Love in Mid Air Read Online Free PDF

for two years in middle school, but you don’t
     have to be that good to cheer in middle school. It’s not like you need gymnastic skills or anything, you just have to be cute
     and loud. So when I showed up for the high school tryouts it was obvious at once that these girls were on a whole different
     level. Especially Kelly. I noticed her the very first day. Lots of the girls were good, but she was the only one who was casual
     about it, lithe and nonchalant as she went through her fallbacks and kicks.
    On the third day they taught us a pyramid formation and I was placed, along with the other girls who were sure to be cut,
     in the bottom row. Kelly was top tier and she put her foot on my thigh as she climbed me, then her other foot on my shoulder,
     and then there was this strange moment where the length of her body dragged across my face. And then, with the arches of her
     feet trembling against my shoulders, she slowly stood. I held her ankles, but once she got herself righted, which took her
     only a few seconds, she was completely still.
    She didn’t speak to me until it was time to drop out, always the most perilous part of any formation. She called down, “You’re
     going to catch me, right?” and I said, “Absolutely,” and I did, even though the force of her falling weight jolted me and
     for a moment I lost my breath. One of the coaches stood in front to spot us, but it wasn’t necessary. I caught her perfectly
     and the other girls, the returning cheerleaders for whom tryouts were just a formality, clapped.
    “You’re good,” Kelly said. “I’d even let you catch me in a flip.”
    On the first full day of school I was at the end of the cafeteria line, ready to pick up my tray and go sit with the girls
     I’d known from middle school, and I heard her call out, “Elyse?” We’d worn nametags at tryouts but I was still surprised she
     would remember my name or know how to pronounce it. Most people don’t. Half the time in middle school I’d answered to Elsie.
     Kelly was sitting at the table with the other cheerleaders, the most popular girls in the whole school, and she said, “Come
     eat with us.” The room blurred. She was a star—of course they’d wanted her, and apparently she had somehow managed to convince
     them to bring me on too. I looked down at my tray, ignoring the faces of my former friends who had already cleared a place
     for me to sit, and took a deep breath. That’s it, one casual invitation, and I knew in that moment that my whole life was
     going to be different.
    Our periods were synchronized within a month. We used to—I can’t for the life of me remember why—slip into the bathroom between
     classes and switch shirts, and then I would smell her baby powder scent all day. Kelly would sit in class drawing medieval-looking
     pentagrams on the backs of her spiral notebooks and then coloring them in purple and magenta. I learned to draw these patterns
     from her and for years they encircled my pottery. Her mother, in fact, was the one who first taught me how to throw pots,
     and Kelly slept over at my house so much that my father, who used to call me Baby, started calling her Baby Two. We got the
     same haircut—a long curly shag that was known as a “Gypsy” and required twenty minutes in hot rollers every morning. We lined
     our eyes in kohl and our mouths in a light shimmery lipstick by Yardley called Berryfrost. We bought matching pairs of black
     platform boots and wore them with long V-neck sweaters and short pleated plaid skirts, a juxtaposition that struck us as sophisticated
     and ironic, as if we were prep school girls hooking on the side. Looking back at pictures from that time, it amazes me how
     much we willed ourselves to look alike.
    At one point we even dated twins, shy studious boys that I doubt we ever would have noticed if there hadn’t been two of them.
     Fridays were for ball games but on Saturday nights we would go to the drive-in with the twins,