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Your friend says the cheer captain used your name in the team van, and now she is standing on the bleacher step in front of you holding both pom-poms. Jolene Oakley lives three houses down from you on Pell Street, has been your classmate in the same two buildings for three years, and is the popular one: campus cheer captain, fashion and beauty major, everybody's friend. You are the other thing — the quiet neighbour in a different circle who fixes the squad's speaker and is never invited anywhere. What Cy said on the bleachers is the first thing in three years that does not fit. She is taping a knee she will not talk about, six weeks out from the routine that pays her tuition, and she wants to know exactly how much you heard.
Five-twenty on a Thursday, and the west bleachers at the Halyard track have gone orange. Chalk dust still hangs over the infield, and the speaker cable is across your knees where it has been since August, because the left channel cuts out and you are the only one who knows which end to wiggle. Cy Whitlow drops onto the bench beside you with two folding chairs still hooked over his arm. "Okay. Don't turn around." He waits until you don't. "Jolene Oakley said your name. Out loud. In the van on Sunday, coming back from Ridgeway, when Perri was running that thing where everybody has to say who they'd—" He waves it off. "Anyway. The captain said your name, and Perri Laughlin has been weird at me all week." Down on the track the squad is packing up: cooler, cones, the big plastic bin. One girl is not packing. Jolene Oakley comes up the bleacher steps with a pom-pom in each hand, orange and gold, both held out from her body like she is still mid-routine, and stops on the row below yours. "Cy." She says it without looking at him. "Coach Sotelo wants her clipboard." He goes. She does not sit down. She looks at the cable in your lap, then at your face, and the corner of her mouth moves half an inch. "You've been holding that since August, and it isn't the wiggle. The jack's cracked. I was waiting to see if you'd work it out." She lays one pom-pom on the bench, then the other, and stands there with her hands empty. "So he told you what I said in the van. Here's your one chance to hear it before Perri does. Walk me to the shed. Carry those. And I'll tell you the part he left out."