Cheerleaders Don't Cry

7

Albert Cooper
"Ow!"
I clenched my teeth as the vibrating needle dug into the skin of my shoulder. It had been nearly two weeks since I'd gotten the tattoo, and it was becoming aggrivating to see it every day whenever I changed my shirt or got into the shower. I'd never been a fan of tattoos, but maybe I wouldn't have hated it so much if it had been something sensible, like a meaningful quote or image. Instead, it was the words 'NOLEGE IS POWER' over a disproportionate picture of Florida.
Apparently drunk Cooper was also an idiot.
Another sting of pain shot through my shoulder, and I winced. Phil, the tattoo artist, scoffed under his breath, a smug look on his face. He was a middle aged man with a scraggly beard and squinty eyes, and arms covered in colorful tattoos. And he appeared to have a problem with me.
"All done," he finally said, after about half an hour of me clenching my jaw and trying not to cry like a 6 year old. I sat up in the chair and looked at my shoulder, pulling up the sleeve of my shirt. The tattoo was still there, swollen and red, but significantly more faded than when I'd arrived. I'd need at least two more treatments until it was fully gone.
Phil rubbed some ointment onto the area and then bandaged it up. Once he was finished, we went out front to the counter so that I could pay for the treatment session. The tattoo parlor was mostly empty, except for a couple of workers cleaning equipment. I guess they don't see many customers at 5 in the afternoon on a Thursday.
Phil tapped some numbers into his computer, scratched his beard, and then said, "That'll be $45.68."
I nearly choked. "Seriously?"
He shrugged. "This stuff is expensive, kid. Maybe you should've thought of that before you got a shitty tattoo that you knew you'd regret."
"Yeah, well," I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and got out a 50 dollar bill, "Maybe you guys should revise your policy on giving tattoos to drunk teenagers."
Phil took my 50 and stuck it in the cash register. "If you got money, we service you. That's our policy. Maybe you should be a little more responsible."
It wasn't until I was in my car, backing out of their parking lot that I started laughing. Responsible? Until two weeks ago, I was practically the poster child for responsibility. It might as well have been my middle name. I'd always had straight A's, never done drugs, never skipped class, never even had a sip of alcochol until that night. What had gone so horribly wrong that made everything turn upside down?
The answer came to me the next day, during my AP Calc class. I was sitting at my desk before class started, absentmindedly rubbing the bandage on my shoulder (the skin was still sore from yesterday) when I glanced up and Marcy Hannon walked into the room. She was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt that was too short for any kind of weather, especially a Massachusettes winter. She breezed right past me, probably not even seeing me, and sat in the back row of the class.
I followed her and sat in the empty desk in front of her. "Are you stalking me?"
Marcy looked up, her brow raised. Her skin was thick with foundation and her eyelashes were chunky with over-applied mascara. "What?"
"You're not in this class," I clarified. "What are you doing here?"
She paused, her eyes narrowing. "I've been in this class since September," She said carefully, a distinct poison underlying her words. "You've just had your head too far up Mr. Steiner's ass to notice."
"But you're - this is AP Calc, " I said. "This is the most difficult course that South Westport offers."
Marcy smiled bitterly, holding her pencil gingerly between her fingertips. "And you think I'm too dumb to be here, is that it?"
"That's not what I said - " I quickly interjected.
"Maybe not, but it's what you were thinking. Lucky for me, I'm not as stupid as you think I am. I have an A in this class, so you can go - " The pencil twirled in her fingers and she jabbed my nose with the eraser end.

