Clash of the Cheerleaders Page 5

  I wondered that too, sometimes. “We grew up best friends and we cheer together, so it’s just kinda how it is.”

  His eyes squinted like he was studying me as he nodded. “Well I’m glad you asked me out.”

  “Me too.” It was strange, but I meant it. Even though I knew we could never be together and things would have to go back to what they’d always been in the morning, tonight, I was happy to be with him.

  Cindy poked her head out of the kitchen to look at us. Now she had a girl from school with her. The other girl was president of the math club, I think, although I didn’t know her name.

  My stomach twisted in knots. By Monday, no doubt the whole school would know about this date. I pulled my hand away, hoping I could play it off like we just happened to bump into each other there and decided we might as well sit together.

  “You want to play some pinball?” Ty asked.

  I looked over at the Batman, Jack and the Beanstalk, and rainforest-themed machines against the wall. “Those are new. And what happened to all the claw machines?”

  “They had one by the front door. Would you rather play on that?”

  “Yeah, maybe when we leave. We can play pinball right now.”

  I wondered if I would have to shell out quarters or not. I brought plenty of cash, just in case he left me to pick up the bill wherever we went. Ty pulled out a five and put it in the quarter machine before I could even ask.

  He really got the lights going inside the glass pinball cases as we played the machines beside each other, trying to see who could get the most points.

  “I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” he kept saying.

  “No way! I’ve got you!” I shot back. We argued playfully through five long games, because we were both pretty good. But in the end, he beat me by a long shot every time.

  “Congratulations,” I said, holding out a hand to him.

  He took it and pulled me toward him, leaning down to kiss my cheek. It felt nice. It also got me wondering if he would really try to kiss me later… and if it was something I wanted.

  He looked over at our table. “Food’s here.”

  “Good, I’m starving.”

  We sat down and watched the pirates fight over a beautiful woman. They took turns falling to the plastic swords one at a time. It was all so cheesy; you couldn’t help but laugh your head off.

  “This is really good,” Ty said halfway through the show.

  I took a long drink of water and swallowed down my fish before I answered. “It is really good. I can’t believe how much I missed this place.”

  “So you’re having fun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  I caught Cindy watching us nearly every time I looked up and saw her waitressing at other tables. It was a relief that Ty made no move to touch me the rest of the time. Cindy didn’t stop by our table again until after we’d finished eating. “Y’all want some dessert?” she asked when she finally came over to check on us.

  I put a hand on my stomach. “I’m full.”

  “We’re good,” Ty said.

  “All right, I’ll just bring your check then.”

  We laughed at the pirates while we waited. I kept wondering who would end up paying the check, or if we would split it. Blaine never let me pay for anything, but I had no idea what to expect with Ty.

  “Here you go.” Cindy set the bill in between us. “Do y’all need anything else?”

  Ty picked up the bill and reached in his pocket. “No, thanks,”

  “All right, then. I guess I’ll see y’all ‘round school on Monday. Have a good night.”

  “You too.”

  I reached into my purse, feeling like I should pay for something. “I can at least get the tip.”

  “No, I’ve got it. You should go ahead and see what you want to try to get from the claw machine.”

  “Um, okay.” I left him behind and headed toward the doors. I was very careful to keep as much distance between myself and the parrot on Ms. Susan’s shoulder as possible.

  “You leaving?” Ms. Susan asked when she saw me.

  “Not yet. We’re going to play on that before we go.” I tipped my head toward the claw machine I hadn’t noticed when we first got there.

  “Well it sure was good to see you, Hadley. I hope you’ll come back sometime, and bring your parents with you.”

  “Maybe.”

  She came around her little podium to give me a hug. I turned my head away from her shoulder with the parrot and shut my eyes tight. Oh, my heart was racing! It was a relief when she set me free.

  I walked past gumball and sticker machines to the claw machine beside the door. I couldn’t believe the stuffed animals inside it. They weren’t even beach animals! There were pigs and puppies and elephants, some weird cartoon girls and a pair of purple dice. I was totally letdown until I noticed the green mermaid buried under one of the pigs.

  “See something you want?” Ty asked, walking up behind me.

  “Yeah, but it’s under that giant pig. It’s not gettable.”

  “Everything’s gettable.” He pulled a one dollar bill out of his pocket and put it in, buying us two tries. “You just have to keep at it. Go ahead.”

  Knowing I didn’t have a choice, because it said NO MONEY BACK underneath the money slot, I moved the claw until it was right above the pig. It went down…clamped over it…and dropped it after lifting it only a couple of inches. “I’m really no good at this thing. My dad always won everything for me.”

  “I’ll give it a try.” Ty reached for the joystick, so I moved out of his way. The claw went down on the pig and lifted him a few more inches than I had, but dropped it again. This time it rolled far enough away the mermaid was left exposed. “You didn’t want the pig, did you?”

  “No. Why would I come to a pirate restaurant for a pig? I wanted that mermaid under him.”

  “Aww, she’s easy.” He put in another dollar…and dropped her twice.

  “Easy, huh?” I teased, making him laugh.

  “I’m getting you that mermaid.” He put in another dollar, and lost again.

