Waiting on the Sidelines

“Have fun honey!” my mom yelled from the kitchen.

As I made my way down the steps of our porch and heard the crunch of the gravel under my feet, I felt the weight of my lie start to lift. I had made it, and I instantly started busying myself with how my night was going to go. I remembered the words Reed had written…pretty, he thought I was very pretty. I had read that part of his letter at least 100 times the night before. I had tucked it carefully in my jewelry lock box when I was done, afraid that someone might find it and throw it away. I never wanted to lose that letter.

As we rounded the corner of the main street in town, Sarah’s sister Calley turned the radio up full blast. She was on the dance team and listened to a lot of hip hop music, which was not known for its quiet, subtle language. The students that had gathered early for the tailgate party were walking around the parking lot, sitting on the hoods of cars and in the beds of pickup trucks. As we pulled in and found a spot near the exit, heads started to turn in our direction, no doubt thanks to the F bombs blaring from Calley’s car. She turned the ignition off, pulled down the mirror on her car’s visor and touched up her lipstick. Finally, with a kissing sound, she flipped the mirror back up and kicked open her door.

“Let’s go rule this shit, bitches!” she shouted, followed by a “wooooooo!”

Calley had a way of making you feel like the party started when you arrived, as long as you were with her. Twice suspended for fighting, she had a tough reputation. But she was also gorgeous. Calley and Sarah’s dad was from Cuba. He had defected to the United States and met their mother when she was working at a diner in Miami. Her father refused to let them marry, so they ran away to Arizona. They’ve been married for 18 years now, which I guess goes to show that overprotective parents don’t always know best. Anyhow, the Perez sisters had the most beautiful bronzed skin, light brown hair that fell down their backs in waves and curvy bodies built for dancing. I think that’s why they both excelled so much at performing.

Sienna and I stepped from the car and shadowed our bolder leaders. When we reached the field, Sienna walked to the far entrance where the band was meeting up. She was nervous about her first time marching and playing an instrument at the same time. I didn’t want to crush her spirit, but I was pretty sure most of the people in the stands tonight would be standing in the snack bar line during her performance. They were here for football, not the arts. I was starting to pull my wallet from my purse to pay for my game ticket when Calley grabbed my arm and shook her head.

“Sister, we don’t pay. Come with me,” she said, leading me by the hand along with her sister. We walked over to the snack bar and I watched as Calley leaned in and whispered something into one of the guy’s ears. He smiled and she kissed his cheek. In seconds, he rounded the building and was holding the back gate open for us.

The stands were already getting crowded and our team hadn’t even left the locker room to take the field for warm ups yet. The Bears had won their first two games, both away. This was their first home game, and the first home game with a Johnson at quarterback in a few years. We were playing East High School from Yuma, which is on the other side of the state about four hours away. Their travel busses lined the alleyway behind the away stands.

We climbed the middle section of the bleachers and found a seat near the press box at the top, making for a perfect back rest. We were just getting settled when we heard the speaker crackle and the announcer welcome the visiting Lions from East. The band started to play then and the cheerleaders were standing two-girls-high in the end zone, holding a banner for the team to run through as they entered the field. Sarah was watching them intently, I think waiting for one of them to fall. She had made the junior varsity cheer team, but was an alternate for varsity should anything go wrong.

Just as the announcer finished “…your hometown Coolidge High Fighting Bears,” the team burst through the banner that read ‘Go, Fight, Win!’ I saw Cole and Devin right away. Reed wasn’t far behind. His helmet in one hand as he side-skipped towards his two friends and bumped into them mid-air in some masculine show of pride. The team circled up in the middle of the field and broke out into lines to start their stretching. You could hear the group of almost men counting down each stretch from blocks away.

The stands were full. There wasn’t much else going on in Coolidge on a Friday night, and high school sports were about as elite as it got, given the hour-plus drive to any of the college or professional teams in the state. Calley had left us to save our section of the bleachers while she went to the snack bar for some sodas and candy. Left on my own, I don’t think that I would have been able to guard our section from the aunts, uncles and cousins that were quickly filling every spare inch of bleacher. Sarah, thankfully, had no problem shoeing away unwanted neighbors, though she did let a few junior and senior boys sit close enough to her that their knees touched her shoulder blades (part of her plan, I was sure).