Chapter Two
Susie
Dressed in a pair of Liz’s flare-bottom jeans that are a little loose and a bright floral halter top that makes me look like I’m ready to do a hula dance, I lead Liz to my mom’s car, an old Volkswagen Beetle, parked in the visitor lot.
“You look like a different person,”
I say as we get in the car. She’s all made up, wearing big hoop earrings, a white sleeveless blouse, and washed-out jeans with platform sandals that make her look as tall as me.
“So do you. I like you in bright colors with your dark hair. You should wear them more often.”
“I think we’ve had this discussion before,”
I chuckle as I turn the ignition to mom’s car. “About six years ago.”
She giggles and then gives me directions. Ten minutes later, we arrive at Chuck’s Steak House and join the other girls in the lobby as we wait for our table. Liz introduces me to two girls from this year’s squad who weren’t at the tryouts. One is a senior and graduating. I don’t know what the story is with the other one, why she’s not cheering next year.
When Carol arrives, Liz takes her aside, but I’m standing next to them and hear every word whether I’m supposed to or not.
“Carol, I want to tell you I had no idea Pete was going to appoint me captain next year. I hope everything is cool between us, that you don’t mind.”
“I might have been a smidge disappointed, but when it comes down to it, you really are the best person for the job. You’ll do great.”
She touches Liz’s arm, and her expression is earnest. Liz, of course, gives her a big hug.
The hostess shows us to a long table set for sixteen. Everyone talks at once as they take their seats in an excited rush. I tense up like we’re playing a game of musical chairs and I’m about to be the odd person out—my worst nightmare when I was a kid. It only happened once, and I’ve worried about it ever since.
Instead of finding a chair, I freeze in place. Liz takes my hand and pulls me to the seat next to her at one end of the table. I don’t know how she figured out that I panicked because I think I’ve remained calm on the outside. But as we sit, I give her a grateful smile.
When I ask about Carol, Liz tells me she’s the only senior next year and she clearly thought captain was hers when the other two seniors, Linda and Ellen, dropped out. “Linda got engaged?—”
“Linda dropped out of school because she got engaged?”
I keep my voice low. It shrills through my words.
“No, both of them dropped off the squad, not out of school. Ellen dropped cheering because of her class workload. She said she had to choose between cheerleading and med school, and it was no contest.”
I nod and glance at Ellen, admiring her choice. “What about Linda?”
Liz shrugs, and I glance in the direction of Linda, who sits at the opposite end of the table with the perfectly coiffed bob right out of the sixties and looking like she’s holding court.
Liz says, “She’s the one who would have definitely been captain, but her fiancé insisted she had to quit because he didn’t want strange men ogling her.”
I sit up, surprised. “Does that really happen? Ogling? I thought cheerleaders were supposed to be the all-American girls next door.”
“That’s the thing. We are to some. But to others, we’re easy, like floozies.”
“Floozies?”
I laugh, but Liz is perfectly serious. She leans in closer. “The way I see it, it’s up to us to choose who we are, which I figure is somewhere in the middle, you know?”
“How about if we’re cheerful, supportive, and ambitious young women who like to have fun?”
I say, deciding that’s who I am—for lack of anything more specific at the moment.
She snorts. “Sure. Be whoever you want, Susie Q.”
I wince at the old nickname. She used to tease me about it, making innocent fun of my dad’s name for me. When I’d complain, she’d say how I was lucky my dad had a cute name for me.
Grinning, she jolts me back to the here and now and throws an arm around my shoulder in a half-hug, like she’s making up for lost time. I lean in automatically, regardless of my complicated feelings.
Carol raises her wineglass. “Here’s to next year’s cheering squad. I have a feeling we’ll thrive under our new fearless leader.”
Her smile appears genuine, and I like her. She’s sitting next to Judy, who nudges her. Judy seems annoyed, like something’s bothering her. I hope it’s nothing about Liz because I want to like her. But I’m withholding judgment on Judy.
I want to like all the girls. I need to overcome my natural reticence because I could use some girlfriends here next semester, without the security of my housemates from Smith. I don’t want to cling to Liz or depend on her too much.
A sense of disorientation knocks against me. I don’t know if I’m a serious student anymore or whether I’ll be an engineering or education major.
All I know for sure is that I’m a UConn cheerleader, and I need to fit in, to connect with these girls.
“Do any of you do volunteer work?”
I ask the table at large, trying to be part of the conversation, to find common ground beyond cheerleading—which technically I know nothing about. Not yet.
Looking around, I see blank stares, albeit accompanied by friendly smiles.
I add, “I tutored other students at my previous college.”
“That’s fantastic,”
Carol says. “Maybe you can tutor me—do you know French?”
She laughs, and everyone else joins in.
“Seriously, who has time to volunteer for anything with classes and cheerleading?”
