7
The Beta Cheerleader
HABITAT: Middle-to-upper range of the cheerleading pyramid.
HOBBIES: Kissing the asses of those at the top, carrying bags, stitching up uniforms.
PREDATORS: Occasionally preyed on by its own kind.
LARVAE FORMS: Permanent swing-pusher, “good listener.”
ADULT FORMS: The beleaguered assistant, sober-sorority-sister hair holder, always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
The Bone Yard trafficked in big families and truckloads of UT students—as in literal loads of humans that traveled by truck beds—and the output they left behind in terms of greasy, balled-up napkins could clog a national pipeline. A lot of parents kept their kids on leashes on weekends, a practice Norris strongly supported.
Four hours into his first shift, Norris discovered that the key to excelling at the job was not to think about what he might actually be touching at any point in time. He had no qualms about touching bones, still moist with saliva, or napkins filled with everything from barbecue sauce to chewed-up meat fat. He floated above his body watching himself pick through these battle zones, clearing plate after plate.
The evening crowd was on its last leg, with the kitchen already closed and a group of twenty-somethings lingering out in the back. Judith was on standby to come pick Norris up once he texted her. He foresaw himself sleeping well into the afternoon the next day. Thank God for the weekend.
“Can I help you?” Norris finally asked after a solid five minutes of Madison’s glare burrowing into the back of his skull.
“Norris Kaplan,” Madison said, tapping the brown, leather-clad employee schedule. “Norris Kaplan, Norris Kaplan, Norris Kaplan.”
Norris raised an eyebrow. Maybe her cheerleader brain had suddenly become stuck on repeat.
“Why are you signed up for so many shifts?” she asked accusingly.
“Well, Madison,” Norris answered slowly. “The basic principle here is that at the end of all of this, let’s face it, underpaid labor, there’s supposed to be a paycheck. More shifts, more paychecks. It’s a thing.”
“Are you saving up for some kind of glandular surgery?” she said, whispering sympathetically. “I hear they can inject Botox under the skin to, y’know, stop the sweating. My aunt Livvie did it when her hot flashes started getting really bad.”
“I really don’t like you,” Norris said, armpits instinctively clenched.
“I’ll grieve quietly.”
Madison removed her apron and joined Norris in the sitting area to realign the tables that throughout the day had inched out of their rigorously enforced pattern.
“No, really. Are you saving money to make a break for it back to the Great White North?”
Yes. “Something like that.”
Norris had been stalking fares online and realized that flights were nearly double around spring break. He needed to start saving ASAP.
“What are you doing for spring break?” Norris asked, though he really had no idea when this had turned into an actual conversation. Or when she’d started flipping chairs onto tables alongside him.
“There’s a competition out in Milwaukee,” Madison said. “So my spring break will be spent on a bus with Mer having us rehearse every night in a crowded hotel room, while a bunch of the girls are having stress breakdowns.”
“Shocker,” Norris mumbled. Meredith struck him as someone who would one day pinch her heavily made-up child during a beauty pageant.
“Still, you must really like those things to spend your entire spring break doing that. That’s, I don’t know, commendable.”
“The winning squad gets a ninety-thousand-dollar national college scholarship. Even split across the squad it amounts to a pretty penny. Colleges are expensive.”
Norris’s confused face must have given something away.
“It’s a restaurant; not a gold mine,” Madison said with pursed lips. “And as it turns out, college savings tend to dwindle by the fifth child. Another perk of being the youngest.”
Norris couldn’t imagine how a sprawling family and crowded dinner table could be burdens, but then again, he didn’t have to grow up inside a sprawling family and around a crowded dinner table. There was clearly more to this story, going by her tone, and Norris felt it best to shovel some dirt onto that grenade of McElwees family drama.
“My friend Eric and I are going to Whistler,” he offered. “For spring break, I mean. That’s what I’m doing. It’s this ski resort near Vancouver.”
“Guys and spring break, I swear,” Madison said with a sigh, looking grateful for the topic change. “It’s like Christmas for little kids, except instead of trying to peek under the tree, you’re all trying to put your erections into something drunk.”
