Fly Away Read online

  Most of the girls turned to look at the gift bag, and I took the opportunity to check out the new girl. She was a couple of inches taller than me. Maybe fifty kilos. Inconclusive. Flyers tend to be small, but not always. The new girl wasn’t too big to be a flyer.

  “Please sign the card at the end of practice,” Coach Saylor said. Then she beckoned for the new girl to come forward.

  “Girls, this is Lucy O’Reilly. She has agreed to join our team while Emma recovers. Some of you know her from the level-three Cardinals, where she’s been a base girl for the past two years.”

  Base girl. Base girl. I wondered if anyone else could hear my heart. It was thumping so loud, I thought it would burst out of my chest. Was it possible?

  The other girls were clapping. I joined in, flashing Lucy a big smile.

  “And since Lucy is a base,” Coach said, “we now have to replace the flyer in Emma’s group.”

  I couldn’t look at Coach Saylor. I was too nervous. I stared at Lucy instead. I waited for Coach to say, “Marnie, we really need you as a tumbler…”

  Instead I heard her say, “And I can’t think of a better girl for the job of flyer than our own Marnie Goodwood.”

  chapter four

  The moment we were in Arielle’s car and out of earshot of the team, I pounced.

  “Did you know?”

  She smiled sideways at me. “I really expected you to hound me about it, Marnie! Way to keep your cool.”

  I laughed. Self-control is not exactly my strong suit. “Well, I didn’t want to disrespect Emma. And I knew you’d never tell me what Coach was planning. You’re always so professional. But I’m superexcited!” It had been more than an hour since the coach’s announcement, and I still had butterflies in my stomach.

  Arielle turned the key in the ignition. “You earned it.”

  Something in her voice made me pull myself together. I wondered about Arielle’s own feelings. “Did you ever want to be a flyer?”

  “If I ever did,” she said, “it was so long ago that I don’t remember. I’m way too tall anyway.”

  As we pulled out of the parking lot, I wondered how anyone could forget something like that.

  I was awake half that night, still hyper from the big news. The next day, the best I could do was coast foggily through the school day. I knew that if I had any hope of getting into the University of Toronto— where Arielle was going in September—I had to pay attention and get my marks up this year and next. But an off day here or there wouldn’t kill me, I reasoned. Except that I was headed for a second late night in a row. Liam had agreed to come with me that night to a party at Ashleigh’s. Ashleigh was a cheerleader who lived in Tavistock, a smaller town just east of ours.

  When I reminded Liam after school, he groaned and said, “Not tonight, Marnie.”

  “But you said you would come!” I said.

  If he didn’t drive, I’d have to find another way to get there. “Okay, Marnie,” he said, as if he was doing me a huge favor.

  “I’ll go.”

  It was a party. As in, a little bit of fun for a change. Sheesh.

  Liam and I had pizza at his place before the party. When it was nine thirty and time for us to head out, he balked. He tried to convince me that we were having fun already. We’d played video games until I got frustrated with losing, and then we’d watched a stupid movie. He wanted to start another one. Never mind even trying to get me to go downstairs, where we could make out. He just wanted to sit and stare at the screen.

  “But I said I’d go,” I said.

  “Just call Ashleigh and tell her you’re worried about the roads. It’s January.”

  “The roads are clear, Liam. It hasn’t snowed in a week. We only need to stay for a couple of hours…”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll drop you off.”

  What kind of boyfriend does that? “It’s not like you have anything better to do!” I said.

  “I’m just not in the mood,” he said.

  I played my last card. “I made flyer. Finally, after two years of waiting. Don’t you think that’s worth celebrating?”

  He pulled himself to his feet. “It’s not a party for you, Marnie. You’re just trying to talk me into going.”

  He walked to the hall closet to get his coat with all the enthusiasm of a person walking into a dentist’s office. I followed in a funk. If he dropped me off, how would I get home?

  “You know what?” I said. “Don’t even bother. I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

  I grabbed my coat and walked out the door. Once I was around the corner, I called Arielle on my cell phone.

