3
Jocks and Cheerleaders
IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS: Muscular, rarely spotted without a water bottle, athleisure wear.
HABITAT: The jock table, football stadium or other athletic field, keg parties.
PREENING HABITS: Extensive.
MATING HABITS: Frequency of copulation typically overexaggerated.
It turned out that enduring wasn’t so easy after all. For the next two days, Norris couldn’t seem to stop drawing attention to himself.
Exhibit A: Norris’s very first class in his entire tenure at Anderson High—Advanced Chemistry with Frappuccino fan Mr. Donovan Goade—where three tall and interchangeably large guys all wearing the same dark red sweatpants had entered the room, making as much noise as possible in the process.
“Why am I here again?” one of them complained as he slammed himself into the seat to Norris’s left. He had a literal red neck and close-cropped hair hiding a prematurely receding hairline. It was a strong recession too. Like Obama’s first term.
“Because you failed last semester, dumbass,” the one who moved to his right said, wafting the same scent of protein powder pancakes and shower gel.
“He could have passed me! Goade just hates me for no reason!”
“Well, you did take a dump on his car,” said the last one to enter, casting Norris a dark look. He grunted and moved to a window seat, one row ahead.
“Allegedly took a dump on his car.”
“Allegedly sent around a selfie of yourself smiling in front of the steaming pile.”
The other two laughed. They didn’t need varsity jackets for Norris to recognize them. Jocks. Subcategory: unquestionably football, each of them a six-foot-five outline that would inevitably tip from “beefy” to “neckless” halfway through college.
And though Norris had not meant to look, had fully intended to avoid eye contact with the jocks, he made the fatal error of doing just that. He would now pay the price for weeks to come. (See Exhibit C.)
Exhibit B: In English, he made the mistake of volunteering a correction when someone was at the board during a truly random round of dictations. Which was apparently a thing, as Mrs. Gallo did not believe in keyboards.
“There’s no s,” Norris had simply said. “The plural of moose is just moose.”
“Well, there you go, eh!” someone answered right on cue from the back. The unending snorts that followed signaled to Norris that it was best to stay away from all things deer- and elk-related.
Exhibit C: It didn’t help that someone kept playing a ringtone version of “O Canada” from their phone whenever he was at his locker.
The one thing Anderson High had going for it was an average student body of 658 students per class year. Six hundred fifty-nine would not drastically change things, Norris continued to remind himself. And yet Receding Hairline, Hairy Armpits, Protein-Shake-Crusted Upper Lip, and the rest of their brood—Norris went out of his way not to learn their names, as the ones he assigned were better—had clout at this school. Whatever the jocks talked about or mocked, so did their girlfriends and those girlfriends’ carfuls of friends, along with the wannabes and hangers-on. Somehow he’d rattled the top of some horribly clichéd pyramid. As he suspected, Original Thought had died in the desert on its way to Texas, baked under the sun for a few miles, and been slaughtered for sustenance when provisions had dwindled.
Judith’s constant nudges inquiring about how things were going at school and if Norris had made any new friends did not make things any easier.
Finally: the freaking heat. He’d started bringing new T-shirts to school and changing whenever one got soaked through. The prescription antiperspirant worked but barely. Any hint of stress and the pits were back. Austin’s was the sort of heat that had left him three pounds lighter in less than a week.
“We need a T-shirt budget!” he had told his mom, throwing his bag into the back of the car after his first day.
“We definitely need a T-shirt budget,” Judith had agreed after the fourth laundry load.
Norris still hadn’t made it home without a wet T-shirt bundled at the bottom of his schoolbag.
His lunch breaks were spent meandering around the school, getting the lay of the land and avoiding the hassle of figuring out where to sit in the cafeteria. Plus, being car-less with only a foreign learner’s permit was a deterrent to travel. Soon, he’d have to sign up for some extracurricular time sinkhole. No way would Judith let him go on for too long with anything less than a top-ten-college-worthy schedule.
