Hey Underlined subscribers! I am so excited to share this alternate point of view chapter from The Cheerleaders with you. Ginny was my favorite character to write, and it was so much fun re-visiting this scene through her eyes. Enjoy!
—Kara Thomas
The Cheerleaders
by Kara Thomas
Chapter 7
On my father’s birthday, I wake to the smell of scrambled eggs.
I get dressed with a pit in my stomach before I head downstairs. She’s at the stove, plating the eggs, humming to herself.
My mom is beautiful—the type of attractive that turns heads, even when she’s in scrubs. People do a double take when they see me, but not because I’m beautiful. When I’m with Mom, people stare at me like they’re wondering if she and I actually share DNA.
We both have the same strawberry-blond hair, but in every other way, I am a carbon copy of my father. Pale skin, small eyes, sharp nose. I wonder if it’s hard for her, looking into the face of the man who ruined her life.
Mom sits opposite me, cupping a mug of coffee. On her plate is a soft-boiled egg and one piece of toast. I keep telling her it’s a little ridiculous she still makes me breakfast every morning, especially after an overnight shift, but she insists she needs the time to wind down when she gets home.
I know the real reason is that Mom feels guilty about how little I get to see her. She spends all her time either taking care of other people or sleeping so she can wake up and do it all over again.
Mom sips her coffee before asking, “Have you thought about what you want to do on Monday?”
My stomach turns as I spear my egg. Monday is my birthday. We always celebrated Dad’s birthday and mine at the same time when I was growing up; they were only a few days apart, so he swore it was wasteful to do two dinners, two cakes. I know Mom is thinking about that now and feeling shitty about it. On my seventh birthday, my father got a DWI. He insisted on driving home from TGI Friday’s, even though he’d had four beers at the table. My eighth birthday, an argument over not repeating the fiasco of last year ended with my mother and me locked in the bathroom, Dad threatening to break down the door.
“I’ve got my road test,” I say.
Mom sets down her mug. “I know. I took the whole day off.”
“We could do pizza afterward,” I say.
“That sounds great.” She smiles, without her teeth. She’s self-conscious about them, the way one of the front teeth is slightly crooked.
We turn our attention to our plates, Mom breaking off tiny nibbles of the toast she doesn’t actually want, and me peppering my eggs. Neither of us has much to say this morning. Dad is a conversational land mine that is too easy to stumble on today. When I’m finished eating, I stand, rinse my plate with my back to my mother.
I know she must think about him, probably even more than I do. She loved him, once, by choice. He must have been charming, or kind to her. Maybe he was a different person when they met—a person I only caught glimpses of. The man who showed up for my gymnastics meet that one time, his shirt ironed, cheering from the front row louder than any of the other parents. The man who came to my second grade Valentine’s Day tea with a corsage that I was too embarrassed to wear.
Mom must wonder where he is, or if he’s ever coming back. I heard her on the phone with my grandmother once, saying that in her heart she believed my father left us to become someone else. That he had gotten sober, moved in with some unknowing woman, and started a new life.
I could end all that for her. I’ve thought about ways to do it without her finding out that I was there, that I saw everything and didn’t stop it. An anonymous note, mailed to our house: He’s in his truck at the bottom of the lake. The Sunnybrook police probably wouldn’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on an underwater search for a domestic abuser who skipped out on a court appearance, but there are volunteer organizations that bring in drones, experienced divers.
I’ve thought of sending them the anonymous tip and lose my nerve, every single time.
“Ginny?”
I turn from the sink. Mom is watching me, almost as if she wants to say something. Before she gets the chance, I plant a kiss on top of her head, then grab my backpack and head for the bus stop.
Dance team practice doesn’t start until three, so after last period, I head to Mrs. Goldberg’s room to get some work done on the yearbook. It’s only September, but no one really understands how much work goes into publishing something that’s over a hundred pages.