  “Hey,” she said. “Where you calling from?”

  “A snowbank,” I told her. “I just walked out on Liam. Are you at Ashleigh’s yet?”

  She told me she was partway there, but that she’d turn around to get me. That’s what real friends do.

  By the time she arrived, I was shivering. I climbed into the backseat. Lucy O’Reilly, Emma’s replacement, was riding shotgun. That was so like Arielle, being sure to include the new girl. I’d known Arielle long enough not to be jealous. I sank into the warm upholstery and sighed.

  “So, what happened?” Arielle asked.

  “He was supposed to come. He bailed at the last minute. So I blew him off.”

  “I’m sorry, Mar.”

  “No biggie,” I answered. “I don’t need him there. He’ll just bring me down.”

  “Marnie’s boyfriend,” Arielle explained to Lucy, “is, um, kinda moody these days.”

  Except, I thought, he never used to be. Not until this year.

  I had so much fun at that party. I love Liam, but it was a nice change not having to pay attention to whether or not he was having a good time. He can be hard to please. He doesn’t like it when I get too hyper, and he never seems happy around my cheerleader friends.

  “Do you have a boyfriend, Arielle?” Lucy asked on the ride home.

  Arielle shook her head. “Nobody can stand me for more than two or three dates.”

  “But you’re so gorgeous!” Lucy exclaimed.

  Arielle laughed. I knew her well enough to know that making the effort to hang on to a boyfriend had never been a priority for her. She made time for her studies, her cheerleading and her painting. Everything else took a backseat. If there was a guy out there independent enough to keep up with her, she hadn’t met him yet.

  “Listen, Lucy,” said Arielle, “do you think you could make it to the gym on Saturday for a couple of hours to help Marnie work on her stunts? She was a flyer when she was level three, but that was a couple of years ago. I’m sure she’d appreciate the practice.”

  “Sure,” said Lucy. “No problem. I’d love to.”

  “I’ll call Priya,” Arielle promised. “Then we’ll have three bases. We could meet at Soar at eleven.”

  That practice session didn’t go so well.

  Maybe it was because Lucy was new and she wasn’t used to Priya’s and Arielle’s lifting rhythm. Maybe it was just me. I was popping up fine. I’m short and only 103 pounds, so I’m easy to lift. But once I was up, I was shaky. My ankles wouldn’t stop wobbling, so every throw was off-kilter. After a while the girls’ arms were aching, and I was a little heap of misery and shame. I sat on the floor, pulled my knees up to my face and hid behind my thick bangs.

  Priya and Lucy sat on either side of me.

  “Hel-lo,” Arielle said. “Come out from behind the hair.”

  They waited. I sulked.

  Arielle lifted my bangs away from my face. “Coach Saylor used to hate this hair,” she told the other two girls. “She wondered how Marnie could see through it. So one day, she made her tuck her bangs under a headband.”

  “Made me look like an alien,” I mumbled, my head still buried in my knees.

  Arielle nodded. “She did look strange. Half the squad ran away. And that was the end of the headband experiment.”

  Priya and Lucy giggled.

  “I suck,” I w
himpered, “and I’m an extraterrestrial.”

  “Well, you’ve had better practices, Mar. But aren’t you glad you got the kinks out in front of us instead of the whole team?”

  I sniffled.

  “Why don’t we forget about the throws for today? Work on scorpion and liberty. Okay?”

  “And if you don’t mind,” Lucy piped up, “I could really use a couple of run-throughs of the drill parts in the seventies routine.”

  I’d been so wrapped up in my own poor performance that I’d forgotten how new our choreography was to Lucy. “Let’s do that first, then,” I suggested, getting to my feet. “Take my mind off the stunts for a bit.”

