Confessions of a Teenage Leper Read online

  Stupid people can’t be cheerleaders. They just can’t. It’s too complex. If you’re stupid, you’ll never make a great cheerleader. You should just play rugby instead.

  A little while later, Mom came through the front door, carrying a bag of groceries.

  “MOM! Abby’s pregnant!” Dean yelled.

  The bag of groceries dropped from my mom’s arms and the eggs cracked their yellow mess all over the front hall. She stared at me.

  “I’m not, Mom. I swear.” I punched Dean in the shoulder, hard. “I’m not!”

  “Are you sure?” Mom said, her voice shaky.

  “Yeah.” Dean turned to me. “How can you be sure, Abby?”

  “You are such an ass,” I said, scowling at him.

  He grinned. “But seriously. How do you know for sure that you’re not, Abby?”

  “Because,” I said.

  “Because, why?”

  “Because I’m a virgin, okay!” I threw my hands in the air. “There! I’m a virgin! Are you happy now?”

  “Ha! I knew it!” Dean said, smug. He had been trying to get that out of me since the summer before. And I was super pissed at him in that moment for tricking me into having to admit it.

  “But wait, Abby! What about immaculate conception? You could still be pregnant! Mom, you’d better get her a pregnancy test!”

  “You’re an idiot. I hate you!” I pounded his shoulder with my fist, but he only laughed at me and kept playing his video game. He was a pretty big guy and I couldn’t really hurt him. Which was incredibly annoying. Especially when he pinned me down and farted on my head. There was nothing I could do then but wait it out.

  “Dean. Clean up this mess,” Mom said, and walked out of the room, her heels clacking over the tile.

  “Ha!” I said, pointing at him. Then I went up to my room to practice my cheerleading moves in front of the mirror.

  I had been working out all summer, trying to build my strength and endurance so I could make the cheer team, but I knew the competition was really tight. Plus, I’d been feeling a bit weak (which made sense, given what I know now), and I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to land some of the stunts. Fifty-four girls had made the first cut, twenty-five would make the next cut, and fifteen or fewer would be on the team after those twenty-five had their interviews. Most of the cheerleaders on the squad last year were gymnasts or dancers, so they already had a lot of practice and training in those kinds of skills. I had never done either of those, but somehow made it onto the team in my junior year. I went through my closet and picked out what I was going to wear for the next tryout. A pleated yellow skirt (yellow is the most cheerful color!) and a red tank top (wearing red means you have confidence!). But red and yellow together? Ketchup and mustard. McDonald’s. Ack! I hated all my clothes. I wanted to give them all away and start fresh with a whole new wardrobe. I called Marla. She picked up on the first ring.

  “What are you wearing for the cheer tryout?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why? What are you wearing?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling you!”

  “Are you alright?”

  “No! I’m freaking out! I just tried on my cheer shoes from last year and they don’t fit anymore! Ahhhhh!”

  “Abby. Calm down. I’ll come get you and we can go to the mall and buy you a new pair.”

  “Come over right now?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “You’re the best.”

  “I know,” she said.

  I ran downstairs to ask Dad for the money for a new pair of cheer shoes. He was at the kitchen counter, pummeling a lump of dough. He sighed when I asked him, wiped his hands on his jeans and fished two twenties out of his wallet and handed them to me. I kept holding out my hand.

  “What?” he said.

  “That’s only forty dollars. Cheer shoes are, like, eighty dollars.”

  “Well, you get an allowance, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Sorry, Ab. That’s all I have for you.” He washed his hands at the sink. “You’re going to have to cover the rest yourself.”

  “Fine.” I stomped back upstairs and got my secret stash of cash out from under my mattress. It was only for emergencies or things I really, really needed. Cheer shoes were one of those things.

  Marla honked the horn twice and I raced outside to meet her. I climbed into her little red Mini Cooper.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Seriously?” She reversed out of my driveway.

  “What?”

  “You’re worried you’re not going to make the team?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going to make it, Abby. You’re thin, you’re gorgeous and you’ve got legs up to your freakin’ eyeballs. You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s me who should be worried. I’m a fat cow.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I’ve gained eighteen pounds since last year,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat.”

  “Abby.” She pinched some flesh on her stomach. “This is not muscle.”

  “Well, you’re not fat.”

  “I’m a blimp.”

  “You’re not going to go all anorexic again on me, are you?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Marla, cheerleading is not about being skinny, okay? It’s about having muscle and strength. If you’re too skinny, you’ll get weak and pass out. You know that.”

  She shrugged, sulking.

  “Look, maybe you’ll be a base.”

  “Yeah, if I even make the squad.”

  “Just remember, fifty percent of cheer is attitude…Kind of like life,” I said, sticking my tongue in the corner of my cheek.

  Marla rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m definitely screwed then.”

  “Okay, shut up already. Help me decide what to wear.”

  “Alright, but first you have to tell me something. And I want the truth.”

  “What?”

  “Why do you want to be a cheerleader so badly? You don’t even like sports.”

  “I like cheer.”

  “Come on, Abby. You’re taking this way too seriously. Why is this so important to you all of a sudden? Last year you didn’t even care if you made the team or not. Liz and I made you try out.”

