Breadcrumbs #693

Jessica Pavia

Halfway through college, I will be sitting with my friends in our apartment, sipping on cheap red wine, playing charades, when someone mimes a back tuck and we yell out cheerleading. I will find myself slightly tipsy, telling them for the first time about the handful of years I spent on a team, throwing girls into the air, shouting chants out to bleachers. I’ll ask my mother to text photos of me in the uniform, on the mat, during the games — my small red face pulled tight by the high pony, bright green turf flowing out behind me, the hint of cleats rushing across the field, my mouth caught in a perfect “O” —to prove to them that yes, I was a cheerleader.

I’ll say I did it because I wanted to be like Kim Possible from the Disney cartoon: a young, beautiful, redheaded cheerleader who fought off bad guys on the side. I’ll say I was in love with her in a way I couldn’t explain then, that I wanted to be like her, mold myself into her.

             We head home in the storm. Mom drives our carpool tonight, her car planing over the rivers that form beneath bridges. I’m up front in the passenger seat, curving my body around the black leather chair to look at the other four girls: a pair of blonde twins, two brunettes, sweaty hair stuck to our foreheads from two hours of running and jumping. In the backseat, Dani pulls out her violin and plays.

My stomach flips and rumbles, but I ignore it. In this moment, I have eyes only for these girls of my cheerleading team — my equals, according to our coach, but I'm no longer sure.

When Dani plays, I smile big. Cheer her on. Clap. Even as the strum of each chord rattles my brain and stings my teeth.

Dani is part of the popular group at school, a group that I thought I would magically float into once I made the freshman cheer team a year early. But I still feel like the odd one out. I watch how their bodies relax into the cushions. They seem to know much more already: How to hold their shoulders, how to draw attention, how to move their bodies the way boys like. I’m rounder than these girls, who are so small and slim. I wear the largest size skirt. Even then, it’s about an inch shorter in the back than in the front — a result from having a growing body already moving out of juniors sizes and into women's. The blue bodysuit, a size large, pinches my neck.

My mom returns to this story often: It was pouring rain, I couldn’t see in front of me, and this girl in the back starts badly playing the violin. It always gets a laugh.

I get embarrassed, defensive. I remind my mom: We were young, foolish. All trying to impress the other.

The next day after school, the five of us walk down from the high school to the primary school. This is a rite of passage, a daily exercise in alliances. I tag along with Dani and the other carpool girls. I don’t know if they want me there. I feel like a burden on these walks. I try to fall in line with them. I don’t know what they’re talking about. I listen. Something about some boy in their friend group who has a crush on Dani. I don’t think any boy has had a crush on me ever.

The gym walls are lined with blue mats. The wooden floor squeaks of a fresh clean. The room is fluorescent, an entire ceiling covered in lights. There are bodies everywhere; girls already in their pastel soffe shorts and white sneakers, stretching out on the hard floor.

We head over to the massive storage closet with doors nearly touching the ceiling. We split off into groups of two and three to carry the mats out into the gym, the top wavering high above our heads. Once we’re in the right spot, we drop the mat on the ground with a thud. Dust, eyelashes, pieces of hair, fingernails, toenails fly off in a huff. We line up on one side, brace our knees, lay our hands firm on the roll, and push. One mat after another covers the floor. The coach, one of the several who trains us, comes in and has us start running.

Five laps later we come to a halt and spread out into a circle. The three captains  count off 5-6-7-8. Then, they start doing cheer jumping jacks, jumping out and holding the lunge for a bit before returning to center, always keeping their elbows straight. We join. The gym rattles as we count to fifty, our legs jumping in and out, but all I focus on is how I can feel my breast lifting and landing against my chest, can only wonder whether my shirt is lifting up to reveal the jiggling tummy below. I look around the circle and watch: their arms, their legs, their bodies.

“Natalie, do you have my straightener?”

“I do. Give me five minutes.”

“Nat, I need it. Come on. Bring your own next time.”

The twins are bickering in front of the locker room mirror in the primary school. Their bodies take up barely any space. I catch my eyes falling down to their skirts, let them linger on the soft skin that falls beneath the hem. I think if I wrap my hand around their thighs my fingers would touch. It’s photo day and they look great in the uniform.

I didn’t think to bring a straightener. I didn’t think to bring more makeup. I watch in the mirror as they fuss with their hair, pinch their cheeks for a rosy glow, flit around their already perfect bodies. My top cuts so tightly into my armpits, it’s hard to expand fully when I take a breath. I walk over to where Nat stands, by the sink mirror and study my own face. Flyaways poke out of my hair in all directions. My skin is blotchy, covered in small bumps that aren’t quite acne but are certainly not smooth.

I ask Nat to move over and position my hands under the running faucet, then use the water to flatten my hair. One final look in the mirror reveals a tired young girl who knows her uniform doesn’t fit, knows somewhere in deep down in her toes, that this company doesn't either, but still cannot bring herself to admit it.

In a few years, another girl on our team will wish the twins a happy birthday via an Instagram post. The post will say something about high school memories of drinking four locos in the woods. Maybe something about weed. That part of me deep in my toes knew this was happening. But I heard none of it. I was far removed from this world and them.

Where was I when they planned these outings? Would they whisper to each other, bodies tucked into corners, heads cocked to see visitors, stopping hard in the middle of sentences when I came into view? Or was I the naive one? Thinking all that partying and sneaking around was just something in the movies. Or maybe I was simply walking through the motions, being a cheerleader because Kim Possible promised a life I never found.

When my college friends ask, I’ll say I loved youth cheer, with the innocence and magic that comes with night-wet grass and body conditioning done under the stars. That it got bad in high school because everything does. The girls got mean because they always do.

But I was outside. Forever a new cheerleader, becoming like my television hero, pushing my weight up on swing-set rings. Kim Possible is flipping, high kicking her way through crime fighting; I’m flipping my head over my toes, watching as the world topples over, feeling the weight of blood in my stomach. I look up at the clouds, high enough to flip over this whole set, when this new castle, all stone and grey, shimmers into existence like some desert mirage. And I wonder how much harder I have to kick to get there.