Cheerleaders Don't Cry

2

Albert Cooper
Marcy was full of surprises, and one of them happened to be the metal baseball bat that she got from the trunk of her car.
I nodded towards it as she got into the passengers seat of my car. "What's that for?"
Marcy slid me a side-look, her eyes glassy and unfocused. She was too drunk to drive, while I was just moderately tipsy, so I had assigned myself the position of partial designated driver.
She rested the bat in her lap and reached under the seat to get a beer from the twelve-pack that she'd managed to snag from the house, somehow without me noticing. "You'll see," she said vaguely. "Just drive."
Marcy sat with her feet propped up on the dashboard, feeding me slurred directions as I drove cautiously. I made sure to keep to the side lanes of the road, and kept the speedometer close to 25 mph. The trick'o'treaters had retreated for the night hours ago, but I was still tense.
After about ten minutes, I began to recognize the familiar directions, and I got an ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Wait, isn't this--"
Marcy made a grunting noise as we approached the destination. "Pull in here," she said, waving towards the familiar parking lot. Reluctantly, I drove into the space and parked my car in the corner of the lot, as far away as I could get from the buildings. They were tall, red brick structures with shiny windows and concrete stairs leading to the doors. The letters above the entrance of the front building read SOUTH WESTPORT HIGH.
I'd only just turned the engine of my car off before Marcy was off, bounding through the parking lot on drunken, unstable feet. She held the baseball bat under one arm and the pack of beer under the other. I watched her through my car window, the thought flashing in my head that I could just leave her here, forget this entire thing ever happened. I could go home and sleep the rest of the weekend away, and pretend for two short days that I hadn't been rejected from MIT, that my girlfriend of two years hadn't dumped me.
I watched Marcy as she approached the school's main entrance. She stopped by the giant concrete fountain that encircled our school mascot, Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. Marcy looked up at the main entrance, and then back at the building. I couldn't see much in the dark night, but I could read the body language from Marcy's dim silhouette. She was angry. She set the pack of beer on the ground and paced back and forth in front of the fountain, the baseball bat ready to strike in her hands. My entire body was coiled and tense, waiting for her to act. I didn't know what she was going to do.
Her shoulders sagged, and the baseball bat fell limp to her side. Marcy stepped onto the concrete of the fountain and then into the pool, sitting down and putting her face in her hands.
I should've driven away.
I didn't.
"You like sitting in bathtubs, don't you?" I asked as I approached the fountain. Marcy looked up from her hands and a half smile formed on her lips. Her makeup was a cloud of black that smeared her cheeks.
"Thought you'd left me."
"Nah," I said. "This is more exciting than anything I was going to do anyway." I tucked my hands into my pockets and peered into the pool of the fountain. The school always turns the system off at night and on weekends to save money, but there was still a six inch deep remnant of ice cold water in the pool. And Marcy was sitting in it with her legs folded, submerged past her knees. "Are you planning on getting hypothermia tonight?"
She shook her head and wiped her face, her hands damp with the pool water. Her palms came away streaked with black. "It's not that cold," she said, though I could see her shivering. A shaky smile eased on to her face, and she tapped the metal baseball bat. "I was going to destroy the statue. That was my big idea. Whack it over and over until the stupid world rolled off of Atlas' shoulders." The smile dropped from her face and she looked down, flicking the water with her finger. "I've always hated it. Ever since that bullshit freshman year."
I glanced up at the statue. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I hated it, but it definitely wasn't my favorite thing to look at. Atlas' face had a perpetual scruntish look on it that made me uncomfortable, and it always bothered me that the statue showed Atlas holding the world, when in the actual myth he was holding up the sky.
The longer I stared at the statue, the less the chilly October wind seemed to bother me. I was getting a rush in my veins and my head, a kind of excitement that I wasn't sure I'd ever felt.
"You know," I said slowly, lifting the cold metal baseball bat out of the fountain pool. "It's not such a bad idea."
My fingers tightened around the ends of the bat, and my forearms tensed. Marcy must've felt the change in my demeanor, because she looked up with a surprised expression and a call of caution ready on her lips.
"Wait, Cooper--" Marcy said as she scrambled out of the pool, water dripping from her hips down her fishnetted legs. "Hold up, maybe--"
I stepped up on the concrete pool and braced myself before swinging the bat as hard as I could. The metal connected with Atlas' scruntish little face, and a sickening smack echoed across the parking lot.
Marcy gasped as I pulled back the bat and swung again, and again, and again. Concrete crumbled into the pool water and my arms were beginning to burn, but I wouldn't stop until--
Thunk!
A long crack snaked down Atlas's face, down his neck and to the area where his arm attached to his shoulder. The crack separated, and Atlas's head toppled off the statue and plopped into the fountain. Silence stretched out across the parking lot.
"Oh my God," Marcy whispered. She had her hands clasped over her mouth and was bouncing on her feet, either from the cold or from fearful excitement. Maybe both. "Oh my God, oh my God. That just---you just---" Laughter bubbled from her throat and she tilted her head back. I realized I was smiling so hard that my cheeks were burning, but I couldn't stop. I felt liberated, relaxed. My head was finally clear, and for a blissful moment, I wasn't thinking about colleges or Kathy.
Marcy picked up the twelve pack of beer that she'd put on the ground before and hauled it over, sitting next to me on the concrete edge of the pool. She handed me one and then popped one open herself, downing half of it in a single swig. Miniature giggles were still flowing from her throat.
"I can't believe you just did that," she said. "I mean, you of all people. Mr. Sensible with a stick up his butt, defacing school property."
I drank the bitter beer and discarded the can at my feet. "Is that what they call me? Mr. Sensible with a stick up my butt?"
Marcy quickly replaced my beer and smiled. "Could be a lot worse. They could be calling you slutface, skank, white trash. My favorite is Hannon the Harlot."
My brow rose. "Harlot?"
She shrugged and drank. "Fancy biblical word for whore." She brushed it off so easily, effortlessly, from years of practice no doubt. Her eyes gave her away. It's hard to hide things when you're drunk.
At that moment, the school's security lights flashed on, bright and loudly illuminating the main entrance.
"Fuck," Marcy swore loudly. "Forgot about those."
We abandonded the broken fountain and ran like hell away from the building towards the parking lot. Marcy sped ahead of me and reached the car first, the pack of beer tucked under her arm. She slipped inside the passengers seat and I climbed into the drivers seat, slamming the door shut and jamming the keys into the ignition. My tires peeled as I slammed on the gas and sped out of the parking lot, the security lights still shining bright behind us. Marcy was hugging her knees to her chest and laughing, the beer cradled beside her. I only slowed the car down once we were blocks away, and parked in a dim, nearly empty Meijer lot. My heart was racing and my breath was fast, and the image of the defaced Atlas statue was burned into the backs of my eyelids.
Marcy leaned forward and her arm brushed mine as she turned the knobs of the heater. "I'm freezing," she said as warm air burst through the vents.
I snorted. "Yeah, that's what pants are for."
"Harley Quinn doesn't wear pants."
"I can assure you that she does, especially in a Massachusettes October." I leaned into the backseat and searched around with a blind hand, eventually pulling out a green sweatshirt. "Here," I said, tossing it to Marcy. "You can borrow that, just don't get your weird perfume all over it."
Marcy sent me a glare as she pulled the sweatshirt over her head. "My perfume isn't weird."
"Yeah it is, it makes my nose itch."
She made a huffing sound and crossed her arms, looking out the window. A stretch of silence passed before she said, "Travis used to tell me that."
I raised my eyebrows in confusion. "Travis? Travis Reynolds?" He was a big blockheaded guy with a rock for a brain, but the girls liked him. His girlfriend Amber was too nice for him, too soft and sweet. They'd been dating for four months. I only knew all of this because my friend Oliver had a monstrous crush on Amber.
Marcy pulled the hairties out of her ponytails and ran a hand through her hair. It fell in messy blue, red, and blond waves down her back. "Bet you didn't know he was cheating on Amber, did you?"
I didn't know what to say. Asking a question would be prying into her business, making a snarky comment would be dismissing her input as irrelevant.
I tried to pass off as nonchalant. "What's he to you?"
Marcy shrugged. Her words were slurring together. "I dunno. He's an idiot. I'm just sick of getting thrown away over and over again."
I felt awkward for hearing such intimate, personal thoughts from Marcy, a girl I've only known for about three hours. In my defense, my head wasn't clear and I wasn't thinking rationally. The only thing my dumb drunk brain was thinking about was how to make a sad girl smile.
I gestured to the clock on the dashboard. It said 2:25. "The night is still young, you know. I think we can fit one more slightly illegal revenge plot in."