  Arielle found our music, and we lined up in front of the mirror. Drill is the part of cheerleading that’s sort of like dance— the part where you keep your feet on the floor and interpret the music. There’s a lot of pressure, in competition, to do stunt after stunt. Some people even say drill cheerleading is dying and that in a couple of years it’ll be extinct, like the pom-pom. But our coach always tells us that drill is the element that separates the good squads from the bad. If a team has a weak link or two, you can hide it on stunts—after all, how much grace does it take to hold up a leg? But when you watch a team do drill, your eye is drawn, like a magnet, to the girl who’s half a beat too slow, or whose toes aren’t pointed. Strong drill is a hallmark of our team.

  Twenty minutes of drill left all of us sweaty and breathing hard. It’s hard to be nervous when you’re tired. When Arielle reminded me we still hadn’t worked on the lifts, I lined up in front of the three bases without objection.

  “One, two,” recited Arielle.

  I lifted my foot off the ground for the boost.

  “Three, four,” answered Lucy and Priya, bending their knees and taking hold of my left foot and right ankle.

  “Five, six,” I said, pushing off the bases’ shoulders on five and raising my arms above my head on six.

  For “seven, eight”—which we count in our heads—I’m more than six feet above the ground, supported only by three palms under the sole of my right foot and one hand around my ankle. My left toe is pointed against my right knee, and my arms are in the air. The only thing that keeps me from falling in a liberty lift is the strength of my stomach muscles and how rigid and straight I keep my ankle and my knee. Any wobble anywhere, and the whole thing comes crashing down in a heap.

  “Down,” whispered Arielle, and the web of palms below my foot collapsed, forming a basket to break my fall.

  “Nice,” said Lucy, setting me down on my feet.

  “Well,” I protested, “I kept my hands on your shoulders too long, but—”

  “No,” said Arielle, “that was nice. Now, let’s do a scorpion.”

  chapter five

  I was nervous during Monday’s warm-up. Saturday’s fiasco had proved that, even though my lifts were coming along, my flying skills were seriously rusty. I stayed quiet while we stretched, trying to focus on the task ahead.

  I was new at flying, at least on this level-five team. I was well liked, so the girls would probably cut me some slack, but only for so long. After all, this was supposed to be our breakout year. Second place wasn’t going to cut it. I had only a few weeks to go from crummy to perfect.

  “Let’s go,” said Coach.

  We practiced the drill sequence first— the part that comes right after the opening stunts. Because it’s on the floor, my part didn’t change much. I just moved one row back to make way for Jada, who was taking my place as a tumbler.

  When it comes to drill, timing and precision are key. Precision comes from positioning. Arms tight and straight, abdominal muscles taut, toes pointed. Each position must be held crisply, never drifted through.

  Great music helps. Since I was friends with Arielle, I got to help choose our music, and I loved it. Many teams just pick whatever’s popular at the moment, to please the crowd. This time we decided to go retro. One of our routines was a medley of seventies songs, from Led Zeppelin right through to disco. We called the routine “Groovy.”

  Working on drill helped settle me down. By the time we moved on to stunts, I felt competent. There are three stunt groups. Arielle was on the other side of the room with her group. Lucy, who’s in my group, shot me a nervous little smile as we got into position for the first lift. She was new too, I reminded myself. If we wobbled a little, it would be perfectly normal.

  But we wobbled a lot. And Lucy wasn’t the problem.

  After I bailed out of a basic split throw for the second time, Shona Bart, the flyer from the center group, turned and stared at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “Huh?”

  “This is, like, a level-two throw. What’s the matter?”

  A hot blush crept up my neck.

  “She hasn’t done this in two years,” Priya retorted. “She’s just rusty. And Lucy just joined us.”

  Shona turned her back to me and said something to Ruthie that ended in “…get her act together in time for provincials.” That didn’t make me feel any steadier.

  “What was that all about?” I complained when Arielle and I got into her car.

  “You mean Shona?” Ari asked. “You know what she’s like.”

  Anyone who’s ever done a “girl sport”— figure skating, gymnastics, whatever—has met a girl like Shona Bart. The type who thinks a little talent gives her the right to criticize girls who’ve been doing the sport longer. That was what bugged me the most. Shona was only fourteen—she looked about nine—and I was sixteen.

