Work Text:
i'm squirming out of my skin
is this really happening to me?
i'm learning how to be someone i could put my faith in
if it really came down to me
just 'cause you know what you want doesn't mean you get to choose
squirming out of my skin
i'm in love with you
you said “open up your mouth and tell me what you mean”
i said “i’m gonna marry the scariest girl on the cheerleading team”
“head cheerleader” by pom pom squad
you were just 11 when you saw her for the first time, but you remember with vivid clarity. recall now: the school assembly, the uncomfortable wooden fold-out bleachers, the giant box fans whirring. even with the fans, everything is sticky with the heat of impending summer. you don’t want to be here, but it’s better than being in class, and you hold your zip-up binder in your lap and doodle in sharpie on the fabric cover.
the vice principal speaks into the wired microphone, her voice echoing over the fans and the chatter of your peers. you all may be 6th graders now, but it’s never too early to start thinking about what you want to do in high school.
you remember rolling your eyes with the world-weariness of a preteen who’s already over it. you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that once you get to high school, the teachers will be saying, you may be in high school now, but it’s never too early to start thinking about college. and in college, it will be, you may be in college now, but it’s never too early to start applying for jobs. always the preparation for the next thing — years of your life in a concrete box, spending your childhood for the promise of an exciting future. you can’t wait for the future to arrive. you feel prepared. the only thing that stands between you and freedom is time.
the vice principal continues: please give a warm poteidaia welcome to the marching band and cheer team from amphipolis high!
your fellow classmates cheer half-heartedly as the marching band files in, walking mostly in step. the cheers grow louder when the drums start — finally, something interesting is happening! you find yourself tapping your heels against the wood under your feet. you look up from your doodling to watch them form a curve on the gymnasium floor: shiny instruments held up at impossible angles, rigid backs, ridiculous plumes sticking out of hats. after taking a moment to admire the spectacle, you go back to your doodling.
the music is almost too loud in this hot, stuffy gymnasium, but you have no control over the particulars of your day-to-day life, so you grimace and bear with it. you open your binder and pull out your notebook, trying to remember the lyrics to the evanescence song your 7th-grader friend ephiny showed you. you write them out in cursive, practicing the steady flow of words, your gel pen gliding across the page.
when you get stuck on the chorus — how do you spell “tourniquet”? — you look up, tapping your pen against the paper.
and you never look back down, because in that moment, your eyes alight on a real-life honest-to-god high school amy lee on the gymnasium floor. dark hair and ice-blue eyes. of course, that’s where the resemblance stops. you can’t imagine any of the members of evanescence in a cheerleading uniform, but here this girl is. tall and proud, wielding dual pom-poms like weapons.
you always thought cheerleading was kind of lame before this. you don’t know who you are yet, but you know you’re nice, and you know you land more on the emo side of the prep-emo spectrum. cheerleaders are supposed to be mean girls and preps. that’s the way things are.
this girl — well, she looks mean. scary, even. her grin is almost feral as she waves her pom-pom around. but even in the red-and-white cheer uniform of amphipolis high, you could never mistake her for a prep. what is it that gives her away? maybe it’s her hair, layered and straightened and parted harshly on one side. you self-consciously tuck your hair behind your ears. the last time you went to supercuts, you asked them to make you look like hayley williams, and instead you ended up with blunt, straight bangs. but here’s this girl, with feathery side bangs and volume, and she looks like a rock star.
she opens her mouth and starts to lead a cheer: stronger than steel! hotter than the sun! warriors don’t stop ‘til we get the job done!
you don’t want to be a cheerleader, but you want to be this girl. you won’t understand your obsession for a few years. you don’t know why your eyes travel down her long legs (does that skirt really pass the fingertip rule?) or settle on the letters printed across her chest. (it’s not the letters “ahs” in a collegiate font you find fascinating, but how well she fills the uniform out. you’re still pubescing, and she must be a c-cup, at least! it’s envy, isn’t it, that keeps your eyes fixated on the subtle outline of her bra?)
she never once looks at you, though you will her to a thousand times through the assembly. you don’t take your eyes off her once. she stands tall, almost a foot taller than most of the other girls on the team, her broad shoulders unapologetically square. at one point the rest of the cheer squad clears the floor so that she can a series of acrobatic flips across it.
everyone in the bleachers loses their freaking minds at this, yourself included. you feel a stab of jealousy and contempt for your classmates — okay, they’re impressed, too, but only you can truly see how cool this girl is. at some point in the last thirty minutes, she has become yours. you’ll never share this with anyone else, because that would mean sharing her with someone else.
