Pyramid of One Read online

  Mom told me that when she was just trying out for the team as a cheerleader, two of her closest friends also tried out. When they didn’t make it, they decided they hated the Titans for it. So of course it was always way AWK every time my mom just wanted to be, like, chilling with her cheer friends, because the friends who didn’t make the team would give her all sorts of attitude.

  “And one day, Marge and Tiffany got really upset with me. They’d noticed I was forgetting important things we’d always done together, like our annual Halloween sleepover. At first I told them, ‘Cheer is everything to me.’ But you know what?” she asked, shaking her head and looking into the distance.

  “What?” I asked. “That sounds about right. Doesn’t the team always come first?”

  “Sure, the team does always come first.” Mom smiled.

  I felt like I was missing something. If I was right, why was she smirking like that?

  “The question is, which team comes first?” she continued.

  There it was!

  “Cheer is important-don’t get me wrong. But you have a life, too. You don’t want to lose your friends. Sometimes the team that has to come first is your friends or your family. You know Lanie—she would never do anything to hurt you, including writing an article that would ruin your chances of becoming a Titan. And even if that article revealed some things about the Titans that aren’t so great, you should support her right to write the truth. She always supports you.”

  I realized I hadn’t even touched my vegetable couscous.

  “I should have stood up to them, right, Mom?”

  “I can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t have done,” Mom said. “But Team Titans will one day be a thing of the past. Your friendship with Lanie-that’s a team that’ll last forever.”

  I couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been. And hearing Miss Everything Cheer saying that cheer didn’t always come first? That was REALLLLLLYYYY huge.

  I ran upstairs to see if Lanie was online. She wasn’t, so I called her. The phone rang and rang. No answer. She was totally avoiding my calls! Urgh!

  “Evan,” I said over v-chat, “please tell Lanie I have to talk to her and that it is a matter of life or death.”

  “Um, I really don’t want to get in the mid-”

  I cut him off. “Evan, I need you. She won’t listen to me,” I pleaded.

  He fiddled with his mouse and typed something—probably chatting with someone else.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” said Evan. “All right, fine. Just this once. But if she says no, then that’s it. I’m not begging her for your friendship.”

  “All right,” I said. We x—ed out of v-chat. Then I waited. Finally Lanie rang me on-screen.

  “Lanes, I am so, so, so sorry for what I said today. It was totally wrong. I should have always trusted you and not even thought about listening to Clementine and all of them. I know you’ll do an awesome job reporting. And whatever you need to say, well, that’s your job and it is up to you.”

  Lanie just sat there looking at the screen for a while. Finally she spoke. “And?”

  “And . . .” I wasn’t sure what else to say. I thought I had said it all. But then it came to me: “I will never choose the team over you again. You’re my best friend. Aaaand . . . I was really wrong. I was worried the Titans would use this against me and never take me on their team.”

  Lanie’s face softened. “Thanks, Mads. But now I’m kinda sorry . . . I didn’t think about what an awkward position this put you in, knowing how badly you want to be on their team. I’M sorry. That was really careless of me. So . . . they threatened you?”

  “Eh, doesn’t really matter. So, can we call it even?” I asked hopefully.

  “All righty,” Lanie said, nodding her head. “That works. But don’t ever do that again!” She smiled. “Just trust me, ok?”

  “I know—I will. And I’ll stand up to the Titans if they talk to me about you again.”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll make your life easier and just do some behind-the-scenes reporting from now on. I’ve gotten most of what I needed from the interviews by now anyway.”

  “Oh, well, good, I guess,” I said. I felt guilty because I didn’t want her article not to be good because of me. “But really, if you still need to-”

  “It’s cool,” said Lanie. “Besides, fear isn’t a good look for you. I wouldn’t want you walking around wondering what they’re gonna say to you next.”

  And THAT is why she’s my bestie .

  I’m so glad that we made up. Hurrah!!! I don’t know what I’d do without Lanes, even for a few days. Phew, that was close.

