cheerleaders

Zaya was named Zaya because her mother read the name in a baby book and had thought the name's meaning-- which was listed politely below in fine print as an invitation to appreciate how very sophisticated the novel was-- had been ‘gay’ instead of gray. She had needed glasses back then.

Thinking to herself that naming her child ‘gay’ would be the epitome of humor (she was a bit ahead of her time, Zaya’s mother) she became excited, and the title was selected.

Zaya didn’t appreciate how the story had turned into a sort of prophecy.

“I didn’t, like, think you would want to be a cheerleader,” Betty said. “You know.”

Zaya did know, but she pretended not to for the sake of irritating Betty. She said, “Huh?”

Betty sighed and looked over her shoulder. “Like, you know. You don’t seem like you’d be a good fit for… the team.”

The team in question nodded beside her. They were all seated on one long table like a presidential conference of bitches, in the striped purple outfits that acted as their official wardrobe and wearing the exact same expression on their faces.

Zaya pursed her lips into a thoughtful duckface to annoy them and asked, faux-innocence, “How so?”

“Like, your hair is short.” Betty twined hers around a finger. “And like we need to have our hair tied back.”

Zaya flipped her hair. She supposed it was very different to anything any of the girls on the team wore. The cut came to just above her jaw, black as her soul, with a few choice streaks in front that had been dyed white. It had a messy undercut that was growing out and choppy pieces in the front and on the top that were shorter and clumpier than the others, pinned back with clips.

She had gone to four salons to make it look like that. “Looks like you got lucky. It’s already short enough to stay out of my face.”

Betty glared at her from behind a dazzling smile. “Um, okay, good for you, I guess? You do realize that we, like, have other concerns too though, right?”

“Oh, of course.” Zaya put her hands behind her and rocked backwards and forwards on her heels. “Please.”

Betty picked up a stack of papers, then riffled through it a few times so it sounded like she was doing something more important than what she was doing. “Okay. Well, it says here that you’re, like, in the chess club, the journalism club, and the math club-- will those interfere with practice?”

“I’m the president of those clubs, so no ma’am.” Zaya said. The table of girls gave her a blank look. They didn’t seem to get it, so she added, “I decide when we meet, so I can assure you that in no way will my fellow interests interfere with this most significant of interests.” She tipped them all a widening, generous smile. They still didn’t seem to get it. She felt the smile fade from her face. “Cheerleading. As an interest.”

Betty pushed her tongue into the side of her mouth until she seemed to feel that she looked appropriately pissed off. “Right. Well, then. Dress code? There is of course a dress code.”

The cheerleaders beside her shifted at the word ‘dress.’ Probably some kind of instinctive response, thought Zaya. Their biological responses to any sort of clothing references were making them itch to try something on. She wondered if shouting 'mall' would make their heads swivel around like owls.

“Cool, so what’s the dress code?” Zaya asked.

“No hoodies, no jeans, no cargo pants, nothing gaudy or baggy. ”

Zaya looked down at her ripped black leggings, her favorite boots that had a knife tucked into the side, her baggy black shirt with Led Zeppelin on the front she had cut a v-neck into, and the massive leather jacket she had found in the men’s section of a thrift shop and had been wearing faithfully ever since. “Ah, yes. Well. I perhaps may have something skintight at home.”

Betty rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Okay, whatever. But seriously, like, why are you doing this?”

Ah, here it was. The final tick on the checklist. The last dance. The final hurrah. The… Zaya’s brain spiraled as Betty uttered the deciding word:

“Aren’t you a like lesbian?”

The word resonated through the bleachers of the gym and in the way the other girls held their breath. A real lesbian!

“I prefer ‘gay woman,’” Zaya mused. “So much more official. Lesbian sounds wrong to me. Like as a word. Let’s-bean. Less-been. And of course, people seem to enjoy shortening it. Lezbo. Lizbo.” She considered it. “Le--”

“Okay,” Betty interrupted. Several of the girls looked distinctly uncomfortable. “We get it. Some of the girls just like had questions about why a lesbian would want to like join a cheerleading team.”

One of the other girls piped up. “Yeah, wouldn’t you like rather play football?”

Zaya found herself annoyed. She didn’t like being insulted by people less attractive than her. It let them think they were worth something. “I choose life.”

Betty sighed and rolled her eyes. Zaya appreciated the gesture. Betty was someone who was worth being insulted by-- glorious red hair down her back, freckles that spattered her face and arms and marked her as a true country girl, green eyes that could go warm as summer fields or cold as ocean ice. Zaya had always envied her eyes.

“Anyway,” Zaya said. “When’s the first practice?”

“We’re not done here,” Crystal Matthews said.

“Yeah, okay.” Zaya sat down on the floor, let her feet knock together, and waited. They hadn’t even bothered to give her a chair. “Shoot.”

