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Act One
In Which a Bad Idea Is Born
One
At 6:43 p.m. on Football Friday, Corrine Baker is right on schedule for a pregame meltdown, and you bet your ass I have my camera ready for the freshman cheerleaders’ reactions. This is a moment they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Something they’ll want to cherish, look back onfondly—
“Macy, a doctor’s note means nothing to me,” Corrine says to the sophomore newcomer. “Your mother is a doctor. You getting a doctor’s note is as easy as a baby drooling on itself.”
Four perfectly red-lined mouths pop open, jaws on the dirty locker room floor.
I’d feel bad about Macy’s semipublic humiliation at the hands of Corrine, but Macy isn’t actually sick, she’s just hungover. We all know she was drinking last night, on aThursday, because her Instagram stories didn’t end until about two in the morning or whenever she and her friends drained her father’s liquor cabinet dry. One or the other.
I zoom in to Macy’s face, her squad of freckles smotheredunder the blush creeping onto her cheeks. If Corrine makes her stand there any longer, Macy’ll probably throw up on Corrine’s perfectly white sneakers that she only wears for games, and then we’ll see how annoyed my best friend can really get.
Corrine snatches the paper out of Macy’s hand. “Get well soon.”
My other best friend, Kayla Kishbaugh, slides onto the bench next to me, her dark brown curls loose over her uniform. “Corrine’s being kind of a b-i-t-c-h, right?”
I turn my camera in her direction. She has no bad angles. “No, it’s just... a pregame ritual. We all have them. I dissociate, you miss that tiny patch of hair above your ankle when shaving, and Corrine makes someone cry.”
I get a whiff of her vanilla perfume when she pulls her leg onto the bench to check out her shave job. Sure enough, little specks of hair dot her brown skin in the curve of her calf. “How did you know?” she asks. “And more importantly, why did you never tell me? Have other people noticed?”
She’s so used to me shoving my camera in her face that she’s just now seeing that I have it pointed at her. She pushes it away with practiced gentleness—it was a gift from my mom and grandma for my seventeenth birthday. “Saine, don’t you dare show this to anyone.”
“Let’s get out there!” Corrine cheers to the buzzing room. Coach Hartl stands proudly behind her, arms crossed over her faded red polo. “We have losers to support.”
“Save the trash-talking for the other team, Corrine,” Coach Hartl says, motioning for the cheerleaders to leave the locker room with her.
The four girls Corrine stunned with her earlier dressing-down leap to their feet and fly out of the room. Kayla stands, catching Corrine’s Intense Eyes™.
“Kayla,” she says, marching up to us, “you’re going to fly in Macy’s spot tonight.”
Kayla gestures to me. “What, you expect Saine to hold me up by herself?”
“No,” she says. “I’ll be your base, too.”
“Please don’t let me die,” Kayla says to me with a groan in her voice.
“You’ll be fine,” Corrine says with a laugh. All the humor slides off her face when she turns my way. “You, on the other hand. What’s that on your mouth?”
“A smile?”
Her own cherry-red lips frown. “Black is not a cute or school-sanctioned lip color.” Lying is a waste of energy, she always says. Better to just get straight to the point.
“It’s one of our school colors, though.”
“She has a point,” Kayla says, pulling her hair into a sloppy but passable ponytail.
“We wear red lipstick and you know this,” Corrine says.
“Shealsohas a point.” Now Kayla slides her school-sanctioned, cherry-red bow from around her wrist and over her hair tie. This conversation feels ominously reminiscent of the one we had when Corrine convinced me to become a cheerleader sophomore year. Resistance was futile, and not that I’d ever admit it to her, but I had been pretty excited to be part of a team anyway. She didn’t need to put in so much effort to make me join with her. I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if shepromised it would be a good time and I wouldn’t be alone.
Corrine crosses her arms. “Thank you.”
I’ve been trying to get black lipstick approved for two years now, but I guess this isn’t the year either. “It’s a lip stain. I’m sorry,” I say, “but this sucker’s not coming off until I’m cremated.”
“Better start scrubbing.” Corrine flips her strawberry-blonde ponytail over her shoulder and winks.
