Cheerleaders Don't Cry

14

Marcy Hannon

I returned to school on Wednesday, and was greeted with tests in AP Calc and AP Stats. After school, I attended cheerleading practice, but spent most of the period hunched over trying to catch my breath. The flu had drained my body of any energy I had, and then some. Amber suggested that I leave early, go home and get some rest, a suggestion that I immediately took her up on. I hit the showers 20 minutes early, and left as the rest of the girls were putting away the mats.

I stopped by the library on my way out to grab a book for my English class. As I was searching the shelves (it had to be some ye old book written by a dead guy to count for a reading credit), I saw a familiar face seated at one of the study tables. He was staring intently at a worksheet, a Calculus textbook flipped open next to his arm. Every few seconds he would reach up and push his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose, even if they hadn't been sliding down. It must've been an unconscious habit - I noticed that he did it whenever he was taking a test, or doing homework, anytime he was focusing on something.

I walked over and poked the back of his neck with the corner of a book that I'd randomly picked off the shelves. Cooper flinched and spun in his chair, the immediate surprise of his expression fading into irritation once he recognized me.

He rubbed the back of his neck and watched as I pulled a chair out and sat down. "Look who's not dead," he said, tapping the eraser of his pencil against the table.

"I had the flu." I plucked the pencil from his hand and started doodling on the corner of a page from his textbook.

"Oh, that's funny. You know who else had the flu?" He took the pencil back and leaned forward, whispering in overexaggeration, like it was a secret. "Travis Reynolds. What a coincidence."

I imitated him, leaning forward and whispering loudly, "Yeah. Weird."

Cooper stared at me for a brief moment, and I realized how little space there was between us. I hadn't even noticed that his hand was resting on my arm, the eraser end of the pencil poking my wrist. An unexpected warmth flushed my cheeks - I quickly moved my arm and sat back in my chair, arms crossed in something resembling detachment. Cooper didn't seem to notice - he turned his attention to the worksheet on the table.

I peered at the assignment he was working on. "That's not due until Friday."

Cooper shrugged. "Yeah, well ... I'm doing it now."

"How long have you been here?"

"About two and a half hours."

My brow rose. "And you're only three problems in?"

He leaned back in his chair and pointed the eraser end of the pencil in my direction. "I never said I was particularly focused." Cooper looked down, staring at the doodle I'd drawn on the corner of the textbook page. It was a stick figure being crushed by a giant calculator. "It hasn't been a great week," he muttered.

He told me how Kathy had ambushed him in the hallway on Monday, how he's had to take elaborate routes through the school just to get to class and avoid seeing her or Oliver. He had to block Oliver's number from his phone because it was filling up with unheard voicemails and unread texts, but it's only a matter of time before Oliver corners him to ... explain himself.

Cooper shook his head, rubbing his forehead. "I - I don't know. I'm just sick of all of these excuses. All of the justification, like they think that what they did was okay. I wish that they'd just tell me the truth instead of tiptoeing around it. I'm not made of plastic."

I shrugged. "Plastic is a fairly durable material - "

"That wasn't at all what I was arguing," Cooper said, but the corners of his mouth twitched when he spoke, hinting at something resembling a smile. I noticed that he had a spray of dark freckles across his nose, something I hadn't recognized before because I usually only saw his black-framed glasses. A lot of things were dark about him - his hair was the color, his eyes, his glasses, his freckles. Most of the time he wore darker colors, like grey or brown. It made sense that he didn't like brightness. Standing out wasn't really his forte. He was more of a background type.