Squad Goals
Amy Jones
It would surprise people who know me now that I once wanted—desperately—to be a cheerleader. They’d have pegged me for the girl mocking such unflagging and misdirected enthusiasm from the stands (assuming you’d find me in any kind of stands); or more likely, just reading a book someplace. But most school-age girls, or the honest ones, anyway, would admit to the same desire. And why not? Cheerleaders are chosen. Popular. Pretty. Watched and admired by crowds of people. Desired by boys. If you are none of those things, cheerleading’s promise is that you will be all those things. Of course I wanted to be a cheerleader. Specifically, I craved admission to the rarified peppy enclave of the Wilshire Junior High School Cheer Squad.
Anyone who loves and believes in her school and its athletes with the fervor of an evangelist should be a cheerleader. What I loved and believed in was the cheerleading uniform and its power to confer myriad blessings, the greatest of these being belonging.
It was a feeling I’d waited since toddlerhood to experience. I was enrolled in three successive preschool groups, starting each promisingly enough, until the inevitable taunt of “baby shoes!” unleashed every ounce of rage in my undersized 4-year-old body, the very bottom of which sported the white high-topped corrective oxfords I’d worn since birth. At those two words, I’d rush my tormenter with whatever was handy—fists, teeth, a chair, scissors (even our round-tipped safety shears were ruled weapons when brandished in red fury). I’d be sent home to “think about it” and then simply refuse to return. Beyond the shoes’ orthopedic benefits, my mother insisted they looked “absolutely precious” on me; I think even then I sensed the futility of going back.
The best friends of my lunch-sharing fantasies didn’t materialize in kindergarten or first grade, either. Though still in my baby shoes, I was reading and writing at several grade levels ahead of my classmates, so in addition to being ridiculed for my footwear and general shrimpiness, I found myself bored silly. I still remember the worksheet that set off what became a familiar pattern: among similar challenges, it depicted a bat, a ball and a glove, encouraging us to circle the offender that did not begin with the letter B. I began handing in empty worksheets with large X’s scrawled over them—my six-year-old version of an eye roll, I guess. I’d walk home to inform my mother that I was dropping out of school but would still require a Space Food Stick at the usual snack time. After several days and a visit from the teacher, I could usually be coaxed back to class.
My luck changed somewhat in fourth grade when we moved to a new house on a block with ten kids around my age, all boys: Don, Dave, Tim and Tommy Fraser, Rob ‘The Bird’ Elias, James and Jeffrey Hall, Mike Reynolds, Scott Davis, and (if we were desperate to even out teams), Sean McGrath. I was included unquestioned and un-mocked in football, baseball, and basketball, with skateboarding and (between sports seasons) rolling each other down the alley in empty trash cans. In jeans and a cousin’s hand-me-down Hang Ten T-shirt I loved beyond reason—or no shirt, if our side was ‘skins’—I was just one of the gang, valued as a quick and fairly sticky-palmed receiver. At school, I was still in search of a team. Standing in the middle of the boys’ recess football games until they let me play only made me weirder in the eyes of the girls I hoped to befriend. So did my oxfords, now black-and-white and non-orthopedic. My mother laid them out each morning along with my white knee socks, eyelet-trimmed underwear, short skirt and grosgrain hair ribbons. I lived in Southern California in the 1970s, where girls wore the Wallabees and saddle-back Dittos I begged for almost daily. My mother lived in Norman Rockwell’s 1950s and would not be budged.
So, I lived for weekends and summers on the block, where my clothes and I did fit, until one day late in the summer before sixth grade. We’d finished a game of football and were cruising the empty blacktop of the school playground on our bikes when we encountered some other kids with the same idea. One of them, a boy from my class, stopped in front of us and smirked, “Aren’t you missing something?”
My understanding—and shame—were instant. Expelled from my asphalt Eden, I pedaled home to ask my mom through furious sobs why she’d never told me I was supposed to wear a shirt. Any reserves of pluck or innocence I’d managed to squirrel away that summer fermented to the pre-teen angst and self-consciousness I suppose are inevitable. I was never more in need of a uniformed safety net, and Wilshire Junior High School was my shot.
Ignoring my nascent inner fatalist, I signed my name on the cheerleading tryout sheet the summer before eighth grade. I knew my chances, but I also knew the stakes. Each hopeful was assigned a tryout partner, with whom we were to work out an audition routine. Mine was a tall, skinny, squinty-eyed girl named Ann-Marie Bergmann, whom I didn’t know. Most of the other pairs were girls who were not only friends, but members of Wilshire’s most envied in-crowd. I didn’t believe the assignments were deliberate; I’d already accepted that was just how popularity karma works, and always has.