  “It’s okay.” I put my hand over his when he tried to put in another dollar. “This thing’s probably rigged, and I don’t want you to keep wasting your money.”

  “It’s only a few dollars. I wanna win that thing for you.” He pulled his hand away and put in the dollar. Then he moved it over the mermaid… lowered it down… and carried her to the drop box.

  “You won!” I shrieked, wrapping my arms around his neck. I felt an excitement I hadn’t felt in three years. It was incredible.

  He hugged me tight before he leaned down and pulled the mermaid out. “Happy late birthday.”

  “Thanks… Sorry I didn’t invite you to my party.” Nicole would’ve killed me, but it might have been nice to have him there.

  Ty shrugged. “Next time.”

  “Next time… Hey, you still have one try left.”

  11

  “So, what next?” I asked, taking my helmet when Ty handed it to me.

  He looked at his watch. “Raging Love starts in twenty minutes. Have you seen it?”

  “No. But do you really wanna see that movie?” It was a total chick flick about a guy who joins the army because it’s the only way to win his girlfriend’s dad’s approval so he can marry her. He gets sent to war straight out of boot camp before he even gets to propose. Then he’s got it in his heart to fight and survive the war just so he can come home to her. The previews made it look soooo romantic.

  “Not really, but my sister tells me it’s the perfect movie to see on a date.”

  “I have been wanting to see it.”

  “Then let’s go.” He slid his helmet on and got on his bike. I climbed on behind him.

  “Do you think it’s going to rain?” I asked when I noticed the heavy clouds in the sky.

  “Hopefully not,” Ty said, then took off through the parking lot.

  I couldn’t help but worry a
bout it all the way to the theatre. If it rained, my hair would get all frizzy and ugly while it dried. I kept my eyes locked on the starless sky.

  When we got to the theatre, I found myself searching nervously for anyone who might recognize me. It was Friday night, so there were like a dozen kids from school in the same outside line as us. I was glad Ty didn’t make a move to touch me.

  “So how old’s your sister?” I asked, wondering if I knew her.

  “Which one?” he grinned.

  “How many sisters do you have?”

  “Three. The one that told me about the movie’s Poppy. She’s fourteen.”

  “Is she still in middle school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have three brothers too?”

  Ty smirked. “Just one.”

  I shifted nervously when I realized Rodney, one of our school’s football players, was selling the tickets. It was nearly our turn. If Ty bought both our tickets, you could bet Blaine would hear about it that very night. He’d probably be up there before the previews were even over, jumping over theatre seats so he could rip Ty apart.

  “D’you mind if I go ask Kirsten a quick question?” I asked Ty, thinking fast. She was a girl from my science class who I’d noticed standing in line several people behind us.

  “Go ahead. I’ll get the tickets and meet you inside.”

  I hurried toward Kirsten and asked her some lame question about our upcoming science test. I was extremely distracted, watching for Ty to go inside out of the corner of my eye, so I really had no idea what she’d said when I left her.

  I found Ty waiting in line for the guy taking tickets. “Here’s yours.” He held out a ticket to me.

  “Thanks… Sooo, where’d you move here from this summer?”

  “A little town in California. We actually moved here last winter. I just finished my sophomore year through home school. I probably would’ve finished high school that way if my mom hadn’t make such a big deal about me going back to school.”

  “Why would you want to be homeschooled?” I know it’s nice to sleep in and be your own boss and stuff, but it seems like it would get boring and lonely after a while.

  “I’ve never been very social. I didn’t have any close friends where I grew up, and I’m not looking to make any now. You’re an exception, of course.”

  “But don’t you ever wish you had somebody to hang out with and tell all your secrets to?”

  Ty shrugged. “My brother and sisters keep me pretty busy. Then there’s homework and my job with my dad.”

  I tilted my head in amazement as I stared at him. He wasn’t a bank robber or an ex-con. He was this great family guy who just happened to look that way and be really anti-social. I started to relax for the first time that night.

  “What?” he asked when he caught me staring at him.

  “Nothing. It’s just… you’re not what I expected.”

  “Well, what’d you expect?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged.

  “An axe murderer?”

  I stared at him in surprise, because the thought had crossed my mind.

  He only laughed. “I’ve heard the rumors.”

  “Don’t they bother you?”

  “Why would I care? None of them are true. And in less than two years, I’ll never have to see anyone from school again. Besides, it’s kind of fun having everyone scared of me… Are you disappointed?”

  “No way! You turned out to be a nice surprise.” We shared a smile as the people in front of us handed over their tickets. Then it was our turn.

  Ty and I sat in the very back row of the theatre, right in the middle. That way I could watch for any dangerous persons I absolutely could not have noticing me. I didn’t see anyone I knew filtering in, and soon I was swept away to the bitter war and agonizing separation of Raging Love.

  The longer I watched how much the soldier loved his girlfriend and the lengths he went to in order to be with her forever, the more I hated Blaine. He had to be like—the worst boyfriend ever. He would have never done any of those things for me. How had I been so blind for so long?