  I can’t believe I’m finally vegging out-I’m sooo exhausted. On the upside, we made a ton of cash at the car wash fund-raiser. It was a gorgeous day, so everyone in town came to the school parking lot to give their cars a good cleaning, even though it was a holiday weekend. As a surprise for the team, Mom gave us T—shirts to wear that read “Get Scrubbed by a Grizzly!”

  “Aw, Mom! These are adorable!”

  Mom smiled, her hands on her hips. “It was easy,” she said. “And I figure you’ll be able to use these for future car washes too.”

  Our first customer drove up. Two college—age girls driving a blue BMW rolled down the windows.

  “Hello, ladies,” said Ian, pushing up his T—shirt sleeves to show off more of his biceps.

  “What are you raising money for?” asked the girl with long, curly hair.

  “Uh. Um. It’s for my . . . my . . .” Ian was having trouble finishing the sentence.

  Tabitha Sue stepped in, happy to have found an opportunity to embarrass Ian. “It’s for his cheerleading team. Our cheerleading team. We’re the Grizzlies,” she said, pointing to her T-shirt. Ian turned bright red.

  The curly—haired girl looked at her friend, giggled, and pointed to Ian. “If we get our car washed, will you throw in a cheer for free?”

  By now, everyone was curious as to what had made Ian lose his cool.

  “Of course he’ll do it!” said Jacqui, patting him on the back. “Right?”

  Ian, Tabitha Sue, and I got to work on the car, and Ian mumbled the whole time about what was waiting for him when he was done cleaning the BMW. “Maybe they’ll forget,” Ian said to me.

  “Oh, I really doubt it.”

  When it was time for the girls to pay, Ian held out his hand to take their money, but they refused. “Cheer first, pay after.”

  Ian halfheartedly did some hand motions as he cheered:

  LET’S GET FIRED UP!

  GET ROUGH, GET TOUGH, GET MEAN!

  LET’S GET FIRED UP

  AND ROLL RIGHT OVER THAT TEAM!

  The girls hooted and clapped when he was finished.

  “Very impressive,” said the other girl in the car.

  “Really?” asked Ian.

  “Yeah. You were great. And very cute. Here.” She handed him a ten—dollar tip.

  He was still staring at the tip when they waved good-bye. We all started cracking up.

  “That was awesome!” said Matt. “Cheerleading gets older chicks!”

  “I guess so!” agreed Ian.

  “Actually,” I said, “cheerleading is all about putting on a show to please the audience. You have to look excited and happy when you’re onstage. That’s why you see a lot of cheerleaders making funny, crazy faces when they’re stunting. They know they have to be in performer mode.”

  “Your point is . . . ?” asked Matt.

  “Ian put on a show for our customers just now, and look where it got us!” I pointed to the ten—dollar tip Ian had just placed in our fund—raising pile. “A big tip. It’s up there in the rules. Spirit Rule #7: ‘Don’t Just Go Through the Motions.’ A team at last year’s Nationals scored the lowest points of anyone because the judges said they looked like they weren’t having fun.”

  “Ouch-that sucks,” said Ian.

  “Huh,” said Matt. “Interesting.�
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  So from that point on, every time there was a group of girls in a car, Ian and Matt volunteered to cheer for them. And they smiled through the whole thing. Each time, they’d get the largest tips. I would have thought it was unfair—had the money not been going toward our own team.

  And in between washes we all practiced our back walkovers, and Ian actually got his—without a spotter! I guess having girls to impress made him more confident.

  Now we won’t have to cough up as much money per person for the trip, which is UH-MAZING. More for me to spend on materials for this totally fab dress I’m designing. . . .

  As it turns out, the Titans barely had to do anything to pay for their trip or the cost of competing at the qualifier. (Just as I thought.) According to Lanie, their idea of fund—raising is asking their parents to swipe a credit card. It’s funny, cuz it never really bothered me before. But now that we Grizzlies actually had to raise money for our trip, the difference is even more obvious. So unfair sometimes! Hmm . . . maybe Lanie’s onto something. . . .

