Nine
Trudy
“Don’t y’all forget!” Trudy hollered when the bell rang and her students scrambled for the door.
“Read Chapter Six! There might be a quiz!” Her stomach growled; fighting for the attention of thirty-seven ninth graders in Physical Science class the fifty minutes before lunch had her so famished, she actually craved the cafeteria food.
“Well, hey there, stranger!”
At first, Trudy wondered why in the hell her former-best-friend-turned-nemesis, Caroline Beaumont-Rickard stood in the doorway. The blond hair, the tall frame. Those piercing blue eyes. The little princess nose that pointed up nice and pretty.
But the hair was permed and teased, so voluminous, you could use it for flotation.
Her bangs towered and burst out in all directions like a firework had exploded on her forehead.
She wore an acid-washed denim skirt, and a billowing, neon-paint-splattered Esprit T-shirt, its gigantic neck opening spilling over one shoulder.
Matching neon lacy socks rested above black ankle boots like you’d see on a cartoon witch.
But Caroline had always preferred muted colors, and why so many bracelets?
When they were friends in high school, Trudy couldn’t get Caroline to wear more than a single pendant, usually a cross, and sometimes the tennis bracelet her daddy had bought from Dub, but certainly never an arm’s length of neon rubber.
“Remember me?” the girl asked.
Finally, it dawned on Trudy. “Dee Dee?” Trudy said.
“Little Dee Dee Beaumont?” More girls, more bleached-blond permanents with firework bangs, and more wings of teased hair filled the doorway.
Instinctively, Trudy scanned the room for any errantly still-lit Bunsen burners.
The amount of isopropyl ethanol and hydrocarbon propellants approaching her desk could set the school ablaze.
Dee Dee Beaumont flashed a pageant-worthy smile and led the way.
Trudy remembered young Dee Dee, always following her and the other 1975–76 Bruins cheerleaders around the Beaumont Forks Plantation whenever Caroline had hosted a sleepover.
She was about to comment how Dee Dee was only this tall when she’d last seen her, but realized it was an old-lady thing to say.
Also, something told her she’d better keep boundaries with the Beaumont girl, her former cousin-in-law.
“Miss Abernathy!” Dee Dee said, she and the other girls now standing in front of Trudy. “As the 1982–83 head cheerleader for the Bailey Springs Bruins, just wanna say, welcome to the squad!” A confident hand, covered in fingerless lace gloves, shot across Trudy’s desk.
Of course. Who else should Trudy have expected besides Caroline Beaumont’s little sister to be head cheerleader? Trudy stood slowly and obliged the handshake.
The other girls giggled and smiled as Dee Dee introduced them. “This here’s Vangie. She’s my best friend. And that’s Patty. Milly. Sandy. Nonnie. Elsie. And—”
“I’m Faye.” The sole brown-eyed, brunette spoke. “Faye Moore.”
Faye, the fat one, Trudy thought and then felt really mean for thinking it; perhaps cheerleaders, even former ones, keep a bit of a mean streak. Bless her heart.
“We’re decorating the boys’ lockers today!” Faye said. She wore her hair in a tight bob, instead of a perm; it made her face look like a globe.
“That’s today?” Trudy’s hunger turned to panic at the thought of going any longer without food. “As in, now ?”
“Miss Duffy should’ve told you,” Dee Dee said. “The sponsor’s gotta chaperone, but don’t worry, we’ll make it, like, totally fun .”
“Can we do it after lunch?”
“Oh, no ma’am.” Dee Dee shook her head.
“That’s when boys get naked,” Vangie smirked as if she’d garnered this information firsthand.
On the way to the field house, Trudy quickly learned about the cutest football players, ranked by class, who’s daddy donated the most money to the Booster Club, and who had wanted to be a cheerleader, but whose toe touches weren’t high enough.
Trudy counted eight but remembered there had always been ten Bruins cheerleaders.
Dee Dee’s likeness to Caroline continued to bewilder her.
It was as if someone had run Caroline through Miss Duffy’s Xerox machine before Miss Thompson sabotaged it.
Dee Dee even smelled like Caroline: honeysuckle and baby powder.
Trudy tried not to hate her, tried telling herself there’s no reason to hold Caroline’s past—or her mother, Barbara’s relentless rumormongering—against her, but it was taking everything she had.
“Crepe paper in the boys’ lockers,” Dee Dee said. “Is a no-no to the max. The football players hate it. June Bug told me that one time, orange crepe paper got in the laundry and, like, turned all the towels peach.” She giggled.