I’m the photo editor on staff. I’m not entirely sure how I wound up with the job. I took Mrs. Goldberg’s graphic design class to fulfill an art requirement in ninth grade, and she roped me into yearbook staff because of my knack for Photoshop.
I guess it makes sense that I’m the one who airbrushes the imperfections off the homecoming queen’s face, who removes the dick graffiti from the brick wall behind the cross-country runners in their team photo. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been this way—watching my peers date, break up, win championships, get publicly shamed. I observe from the sidelines not because anyone put me here but because it feels safe.
Mom was the one who pushed me to try out for dance team again. She said it would help with college applications, but I suspect the real reason is she’s hoping I’ll make some friends.
I used to have friends. All the girls from Julie’s Gymnasium were my friends. Most of us went to different schools, but there were birthday parties, sleepovers, trips to Six Flags. When we lost Dad’s income and I had to quit the team, I tried to keep in touch with them until it became painfully clear that all we had in common was gymnastics.
By that time, I was a sophomore. The idea of trying to shoehorn myself into an existing social circle at Sunnybrook High School was exhausting. I don’t really mind being left alone, honestly. And it seems like the other girls on dance team, especially the other juniors, are more than content to keep leaving me alone, despite the fact that I’m one of them now.
Except for Monica Rayburn. I think of how she’s talked to me more times in the past few days than in our seven years of attending school together. I wonder if it’s because I saw her talking to the new cross-country coach. I’m not sure what they were talking about, but Monica’s reaction when she saw that I had seen them kind of said it all.
In Mrs. Goldberg’s doorway, someone clears their throat. I look up, my heart racing, because it’s like I’ve summoned her. Monica Rayburn is watching me awkwardly.
“Is Mrs. Goldberg here?” Monica seems out of breath, like she ran here.
“She went to use the copier a little while ago,” I say. “I didn’t know you took graphic design.”
“I don’t. I need an old yearbook. The librarian told me Mrs. Goldberg has it in her office.”
Monica tells me she needs the yearbooks from five and six years ago. I head into Mrs. Goldberg’s office and grab the yearbooks, wondering why Monica could possibly want them, before I remember that her sister, Jen, is in these books.
Monica is studying the wall very intently when I emerge from the office. I hand her the yearbooks. “These are her copies, so you just have to stay here with them, if that’s okay.”
Monica thanks me, and I return to my computer. To my surprise, she slides into the empty seat right next to mine, even though there are two dozen free computers in the art lab.
I try to focus on the photos from the Welcome Back assembly I’ve been resizing, but I’m too aware of her next to me. When I glance over to see what she’s looking at, I’m surprised to find she’s already looking at me.
“Have you ever seen this guy before?” Monica points to Ethan McCready’s portrait. I haven’t seen him in years, and the sight of him is still jarring. Dirty blond hair hangs in his eyes, and he’s wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt. A constellation of acne covers his jaw, and he’s not smiling.
“I know him,” I say.
“Really?”
“Well, I know who he is.” My mother took an extra job providing in-home care to Ethan McCready’s mom while she was dying of cancer. When I tell Monica this, she swallows.
“My mom told me he got expelled that fall,” I say.
Monica doesn’t look surprised. “He had a hit list. The cheerleaders were on it.”
I meet Monica’s eyes, thinking of what she asked me yesterday. Have you seen anyone hanging around that abandoned house?
“He says he was friends with Jen.”
“But Jen was a cheerleader,” I say. “Why would he put one of his friends on his hit list?”
“I don’t know.” Monica drops her gaze back to the yearbook, still opened to the page with Ethan McCready’s picture.
I hesitate before asking, “Does this have anything to do with what you asked me yesterday? About the house?”
“Ethan was there.” Monica’s voice is strained. “He left something for me—a note my sister left him.”
“Why would he do that? How did you find it?”
Monica looks nervous. “Can you take a break for a couple minutes? Maybe we could go outside.”