  Yay! Gooo, Grizzlies! We did pretty well at the speech competition overall. Jacqui, Mom, and I were superproud of the team. It was only a teensy bit awkward at first because the speech geeks weren’t used to having anyone besides themselves talk at their competitions (um, yeah, so there were a few dirty looks from the peanut gallery).

  When we first walked into the room, I was thinking there was no way we’d be able to get this crowd hyped up. Everyone, from the students to the judges, was wearing what looked like a business suit. We Grizzlies definitely stood out from the crowd! I’d heard that these speech competitions were serious, but I’d never seen one in person. I was like, “Oh, man—this is gonna be rough.”

  We stood at the front of the room facing the slightly amused stares of everyone in the audience. Tabitha Sue gave me a nervous smile, so I made sure to look extra confident. I knew she was worried about being a stunt base for the first time in front of an audience.

  “Let’s open with the new cheer,” Jacqui instructed.

  OUR SPEECH TEAM CAN’T BE BEAT. WE NEVER SAY THE WORD DEFEAT!

  GO, PORT ANGELES! GO, PORT ANGELES! GOOOOO, PORT ANGELES!

  Matt did a low V while everyone else was doing a high V, but that was really the worst of it. We ended the cheer (the “GOOOOO, PORT ANGELES!” part) with a flawless thigh stand. Katarina was the flyer and Tabitha Sue was one of the bases. She did great! But I was glad we had run through these motions a lot during practice.

  The first person to give his speech looked really scared as he approached the front of the room. After a couple of seconds I realized I recognized him from my gym class the year before. He was the kid who always showed up late and hated to wear the shorts that were part of our dress code. Instead, he’d show up in the kind of jeans that looked like he wore them when he was ten. Like, all badly fitted and too short. Then he’d get docked from class. He was always so quiet—I couldn’t imagine him willing to make a speech in front of multiple people. His teammates looked like they were getting really worried that he was going to wuss out. I know I would be pretty upset if he was on my squad.

  His hands were locked at his sides while he mumbled his opening lines under his breath. It was so bad that most people were craning their necks to hear him better. I think he either said something about “constitutional haste” or “pharmaceutical waste,” but who could tell? And then he did the worst possible thing for someone with stage fright: He looked straight at the audience. It was like he suddenly realized everyone was watching him. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.

  He reminded me of Lanie’s pet fish, Spike. When we were little, she’d tried to convince Evan and me that his little mouth movements were really his way of talking to us. “See?” Lanie used to say. “One open mouth and closed mouth move means ‘Hello,’ and open close open means ‘How are you?’ I taught him that.” She’d smiled proudly. I’d believed her until Evan started telling Lanie that he swore Spike had mouthed that he wanted Evan to take him out of the tank so he could watch TV with us. Lanie had insisted that she hadn’t taught him how to mouth that and that if Evan took him out he’d die. “Not if you teach him how to mouth ‘I need water,’” Evan had joked.

  “Chester?” asked the teacher adviser.

  I snapped back to the present.

  “Chester, you’ll need to speak up or you’ll have to step down, I’m afraid.”

  I couldn’t stand to watch Chester struggle.

  “Come on, guys, let’s do something really quick to pump him up,” I whispered to my team. Spirit Rule #8 says that sometimes you have to look for just the right moment during a game to do something unexpected. Something that will make your team stand out. From one look at my team, I could see that the Grizzlies were finding it just as painful as I was to sit and watch this kid drown in his own embarrassment.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Jacqui.

  “The ‘Pride’ cheer,” I suggested. This was something we’ve been practicing lately. It wasn’t our most flawless cheer, but Jared, Matt, Ian, Tabitha Sue, and Katarina all nodded in agreement, so I knew that the team was at least ready to try it out. We stood up and did our quick cheer:

  PRIDE (CLAP)

  SPIRIT (CLAP)

  COME ON, CROWD, LET’S HEAR IT!

  STAND UP AND SCREAM,

  PORT ANGELES SPEECH TEAM!

