The prospect of dancing in front of the entire school had forced me to lose the weight Addison had been bugging me about the entire time we’d been friends. So here I was, thirty pounds lighter. We wore T-shirts and shorts to try out, thank God. I still wasn’t ready for the sequined leotard. Luckily, I didn’t have a chance of making the majorette squad. I would have loved Robert’s support, but he was right that my effort was futile. Majorette tryouts were a popularity contest, and I was not popular.
Mrs. Baxter, the majorette coach, guarded the door into the gym. She was grandma old. She was thin, but the skin underneath her chin wobbled when she moved, in time with the jeweled chain hanging from the spectacles perched on her nose. She’d been the coach when my mother was a majorette. Mrs. Baxter had been a majorette herself several centuries ago. She ran our school’s twirler line like she was stuck in time, and she always held her head perfectly level as if she were wearing a tiara.
As each girl approached her, she looked the girl over one last time, smoothed her hair or tucked a loose end of her T-shirt into her shorts, and sent her inside the gym amid renewed whoops from the student body. Mrs. Baxter looked Delilah over and didn’t see anything wrong. She just put her hands lightly on Delilah’s cheeks, so as not to smear Delilah’s heavy makeup, and said, “You will do great. Good luck!” Delilah stepped over the threshold, into the Roman coliseum.
Mrs. Baxter turned to me.
Blinked at my hair. The guidelines for tryouts had specified that we needed to be “in full hair,” which translated apparently as “big hair.” My usual style was to wear my long brown hair straight with purple streaks. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to create movie-star hair easily. Long ringlets cascaded around my shoulders. I’d even worn a rhinestone tiara that I’d bought at the costume store, because it made the purple streaks seem ironic.
Mrs. Baxter’s gaze moved to my face. The majorette tryout guidelines had specified “full makeup” also. I was wearing an even heavier version of my usual smoky eye—maybe more of an evening look for most people rather than something they would wear during a dance tryout, but it went with my movie-star hair.
Her gaze shifted to my T-shirt. While the other girls had opted for white or bright colors, mine had a picture of Courtney Love, for luck. If Courtney Love had tried out for majorette—which I was pretty sure she hadn’t, because she was in juvie by the time she was my age—I thought she would have worn a tiara and striped her hair purple too. The new shirt was a lot smaller than what I usually wore, because I’d lost so much weight. But I was careful to make sure it wasn’t too clingy. It disguised the stubborn roll of fat still hanging around my midriff. I wore long black shorts and thigh-high black-and-white-striped socks, because they amused me, and black Converse high-tops. This was the way I had dressed for my first two years of high school.
And I had fit in, more or less. I just wasn’t someone you’d peg to try out for majorette. I’d gotten a lot of guff from my friends in band, especially Robert, for losing so much weight, trying out for majorette, and showing what a popular-girl wannabe I was. Trying out wearing my usual clothes with my usual purple hair was a concession I made to my friends, to show them I didn’t think I was suddenly too good for them and their style. They were the only friends I had. Them and Addison. What a selection.
“Good luck,” Mrs. Baxter said to me without emotion. I could tell that in her mind, I was not a contender. In my mind, I wasn’t either. But I would try out. I would placate Addison and give Robert and the rest of the band something to talk about behind my back for the next few months. And after that, it would be over.
“Gemma Van Cleve,” Ms. Zuccala called. I smiled my own brilliant smile and high-stepped into the gym, walking forward but facing sideways with my grin to the crowd, as Mrs. Baxter had taught us wannabes. There was a smattering of polite applause and an ugly groan from the band section. Before I could stop myself, I glanced in that direction and saw Robert, his dyed-black hair unnaturally glossy in the gymnasium lights, cupping his hands over his mouth to boo.
Reaching my designated place for the group routine, I turned forward, bent to place my third baton out of the way, and took my position with my arms extended, batons in hands. The booing had faded away with the applause. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and the bigger I grinned. I would not make the majorette line, but I would twirl a flawless performance, and Robert could suck it.
Ms. Zuccala announced Addison, whose applause was a little louder than mine. Then came the girls behind her in line. They were a year older than us and had been majorettes this year. The applause for them was enthusiastic.
The school’s fight song blared over the loudspeaker. It was a recording of the marching band. I was part of that marching band too. Only girls who’d been in band were allowed to try out. But for once, I wasn’t playing alto sax. I was kicking and skipping in front of the band, pinwheeling my batons like a pro. If we’d been judged on our performance during the fight song alone, I would have been a shoo-in for majorette.
Some of the other girls had been taking baton for only a few months, since deciding to try out for majorette. Even Addison had dropped out of lessons in eighth grade—because baton was boring, or because I was a lot better than her, depending on whether you put more stock in what she said or how she acted. She’d started lessons again when she decided to try out. Only one of the juniors and I had been taking lessons for years. I even helped with the little kids’ classes at the dance studio after school, just so I wouldn’t have to go home.
I stayed on pattern, keeping my batons spinning in a plane, while the other girls’ batons wobbled. I caught my tosses with the big end of the baton up to keep my spins neat, while the others grabbed their batons wherever they could. Not that the crowd would know the difference. What they would notice was how many times the other girls dropped their batons and had to chase them as they rolled away in a semicircle across the gym floor.
Sure enough, as the second stanza of the fight song began and all twenty of us wannabes attempted a high vertical toss while we turned underneath, three sickening thuds sounded, batons dropping to the wooden floor. Mine landed squarely in my hand. Another few thumb-flips, one toss caught behind our backs, and a horizontal twirl in one hand with a vertical twirl in the other just to make sure everybody was well coordinated, and we were done.