I abandoned football and baseball for Anne-Marie’s front lawn. We practiced precise arm movements, synchronized jumps and intricate stomp-clap patterns until we were as unified as we could be, given our twelve-inch height difference. We screamed our throats raw committing to memory nuanced stanzas like, “We got the ball, so / Let's go, let's go / We got the ball, so / LET'S GO!” I found the grammar disturbing but couldn’t argue with Anne-Marie’s “But that’s how it goes.”
For better or worse, it did. Besides, I reasoned, she was a nice girl. And integral to my success.
In early September, we entered the Wilshire auditorium with countless other hopefuls to vie for six coveted spots before a committee of discerning faculty and student judges. As long and hard as we’d practiced, there was one part of our routine I found nearly impossible to master—an unwritten but long standing audition protocol: at the end of your best and longest cheer, you and your partner, one after the other, lunged forward, arms raised in a V, and shouted your name. No matter that everyone watching already knows who you are; you must yell it with pride, spirit and the conviction that you deserve to be a Wilshire! Junior! High! Cheerleader!
During practice, my name always sounded like an embarrassment in my own ears—a crime of audacity committed by an interloper who everyone knew didn't belong on the audition list, let alone the squad. And in the critical moment of our tryout, it emerged in an asphyxiated squeak that traveled no further than my forward knee and landed on the stage in front of me, an open invitation to the side exit.
I’d wanted to be a cheerleader in the way only kids can want things—as if nothing else matters. Nothing else did matter. Crushed, I waited with Anne-Marie for the new squad to be announced. Amid screams and hugs and much jumping up and down, the principal read the names of the few, the chosen, the usual suspects: Susan Shields, curvy, blonde and dimpled; Karen Kincade, boisterous, funny, athletic; Donna Hanover, icy blonde and constructed entirely of legs; Shannon Mitchell, big blue eyes, the cute kind of freckles, also preternaturally tall and leggy; Jennifer Richman, olive-skinned with long dark feathered hair and an actual boyfriend; and Lori Gardner, giggly and popular for reasons unclear, but friends with all of them nevertheless. Prejudicial selection wasn’t to blame; it was the usual ancient alchemy whose workings would remain forever unrevealed to me.
But the principal had one more name to read: mine. I was the first runner-up, and as such, automatically elected team mascot. By virtue of previously undisclosed bylaws, I was now the Wilshire Wildcat. I didn’t think to console Anne-Marie, who’d come away with nothing; I was too dismayed by this unforeseen consolation prize. I’d spent a summer choking down bad grammar and self-doubt with the dream of donning the same uniform as five other girls and joining the middle school aristocracy. Cartwheeling and prancing about in front of students, parents—and boys—in the furry, oversized costume of a large cat of indefinite species seemed counterproductive. In fact, it seemed like death by a thousand touchdowns, but my mother wouldn’t let me decline. It would be ungracious, she said. “Just think how many other girls would jump at the opportunity.”
I was pretty sure I knew exactly how many.
And then. Days before the start of school, a deus ex machina uninventable in my wildest fantasies descended to alter my life trajectory: Lori Gardner’s dad was being transferred for work. Their family would be moving down to Texas, which meant I would be moving up to cheerleader. My newfound love of bylaws was cooled only slightly by the finger of fear that touches your spine when the thing you want beyond all wanting becomes suddenly and irrevocably real.
Lori’s mom (with a red-eyed Lori in tow) delivered the bag of fabrics that were to be her uniform, and now mine: thick, blinding neon-yellow polyester for the skirt, vest and trunks; the same fabric in bright blue for skirt insets and piping; and cornflower-blue cotton with small white flowers that the enclosed Butterick pattern promised would be a collared blouse with short puffy sleeves—all of which my mother pronounced “God awful” as soon as the door closed behind the Gardners. Instantly, and with perfect clarity, I saw myself in that uniform, walking around school with the other…cheerleaders. I’d just become someone I hardly dared dream I’d ever be. It was incomprehensible. And it was happening.
My grandmother, a legendary seamstress, glanced once at the pattern before tossing it and announcing through a stream of cigarette smoke that if I had to wear something that ugly, at least it was going to fit right. She cut a pattern out of newspaper proportioned to my four-foot-three, 51-lb., no-boobs-on-the-horizon frame. When I tried it on, I felt electric. I’m sure I looked electric too, but all I saw was the miracle of transformation. It was breathtaking, perfect.
Susan’s mom (our volunteer squad mother) called mine to let her know about footwear. “The girls” had chosen oxfords. “Perfect!” said my mom, exhaling her own fog of Salem Lights smoke into the phone, “she already has them.”
But “the girls” had chosen bubble-like white shoes with big rounded toes, a smooth black saddle and two-inch black lug soles. I most certainly did not have them. Mine sported almond-shaped toes, decorative perforated saddles and thin soles of red leather. Of course they did, my mother pointed out, because mine were classic oxfords—the real deal, not some dopey version chosen by girls who knew nothing about fashion. Mine were perfectly good; there was no need to wear, let alone pay for such aberrations. “And besides,” she said, delivering her usual final retort to most of my fashion grievances, “no one will notice.”