“June Bug’s her boyfriend,” Faye said, that round head bobbing.
“Anyway,” Dee Dee said. “Can y’all imagine, for the life of you, those wet boys, drying themselves off in peach towels?”
It seemed Dee Dee could imagine this, for the life of her, a little too well. The football season wouldn’t officially begin for another two days, and it had already lasted too long.
The field house smelled like methyl salicylate and kyetococcus sedentarius.
Ben-Gay and boys’ feet. Except for Vangie saying the place was “totally grody,” the girls seemed undeterred by the olfactory assault and went right to work pulling out construction paper signs with spirited sayings in precise magic marker lettering.
Go get ’em Bruins!
Beat Goose Shoals!
Gag the Gators!
Faye carried shoe boxes covered with craft paper, decorated orange and blue, and filled with homemade treats. She placed a box in each locker, but not before stealing a brownie.
“Put it back, Faye,” Dee Dee said. “They’re for the boys.”
“What’s all this racket?” Coach Meechum waltzed out of the coaches’ office.
The girls’ unnecessary squeals intensified Trudy’s hunger headache; she ran through a mental list of recent sins God must have been punishing her for.
She knew she shouldn’t have told Betsy Grisham how delicious her bread pudding was at Melinda Millsap’s niece’s baby shower last week, then gossiped with Leta Pearl the whole way home about how she’d obviously used Wonder Bread to make the stuff.
Or maybe it was because last Sunday she’d gotten sucked into a long discussion with the ladies at church about Bibbie Hall’s new layered cut and highlights being way too young for her age.
Then they’d all guessed what her age really was, and Trudy had guessed the oldest. She really did need to work on that little mean streak.
“Coach Meechum,” Dee Dee gushed. “As if! You knew we were coming!”
Meechum looked at Trudy, simpering. “Girls, our new cheerleader sponsor looks a little peckish, don’t she?
” All the girls looked at Trudy, who simply couldn’t smile until the coach revealed a brown paper bag from behind his back.
“Ham and cheese. Lettuce. Tomato. And mustard.” He shoved the bag in Trudy’s direction.
“No mayonnaise.” His eyebrows lifted in triumph.
Her grateful stomach forced her to say, “Awesome.”
“C’mon.” The coach gestured toward his office which was essentially the corner of the locker room, cordoned off by two walls connected at a ninety-degree angle, one with a door and one with a large safety-glass window. The nameplate on the door read, COACH “SHUG” MEECHUM.
“Impressive,” Trudy remarked as she sat on the uneven rolling chair. Yellow foam that had turned brown over the years spilled out of a tear in its vinyl cushion. “A corner office and your very own name plate.”
“Luxurious, huh?” Meechum pulled out two cans of Coke and two sandwiches in Ziploc bags.
“So, what’s your actual name?” Trudy asked. “Given Shug is in quotation marks?”
“Some things are better left a mystery.” Shug kept chewing.
“Really? You don’t share the name your mother gave you?”
He took a swig of Coke. Swallowed. “Nope.”
She didn’t mean to hit a nerve, so she let it go.
Although they had gone to different schools, Trudy was a freshman when Shug was a senior, but she didn’t recall him being called anything other than Shug Meechum when he was the quarterback for their rival.
Jimmie used to lament how a state championship had put a feather in the Yellow Jackets’ cap, how ever since they won the state, “people from Sweetwater think they’re better than us.
” Jimmie vowed to settle the score, win a championship of his own.
And that’s exactly what he did in 1975. In a strange sense, Trudy realized, Shug had been Jimmie’s inspiration.
“Was it hard coming here from Sweetwater?” she asked. “I mean, deep down, don’t you still hate us Bruins?”
“An athlete loves the game,” Coach Meechum said. “If hating my fellow Yellow Jackets gets my players to knock their lights out, then I’m happy to change allegiances.”
“Well, I could never cheer for Sweetwater. I’m a Bailey girl through and through.”
The girls squealed, so they both glanced out into the locker room, reminded of the real reason she was there: to chaperone.
Faye had apparently stolen another brownie, and Vangie scolded her.
Then, Dee Dee was “too embarrassed” to look inside June Bug’s locker without moral support.
They all screamed when Vangie chased Dee Dee around with June Bug’s jockstrap, but then they settled down and pondered life’s great mystery of why in the world it didn’t cover the rear end.
Trudy was too hungry to intervene in any of it.