“Whoa, pronouns. Do I look like one of your protein-shake-and-vodka-chugging jocks?”
“Please. Football players, swimmers, theater kids. All guys are the same,” Madison said. “Even in Canada, I’m guessing some coeds will be getting pelted by ice-bead necklaces by you and your friend.”
“Hardly,” Norris scoffed. “Eric is gayer than Christmas.”
“Oh.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Norris asked.
Madison leaned into the leg of the chair she’d just flipped over and turned to face Norris with a blank expression.
“Well,” she started. “Your friend is obviously going to hell for being a godless heathen, that’s all.”
“Excuse me?!” Norris exclaimed, indignant.
Madison held his stare for a second before bursting out laughing. It was a booming cackle that turned a few heads their way and confirmed that she was definitely Jim McElwees’s child under that one hundred twenty pounds of prototypical cheerleader.
“Jesus, your face!” she said, doubling over. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re kind of a martyr?”
“I don’t—”
“What,” she continued, smirking, “you thought everyone in Texas was a backwoods homophobe, is that it?”
Norris shrugged, caught off guard by his own sudden discomfort.
“Well, not everyone but, statistically . . .”
“Dude, this is Austin!” She laughed. “Livvie and her girlfriend were one of the first couples to get legally married in all of Texas a few years ago. It happened in the back, right here. Dad doesn’t spare expenses when it comes to family weddings.”
Norris scanned the softly lit tables, imagining the scene. It sounded kind of nice, actually.
“Not to mention that a good third of the squad is definitely on the questioning end of the spectrum,” Madison continued matter-of-factly. Norris noticed all her chairs lined up and that his work had been cut in half without him ever asking.
“Look, I’m going to level with you: I’m trying to make head cheerleader this semester,” she announced, with one hand on the counter and the other on her hip.
“Hmm. Have you considered being aggressive?” Norris suggested, taking on a cheer-like pattern to his voice as he clapped along. “Be, eee, eee, aggressive?”
Madison just stood there staring at him. Norris noticed she didn’t so much roll her eyes as fix them on people until they felt uncomfortable. It was working.
“Do you want this job or not?”
“Your dad already hired me,” Norris said with a grin, feeling her burning desire to suddenly throw him off the premises.
“Believe me, he won’t bat an eye if he never sees you again,” Maddie scoffed.
“True, but you gave me the tour, which means you intend to keep me around.”
She glared.
“What I mean is that it’s a lot,” she powered on, glaring a very specific frequency of hatred at Norris. “I need help. Between the squad responsibilities and dad being, well, you saw the other day, and my sister’s wedding coming up, and the prom committee, and God, key lime season is just around the corner, it would really help out to have some time set aside to practice and work on squad plans.”
Key lime season?
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I need someone to, y’know, pitch in. Go beyond the requirements of the job description when we really need someone to take a look at the gutters, or fix the Wi-Fi for Dad’s office, or be on the phone for eight hours with the cable company. Plus, you being at Anderson means I know your schedule, which would make my life so much easier for scheduling last-minute shifts and—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Forget it!”
“Oh, come on!”
“I’m not going to be your lackey—”
“—professional assistant and schedule alleviator,” she corrected.
Who was this monster?
“Not going to be that either, you megalomaniac. Find someone else to pick up the slack while you slowly take over the world and come up with intricate squad plans.” He stretched those last two words because, c’mon, that couldn’t be real.
“What happened to you needing this job and always being willing to go the extra mile?” Maddie raised a brow at him.
“Yeah, mile, singular. This is an extra Saskatchewan! This can’t be the only restaurant in Austin in need of a busboy,” Norris said, ready to wash his hands of the Bone Yard and the insane family that ran it.
He was on his way out, back arched and proud, when Maddie said the two words that could stop him in his tracks in that moment.
“Aarti Puri!”
Goddammit.
“What about Aarti Puri?” Norris repeated suspiciously, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. Maddie leaned back with one arm on the counter and linked her fingers in front of her, looking at him with a newfound coolness.
“You like her, right?”
The tone of her voice confirmed what they both already knew; she had the upper hand again.
