as a mechanic at K-Mart’s auto center. Tricia would circle the auto center often, and I would hide on the floorboard, knowing that if he ever saw us he would know how I felt about him. I knew every page number where he appeared in all of Bobby’s old annuals, and he had even signed the senior one, on the page with the picture of the track team. “To one helluva guy. Take it easy with Fancy Nancy. Knock ’em dead at Wake Forest. Red” I must have read that a hundred times, over and over, the long thin irregular letters, the curl on the d at the end of Red.

  For one whole month, I had watched Red, some days disappointed by the fact that he did not show, other days, disappointed when he talked to Buffy Paige or one of the other older girls. There had even been days when I felt a twinge of jealousy when I saw him at the shady end of the lake talking to Beatrice or one of the others in their tight jeans and tee shirts, their heads wrapped in bandanas. But then, there had been the good days, those days when I was certain that he was watching me, certain that all I had to do was smile or lift my hand and he would acknowledge my presence. Of course, I never did that, I suppose out of fear that he wouldn’t respond, that it would turn out that he was not looking at me at all but someone just past me, or Tricia or Lisa. It was during one of his daily jogs between the two worlds when he stopped and introduced himself. I had fallen asleep and was quickly awakened by the shaking of the pier and by Tricia’s flirt laugh which was quite recognizable to all but a large percentage of the male population.

  “You girls having fun?” he asked and it was funny because his voice was not nearly as deep as I had imagined.

  “Just catching some rays,” Lisa said and looked at me. She immediately went into action. “I’m Lisa and this is Tricia, Cindy and Jo.” I opened one eye and nodded, certain that my face was getting redder.

  “Yeah, you’re Bobby’s sister, right?” I was dumbfounded that he actually knew who I was. Tricia and Lisa were staring at each other and I could tell, were trying very hard not to laugh. Cindy remained very calm but kept trying to catch my eye so that, had I given her the chance, she would have either winked or mouthed something like “go for it.” I just nodded and stared over at the row of pine trees. “Bobby’s a good friend of mine. Real good guy.”

  “Thanks,” I said and it didn’t sound like my voice at all. It was that high squeak that I always heard when I taped myself on a tape recorder.

  “Going back to Wake Forest?”

  “Yeah.” I looked up and his eyes were darker than I had ever imagined. I had to look away.

  “He always was the smart one.” Red walked closer and sat right beside where I was lying and dangled his long legs off of the pier. “What’s he studying? He was here at the first of the summer and I haven’t seen him lately.” Tricia was laughing again and I didn’t know why. I started getting uncomfortable, afraid that my suit was riding up my crack or something. “Let’s swim,” Cindy said and Tricia and Lisa immediately went along with her, leaving me alone with him.

  “He wants to go to med school.” I sat up so that he wouldn’t be so close to me, just in case my suit was riding. “He’s working in Winston-Salem.”

  “Oh yeah, Nancy told me that.” He had talked to Nancy; maybe he had talked to her about Buffy; maybe there was still something going on, maybe there really had been a Little Red. “Why’d you wrinkle up your nose? Taking up for big brother against the wicked ex-girlfriend?” He caught my nose between his big fingers like he was stealing it, like old men do to little children. “Is that it?”

  “No, not really.” I kept getting a picture of Red and Buffy Paige in one of those loin throbbing, breast exploding scenes and it made me even more uncomfortable.

  “You’re here every day, but I never see you at night.”

  “We just come to sun.” Cindy, Tricia and Lisa were way out in the lake by then and I almost wished that they would come back. He was staring at me, the fuzz on the tops of my thighs, my unpadded bathing suit. He laughed and his eyes narrowed into slits like laser beams that went right through my suit.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you diving. You’re pretty good.”

  “I like to dive.” I looked away like I was embarrassed and maybe I was but I realized that I had been right; he had been watching me and I had felt it every single day during that slow motioned minute when I spiraled from the tower before I disappeared into the water.

  “Let’s swim out there.” He jumped in and the water was just up to his waist. “Come on.” He started splashing all around me and I had the oddest feeling. I wanted to go but I didn’t. I wanted him to freeze, to stay right there, but I wanted him to leave so that I could think through it all and figure out just what I was supposed to do. Finally, I did the only thing that I could do; I slid in feetfirst.

  We swam side by side and every time that I switched strokes, he was right there beside me, doing the breaststroke, his head up above the water, watching me. “By the way, my name’s Red,” he said one of those times.

  “But really it’s Claude.” It surprised me that I said that. I immediately thought that he may be self-conscious about his name, that maybe I had made him angry. My philosophy of life delivered by Bambi: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
I shouldn’t have said anything at all so I did freestyle with my face in the water and when I turned to get a breath, he was laughing, or maybe it was a distant motor boat, or maybe it was in my head.

  There was no one else at the tower and I was both sorry and relieved. Sorry, because if some of the boys from my class had been there, they would have laughed and joked and asked me to dive with them and Red would’ve seen what a likable person I was. Too, I was afraid to be alone with him. I was relieved only because Red might have thought the boys in my class were silly and then he would have been reminded of the age difference. I couldn’t think of one thing to say. How did Tricia and Lisa do it so well?

  “Let’s sit here a minute and rest.” He sat on the edge of the lower level. I had already started up the ladder but came back down and sat beside him. Tricia, Cindy and Lisa were already back on the pier and from that distance, they looked like small children. I couldn’t see their faces but I knew what they were doing. They were watching me, talking about me, and it made me as uncomfortable as when Red scooped water into his hand and sprinkled my face. Then he did the same thing to my legs and just watched the water bead up from the oil that I had put on and slide down. “You’re not shy are you?” he asked and looked at me so hard with those laser eyes that I had to look away and shrug.

  “You know I’ve been watching you all summer.” He laughed and slapped me on the back and then didn’t move his hand. I had heard of such moves, had even encountered them with Howard but that time was different.

  “I knew,” I said. “I’ve been watching you, too.” I had to look at him with that honest statement. Soon, I felt just as I had years ago when I told Jeff Johnson all about Columbus in front of the Quick Stop. I wanted to tell Red how I liked to read Millay and Dickinson, how the best feeling in the world was the one that I got when I played old sad songs and thought, how I was intrigued by the fact that every hair has its very own follicle. It seemed that it was happening, that I was falling in love, that I could tell him anything, but I had to be sure, had to see what he was going to say.