Eventually, Faye leaned into the open door and announced they were finished.
Trudy swallowed her last bite of sandwich, patted the corners of her mouth, and brushed the crumbs off her skirt. She stood as if she were ending an official meeting. “Please let Bess know I appreciate the sandwich. And look at that.” She gestured to her empty can. “We’ve had our Cokes.”
“I don’t think so.” Meechum furrowed his brow. “The Pruett family will expect their photo.”
Shug’s eyes locked with Trudy’s; she clenched her jaw to prevent a grin. “I better inspect their work,” she said. “It’s the responsible chaperone thing to do.”
The girls were gathering their supplies when the outside door swung open and a tall, slender Black girl scurried in, carrying more decorated shoe boxes and clenching more signs in her teeth.
She wore a ponytail tied in a pink bow. Her round eyes seemed perceptive and serious but were made to look incredibly friendly by her bright toothy smile framed in bold ruby lipstick.
Trudy recognized her: Rejoice Johnson from fifth period chemistry. Second row, far right.
Rejoice set the boxes down and took the signs out of her teeth.
“Y’all! Look at these!” she said and held up a sign that read Drown the Gators!
in the most perfect lettering Trudy had ever seen.
Next to the phrase, an adorable cartoon drawing of a smug-looking bruin holding an alligator’s head under the water.
On another sign, the bear poured hot coffee from a steaming pot on an alligator’s head.
Bruin up Trouble for the Gators! it read. Trudy and the girls giggled.
“Rejoice!” Nonnie said. “Those are like, totally rad!”
“I didn’t know you were so good at this,” Faye said, taking one of the signs in her hand.
“I’m not.” Rejoice shrugged. “That new boy sat next to me in study hall; he drew them. He’s so good, and was really into it, so I didn’t rush him. It’s why I was a little late.”
“Where’d he come from?” Faye studied the artwork, dumbfounded.
“Dallas? I think.” Rejoice said. “Speaking of which, y’all, his old school had boy cheerleaders, and he was one of them. He can do a back handspring, standing back tuck, and partner stunts.”
Faye was rapt. “Like a basket toss?”
Rejoice nodded. “They were even in competitions.”
“Don’t get your hopes up Faye,” Dee Dee said. “You’re hardly toss-able. And besides, I know him. His daddy plays golf at Falconhead. Carter Sissoms is his name, but June Bug’s friends call him Sissy. ” She elbowed Vangie.
“Yeah, Sissy Sissoms!” Vangie laughed.
“June Bug’s dad made him hang out with Sissy Sissoms like all summer long.” Dee Dee rolled her eyes dramatically. “Said they needed his dad’s support for Haskel’s campaign.”
Trudy felt her pulse tick up; Dee Dee mentioning her fiancé’s name felt like a violation.
“June Bug was nice to him, but hated hanging out with a sissy—”
“Dee Dee!” Trudy snapped. “Enough name-calling! I’ll not have that on this squad. Now y’all finish decorating and get to lunch.”
“We did ours already,” Dee Dee said, her eyes glaring. “It’s not our fault Rejoice is late.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re happy to stick around and help,” Trudy said. “Since we’re a team.”
“Not even!” Dee Dee said. “We’re hungry.
And we were here on time. Maybe Rejoice can, like, get Sissy Sissoms to help since he’s, like, the reason she’s late.
” Her face looked exactly like Caroline’s had when Trudy was chosen to be head cheerleader by a single vote.
And like that time Caroline found out Eric Rickard had agreed to escort Trudy instead of Caroline to the gala.
“Your big sister was totally right about her,” Vangie whispered in Dee Dee’s ear.
“What’s that, Vangie?” It was taking everything Trudy had to be the grown up, but these silly cheerleader antics seemed to pull her right back in.
“Alrighty, everybody,” Coach Meechum said, and they all snapped looks at him, having forgotten he was there. “Let’s not get carried away over a little construction paper and cookies.”
“Thanks, Coach, but I got this.” Trudy smiled because she’d just gotten an idea. “Girls? There’s only nine of you, but there’s always been ten cheerleaders, right?”
“Oh,” Faye said. “Mitzi Parker broke her foot in Gatlinburg this summer.”
“It’s a bummer to the max,” Nonnie added. “Mitzi’s mama won’t let her come back because she said cheerleading’s not gonna get her into Vanderbilt.”
A bummer indeed, Trudy thought. But now she had a plan, and a way to get Carter involved at school. “Hurry up, girls. The bell’s gonna ring soon.”