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tell her?”
    Fawn, sitting on the grass with her knees to her chin, pulled her vintage 1970s oatmeal-colored tunic down over her knees. Then she crooked her finger. At me.
    Wearily, I went down to her level.
    â€œLast year,” Fawn said quietly, “she missed being first alternate by two points.”
    â€œSo?” A tsunami of a headache was roaring through my brain.
    â€œWe’re her best friends, and it’s our duty to help her fulfill her destiny.”
    â€œNot if I don’t know any of the cheers.”
    â€œYou only have to do two for the tryout. Adair can teach them to you right now. It’ll be easy.”
    If it was so easy, how come Fawn wasn’t doing it?
    I twisted my hoodie strings around my wrists. You didn’t have to know Adair long to realize how much she wanted to be a cheerleader. She never wasted a moment standing still if she could be throwing her arms up and twisting and bouncing to a chant only she could hear. It could get annoying, especially in a car. I wanted Adair to pursue her passion. Truly, I did. But why did her dream have to involve my humiliation?
    â€œEverybody tries out in pairs,” said Fawn. “All she needs is someone to stand up and do the cheers with her in front of the judging panel. You don’t have to be good at it, Coco. You just have to do it.”
    â€œPleeeeease?” said Adair, falling to the ground beside us. “Please be my partner?”
    I looked from Adair’s hopeful, blue eyes into Fawn’s hopeful, brown ones. I had no chance, mainly because there were four big, sad eyes against my two little, weak ones. That, and because I was also sitting on an anthill.
    Flicking ants off my ankles, I said, “All right, I’ll do it, but I’m wearing my hood up.”
    â€œDeal,” said Adair.
    â€œAnd my sunglasses.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd I refuse to do any cheers that involve barking.”
    Don’t think I didn’t catch the “uh-oh” look that passed between them.
    Forty-eight minutes later I was in a gym hotter than the orchid house at the arboretum, flapping my arms, kicking my legs, and yelling at the top of my lungs:
    We are the St. Bernards.
    Victory is in the cards.
    Stand tall and raise the roof.
    Paws up! Let’s woof, woof, WOOF!
    My first thought, as I gazed out into the bleachers filled with about fifty stunned cheerleader wannabes, was someone was going to pay for this. And pay big. Fawn had remained outside, saying she didn’t want to make me nervous. Nice try. She knew better than to be anywhere in the vicinity of me when I finished. While Adair and I did our cheers, Her Fabulousness and the Royal Court sat in the front row, pointing and snickering. Even the three judges—Coach Notting, Miss Furdy, and Mrs. Ignazio, an English teacher who coached girls’ softball—couldn’t hide their grins. I didn’t blame them. If there was a cheerleading manual,which there probably was, I could have been the poster girl for every single “don’t” in the book. If I wasn’t hopping on the wrong foot or saying the wrong words, then I was facing the wrong direction. Only one thing kept me from bolting from the gym as fast as my uncoordinated feet could take me: Adair. She was smiling bigger than I had ever seen her smile. Her movements were graceful and perfectly synchronized with her words. She oozed school spirit. Even her competition couldn’t help but love her. The other girls were cheering along with her. Fawn was right. This was where Adair belonged. It was her destiny. So, for her, I stayed. And barked. And made a complete goober out of myself, bopping around and shouting:
    S-T B-E-R.
    I say, S-T B-E-R.
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    S-T B-E-R.
    I say, N-A-R-D-S.
    Go, go, go!
    Goooooo, Briar Green!
    â€™Cause we the machine
    That’s gonna steamroll over you!
    Who wrote this stuff?
    Adair finished our second cheer with a back