I flinched and reeled backwards. " -suck it."
"Jesus," I muttered, rubbing the end of my nose.
Marcy leaned back in her seat, her eyes set on my shoulder. "So how's that tattoo holding up?" she asked.
"Shhhh!" I looked around the room. "It's bad enough that I have it, I don't need people knowing about it."
She looked at me. "People? Or a particular person who happens to be named 'Kathy'?"
I rolled my eyes and stood up.
"Cooper, what's 'equanimity'?" She asked just as I was turning to leave.
I spun back around, my brow scrunched in confusion. "What? Where did you hear that?"
Marcy tugged at the edge of her shirt and folded her hands on her desk. "For some reason it's tattooed in the middle of my back," she said.
I coughed. "Oh. Um...well it's my favorite word. It means to have peace of mind under stress."
She scoffed. "Seriously? That's your favorite word?" She started twirling a piece of blond hair around her finger. "And here I was, thinking that you couldn't possibly get any more pretentious."
"I'd rather be pretentious than a - "
The bell rang loudly, muffling the next couple of unflattering words out of my mouth.

***
Marcy Hannon
"You've got to be kidding me."
The janitor, Mr. Whittmore, shot me a look filled with disdain as he handed me the cart. "This is janitor duty. What did you expect?" He asked.
My nose wrinkled as I gingerly picked up the toilet brush. The bristles were stained a permanent repulsive shade of brown, and smelled like the boy's lockerroom after a football game. "I expected to be washing windows and taking out trash, not - "
"You damage school property, you get bathroom duty. Those are the rules." Mr. Whittmore started pushing his own cart, armed with Windex, mops, and paper towel, down the hallway.
I sighed and hauled my toilet-cleaning cart into the girls' bathroom. I didn't know where Cooper was - probably halfway across in the school in the east wing, cleaning up the nasty bathrooms over there. I kind of wished that the administration didn't put us on separate janitorial duty; part of my really wanted to see Cooper argue to the janitor that he it was an insult to his intelligence to be reduced to cleaning toilets. Or maybe he'd argue that I should get the gross jobs, since all of this was "my fault" anyway. I've spent a lot of nights lying awake wondering that, and every time I come to the same conclusion: this is both of our faults. We both deserve to clean stinky toilets.
That doesn't mean it's the most pleasant thing in the world, though.
Within the first hour and a half, I learned two very important tips. 1. it's not so bad if you breathe through your mouth, and 2. it also helps to just close your eyes and hope that you're scrubbing something away. The third tip, I learned at about 6:00:
It's a much less humiliating experience if nobody comes into the bathroom while you're cleaning it.
"Marcy?"
I was at the last bathroom on the first floor of the west wing. I'd put my hair up in a ponytail about 6 bathrooms ago, my makeup was smudged, and at some point I had finally given in to the gray, stained janitor's apron that smelled like old water and sweat. So yeah, I looked like a mess.
I leaned against the mop that I'd been washing the girl's bathroom floor with. "Hey Amber."
She looked at my janitor cart, to the apron, to the mop, and then finally to me. "Volunteering?" she asked.
"Uh, nope - no, I'm just..." I dipped the mop into the bucket of soapy water. "Fulfilling my punishment for damaging school property."
"Oh, right. For the statue." Amber combed her fingers through her long black hair and looked around the now almost-clean bathroom. A smile tilted her lips. "I've gotta say, though, that was a really ballsy prank. I never would've had the guts to go through with it."
Prank? All right, whatever. It's better than the truth, at least.
Amber help up a stack of fliers that I hadn't noticed before tucked under her arm. "I hope you don't mind. I was just going to put a couple of these in the stalls."
I nodded. "Yeah, it's fine. What are they?"
She went into one of the stalls, and I heard her breaking tape off of a dispenser. "The NHS is putting on a fundraising carnival in two months. We're just looking for some volunteers to regulate some of the stands and events." She went in two of the other stalls to put fliers up before coming back out, shooting me a white-toothed smile. "You know, it'd be a good idea for you to sign up. You'd get more volunteer hours, and it might be a little more appealing this." She gestured to the bucket of soapy mop water.
I smiled before I could stop myself, before I could even think. You know those people that are just so damn likeable? They walk into a room and it literally brightens? Amber just had to be one of those people, and all it did was make me realize what a terrible person I was all over again.
Just before she left, she made it worse by apologizing again about spilling soda all over my shirt. And when she finally did leave, I realized that my heart was pounding like a big guilt-drum in my chest.

Travis texted me when I got home, and I immediately deleted the message.