and it would mean answering uncomfortable questions that you haven’t even yet asked yourself.
over the next few years, you collect information about her as subtly as you can. you learn that her name is xena. when you find out that she is a sophomore, you do the math and sigh sullenly. she’ll graduate the year before you enter high school. you’ll never know her, never again get to bask in her confidence and glory.
you learn that her younger brother lyceus is a grade ahead of you, and you consider befriending him to get close to her… but you have more integrity than that.
besides, what would a woman like that see in a girl like you?
when you get to high school, you join the cheer team and discover how utterly inflexible you are. your friend ephiny has to coach you extra on the side to catch up with the other girls on the squad. you proudly don your red-and-white warriors uniform, wishing your breasts would grow just a little bit more so you could fill it in the way xena did.
you’d seen her a few more times since that fateful day in 6th grade — nights you were brave enough and had enough allowance money to buy a ticket to a basketball game at amphipolis high school. you never spoke to her, and she never looked at you. you’d sit on the bleachers with your notebook out and your knees up to your chest, daydreaming, all the while staring at her intently.
even when she wasn’t cheering, she carried that air of self-possession around with her. a few times, you caught her out of uniform, and your suspicions about her coolness were confirmed: her long legs filling out her skinny jeans, a chain swinging at her hips. wrist cuffs and black band t-shirts and black-and-white checkered high-tops. (you begged your parents for a pair so you could emulate her further. when you got them, you colored in the white squares with your rainbow sharpie set, utterly devaluing them in the hand-me-down economy.)
at the high school, you find out, after asking around a bit, that she’s left town and started backpacking around the country. she has no plans to go to college, you learn, and she’ll probably never return here except to visit her mother, who you also learn owns a bar downtown. pity you’re only 14 and can’t check it out. but befriending her mother to get close to her would be even weirder than befriending her brother for the same reason. and, again, you have integrity. you pride yourself on it.
by the time you’re a sophomore, you’ve figured out some things about yourself that had been percolating in the back of your mind throughout middle school. you like girls, it turns out, and this explains a lot. you come out to your parents and younger sister, and it goes okay. you’re lucky.
your junior year, the drama club tries to recruit some cheerleaders to audition for the fall production of a chorus line. you audition and learn for the first time in your life that you can’t sing. it works out perfectly, though — you get a whole song about your inability to sing! you find that you love performing onstage, but when the next show is announced — into the woods — you decide not to audition and rejoin the cheer squad. you can’t sing, after all, and the other members of the drama club explain that sondheim’s melodies are impossibly complicated. not written for a tonedeaf girl like you.
and you get through high school, cheering, sometimes acting, often doodling, always daydreaming. you discover your love of writing and join the creative writing club.
by the time you’re a senior, you’ve forgotten about xena, even though she’s shaped your adolescent life.
well, no. that’s not true. you could never forget about xena. you don’t forget your first love.
but you move on.
you have all your firsts. you try to do it all before graduation, rushing to the finish line, eager to begin your life. all of this time has been preparing for adulthood and the freedom that you think comes with it.
an lgbt center pops up in the next town over, and you borrow your mom’s car and drive there to find community and (let’s be real) meet girls. it’s there that you have your first kiss with a girl named seraphin. she was your friend in grade school before she moved away, so it feels symbolic, somehow, to be reunited in such a grown-up fashion.
it’s in your mom’s car that you clumsily finger her for the first time, blushing furiously and mumbling apologies and it’s my first time. thankfully, she’s down to do it again, so the next week, you go over to her place for a sleepover and learn your way around her body on the couch in her basement.
both of you know it won’t last, that this is just practice. practice and raging hormones. you’ve internalized the habit of preparation, and you feel as though you need to be prepared for adulthood by having as much sex as possible and getting really good at it. it’s the one thing school can’t teach you (especially given the abysmal state of your school district’s health curriculum).
midway through the school year, seraphin starts going to church. she tells you she’s been born again. she speaks of her newfound devotion to god with a fanatic intensity, her eyes wide as her smile, and she won’t touch you anymore. she tells you that what you’ve been doing is a sin, and that god will forgive you, but only if you give it up and turn to him for redemption.
you don’t want to give it up, so you stop spending time with her and start trying to get the rest of your firsts out of the way before june. you apply for colleges that you can’t afford, and when you get in, you deal with the fact that you can’t afford to go by getting shitfaced for the first time at a party at the local community college. a girl in the theatre program there tries to convince you that community college is the way to go. you think about it. maybe.