  I sighed. “Okay. If by some miracle I make the team this year and am really…spirited…I could be eligible for a full scholarship to USC.”

  Marla looked over at me. Gave me a slow blink.

  “University of Southern California.”

  “I know what it stands for, Abby.” She stared up at the stoplight in front of us, her jaw tight. When it turned to green, she pressed the gas too hard, making us lurch forward.

  “It’s one of the best acting schools in the country,” I said, adjusting my seatbelt. “Probably the best. I’d never be able to afford the tuition though.”

  “What about the University of Texas?”

  “I don’t want to stay in Texas,” I said.

  “So you’re just going to leave everyone behind? Your family? Your friends?”

  “I’ve always wanted to be an actress, Marla. You know that.”

  “You’ve always been a drama queen, that’s for sure.” She pulled into a parking spot.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go get your shoes.”

  The morning of the tryout, I was so nervous I couldn’t eat breakfast. I ended up wearing our team colors: my yellow skirt and a black tank top. I pulled my hair into a high ponytail and put a nice black bow in it. I looked at myself in the mirror. “You can do this,” I said. Then I bounced around with my pom-poms for a little bit, psyching myself up. “S-P-I-R-I-T; who’s got it? Me! Me! ME!”

  There were three judges: Coach Clayton; the assistant coach, Miss Gable; and Rihanna Pilansky, head cheerleader. They all sat behind a long table and stared at me without smiling. I was so nervous my palms were wet. I rubbed them off o
n the soles of my shoes so they wouldn’t be too slippery for when I did my stunts and tumbling.

  “Hello, Abby,” Coach Clayton said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes I am,” I said, smiling.

  They turned the music on and I did the routine I had practiced a hundred thousand times. Keep smiling. Keep smiling no matter what. Don’t you dare stop smiling. I screwed up a little bit on landing my round-off but I just smiled bigger, hoping they’d overlook it. It was all kind of a blur. When I was finished, I didn’t even know if I had done a good job or not. I didn’t fall on my ass; that was the important thing. The gym looked kind of wavy when I was done and I felt like I might pass out. I looked at the judges. They were all writing things down on their score sheets.

  “Thank you, Abby,” Coach Clayton said.

  “Thank you for the opportunity,” I said.

  She nodded at me and smiled.

  I gave them a wave and walked out of the gym, holding my head high and my shoulders back, my heart thudding in my ears.

  Here’s the thing about armadillos: they are the only creature on Earth other than humans that can get leprosy. If you’ve ever been to Texas, you know that we have a ditch-load of the giant pill-bugs running around, most of them, from what I’ve seen, end up as roadkill. Well, it turns out that around 20 percent of those armadillos are carrying the leprosy bacteria: Mycobacterium leprae. Who knows how they got it. I’m not even sure I want to know. Scientists think that new cases of leprosy in the United States could be from contact with infected armadillos. Like I said, f’d-up.

  I don’t really remember ever touching an armadillo, like, petting one or whatever. But maybe I did and just forgot. It’s possible. I do remember when I was eleven and Dean was twelve, my parents put us in this Young Life church group—even though they aren’t religious and never go to church—because they thought we could use some structure in our lives. Basically, we were fighting so much, they didn’t know what to do with us. And, it was free. So we had to hang out with these other kids and the leaders, like, once a week for a year or something, and it sucked balls and we both hated it. Some of the guys were kind of cute, but they were too busy studying the Bible to notice me. Lame.

  Anyway, I vaguely remember this one barbecue cookout thing they had, and I had a plate heaped with steak and hominy and coleslaw and potato salad and corn bread and all kinds of good stuff. I remember trying some meat that was kind of strong tasting, and squishy, like a sponge. I asked the leader what it was and he said armadillo meat. So, it’s possible that I contracted leprosy that day. At a church barbecue. Which pretty much means that if there is a God, He wanted me to get leprosy. He practically gave it to me Himself. Thanks, God. What a great gift. You shouldn’t have, really.

  Why didn’t the rest of the people at the barbecue get leprosy then, you’re probably asking (I know you’re asking that because that’s what I asked). Well, because all of the other people there who ate that armadillo were in the 95 percent of the population naturally immune to the bacteria that causes leprosy. Nothing happens to them. They don’t get nerve damage, they don’t get sores, they don’t get fevers, weakness, numb feet and all the other crap, nothing.

  And me, lucky, lucky me, I’m in the 5 percent of the population that is not immune to the bacteria.

  I know what you’re thinking; I should sue the youth group. I should sue the church. I should sue GOD HIMSELF!!!! I should. And I would if I could. But how could I prove it? There’s no way to prove it. It was six years ago. Also, suing the church won’t make my face and hands and feet look the way they used to. They won’t bring back what were supposed to be some of the “best years of my life.” It wouldn’t undo any of it. They always say that life isn’t fair, well, I’m living proof of that. There is no fair in life, it just is.

