"Jackie! Come on!" I look at my younger sister, Nancy, as she yells up the stairs. She hates being late to school.
"You do realize I'm already down here ready to go, right?" I look at her from my coffee.
"Oh. No, I didn't." I shake my head.
"Besides, we have 15 minutes before we have to leave. Even for me to make practice on time." She's going into her junior year as I go into senior year. Our younger brother Mike starts freshman year next year. I was the accident kid that led my parents to get married.
"Jacqueline, are you listening?"
"You need me to babysit Holly tonight, Nance has the paper today and won't be done until 4, Mike is having his friends over to play his nerd game, and you two will be at a work dinner for dad until eleven, I know the drill mom. You'll leave us money for pizza under the phone and usual house rules, no parties, no boys, and Holly has to be in bed by 10."
"Karen, I told you, Jackie has it all under control." Dad mutters from his paper.
"Now we have to go, or I'll be late for practice." I grab my purse and keys. "Come on, Nance." We drive over to the high school.
"Why do mom and Dad ask you to do all the parent things they should be doing?"
"Because Nancy, when you were born, mom and dad realized they had a built-in babysitter. Plus, I think they think if they keep me busy, I won't have time to get a boyfriend. They obviously don't know about Tommy." I giggle.
"Do you even love him?"
"No, but a high school boyfriend isn't usually the guy you marry." I shrug. He's just a fling. A play thing. I walk into practice. "OK, girls! I have a new routine for us." Cheer captain has its perks. There's a pep rally tomorrow morning, first of the school year. We practice the routine until the rest of the girls have it down.
"So what song is this going to?" My co captain asks.
"Red Hot by Mötley Crüe."
"Why do you always choose rock music?" She asks.
"It's unexpected." I shrug. If the school knew I was a metalhead, I would get the same treatment as the school freak, Eddie Munson, although I know he's a nice guy. I go to the locker room and change into a pair of black tights, a red plaid skirt, and a black turtleneck with my black converse. I replaced the green bow in my hair with a red one. As I walk into homeroom, I walk straight into a leather-clad Eddie. My books fall to the floor.
"Shit, I'm sorry." He says, turning around and picking up my books.
"No worries, Eddie, I should've been watching where I was going." I smile at him, I'm the only cheerleader that's nice to him, mostly because I know you don't bite the hand that feeds you, the nicer I am to Eddie the bigger discount he gives me. Well, that and he's sweet. "Thank you for picking my books up for me."
"You're welcome, Jackie."
"This freak bothering you, babe?" Tommy asks, appearing behind me. As the quarterback, he's physically imposing, but he isn't very smart.
"No, Tommy, he was helping me pick up the books I dropped. You don't have to be such a jerk." I roll my eyes. I flip my black ponytail behind me as I walk away from Tommy to my seat.
At lunch, I slide a note in Eddie's locker asking him to meet me at the picnic table. I sit with the Jocks, uninterested in their conversation about the pep rally. Just daydreaming about being an outcast, it would be so freeing to have friends I could be myself with. I want to share my music taste with my friends, I want to nerd out about J.R.R Tolkien's newest book, The Hobbit, but I have to play this part. I used to like pop music, makeup, and girly things, but ever since Will's disappearance, all my interests changed. The metal drowns out my thoughts. The fantasy books provide me an escape from my life as a surrogate mother to my three siblings. I've realized how unhappy I am with my life. I'm a little jealous of Eddie. He can be himself, and that's why Jason and the rest of the jocks hate him. We all want to be ourselves.