the next morning, when you’re puking your guts out and lying to your parents through the closed bathroom door about where you’ve been, you think about your first love and wonder what she’s doing. she didn’t go to college, did she? she decided to travel, instead.
maybe that’s what you’ll do, too.
you don’t tell your parents. if they knew, they would try to stop you. you tell them you’re going to community college for the first two years to save money. they’re thrilled. you’ll be close to home, and didn’t they raise such a wonderfully fiscally reasonable child?
you still think you have integrity, but now it’s more complicated.
june finally comes. your parents give you your very first smartphone as a graduation present. you make an instagram account. you download vine. you spend the summer making stupid videos with your friends and sun-soaked selfies, racking up your follower count. your stomach slowly knots tighter and tighter as you come closer and closer to executing your grand plan. your betrayal.
and suddenly, it’s august, and you’re not a carefree child anymore. you count your graduation money, pack your backpack, and write a heartfelt note for your parents to find in the morning.
in the middle of the night, less than a week before you’re supposed to start classes you lied about registering for, you set off to see the world. you were never meant for this small-town life.
you hope your family understands. you know they won’t.
on the bus to chicago, you look out the window and think about the girl whose influence led you here.
what is she doing now? is she still seeing the world? will you ever get a chance to tell her who she is to you, and what she meant?
the answer to all of those questions comes several months later.
you’re in seattle. you’ve made it out here by building up your instagram following with photos and anecdotes about your travels. each follower you’ve gained is another connection made, another couch to surf on.
the girl who’s hosting you, najara, invites you out for dinner and drinks. you’re only 18 — soon to be 19! — but she knows where to get you a fake id, good and quick and cheap. in your travels, you’ve been trying to say yes to as many things as possible, so you say yes to this.
you probably should have said no.
you can’t trust everyone you meet on the internet. at the club, you get a little too drunk, and she gets a little too handsy. from years of cheerleading and gymnastics conditioning, you’re able to evade her, but you don’t feel comfortable sleeping on her couch after this. with the spare key she gave you in case you got separated, you find your way back to her apartment, grab your things, and get the hell out of there.
you wonder if you’ll ever meet a girl who doesn’t turn out to be obsessive. then again, aren’t you a little obsessive, too? didn’t you go on this whole journey because a girl you admired from afar did the same thing? that’s unhinged behavior.
in the bus terminal, you charge your phone and try to sober up with cheap burgers and lemonade. the taste of tequila sticks to your breath; you brush your teeth in the public bathroom, but it doesn’t go away entirely. it’s sour. you feel sour. you trusted najara, and she tried to take advantage of you. that’s a lesson learned.
you remind yourself that you’re doing this to learn lessons like this. you’re collecting stories. that’s why your instagram handle is travelingbard.
someday, this will just be a story you’ll tell at a party between longer and more interesting tales. you hold onto that, as you hold onto all your optimism: with a fierce kind of desperation. if you lose it, what do you have?
you open instagram to block najara, and that’s when your worlds finally collide.
xenawarriorprincess, who you might know, is on instagram.
you swallow, your throat dry from too much tequila and not enough water, and click on her profile. she has more followers than you, and you wonder how you’ve never come across her account before, especially considering where you come from and what you’re doing now. she’s still traveling, it appears. in fact, if she hasn’t moved on since her last post, she’s in portland now.
you buy a ticket to portland, get on the bus, and keep scrolling.
as is the case with most habitual instagram users, the photos decline in quality the further down you scroll. you study her face, the way it’s changed over the years. you remember her most vividly as a teenager in a pleated skirt. she’s a woman now, with cheekbones cut to kill. broad, muscular shoulders and shockingly blue eyes.
how could you ever have forgotten about this woman? you trace the shape of her on your phone screen. you’ve been in love with her since you were 11 years old. even as her face writes itself over your memories, she remains untouchable, as real and distant as the crush you once had on missy elliott.
you scroll down to the very bottom of her feed, going photo by photo. you’re careful not to double-tap your screen — it’s a major faux pas to like an old photo. it makes you look like a stalker. it makes you look like you’re doing exactly what you’re doing.
close to the bottom: a throwback photo of xena in her red-and-white cheer uniform, mid-routine on the football field. her teeth, bared in a feral grin, seem to gleam under the white lights. her long leg extends high above her head, a perfect straight line. she’s a wonder, even captured like this, in a freeze frame of school spirit gone by.