Judy says. “You might have to give up on tutoring now that you’re a cheerleader and focus on what’s important.”
Her words confuse the heck out of me, but before I can respond, Liz squeezes my hand and answers for me.
“I don’t know, Judy. You’d be surprised what a girl can accomplish when she puts her mind to it. I volunteer at a pet shelter a couple of times a month to make up for missing my kitty, Rah-Rah.”
“Let’s face it, Liz. You’re different,”
Carol says on a wistful note. “You have more energy than a tornado.”
Linda nods. “That’s true.”
The others nod, and the talk turns to Linda’s engagement and upcoming wedding.
“Enough about me,”
Linda finally says after the waiter finishes serving our steaks. I’m staring at the outsized piece of meat and the giant baked potato when she changes the topic.
“How about you, Liz? Are you seeing anyone?”
She smiles hopefully, and all eyes turn to Liz. It seems strange to me that she’d single out Liz, but I know nothing about their history and feel like I’m at a disadvantage as one of only three new girls on the squad.
“Not at the moment, but you remember the guy I was dating last year, Bryan Granger?”
“Mm hmm. How could a girl forget that cutie pie,”
Linda says. “I thought you two broke up a while back.”
“We did, but we’re talking again, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up back together before too long.”
Judy speaks up. “Bryan Granger? The football player?”
Linda smiles. “He’s only the star running back and the best player on the team.”
“He may be the star running back,”
Carol says, “but he’s no match for Liz the whirling tornado.”
Everyone laughs, including Liz. “That’s right,”
she adds. “But don’t warn him. I prefer a sneak attack.”
“That’s crazy,”
Carol says. “I’ve never seen him out. I hear he’s quiet—the dark silent type you need to watch out for.”
“He is, but I know him from home,” Liz says.
Carol says, “He’s a cool dreamboat—like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. And I hear he has professional prospects.”
I raise my brows. “Professional prospects? As in the NFL?”
Liz nods with a Cheshire Cat look.
I blow out a low whistle.
Judy rolls her eyes and pushes back from the table. “He has a lot of girls after him. Good luck.”
Liz maintains her confident expression. “I’m not worried about that. Bryan and I go way back. Our families went to the same church forever. We have a strong bond.”
She turns to me. “You might know him or have heard of him. He was a football star at Suffield Academy.”
I shake my head and then whisper to her, “Don’t tell anyone, but I was never into sports.”
She widens her eyes in mock surprise and laughs. Then she immediately claps a hand over her mouth. But her laugh is contagious, and I join her.
“What’s so funny?”
Judy says.
“Nothing.”
Liz calms down.
“I hear Bryan’s an Agriculture major.”
Judy screws up her face like she can smell the fertilizer. In fact, her expression convinces me she’s knee-deep in a pile of shit.
“He is,”
Liz says unfazed, not put off in the least by Judy’s mean judgment.
The conversation turns to majors, and a knot of tension lodges between my shoulder blades, but I admit to being an engineering major without letting on that I’m having second thoughts.
Liz says, “I’m in accounting. Cha-ching.”
Judy’s eyebrows shoot up. But after she just admitted to being a Home Economics major as if she were proud and ashamed at the same time, I wonder why she’s taking an attitude.
“You? Accounting?”
she says. “Sounds hard. I thought only guys took accounting. Same with Engineering.”
She glances at me as if I’ve done something wrong. “It all seems like such a waste when we’re going to end up staying home and raising children. What are you going to do about that?”
“Guess we’ll find out,”
Liz says, “but I’m thinking I’ll make a lot of money before I think about kids. Besides, I’m good at it, and I don’t have to take any lab classes.”
“Sounds good to me,”
I say, looking around at the nods of approval and biting my lip. We were in math classes together in junior high, and we were the best students—better than all the boys in our advanced classes—and we thought that was so cool.
Liz was never afraid of competing with the boys. Neither am I. That’s not why I’m reconsidering engineering.
Linda says, “I suppose there’s an advantage to being in classes with mostly boys.”
The others laugh.
All of us want both careers and family, I think, even if some girls are choosing more traditional careers than others.
Maybe a teacher or a nurse will have an easier time fitting in motherhood. And maybe that’s a good reason to choose those careers. But I think if you’re going to work hard at something, you should have a talent for it, and you should like it, feel fulfillment somehow.
For me, I’m convinced that would be teaching. I hope deep down Dad agrees with me.
All I know is that I need time to work up my courage to go against my Dad’s advice. And to figure out if I can get a student loan on my own if I need to.
The waitress arrives at our table with another bottle of wine, and my glass is empty.
I could use another glass because my first semester at UConn this fall looms like a murky bog of unknowns and possibilities for giant mistakes.
But even more so, I see possibilities for great excitement.