Had she never heard of junior high school? Pleading, yelling, door slamming, baleful looks and cold silences were serenely ignored, along with the humiliation she was visiting on her own progeny. The flight of Icarus was over.
On the afternoon of our first game, Mrs. Shields picked me up in her Ford Econoline, the other cheerleaders already aboard. As was Lori Gardner, who wasn’t moving for another week and had come along “to be with her friends one last time.” I sensed this did not bode well for me. After a few moments Donna Hanover addressed me from her seat on the wheel well. “You’re not really a cheerleader, you know. You’re only here because Lori has to move.”
I looked down at the six pairs of saddle shoes on the van’s metal floor, only one of which would’ve been recognizable at a sock hop. “I know,” I said. “Sorry, Lori.”
It occurred to me that I hadn’t personally transferred her dad to Houston, but it didn’t seem like the time to bring it up.
Despite the ride there, the game went well. Meaning, I didn’t mess up a single cheer; I couldn’t have told you who won. And if the uniform wasn’t the life-changing welcome mat I’d envisioned, my origins as a usurper gradually faded from collective memory and I was accepted as a member of the squad, if not the circle of friends that comprised it. I wasn’t promoted to their lunch table, but I did get invited to one of their parties, and even asked to dance by Sam Rafferty, a recent crush from the basketball team. I think all this was largely thanks to Susan (already a mature twenty at thirteen) who regularly patted my Dorothy Hamill, marveling at “what a cute little thing” I was. Trust me: If you have the face of a weasel you will still be cute, as long as you remain under five feet, and a girl. You will also be of use in pyramids.
Another uncodified rule of cheerleading dictates that every squad have a formation as vertical, complex and precarious as its number and abilities permit. We rarely wasted our pyramid on muddy and uneven playing fields, reserving it instead for school assemblies and other special occasions. In our triumph of human architecture, Karen and Jennifer sank to kneeling side-splits, arms extended at right angles, with Susan bent at the waist between them, arms also extended. On either side of Susan, Donna and Shannon balanced on one leg, their other resting at 90 degrees on Susan’s shoulders. When their arms were properly extended, I took a running leap, vaulted myself onto Susan’s back and raised my own arms for our final shout of “WJHS!” As pyramids go, it wasn’t a showstopper, but it was ours.
In high school, my desire to fit in expanded in scope and pathology. I applied, ran for and/or joined student government, school plays, the student newspaper, choir, a national girls’ service club (they wore uniforms on Wednesdays), honor society, track and—in the summer before my senior year—cheerleading. And incredibly, I was once again first runner up. But I knew this was where Fate and I parted ways. There would be no sudden decampments to Houston and certainly no mascot duty—no way was I going to be the Fullerton Indian. With all the wisdom of my years, I saw that my life was over and immediately applied for a very selective summer foreign exchange program. I was accepted and promptly dispatched to a small South American country in the midst of a dicey military dictatorship. It’s not a place you’d expect a sixteen-year-old with no knowledge of Spanish to feel a sense of belonging, but by then, I’d lowered my expectations. But never mind that; this is a story about cheerleading.
Looking at my old WJHS yearbook on a recent visit home, I came across a photo of the cheer squad in our signature tableau. There I am—the runt, the runner up—proudly astride Susan Shields, smiling maniacally with my arms in a perfect, straight-armed V. Am I aglow with school spirit and the glory of cheerleaderdom? Maybe. More likely, my smile masks relief that I hadn’t just toppled us with my vault, and terror that I might still fall off. Part of me knows it’s ridiculous to have regrets about anything that happened so long ago; the part that doesn’t has a few: I wish I’d told Susan that I wanted to punch her every time she patted me on the head. I wish I’d said yes when Sam Rafferty asked me to dance (the enormity of something so long desired actually happening forced me to hide in the bathroom until “Stairway to Heaven” was over). I wish I’d made friends with Anne-Marie. I wish it had occurred to me that new oxfords might’ve been out of reach for my mom, who had three other kids to feed and clothe on a tight budget. And looking at that photo, I wish I’d been able to enjoy even one moment of belonging—my brief but undeniable fit at the top of the pyramid.
Amy Jones
Amy Jones lives in Santa Monica, CA. She studied journalism, filmmaking and linguistics before graduating with a BA in communications when threatened with tuition cutoff upon any further changes to her major. She works as the communications and PR manager for a Los Angeles-based ballet company and likes writing in her spare time. Squad Goals is her first short story; she is also the author of the children's book Mabel McNabb and the Most Boring Day Ever, and Watsonville, an unproduced feature script. She welcomes any tips for the secret import of adopted felines to apartments with no-pet policies.