1
April
As I opened my locker, an envelope fell toward me with Gemma written in Robert’s tight scrawl. My majorette tryout was in ten minutes. He must have known I would stop here to dump my books and grab my batons before I ran down to the gym. For two years we’d been sending each other Grandparents Day cards on our birthdays and Halloween cards on Christmas. Now he had left me this St. Patrick’s Day or Father’s Day card to wish me good luck.
My heart had already been pounding with anticipation of the tryouts. It jacked into overdrive at the sight of the card. Robert hadn’t wanted me to try out for majorette. He’d said I wouldn’t make it. That I was the wrong type of girl. That everybody in school would make fun of me. I had hung with the artsy crowd my freshman and sophomore years of high school. He’d said that by trying out, I was admitting that I’d wanted to be part of the golden crowd after all. That I was a fraud, and I deserved what I got.
At least, that’s what he’d said. What I’d been afraid he’d meant was, You are too fat.
I had listened to his harsh words since November, when I’d signed up to try out. His card meant that at the eleventh hour, he’d changed his mind and decided to support me. Maybe—crossing fingers—he’d finally started to see me not as a sexless friend, but as romantic material.
Just as I’d seen him the whole time.
Grinning, I slipped the card out of the envelope.
It was a sympathy card.
Okay, it was a sympathy card on the outside. That didn’t mean he wasn’t wishing me good luck on the inside. With shaking fingers, I opened the card.
Inside, Robert had crossed out the inspirational advice for coping with a loved one’s death. Underneath, he’d scribbled:
Congratulations on giving in to the American culture of bourgeois capitalism that markets eternal emaciation and youth.
Your friend,
Robert
After the initial wave of fury, I wasn’t sure what was more unbelievable: that Robert had sent me a sympathy card, or that he had signed it Your friend.
I talked myself down. He’d thought I would find this card as funny as he did. He was wrong, but I couldn’t dwell on it. The hall was full of people jogging downstairs to see me. I grabbed my batons, slammed my locker door, and tossed the card into the nearest trash can. Then I stepped into the tide of humanity and got swept toward the gym.
“Gemma! Why do you have all three of your batons?” Addison hissed as I skittered into my place in line outside the gym door. We were twenty wannabes trying out for six open spots to be majorettes with the marching band next year.
The statistics were cruel enough. But even worse, rather than a panel of judges picking us on the merits of our figure eights and vertical spins in the privacy of a closed room, we had to perform our routines in front of the whole school. Every girl who’d ever taunted me for eating more than my share of Girl Scout cookies and every boy who’d ever made fun of me for driving a train with a huge caboose would decide who made the cut and who was a Loser.
Worst of all, even though I’d lost thirty pounds in the past five months, I was still the heaviest girl trying out.
I was under a little stress. And my so-called best friend Addison picked now to quiz me on how I set up my baton routine? She had badgered me into trying out with her in the first place.
“Last-minute change,” I whispered back. It was a lie. I had planned to use three batons in my individual routine since November. Anticipating that she’d copy whatever I did and then tell everybody I’d copied her, I’d performed a dull routine whenever we’d practiced together. I’d kept my real routine supersecret.
“Well, do you want me to sit in front of you and hand you the extra batons when you need them?” Addison asked, making even her whisper sound hurt.
“No, thanks. I’ve got the pickups planned.” I’d engineered them carefully, anticipating every disaster. If I started by twirling baton number one, placing two and three at the edge of the gym floor where I could dive for them at the appropriate points in my routine, mean boys would kick them underneath the bleachers so I couldn’t reach them. For this reason, most girls had friends who would sit off to the side and hand them batons, as Addison was suggesting. These girls obviously trusted their best friends not to sabotage their routines by letting the batons roll away “accidentally.”
I did not trust Addison. My batons would wait right beside me in the middle of the floor. I might trip over them, but that would be better than someone else tripping me. At least I would be in control.
Inside the gym, the voice of the principal, Ms. Zuccala, escalated in the microphone, probably announcing, “Let the games begin!” like we were gladiators about to be thrown to the lions. I couldn’t hear what she really said because the gym exploded into a deafening roar of screams, whistles, applause, and feet stomping the bleachers. Majorettes were a big deal at our high school. Also, everybody was really happy to be skipping calculus.
In front of me, Delilah bounced on her toes. I had a few classes and band with her, but she was quiet, and I’d never had a conversation with her until we started majorette tryout meetings. The first thing I’d learned about her was that she was prone to panic attacks, though she was petite and beautiful and had a lot less reason to be nervous than I did. I leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “Good luck!”
She looked over her shoulder at me. “Thanks, Gemma. You too!” she said through the tooth-baring majorette grin she’d already pasted on her face.
Then I turned to Addison, who was not beautiful but faked it well. Her makeup was model-perfect. She’d bleached her hair several shades blonder than natural and flat-ironed it into submission until it didn’t dare curl in the Georgia humidity. “Good luck!” I told her.
She flared her nostrils. “Thanks,” she said, half smiling, still puzzling at my three batons. When she was not privy to every detail of my life, she felt betrayed. She would not forget this.
I ignored a pang of guilt. She had betrayed me first. Our moms had been majorettes together at this high school. We’d been ten years old when Addison’s mom told my mom that Addison wanted to take baton lessons, but only if a friend would take lessons with her. Wouldn’t I take lessons too? I hadn’t wanted to be the heaviest girl in that group either. But my mom had asked me, “You don’t want Addison to miss out on something she wants to do, do you?”
Five years of baton lessons later, Addison had decided that both of us would try out for majorette. I had told her not no but hell no. She’d asked me, “Why in the world not, Gemma? Every girl at our school wants to be a majorette, and you’re so much better at baton than a lot of them.” And when that didn’t convince me, as she knew it wouldn’t, because I was not a person who did stuff just because other people were doing it, she’d asked with her usual tact, “It’s the sequined leotard you’d have to wear during football games, isn’t it? You’re letting your weight hold you back. If you refuse to try out for majorette, you’re admitting that you have a serious problem.”