***

The rest of the night transcended into a blur. I remembered a pocket knife and air releasing from tires. I remembered a girl with colored hair and a smeary makeup-ed face with fishnetted legs. I remember speeding away from a stranger's house as she laughed, and then threw one last crazy idea into the air. I remember money slipping out of my pocket and into a man's hand as he lay me on a table and put a vibrating needle on my back. I remember the girl chanting the word "Florida! Florida!" and then laying on the table and lifting up her shirt for her turn.
I stumbled home at around 4 in the morning and collapsed into my bed with the sure feeling in my head that the night had been a dream.

***

Marcy Hannon
I woke up by a toilet.
My toilet, if you want to get specific. My bathroom, my plush green rug, my toothbrush on the counter next to my lotions and the single brand of perfume that I always wore. I got to see all of these things and truly appreciate them, because I was in the bathroom puking all morning.
I wasn't sure when I came home last night, or even who dropped me off. I only remembered waking up and puking. My head felt like a thousand heavy Thor hammers were trying to demolish my skull, and a single patch of skin on my back burned like hell for some reason. This was a hangover, and it was a very sucky one.
Around 1 in the afternoon, I decided to pull myself out of my misery and take a shower. I discarded my Harley Quinn outfit (which, at some point during the night, had added a green sweatshirt to the costume) on my bathroom floor and stepped inside my shower, turning the water to a cool temperature. I washed the smell of booze and the mistakes that I inevitably made (even if I didn't remember) off of me, and stepped out feeling clean and refreshed. This wasn't so bad. I hadn't woken up in a stranger's bed, or in somebody's closet, both of which have happened more often than you could think.
As I was wrapping myself in a white towel, I noticed something in the mirror. I removed the towel and twisted so that I could see my reflection. There were dark circles under my eyes and my skin looked red and blotchy, but that wasn't the problem. I arched my back so that I could see it in the mirror; a sterile white bandage, wet from the shower.
Tentatively, I peeled it off, not sure what I would find. A stab wound? A bullet? Just how crazy of a night did I have?
I removed the bandage, and stifled a yelp of surprise.
I'd gotten a tattoo.
Flashes of the night sparked in my head. I remembered sitting in a bathtub alone. I remembered the swing of a baseball bat and the feeling of cold water on my bare legs. I remembered a green sweatshirt, a sweatshirt that was now sitting on my bathroom floor in my pile of Harley Quinn clothes. I remembered popping tires and screaming, "We should get tattoos!" in a drunken slurred voice. I remembered Albert freaking Cooper, the kid who sat in the front row of my AP Calc class that I'd never even spoken to.
In all of the confusion, I was certain of one thing; I had definitely screwed up.