Cheerleaders Don't Cry

16

Albert Cooper

Exam week arrived and passed, and the semester concluded right as winter break began. My parents hardly gave a glance at my semester grades, but spent a good hour and a half scolding Miranda for the C's and D's spotting her transcript.

Marcy texted me a picture of her grades, highlighting the 94% for AP Calc. She'd beaten me by 3%.

"Suck it" was the caption.

"I'm always available to tutor the less-gifted" was the follow-up message.

I rolled my eyes. "You're so gracious" I sent back.

I spent a good portion of winter break curled up under a thick blanket on the couch in my living room, flipping through television channels until something mildly interesting came along. Past winter breaks, I had spent mostly with Oliver and Kathy, but that was out of the question this year. This year, it was just me.

Or it appeared that way, at least. It wasn't until mid-way through winter break that I noticed how often I'd been texting Marcy. Every few minutes I found myself sub-consciously checking my phone for a reply. Conversations stretched for hours, from late at night to the early hours of the morning. It seemed that Marcy was as bored as I was.

I kept remembering what Kathy had said, insinuating that Marcy and I were more than just friends. Miranda seemed to think so too - whenever she caught me with my phone out, she'd give me a suggestive look, or make an annoying comment. Whatever they surmised, it wasn't accurate. Marcy and I really were just friends, no matter how many ways my confused brain tried to convince me otherwise. I wasn't constantly wondering where she was at, or what she was doing. I wasn't experiencing anxiety anytime I didn't immediately reply to her messages. I wasn't drafting a hundred thousand texts, trying to come up with ways to ask her if she wanted to hang out without sounding like a middle school boy.

And even if I was, it wouldn't matter. Monogamous relationships didn't really seem like Marcy's thing.

Christmas was spent with relatives at my grandparents' house in Boston, a good two days where Miranda behaved venemously, hissing at anybody who dared to approach her. I had to smile with clenched teeth and make up fake college plans for my pretentious Yale alumni cousins, who loved to passive agressively mention that MIT wasn't a real Ivy League school, to which I'd pointedly respond that Anthropology and Communication weren't real majors.

I was incredibly thankful when we returned home.

Every year, my parents hosted a New Years Eve party. Typically, I helped out at the party while Miranda locked herself in her room, which usually meant that she snuck out the window and got picked up by her friends. I was fully prepared to retain my position on the couch for the night while my sister made bad decisions, but my mom wasn't having it this year. Around 11:00, she went upstairs to check on Miranda, and found her bedroom empty, the window propped open with a magazine.

"That sister of your's." She was fuming, her lips pressed together, her eyes squinted. Her arms were crossed across her chest, the knuckles white. She had pulled me off the couch, to a quiet hallway on the second floor. Coworkers and friends of my parents were crowding the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room on the first floor, getting progressively louder the drunker they got. My dad had passed out in the living room in front of the television, which was broadcasting Times Square at full volume.

"Do you know where she might have gone?" she asked. My mom's light brown hair was hanging by her shoulders in slight waves, and she was dressed in a purple blouse and a black skirt. Makeup powdered her face, attempting to disguise the bags beneath her eyes and the creases in her skin that were becoming more prominent, more permanent. Miranda certainly wasn't helping that. Her and my mother had had a difficult relationship since kindergarten - friction since the beginning. "Anywhere? I don't like the idea of her - my 16 year old daughter being at some rowdy party - "