  The letters the soldier and his girlfriend wrote to each other in the movie brought tears to my eyes. I fought to keep them in for the sake of my mascara. Less than halfway through the movie, however, a tear escaped. Ty noticed and wiped it away as he put a kind, comforting arm around me.

  I smiled at him and wondered how looks could be so deceiving. It was becoming difficult to keep my guard up, because there could be no second date. But I was seriously beginning to like him. It felt so good to lay my head on Ty’s shoulder with his arm wrapped around me, the way he kept glancing at me to be sure he swept away every tear. It was kind of perfect…

  Until we walked out of the theatre hallway and I spotted Blaine just walking in the front doors with two of his football buddies. For one horrifying second, I thought Rodney had seen me and Ty together and called Blaine. It passed when they started laughing and I saw the tickets in their hands. I still had a problem, though, because I couldn’t let him see me with Ty.

  “Um, I need to go to the bathroom really fast,” I said when I realized I’d just walked past it. I headed for the door without giving Ty a chance to respond.

  Once I was inside, I leaned against the wall and sucked in a huge breath. Had Blaine seen me?

  The image of him laughing like we hadn’t just broken up and there was absolutely nothing bothering him played through my mind on repeat. Then again, he wasn’t taking our break up seriously at all. We’d had so many, though, it was hard to blame him.

  Simply to kill time, I used the restroom and touched up my makeup. Then I inched my way back out the door. I searched the giant lobby for Blaine as I went around a crowd of excited, little tween girls. No sign of him.

  Ty was leaning forward on the bench just outside the bathrooms, playing on his phone. I stood beside him for a second before he looked over and saw me. “Y’ okay?” he asked, standing up.

  So embarrassing! “Long line,” I lied. If he’d noticed there weren’t many girls coming and going, he didn’t say anything.

  I headed for the exit doors, hoping to prevent any hand holding or anything. Just as I’d suspected, Rodney was still taking money at the ticket stand outside.

  “It’s only nine-thirty,” Ty said as we walked through the parking lot. “You wanna come over to my house? We could watch some TV.”

  “Okay.” I really didn’t want to meet his parents and brother and sisters, but it was only this one night, I reminded myself… Except that he was so mature and so sweet and so cool. I kind of wouldn’t have minded doing this again sometime.

  12

  I leaned against Ty’s back when we took off on his bike. With no-one to see, I decided it was safe to savor holding him in my arms.

  We only made it about a mile before I was hit by a few cold sprinkles. I gasped and nearly let go of Ty. My hair would be ruined! Luckily, the rain died away just as swiftly as it had arrived.

  We sped past our high school and took two quick turns. Then Ty turned left into a long downhill driveway. A wide, barn-style house sat at the bottom of the hill. Nearly every window was lit. Two little girls were chasing each other around a kitchen table inside the two biggest windows.

  The sprinkling picked up again as we rolled into the open garage. I could just make out the backend of a station wagon and a van on either side of us. I was glad the rain had held off long enough not to destroy my hair.

  I let go of Ty reluctantly and climbed off the bike so he could flick on the lights and push the button to close the garage door. Thomas Black’s Home Improvements was painted across the side of the white van with a phone number underneath. Tools hung all over the walls like a miniature hardware store.

  “We can go in through here,” Ty said, opening a door that connected to the house.

  I set my helmet beside his on a little table beside the door and walked into a dark laundry room. The rumbling of the dryer was
nearly as loud as the laughter right outside the room. The sliver of light drifting in from the cracked-open door revealed shirts hanging on a pole above the washer and dryer. The shirt sleeves swished gently to the side from the air conditioning vent blowing against them.

  We walked into a cheerful yellow living room, where the girls I’d seen through the window were pulling cushions off a blue couch and throwing them on the floor. They started jumping from one to another. Jazzy music played softly on a radio, so they danced and twirled around as they jumped. One looked like she might have been nine or ten and the other looked kindergartenish. Both had long black ponytails and wore cute, frilly nightgowns.

  “It’s Ty,” the little one said.

  “Mom, Ty’s home!” the other one called out, running to shut off the old radio.

  “This early?” A thin woman with short, curly brown hair walked in from a connecting room, wiping her hands on a pink dishtowel. Her pink dress made her look like someone straight out of an eighties movie. “Oh,” She looked pleased to see me. She crossed the room and reached out to shake my hand. “I’m Mrs. Black. You must be Hadley.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ty’s sisters bounced toward us like kangaroos. “I’m Lucy.” The smaller one showed off an adorable gap between her front teeth when she gave me an enormous smile. “I’m the littlest, so that means I’m the cutest. And she’s Kelly.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Kelly, go get Poppy so she can meet Hadley,” Mrs. Black said.

  “Okay.” Kelly zipped around the couch toward the hallway on the other side of the room. She stumbled jumping over a basket loaded with clean laundry and nearly wiped out against the brown carpet.

  “I know Ty’s father would love to meet you, but he’s already gone to bed,” Mrs. Black told me. “He’s got an early start on work tomorrow.”

  A girl with long curly brown hair walked out of the hallway with her nose in an old book about horses. She lowered it enough to have a look at me. “Hey, d’you like the movie?”