Free What Happens Next by Colleen Clayton Page B

chase after them, especially spouting on about the woes of cheerleading, seems desperate and wretched. I sit in my cubicle, stunned. I want to talk to somebody about this, but I can’t. I know cheerleading is stupid. I know this. Why should I care, right? I mean, it’s cheerleading, for god’s sake. You might even wonder why I would do such a stupid thing as try out for cheerleading in the first place. True, I did it because Kirsten dared me to, but I also did it because…
    … well…
    … I did it because I wanted to be a cheerleader.
    Ugh.
    So there you have it. I wanted to be a cheerleader.
    And I’m good at it. You might think a bigger girl like me wouldn’t be capable of a back handspring or a toe touch or a double side split, but you’d be wrong. Because this one is very capable of it. Liam’s dad taught me how to do a back handspring in the fifth grade, and I never forgot it. So sue me. I wanted to wear a cute uniform and shake pom-poms and possibly have a boy or two look at me for a change. A fat lot of good it did me. No boy has ever looked at me in my uniform and thought anything but, Wow! That’s one big-ass cheerleader!
    It’s so stupid, I know. Especially now, after what’s happened.
    But still, it irks me that I’ve been kicked off. Not because I won’t get to cheer anymore; I’ll get over that. In fact, I’m already over it. I was over it three games into football season when the sparkle wore off and I realized that the view from the pyramid was exactly the same as the view from the bleachers. I stayed in it because I couldn’t give Starsha and her coven of harpies the satisfaction of seeing me quit. So losing the actual cheering isn’t what’s bothering me. What’s bothering me is that he took it from me.
    He took my most precious thing, and now he’s taken my most stupid, idiotic thing, too. And I get to hear Starsha remind me about it every day for the next eight weeks.
    I look over the cubicles, at the tops of people’s heads—at Starsha, Kirsten, and Tate.
    I cannot sit in this class for the next eight weeks.
    I’m throwing up the white flag. I’m embracing something I’ve always despised: I’m quitting. I am quitting this class. I am dropping web page development.

    “I want to drop web page development for pottery,” I say to the guidance counselor, hoping to god he will say yes.
    “Sorry. Pottery’s full.”
    He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. His carefully groomed soul patch and ornately shaped sideburns cry out to me for acceptance. See, kids… I’m just like one of you….
    “Okay, then cooking.”
    “No dice. Canceled—not enough people signed up.”
    I go moist in the armpits. I cannot sit in that class every day for the next eight weeks. I will go completely cuckoo, rip my hair out, and be hauled out of the computer lab, bald and screaming.
    “Well, is anything else available?”
    He looks over the catalog on his computer.
    “Nope, sorry.”
    “Is there anything at all that I can do for the period? Office assistant? Writing tutor?”
    Long pause.
    “Well…”
    “What? What is it? I’ll take anything.”
    “Well, all I have available is an open position in the audiovisual department.”
    “You mean like an aide?” I say, and instantly conjure images of those creepy burnout guys in wifebeaters, the guys who push dusty TVs around the halls, reeking of cigarettes.
    “Yes, but you have a pretty good GPA and I don’t think that, with the college prep track you’re on, AV would be appropr—”
    I interrupt him. “I’ll take it.”
    “Yes. Well, while we have almost two thousand kids here at Lakewood and while the audiovisual aides provide a valuable service to the student body—”
    He stops abruptly, then continues. “Please, who are we kidding here? We both know they sign up for AV to get out of taking real classes and the school calls it a service because it keeps troublemakers out of their hair for an hour. Computer