The school’s layout was one of the few things it had going for it. Norris actually enjoyed roaming the oppressively oversize halls when they were empty. He knew that if he walked confidently, no one would question where he was going or think he had nowhere to go. In a few days, he had figured out the best, coldest water fountain, and the bathroom where if absolute need be a quick, emergency flush-after-every-drop shit could be taken. Really, this building was less of a school and more of a series of contingency plans needed to make these eight-hour stretches tolerable.
He wasn’t lonely, just tremendously bored. The biggest fear was that three days in, Anderson High had already run out of anything new to offer.
Norris was just making his way from the second-floor bathroom by the school’s dance studio when he saw it. Him. He was cut off at the neck and worn down from years of facing the harsh sun of another floor-to-ceiling window, but it was definitely him.
“J’accuse!” Norris snarled. Okay, fine. The French had a way of slipping through.
Stephen Fuller Austin, 1793–1836, according to the bronze plaque. He was, as expected, an even uglier man in 3D, with a wide forehead that pulled into the wide expanse of his baldness and a pinched, offensively crooked nose.
“You . . . asshole!” Norris raged, extending a middle finger at the man to whom he owed his cursed existence.
No reply.
Norris considered kicking the pedestal, but the ridiculousness of his anger—because he really found himself irrationally angry at this prick frontiersman—caught up to him, and he couldn’t help but chuckle, imagining what his mom would say right now. Fussy, definitely fussy. Instead, Norris took out his phone and snapped a picture of the bust. It was the perfect reply to his mother’s earlier text wondering, How is it going 2day??
The first photo came out blurry, so Norris repositioned himself for another. Just then the door to the adjacent dance studio swung open, slamming directly into him. He went flying, then sprawled onto the floor.
“Excuse you!”
Excuse him, because apparently the side of his face had greatly injured the metal door.
What was looking down at him—in every sense of the word—was nothing short of a gaggle of cheerleaders. A haze? A miasma. A miasma of cheerleaders.
Unlike the jocks, cheerleaders in Texas weren’t what Norris had expected. No pom-poms or red miniskirts, for one. Norris had classes with a few of them and they all wore a variation of the same getup: high-above-the-knee mesh shorts; huge, baggy T-shirts rolled up to the shoulders; and ponytails that started at the center of their skulls. They were athletes in their own right, only switching from gym wear to sequined prom dresses with no in-between. As far as Norris could tell, the key requirements for membership seemed to be flexibility, a dash of self-importance, and extreme displeasure with his existence at the moment.
“Is that—” one asked.
“Yeah, the new Canadian,” the first one answered.
If it weren’t for the fact that she herself was black, the subtext of “Canadian” might as well have been a racial slur.
“You were in the way,” she continued, her hand still on the door.
“So what?” Norris snapped, rubbing his thumb along his phone’s screen as he got up—no cracks. “You bump into someone, you apologize,” Norris said.
Two of her friends scoffed in faux outrage as the rest of them filed out of the studio.
“What were you even doing behind the door, pervert?” the angriest-looking one asked. From the four clashing shades of pinks she was currently wearing—sweatband, sneakers, top, and nails—Norris could tell there was a particular strand of viciousness in her heart.
“Ew, were you spying on us?” another one asked.
Norris glimpsed into the mirror-walled dance studio behind them.
“You’re kidding, right?” he couldn’t help but ask with a scoff.
One of them darted an accusing chin toward his phone.
“I was taking a picture of that!” Norris said, waving a little too manically to the bust. The last thing he needed on his bio here was Village Pervert.
“Yeah, right.”
“As if!”
“Do you want to check my phone? I guarantee you there are no pictures of you on there.”
“She doesn’t want to touch your phone, freak,” Pink Alpha answered. “Who knows what it’s covered in.”
Just what the hell is wrong with this school?
The black one next to her stepped forward, hands now actually on her hips. Her fingertips were perfect squares and shiny white at the tips. “Guys, c’mon. He’s probably never seen marble before,” she said, pretending to stroke the Stephen Fuller bust, her eyes wide with fake wonder. “Y’all just carve things out of ice up there, right?”
Her friends started to laugh behind her, pretending to pretend to hide it.
“Eh?” one more added.
