That’s more than you can say for our friendship. Everything is different now. Awkward. Ever since seventh grade when Lara got all crazy and depressed, and I had to spend night after night listening to her go on about her awful life. High school gave me a chance to break free.
Now she’s lost all this weight and tried out for cheerleading. Why is she trying to force her way back into my life? I’ve made other friends now. Like, I’m happy for her that she’s managed to get her act together and all that, but I’ve moved on. Can’t she get a life of her own?
Mom texts during second period, asking if the list is posted yet.
No. STOP. I’LL TXT YOU! : /
I press Send.
Shouldn’t she be busy selling houses or doing her volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity or whatever? She should know better than to text me during school anyway.
I’m trying to pay attention while Ms. Blackstock reads from Julius Caesar, “ ‘A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities, but Brutus makes mine greater than they are.’ ”
She tells us that means Caesar thinks friends are supposed to put up with their friends’ faults, but that Brutus exaggerates all of Caesar’s.
It makes me wonder if that’s how Lara feels about me. It’s not that I didn’t feel bad about pulling away from her when we got to high school. But seriously, I’m not exaggerating what she was like in middle school. The girl was totally cray-cray.
How long do you put up with someone’s faults before you get sick of it and give up? I totally get why Brutus stuck it to Caesar. If you ask me, Brutus got a raw deal. The play should have been named for him.
I check to see if the list is up again during lunch. It’s not. I send Mom a text telling her that so she doesn’t text me during class again.
What’s the matter with Coach Carlucci? This is her JOB, Mom texts back. Maybe I’ll call her.
NO!!!! DON’T!!!!!!!!!!!!! I text back.
Ugh. My mother isn’t just a Tiger Mom. She’s a freaking Great White Shark Mom. She should have her own week on the Discovery Channel.
By the time the end-of-school bell rings, Mom’s texted me three more times, even though I told her I’d text her as soon as I knew anything. You’d think it was her who was waiting to hear if she was going to make cheerleading, not me.
When I walk down to the trophy cabinet, there’s already a bunch of girls hanging around the list. Lara is one of them, and I hear her let out a shriek as I approach the group. I’m not sure if it’s of disappointment or excitement, but then she turns around and starts jumping up and down. It makes my stomach clench tighter as I draw closer to read the names.
They’re in alphabetical order and … there’s no Connors. It skips from Chapman to Dresner. I read it twice, just to make sure. There’s Kelley, Lara. But no Connors, Breanna.
I can’t believe it. Am I being punked? Lara made the squad and I didn’t? This is just wrong.
Lara is talking to Ashley Trapasso, a junior on the team, and she is all giggly and happy. As if she senses my gaze, Lara looks in my direction and laughs.
Seriously?! After all the time I spent listening to her whine about how much her life sucked, she has the nerve to laugh at me when I get cut from cheerleading? I turn on my heel and head out of there. I feel my phone buzzing — probably another text from the Great White Shark. I ignore it. I can barely handle myself right now. The one thing I do know is that someday, somehow, I am going to make Lara pay for laughing at me when my life sucks after all those times I listened to her whine when hers did.
When I get home I fling myself onto my bed and blast music and decide to repaint my nails. I can’t believe I didn’t make the team, even if deep down, there’s a part of me that’s relieved, because now I have an excuse for not doing cheerleading. But I just can’t believe Lardo made the team over me. Something has to be seriously wrong with the universe for that to happen.
My phone is buzzing constantly. Mom’s probably flipping out, wanting to know if I made the team. But I’m not up for the sigh, the rant, the way she’ll make this all about her. Because this isn’t about her. It’s about me. And Lara. And her laughing at me for getting cut. This is about me figuring out how to get my revenge for that, somehow. The question is: How?
“Bree!” my brother shouts from downstairs. “Pick up the freaking phone! Mom wants to talk to you!!”
Guess I can’t avoid talking to the Great White Shark Mom any longer. Time to be reminded of what a disappointment I am. Always such fun.
“Yeah,” I say when I pick up the phone.
“Breanna, your father and I don’t pay for you to have a cell phone so you can play stupid apps. We pay for it so we can communicate with you when we need to. That means you pick up the phone when we call and answer our texts when we text. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“So? What happened? Why have you been avoiding me?”
I take a deep breath and exhale the answer into the phone. “BecauseIdidn’tmakeit.”
“What do you mean you didn’t make it?”
“I mean, I’m not a varsity cheerleader. I got cut.”
“That can’t happen!” Mom shouts into my ear. “I paid for all those camps! You were on junior varsity! You can’t get cut!”
“Apparently I can, Mom,” I point out. “My name wasn’t on the list.”
“Did you go to Coach Carlucci and ask her why?” Mom asks.
“No,” I say.
“Why not?” Mom asks. She’s sounding increasingly irritated, and I can tell that she’s winding up for a lecture.
“I didn’t feel like it, okay? I just wanted to come home.”
“You didn’t feel like it?” Mom repeats in a scathing tone. “You have to start advocating for yourself, Breanna. You’ll never get anywhere in life if you stay a doormat.”
“Wow, thanks for the pep talk, Mom,” I say, feeling a lump rise in my throat. “You always know just what to say to make me feel better.”
And I hang up on her.
Picking up the nail polish and turning my music back up to loud, I finish painting my nails bright red and start adding glitter stripes.
“Hey, can you turn that down or use headphones?” Liam says, sticking his head into my room. “I’m trying to do homework.”
“Can you do it? I don’t want to ruin my nails.”
My brother rolls his eyes and grunts but stomps into my room to reduce the volume on my Jambox. And just before he does, I hear the chorus of the song that was playing:
You said you loved me, but it was all a liiiie.
Now I’m so lonely, all I do is crrrry.
That’s when I get the idea. The genius idea of how I’m going to get my revenge on Lara for laughing at me.
The first step is to set up a new Gmail account. That takes all of, like, two minutes. Then I use the new Gmail account to open a new Facebook account. I search Google images for a really hot guy, the kind of guy I know that Lara would think is gorgeous. The kind she’d totally flip out over if he showed the faintest bit of interest in her.
This is where I have an advantage from being her former best friend. I know her taste in guys. We used to sit in the food court at the mall, rating guys on a scale of one to ten. She’d sigh every time we went into Abercrombie, because the models were so hot. Not that it did her any good. The salespeople in that store looked down their noses at her because she was overweight. She usually ended up more depressed after we went in there, and then I’d have to hear about it. It got to the point that if I wanted anything from Abercrombie, I’d make sure to go there with ABL — Anyone But Lara.