  “Yeah, well,” I continued, “the problem is, she’s right. I can’t even do a stupid split throw! What’s wrong with me?” I put my hands over my face.

  Arielle laughed.

  “Oh, nice,” I said. “Laughing makes it so much better.”

  She shrugged. “Nothing’s wrong, Marnie. You’re rusty. Sometimes Shona flubs throws too, you know.”

  “When?” I asked. “When was the last time you saw Shona miss a throw?” Shona was a dependable performer. Rock solid.

  “If you want,” said Arielle, “I could sabotage her. Bump one of her bases at exactly the right moment…”

  I wasn’t sure I liked Ari making a joke out of my problems. But maybe I really did need to shake it off. Maybe I was being self-centered. Arielle was a very good listener. It’s easy to dump on her and forget that she might need to talk about her own stuff too.

  “So what’s new with you, Ari?” I asked. “Any decisions about residence?” Arielle still hadn’t made up her mind where she wanted to live at U of T.

  She shrugged. “I guess Woodsworth. Unless I like the Lorretto house better when I take the tour.”

  “Isn’t Lorretto girls-only?” I stuck out my tongue. “Bleah. When do you go for the tour? Want me to come?” We were hoping to live together when I got to U of T. Assuming I got accepted.

  “Sure,” she said. “Remind me to find some time to go.”

  “You don’t seem too excited.”

  She shrugged again. “It’s months away.”

  I wondered if having to leave cheerleading was one of the reasons she wasn’t excited. But Arielle hardly ever talked about herself, and I didn’t want to pry. Would I miss cheerleading too when it was time for me to go to Toronto?

  “So, Liam canceled geek night again,” I told her. “He’s mad at me for walking out on him before that party. Want to get together and watch last year’s DVD from the provincials? Scope out the competition?”

  But she told me she couldn’t, that she had stuff to do. Then she dropped me off at my house.

  I wondered what “stuff” Arielle was doing on a Monday night. Probably painting. I sat alone on my bed for about ten minutes. What was I going to do? There was a social studies essay I could start. I could try to talk my mom into watching the provincials DVD with me, but it wasn’t as though she’d have much to say about it. My mom always likes to tell me she was a science nerd in high school. She doesn’t come right
out and say that she thinks cheerleading is a waste of time, but she rarely has the energy to fake much interest in it. It’s just too girlie for her.

  I picked up the phone. Might as well see if I could patch things up with Liam.

  His mother answered. “Marnie!” she chirped. “You haven’t been over in ages.”

  She hadn’t been home when I’d been at Liam’s on Thursday, but I didn’t want to argue. “Yeah.” I said. “I guess it’s a busy time of year.”

  “Really? I feel like Liam never leaves the house these days. I guess football’s over, and…” Her voice trailed off. “Aren’t you two supposed to be at Eliza’s tonight? Playing that game?”

  I heard Liam in the background. “Mom! Gimme the phone.”

  “Liam wants the phone,” she said. “Come over soon, okay, honey?”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “So,” Liam said.

  “We’re gonna get kicked out of Blood Plain, you know,” I said, “if we never show up.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Nice.”

  “Look, Marnie,” he said, “I’m tired. If you feel the need to give me grief, it’s going to have to wait.”

  “Until when?”

  There was a long pause. “Tomorrow. We can get together tomorrow. It’s cheap night at the movies. Work for you?”

  I didn’t seem to have much choice.

  chapter six

  The next morning I turned on my computer to print my social studies notes. There were no email messages from Liam, but there was one message pending, something that was taking forever to load. With my luck, it was a computer virus. I left it loading while I dried my hair. When I came back, I saw it was a note from Arielle, with several attachments. I opened it.

  Hey Mar!

  Can you take a look at this stuff? It’s a portfolio of my recent stuff. It took me forever to get the images all the same size.

  But mostly I want you to look at the bio, see if it’s okay. I want to sound like a serious artist without coming across like I’m full of myself…