Norris had had enough. Biting his tongue hadn’t helped one iota, and the eh thing bothered him more than he cared to admit. If he was going to be known as “The Canadian” whatever he did, he might as well be an honest Canuck. Bridges were easier to burn down than to build anyway.
“Hmm, a bitchy cheerleader,” Norris said with a sigh. “You definitely get points for originality there.”
The girl instantly stopped fondling Fuller.
“What did you just say?”
“You can’t call her a bitch!” Pink Alpha all but shrieked.
“Actually, I called her bitchy,” Norris corrected. “But I guess it does track that a bitch would behave in a manner that can be described as ‘bitchy.’ Aren’t words fun, Madison?”
Norris decided then and there that all their names had to be Madison: the brood of some Queen Mother Madison pushing out egg after slimy egg of mindless cheerleader drones somewhere in the Texan desert.
“That’s seriously so sexist,” the black Madison said.
“I read that’s called a microaggression,” Pink Alpha Madison added.
Norris clicked his tongue, exploring every facet of the notion. “I don’t believe you read,” he eventually concluded. “I really don’t.”
“Look, you little hick—”
“Now, now, Madison—” Norris began.
“My name isn’t fricking Madison!” she snapped.
“At least one of your names is Madison,” Norris said, moving an encompassing finger across the half circle they now made around him. “Or Brittany, or Kaycee with two e’s.”
“I’m Madison, actually,” the blonde on the far left volunteered, sounding more amused than angry. She was even skinnier than her friends; probably high on the human pyramid but low in the social hierarchy. Norris suspected that she got thrown a lot but not always caught.
“Ha! I knew it!” Norris exclaimed. “We’ve got ourselves one Madison. Do we have an unplanned pregnancy next?”
Norris could swear he saw Madison—the one actually named Madison—stifle a smile.
“Do you have a death wish or something, Canada?” the one who had accused him of being a pervert asked.
Norris tried to appraise the situation as best as he could. Up close, their upper arms all had definition where his didn’t, and they were probably already prone to rage blackouts from all the low-calorie meals; he seriously might be on the verge of getting his ass kicked here. “Guy Pummeled into a Bloody Pulp by a Cheerleading Squad” was at least more interesting than “Peeping Tom Canadian.”
Just then, a camera flash went off.
“What the hell?” the angriest one—Hispanic with a long single side braid—shrieked, causing Norris to wince.
“Calm down, Meredith,” their mysterious photographer said. “It’s a camera flash; not the rapture.” She was dark skinned, Indian or Middle Eastern maybe, with artificially dyed dark red hair that showed black at the roots. “It’s not just false advertising: you girls really do bring that school spirit.” She snapped another picture; the flash exploding in their faces.
“Stop that!” demanded one of the girls.
“No.” The girl gripped her expensive-looking camera with her left hand, holding it over her left shoulder as she looked around the hall, scouting for angles. Norris had never been to Paris—Montreal’s skinnier, chain-smoking cousin—but there was definitely a worldly, Parisian thing about her.
“How about minding your own business for once, Aarti?”
“But your business is so much better choreographed than mine,” she answered with a pout.
“Shouldn’t you be off going down on Ian?” a girl with expertly curled brunette waves asked with a sneer.
For a moment, Aarti seemed taken aback by the swipe.
“Excuse me?” she asked coolly.
“You really thought he would leave me for you?” the brunette asked. “You’re pathetic.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Aarti answered.
“She’s not going to admit it,” Meredith scoffed. “What, are you going to blow my boyfriend next?”
Jesus, Norris thought. Texas cheerleaders really are just laboratory-engineered little bags of evil, aren’t they?
“Hmm, I don’t believe I’m on the schedule today, no,” Aarti answered with a bright and earnest smile that Norris had to remind himself was completely fake. He didn’t know who they were talking about; from the roll calls alone, he’d found this school had an astounding number of guys with three-letter names. Tim, Joe, Dan.
“But you should really have access to the master schedule, Meredith, since you’re technically his girlfriend and all. . . . Or, is that just an ornamental title? Like cocaptain.”
She brought her camera to her eye and snapped another picture of the outraged look on the brunette’s face.