Norris updated himself for a possum-like defense, no eye contact or discernable motion. Unfortunately, Maddie did not give up and walk away and simply let out a delighted little laugh.
“No need to answer, by the way. That wasn’t actually a question! There was a trail of drool from the bust of Stephen Austin to your locker—and I’m guessing to the nearest box of Kleenex as soon as you rushed home.”
The last thing Norris needed was for rumors of some creepy crush by the weird foreign kid to get back to Aarti before she even bothered to learn his name.
“I could help you with that, y’know,” Maddie continued. “In exchange.”
“From what I can gather she hates you Madisons,” Norris surmised. “In a unique and deeply personal way. Nice try, but you can’t help me.”
Maddie remained unflappable.
“Aarti and Ian dated for three months, maybe four, last semester,” Maddie began to recite. “Before that, she dated Oliver, art kid, president of the photography club. He graduated last year. There was apparently a thing with Seth Ezer at Sallie-Ellen’s birthday this summer, but I don’t have corroboration.”
“Do you have a thing for Aarti or something?” Norris questioned. “How do you know all of that?”
“She’s very pretty,” Maddie acknowledged with a smirk. “And also strictly a social butterfly. A week here, a week there. A photo here and an art project there.”
“Art project?”
“Yeah, that’s her thing. She used to be an art kid,” Maddie continued. “Wow, see how out of the loop you are? She likes parties and excitement, and a little bit of drama if we’re being honest—things that I’m guessing you can’t provide. You need me, pal.”
Norris thought for a moment.
“That’s the deal: take it or leave it,” she continued.
“And if I leave it?”
She started to answer but was distracted by the buzzing of her phone, which was suddenly in her hand in the blink of an eye.
Maddie shrugged before returning to her frenetic texting, elbows anchored on the wooden counter. Norris watched her fingers move across the phone faster than he thought was physically possible. He suddenly felt like his Haitian grandfather must have, looking at him typing on his old laptop: obsolete and processing some youth revolution that had left him behind. It was the typing speed of people who received more than three texts a day.
Norris couldn’t repress a snort. “Squad drama?”
“We’re having a party.”
She sighed in a frustrated tone as if Norris was one of the twins kicking off a blanket.
“Look, if you want a shot at Aarti Puri, you’re going to need some assistance. Just like I need some assistance.” She slid the apron his way, smiling like it was a check with too many zeros.
“An official Bone Yard apron,” Norris mused.
“Dad usually waits until a couple of months to give those out to new employees, but he just texted me to make sure to give you one. Congratulations; he must really like you.”
Norris raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“I cannot overstate how much I do not know,” Madison said. “Maybe he’s secretly really into black guys.”
Norris snorted despite himself. It wasn’t a high bar, but Madison McElwees might be the most interesting cheerleader in all of Texas.
“So.” She smirked, eyes sparkling with self-satisfaction. She knew she had him.
Goddammit.
The handshake was surprisingly firm and to the point. Madison was someone used to backroom deals or maybe just to being introduced to a lot of strangers as the mastermind behind a puppet regime that consisted of high school politics and local eateries.
“So,” Norris said with a throat clear. “How do we do this, exactly?”
“Step one,” she said. “I had a shift Monday afternoon after school?”
“Yeah?”
“Now you have a shift Monday afternoon after school.” She grinned. “See how that works?”
Before Norris could protest and pull out of the entire deal, she quickly added, “And in exchange, there’s a pool party this weekend. Do you have a cell phone?” Maddie asked before snatching Norris’s phone out of his hand the moment it was presented. Norris could see that she was entering a new contact listed under M.
“I’ll text you the address. Aarti will be there. You can make a good impression. Or at least an impression. It doesn’t even have to be a good one.”
Norris, suspicious, eyed his phone upon its returning. McE, Maddie.
“Um . . . No offense, but Aarti doesn’t seem like the type to frequent cheerleading parties. As far as I can see, she has all her cognitive functions and stuff.”
“Imagine if you were trying to offend me, Canada,” Maddie said with a smirk. “Trust me, she’ll be there.”