the caption:
#tbt #butimacheerleader
your heart skips a beat. is she referencing the movie? you watched it at the lgbt center in high school. it’s one of the only movies you’ve seen that was made by and for queer people. has xena seen it?
is she like you?
it would make sense. you’ve always been strangely drawn to other queer people, even when you didn’t know they were queer. and, really… looking at xena, it seems obvious. you just never let yourself imagine that far into her personal life.
you like the photo.
and you turn your phone off and stuff it in your pocket, cringing at yourself for the risk you’ve just taken.
you wake up as the sun rises over the treetops, splashing the paved highway with golden light. you blearily watch portland approaching through the window. you did not get enough sleep, and last night is a blur. yawning, you turn your phone on to check the time.
xenawarriorprincess wants to send a message.
your heart is in your throat, or maybe it’s the tequila from last night. now you remember. maybe you hadn’t entirely sobered up when you liked that photo. but she wants to message you. xena wants to talk to you.
you get off the bus and sit down on a bench, your backpack pressed between your knees. you’ve been excited to see portland (you love portlandia, although you do find some of the jokes hit-or-miss), but instead of looking around and getting your bearings, you’re buried in your phone.
xenawarriorprincess: you got a thing for cheerleaders?
you swallow. you have to respond to this. she sent it a couple hours ago, no follow-up. now she’ll have a read receipt, and the last thing you want to do is leave her on read. you’re in the same city as her right now. how can you make this as not-weird as possible?
you remember being 11, sitting in that noisy gymnasium, the breath knocked out of you at the sight of her. at the beauty of her. the power. the passion. the danger.
how much can you reveal?
travelingbard: depends on the cheerleader :P
you sit in the bus terminal, unmoving, staring at your phone like some kind of deranged creature. you second-guess everything. was the :P too much? too juvenile? she’ll be 22 now, and you’re just shy of 19. she’s a real adult. you’re still just pretending.
well. fake it ‘til you make it, right?
your hands shake when xena starts to type. you’re exposed, a young, lost, queer woman with all her worldly possessions in a backpack by your feet. but you don’t have to show it.
xenawarriorprincess: you dug pretty far back to like that pic
busted.
xenawarriorprincess: this you?
she links you to a post on ephiny’s instagram. the two of you — you and ephiny, that is — in your cheer uniforms, mid-cheer at her last game.
travelingbard: that’s me
xenawarriorprincess: i’d think i’d remember someone that cute on my team
you’re blushing now. you’re grinning.
travelingbard: you graduated the year before i became a freshman
xenawarriorprincess: we just missed each other then
xenawarriorprincess: that’s a shame. i’d have liked to have you on my team
travelingbard: what makes you think i’m not?
you feel bold. you feel like you’re going to throw up. you feel like your whole life has been spent preparing for this moment.
travelingbard: are you still in portland?
xenawarriorprincess: yeah, but i’m leaving today
travelingbard: why?
xenawarriorprincess: bored lol
you chew your lip.
travelingbard: i bet i could entertain you
xenawarriorprincess: how do you plan to do that?
travelingbard: i tell great stories
xenawarriorprincess: is that all?
you imagine her pouting, although you’ve never seen such an expression on her face. you’ve never seen her face up close. this has to change. you’re in the same city, and even though she’s still 4 years older than you, you’re an adult now, and you’ve loved her since you were 11, and you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you will love her for the rest of your days, even if that love stays unrequited.
under her unknowing tutelage, you’ve become the kind of person who takes these kinds of risks. maybe you’ll get to thank her, after all.
travelingbard: i just got to portland. i need someone to show me around town
xenawarriorprincess: i’m not much of a tour guide
xenawarriorprincess: anyway, i’m already at the bus station. about to buy a ticket to santa fe
every atom in your body awakens. xena is here?
you almost trip over your backpack as you book it to the ticket counter. and sure enough, there she is, third in line, her dark hair framing her face as she looks down at her phone.
it’s surreal, seeing her here, now. she looks exactly the same, yet so different. she no longer has what you would now describe as an emo hairstyle, but her long hair and bangs suit her. she’s wearing a brandi carlile tour shirt — oh, so she’s definitely not straight.
you swallow.
travelingbard: look to your right
you watch her read the message and look up in slow motion. her head turns in your direction, and you fight the sudden impulse to bolt. you have a feeling that this moment is going to change your life.
your eyes meet.
her lips part in an involuntary expression of awe. you’d recognize that expression anywhere; it’s the same face you’ve always made whenever you looked at her. you smile. wave. brandish a pair of invisible pom-poms.
her face splits into that terrifying grin. she laughs, picks up the duffel at her feet, and strides over to you. her gait is as easy and confident as you remember — more. you keep your eyes trained on her face so you don’t get distracted by the sway of her hips or the curve of her breasts.
she, on the other hand, looks you up and down appreciatively as she approaches you. she slings her duffel over her shoulders, wearing it like a sword strapped to her back. a warrior princess, indeed.