Betty tried to pump her with questions in a way that would dissuade her from joining the team, but Zaya was paying more attention to untangling the leather bracelets on her wrists. They left disgruntled, slamming the gym door behind them.

Zaya stayed on the floor until it opened again nearly fifteen minutes later, and a pair of black high-top Converse attached to long pale legs attached to a striped purple skirt stopped above her. “Well?”

“Hang on, I’ve almost got this knot.”

Betty did not like it when Zaya didn’t pay attention to her. She tapped her foot until Zaya got the message, left the bracelet, and wrapped her arms around the back of her thigh, resting her chin on Betty’s knee. She smiled up at her. “Hiya.”

Betty’s lips made an annoyed duckface. “How was that?”

“Gorgeous.” Zaya kissed her knee. “I can see up your skirt.”

“I can see down your shirt.”

Neither of them moved.

“Bit sharp a few times there,” Zaya said.

“You told me to be sharp.”

“I suppose I forgot that sharp things hurt,” Zaya sighed.

Betty tried to pull her from the ground but Zaya kept a sloth grip on her leg, moaning in protest.

“You’re so annoying,” Betty puffed, words that she had told Zaya a million million times now. Zaya heard the laugh in her voice. From Betty, ‘you’re so annoying’ was more potent and powerful than an ‘I love you.’ Zaya, recognizing the signs of coming affection, immediately bounced to her feet grinning and waited.

Betty kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Come on. We’re going over to my house.”

“I assume I’m tutoring you in math?”

Betty looked uncertain. “Maybe science. I don’t know. You’ve tutored me in math six times over the last two months, only three times in science.”

Zaya grabbed her hand. “Whichever you want me to tutor you in.” She reached over to rub at the little furrow between Betty’s eyebrows until it had disappeared. When they got to the doors to the parking lot, Zaya dropped Betty’s hand. When they got to Betty’s car-- a sleek white thing where the top came down-- Zaya took it again, under the steering wheel, as they roared down back streets that ensured it took Betty longer to get home, the little furrow coming and going from between her eyes depending on how many jokes Zaya told.

Zaya did not mind having a girlfriend who kept her a secret. She used to-- in the early days, she wondered how Betty could have felt so ashamed of her, so dirty when she was with her. It took Zaya coming out for her to realize that Betty was only hiding herself, not Zaya. It took longer to become accustomed to the idea that Betty needed to hide at all.

But Betty didn’t give away love easily. Love for her was usually an uncertainty of half-smiles and quick, reluctant comments and pieces of her soul handed over carefully with shaky hands. She had not been like that in the way she fell for Zaya.

The beginning of them had been massive and all at once, a tide that rushed her along in a way that Zaya had physically seen: Betty’s eyes hot and green on hers during class, Zaya laughing too loudly in the halls with her eyes on Betty’s mane of red hair.

Betty digging her hands deep into Zaya’s shirt after they kissed, head pressed against her collarbone, silent tears dripping down her cheeks but still moving in closer, still pressing their bodies together like the mere touch was more potent than sex. Betty sneaking out her window to meet Zaya in a field where they spent an eternity, or a few hours, kissing and spinning and making up spells on the spot, cursing each other with Betty’s long legs and the mole on Zaya’s neck.

Loving her was Betty going to prom with Tyler Hill and being elected queen while Zaya watched from the side and wished she could claim Betty for herself, but then Zaya going home late to find Betty standing in her bedroom, grin huge, with decorations she had stolen from the janitor’s closet and a cake she had stolen from the dance and the crown on her head, prepared to dance with the queen’s real queen of the prom, she said.

And it didn’t matter that Betty had stood next to Tyler Hill and danced with him for two minutes and that he had had her in front of the school. Because then Betty let her limbs tangle with Zaya’s and danced with her for two hours and Zaya had her there, all night and all weekend, cake frosting in her bedsheets, Betty’s red hair spread over the pillow in a laugh, her smile tucked against Zaya’s shoulder, the two of them reading the lesbian love story in The Times that made her shed a tear and whisper that she wanted to be that way.

Fuck. Zaya loved her in a way that hurt.

She hid for her, cried for her, did what Betty told her to do, stole secret happy moments where she could, let Betty kiss her like she couldn’t stand doing anything else then disappear for the weekend in one of those dark moods she sometimes had. Zaya knew how much she was willing to put into this. She knew how desperately Betty needed baby steps.

So Zaya held her hand, but let go when they pulled into the driveway of Betty’s small house.

Then she introduced herself as the tutor, and both of them pictured a future that was perhaps not so far off. Where they held hands in public and Zaya didn’t have to join the cheerleading team as an excuse for the instances of ‘almost’ and ‘maybe’ that they had experienced. Where Betty’s eyes weren’t dulled by fear and abuse.

And where Zaya could freely kiss her eyelids and make those feelings go away.