“All right, claws in, people,” the one actually named Madison chimed in. “Mer? My dad needs me at the restaurant and you’re my ride, so can we please wrap this up?”
Meredith cast Norris and Aarti one more dismissive glare.
“Yes, please,” she eventually said with an eye roll. “And if I see one picture of me online I’m reporting a complaint and suing. My dad’s a lawyer.”
“Really? A real one, with a briefcase and everything?” Aarti asked distractedly, adjusting her camera’s settings. Oh, Norris liked her.
“Ugh, whatever! It’s called an antiperspirant, by the way,” Meredith said, eyes locked on Norris’s stained pits as she walked away. “That’s freaking disgusting.”
Before Norris could think of a comeback, the cheerleading phalanx was already in retraction, too far down the hall to even hear him.
“Well, that was interesting,” Aarti said, sidling up next to Norris.
Her nails were painted dark red and chewed at the top. Between the leather jacket and short dress, she looked better prepared for a Friday night in New York than a day at Anderson High.
“I aim to entertain, I guess. . . . Thanks for stepping in,” Norris said, arms self-consciously clutched tight at his sides. “And I really wasn’t trying to take a picture of them.”
Aarti shrugged, as if to convey that she wouldn’t care if he had been.
“I wasn’t!”
“Okay, okay! Although, fair warning: I don’t think you’re going to get many invites to the Sadie Hawkins dance after this.”
Norris went through his inner lexicon of American high school customs.
“Is that the one where the girls ask—”
“—the boys out in some patriarchal tradition because a woman making a decision about who might get between her legs as opposed to the reverse is a magical once-a-year event that requires taffeta?” Aarti said as she put her camera away in its stylish case. “Yup, that’s the one.”
“Gross.”
“Not what us ‘bitches’ deserve, then?” Aarti said in a tone that implied she’d heard the entire exchange before stepping in.
Crap.
“Okay, I really wasn’t calling her a bitch,” Norris said before he could stop himself. “I said she was being bitchy, which is, y’know, more of a gender-neutral adjective these days. I mean, I’m kind of bitchy sometimes. Often, actually.”
Norris imagined his parents, Eric, and really everyone he’d ever met simultaneously rolling their eyes across the continent.
Aarti only smiled in response, eyeing him up and down again in an appraising sort of way that did not, definitely not at all, give Norris the tingle of a boner.
“Look,” he continued, finding himself oddly flustered. “I’m really not trying to, like, mansplain away problematic language, I swear. That was an assholic exchange you just witnessed, yes, but I’m really not an asshole.”
“Relax,” she said with a slight shrug. “They’re total bitches. Although . . . shouldn’t you say ‘the B-word’ instead of ‘bitch’? I thought Canadians were supposed to be polite?”
“Yes, we’re all overly polite, forage for berries in the summers, and craft simple wooden objects of great beauty around the fire at night.”
She laughed, and Norris immediately wanted to hear that sound again. “Good to know.”
A series of questions flooded Norris’s brain. Why did that girl say you’d serviced her boyfriend? Is there an actual schedule? Do you have a boyfriend?
“What was your name again?” Norris’s brain thankfully spit out instead.
“Aarti. Two a’s, one i.” She sounded like she was used to spelling her name out for people around here. “Aarti Puri.”
Something new, Norris thought.
“Indian, right?”
“Indian parents. You?”
“Haitian parents.”
“Cool.” She nodded.
Norris was impossibly grateful that her nose hadn’t started to bleed at the concept of Haitians moving to Canada and that he wasn’t subsequently asked for a chart of his family’s migration patterns.
“See you around,” she added. And with that, she walked away, still mostly focused on her camera’s settings.
“Um, okay,” Norris sputtered. “Bye.”
Norris couldn’t help but stand there stupidly, watching her walk away. When her jet-black hair had finally disappeared from view, he reached into his pocket for the journal Kolb had given him. She had told him to write about his experience in Austin, hadn’t she? Well, for the first time, Norris had had an experience he actually wanted to catalog.
Aarti Puri might just be the most interesting part of Texas so far.