  I ended up making the cheerleading squad, and, needless to say, was thrilled. The other thing about being a cheerleader is that guys pay attention to cheerleaders. Suddenly, it’s like you go from pretty-hot to super-hot. If you’re actually ugly, or a butter-face, and you are on a cheerleading squad, guys can’t tell that you’re ugly. Based solely on the fact that you’re a cheerleader, it’s a given that you’re also hot. It’s like a shield. A cloaking device. That’s what cheerleading can do for a person. But you have to earn it. You have to be light and limber and eat healthy pretty much all the time so you don’t gain too much weight or else you’ll be too heavy to toss around or stand on people’s shoulders. You have to practice all the time, like, every day, and stretch and stretch and stretch so you’re flexible enough to do the splits or put your leg behind your head or arch backward while balancing in someone’s hands. But you also have to be strong enough, so you have to do push-ups and sit-ups and calisthenics too. Then you’ll wake yourself up at night chanting 5, 6, 7, 8! in your sleep.

  Cheerleading’s a buck-load of work. But if I got a full scholarship, it would all be worth it.

  I made the final cut of the cheerleading squad just before school started. In the second week of school, Jude Mailer asked me out. I said yes. Obviously.

  Jude Mailer was one of the hottest guys in school. Ask anyone. Like me, he was in twelfth grade. He played forward on the boys’ basketball team. He was tall, but not gangly awkward tall, just nice, let me reach that for you, tall. He did sometimes bump his head in doorways, but I thought that was kind of cute.

  The day he did it was a Monday, so I figure he must’ve been thinking about it all weekend. I sat with Marla and Liz in the cafeteria. I was picking at Liz’s fries even though I wasn’t supposed to eat junk like that because I had to keep my weight down if I wanted to be a flyer on the squad, which I did. The flyer is the person who gets vaulted to the top of a pyramid to perform a stunt. They are the lightest, most agile, most balanced people on the team. Flyers didn’t eat French fries. But all three of us had made the squad that year, so we felt justified.

  “Who do you think will be a flyer this year?” Marla asked.

  “Carrie Nelson, probably,” Liz said. “She’s so…”

  “Compact?” I said.

  “Bitchy. I was going to say bitchy,” Liz said.

  “I wouldn’t call her a bitch per se,” Marla said. “She’s just a flighty little tart.”

  “You hardly even know her,” I said.

  “I know,” said Liz. “But doesn’t she just come across as…”

  “Bitchy?” Marla said.

  “Yeah!” said Liz.

  “Have you ever really talked to her though?” I asked.

  “Not really,” Liz said. “But I can just tell these things. I have bitch-dar. It’s like gaydar but for bitches.”

  “Maybe you were picking up your own signal,” I said.

  Marla started cracking up and Liz got fake-mad and threw a fry at me. I caught it and ate it. Then Jude came up to our table. Everyone went quiet for a minute. Then Liz giggled.

  “Hey,” he said, looking at me, then, briefly, at Marla and Liz.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Marla gave him a little wave and Liz moved over, gesturing that he should sit down. He sat beside her, directly across from me. “How’s it going, Abby?”

  “Good…Great,” I said.

  Marla and Liz, after staring at him for a bit and making everything awkward, finally got the hint and made up an excuse to leave the table. Marla gave me the double thumbs-up as they walked away and Liz fanned herself with both hands.

  “Would you want to go out with me this weekend?” he said.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. You’re a cheerleader. You’re hot. He’s a basketball player. He’s hot. You belong together. It’s only natural. “Sure,” I said. Maybe that wasn’t enthusiastic enough. He thinks you’re not into him. He thinks you hate him! “Yeah, definitely.”

  “Cool,” he said, grinning. “Let me get your number.” He took out his phone and punched my number into it. As far as I know, it’s still in there.r />
  Jude and I had a lot in common. He liked going to the movies; I liked going to the movies. He liked black licorice; I liked black licorice. That’s enough to base a relationship on, right? He was pretty quiet, actually. We didn’t talk much. But sometimes, just being quiet with someone is as nice as talking, or sometimes better. He never called me. Not once. He would text me back after I texted him, usually. But he never called. At first I was pissed off about that, but eventually, I didn’t care anymore. He was a hot basketball player, he had his own car and he was my boyfriend. Because I was on the cheerleading squad, I was at all of his home games, and all of his away games too. I probably would have gone to them even if I hadn’t been cheering them though, because that’s what good girlfriends do. I was a good girlfriend, I think. I never told him what to do or what to wear or that he shouldn’t hang out with his friends, which I know a lot of other girls do. I bought him little presents, like sweatbands and cinnamon hearts. Do you know how hard it is to find cinnamon hearts when it’s not February? Nine out of ten on the difficulty meter, with ten being impossible. I even stayed after school sometimes to watch Jude’s basketball practices while I did my homework. Even though I don’t really like basketball, I liked watching Jude play.

  The only thing I can say to describe him on the court was that it was like watching poetry in motion. He was a graceful gazelle. He made basketball look like a dance. I could tell he was more agile than I was, even before the leprosy bug was doing nasty and horrible things inside my body.

  Jude liked to get a hamburger and a milkshake from Mitzy’s Diner after his practices. I’d usually go with him and get fries with gravy.

  “Fries with gravy and ketchup is disgusting,” Jude said, staring at my plate.