  Jacqui launched herself into an awesome banana jump, fully arching her body into the air and extending her arms and legs. That was good thinking on her feet, since we hadn’t planned on that move being part of the cheer. A few people clapped, and one person in the room said, “Whoa,” which I think was major props for us, considering the crowd. And the best part was, that Chester kid seemed to get his act together after we’d taken the attention from him for a bit. So when it was his turn to speak again, he cleared his throat, slicked his hair back, and started his speech from the beginning. And rocked it! Quick thinking, Mads (pat on the back for me)!

  After the competition (which our school won, BTWhey, hey!), Mom handed everyone permission forms to bring home to parents for the Regional Qualifier trip.

  “Don’t forget to get a signature from your parent,” Mom said as each squad member took a form on our way back to the locker rooms.

  “Hey, Mom, can I go?” I joked.

  “Yeah, I’ll consider it,” she said sarcastically.

  Jacqui and I started walking to the locker room together. We let the rest of the team file past us toward the gym so we would have a few moments to talk, captain to captain.

  “I think the Spirit Rules book is paying off, huh?” she asked. We were standing by one of the science labs.

  “I feel bad saying it, but I am kinda surprised at how great we’re shaping up,” I said. I leaned one hand behind me against a locker to stretch my wrist.

  “Did you see Tabitha Sue and that thigh stand? She hit every mark perfectly,” said Jacqui, looking back toward the room where the speech competition was clearing out.

  “I know!” I said, switching hands. “It was pretty incredible.”

  “The whole team really is working hard these days,” Jacqui pointed out. “I think we should get everyone on the team to really nail their back walkovers, plus one more new move, and then show them off at the Regional Qualifier when everyone else is practicing. That way, the Grizzlies can feel like they’re bringing something to the table too.”

  “And if they can stand the heat of the big competitions, then I think we’d really stand a chance at one of our own,” I said, thinking of the novice competition at the end of the year.

  “Totes,” Jacqui agreed, high—fiving me.

  I hadn’t planned on talking about the Bevan and Katie thing with her, but it just felt like the right moment. Jacqui’s one of the few people who really understand where I’m coming from, since she’s experienced Katie’s strange rules firsthand.

  “Can I tell you something and you promise not to say ‘I told you so’?”
I asked her. She looked at me suspiciously at first, which by now I know is just Jacqui’s way of figuring out the situation.

  “No, I can’t promise. But I’ll try.” She smiled.

  “I know you warned me about liking Bevan, but you also said you thought we’re cute together.”

  Jacqui just smiled again. “Ok, good,” I thought. So she wouldn’t be annoyed that I was bugging her about Bevan. We continued on into the locker room. I told her how much I like Bevan-like, seriously like him—and how we’ve been flirting a lot lately. I also admitted to her that I was secretly upset that he hadn’t asked me out again after we’d hung out at the mall that time. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I haven’t heard anything from him in a couple of days. Of course, I could like, text him or something. But I don’t want him to think I’m super into him or anything.

  I hate thinking about this stuff.

  I told Jacqui how Katie’s been acting really nasty to me ever since the “mall date” but that I couldn’t be sure if the reason was because she’d found out Bevan and I had gone out, or something else entirely.

  “Mads! I warned you this might happen!” said Jacqui, fumbling with her locker combo.

  “Precisely why I asked you not to say ‘I told you so’!” I whispered. “And let’s keep it down, please. I don’t need the whole team to know my business.” I could tell that Katarina and Tabitha Sue were looking over in our direction. “So . . . do you think she knows?” I asked her.

  “Katie’s superpopular, so anything she does—and anything someone she’s dating or used to date is doing-is, like, instant gossip,” said Jacqui, folding up her gym towel. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone saw you and Bevan and ran to tell her about it.”

  “Ohmigod, you think?” I asked. It was scary but kind of flattering at the same time. Probably the one and only time in my whole life that something I did would be interesting enough to whisper about in the hallways. Madison Hays, Gossip Starter.