I wasn’t really working on anything important anyway, so I save my work and grab my gym bag. Neither of us speaks on the walk to the courtyard.
This is where everyone without a car kills time before sports practices begin. The cross-country guys showboating with a Frisbee look over at the doors opening. One of them waves to Monica as we find a spot by the gazebo.
As we’re sitting, a Frisbee flies into my shins. Jimmy Varney looks apoplectic as he trots over to retrieve it. “Sorry,” he blurts, twice, before Monica snaps: “It’s seriously okay.”
Jimmy heads back over to his friends, shooting death glares at Joe Gabriel, who is grinning.
“Joe is such an asshole,” Monica says. “He hit you on purpose.”
“I don’t think he meant to hurt me.” I shrug. “He just did it so Jimmy could come over and talk to you.”
Monica looks over at the guys, considering this. I’m suddenly too aware of how some of them keep sneaking glances at us. The girls in the courtyard, too—Monica’s best friends, Rachel Steigert and Alexa Santiago, aren’t out here, but some of the underclass girls on the dance team keep eyeing us. Probably thinking how weird it is that the most popular girl in the junior class is talking to the silent ginger who somehow made dance team this year.
I watch Monica, how her expression shifts. Something is troubling her, and I think it has everything to do with Ethan McCready and her sister’s death.
Monica turns her head and meets my eyes. “Can I tell you something?”
It started with her sister’s cell phone. Monica found it in her stepfather’s desk drawer. She wondered why he would still have it after all these years, so she charged it.
She found messages between Jen and Ethan McCready. Monica messaged Ethan, wanting to know why he had called Jen the day she died. Ethan left her notes he and Jen had exchanged as proof they were friends, prompting Monica to wonder what else she didn’t know about her sister.
“I talked to this journalist,” Monica says. Her voice is low, as if she’s admitting to something truly awful. “She wrote a story about everything that happened with the cheerleaders—I mean, this is absolutely crazy, but she thinks Jack Canning shouldn’t have been the only suspect.” She takes a deep breath. “And I think I believe her.”
I consider what she’s implying, and how hard it must have been for her to say it out loud. If Jack Canning didn’t murder Susan Berry and Juliana Ruiz, Monica’s stepfather killed an innocent man.
And the person who murdered two cheerleaders is still out there.
“I know it sounds ridiculous,” Monica says. “But my sister—I never believed it, that she would kill herself over her friends dying. And maybe that makes me sound like I’m in denial or something, but this stuff with Ethan McCready—with him calling her the morning she died . . . I don’t know. It can’t be a coincidence.”
A cramp is forming in my thigh. I shift so I’m sitting cross-legged. “You know that theory about how a butterfly flapping its wings could cause a tsunami across the world?”
Monica nods. “Like, something small can happen and set off a bigger reaction.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “The opposite of a coincidence.”
I feel Monica slipping further from me, into her own thoughts. I try to keep still, afraid she’ll sense what I’m feeling. The jaws of panic, clamping down on me.
If Ethan McCready really made a hit list with the cheerleaders on it, that would have included Colleen Coughlin and Bethany Steigert—the two girls who were killed in a car crash a week before Susan and Juliana were murdered.
I can’t tell if Monica believes Ethan McCready really could have been involved in the deaths of her sister and her friends. But she seems haunted enough by the prospect that I can tell she’s not going to let this go until she gets answers.
I will the thumping in my chest to quiet—I try to convince myself that no matter how deep Monica digs, she can’t possibly find out what really happened the night Bethany and Colleen were killed.
There were no witnesses. The paramedics and cops assumed Colleen was distracted, or she hydroplaned before she swerved off the road and hit a tree. There is no one who could have seen the truck traveling in the opposite direction, veering into Colleen’s lane at the last minute, causing her to swerve and lose control of her car.
There is no one who could tell Monica Rayburn what really happened to two of the cheerleaders.
No one but me.