“hey, you.”
her voice is lower when she’s not chanting, or maybe it’s simply matured in her young adulthood. it’s almost husky. you suppress a shiver and smile up at her. (even fully grown, you’ll always be looking up at her, and you’ll always hope to grow to her height.)
“hi,” you say. your voice doesn’t shake. “you still going to santa fe?”
she tilts her head. “i think i’ll stick around for a few days longer. after all, someone’s got to show you around town.”
you grin. you always thought you’d be tongue-tied around her — maybe because you would have been, before. but you’ve made yourself into someone who can talk until the cows come home, as your mother might put it. so you say: “you think you’re up to the task?”
“oh,” she says, smirking down at you, “i have many skills.”
later that night, you sneak onto the roof of the bus station together. xena pulls you over the edge, her biceps bulging. you giggle, looking around. nobody saw you, nobody followed you, and it’s an unseasonably warm night. you could spend the night up here, and that seems to be xena’s plan.
she spreads a blanket out on the silver-painted plane. you sit together in silence. she pulls out a multi-tool and cuts open a cigarillo, dumping the tobacco into the wind. as she talks, she takes a grinder out of her duffel bag and rolls a blunt. you stare at her hands. you’ve never gotten to see them up close. her index and middle fingernails are cut short — every other nail is long. they’re all painted as red as your old cheerleading uniform.
“it’s kinda weird to meet someone from home all the way out here,” she says. her fingers are long, thin, nimble. she rolls the blunt between them, licks the tobacco paper, seals it shut with the heat from her zippo lighter. she is impossibly cool.
“i was in seattle,” you explain, afraid to tell her that you’ve spent your whole life following in her footsteps so you could catch up to her here, “but i got into a weird situation with a girl there, and i, ah — i had to get away.” that’s the short of it, anyway.
“leaving a string of broken hearts in your wake, no doubt.” xena smirks, cups her hands over the end of the blunt, and tries to light it. the wind puts the fire out before she can take a drag. you move closer and add your hands to the shield effort. your unmanicured nails are short, your cuticles all torn up from your nervous habit of biting them. you breathe her in. she smells like vanilla, some kind of musky perfume, and whatever shampoo she uses. you’ll never smell anything more magnificent for as long as you live.
you realize you’re too close and move away. she doesn’t seem to mind, though, so you don’t stop looking. you don’t shy away from her intensity. you have to prove yourself to her, you have to.
she passes you the blunt. you take a drag, trying not to cough. you’ve never quite gotten the hang of smoking, and she can tell. blushing, you hand it back to her. she pats your back, and her hand stays there.
it would be so easy to kiss her right now, but. it would be too easy. it would be the beginning and the end of something.
so you say: “i saw you cheer.”
she raises her eyebrows. “oh, yeah?”
and you recount that day at poteidaia middle school, the day that changed your life, though you downplay it a little.
you can’t hide the admiration from your voice, though. “i wanted to be just like you.” you take a breath, but you can’t help but admit, “i still do.”
you take another small hit from the blunt. she takes it back, takes a long draw, staring at you. “you should be glad you didn’t know me then.”
and she tells you about the things she did, the games she played, the people she hurt. she was a mean girl, she tells you, a scary, angry teenager who took her insecurities out on the people who least deserved it. the marijuana seems to loosen her tongue, or perhaps she’s never had anyone to talk to about this. she stares out into the night as though peeking into her past through a window in the sky. “that’s why i’m still out here, after all these years. i can’t go back. i don’t know how to make things right.”
she stubs out the remnants of the blunt on the rubber sole of her combat boots and throws it off the side of the building.
“it’s hard to be alone,” she says.
you take her hand.
“you’re not alone,” you say.
she smiles. you smile.
“you ever been to santa fe?” she asks.
“not yet,” you say.
“well,” she says, grinning, “we’d better get some sleep, then. we’ll head out first thing tomorrow morning.”
you were just 11 when you saw the woman you were going to marry for the first time, and you were 18 when you finally spoke to her. eventually, you will tell her how much she meant to you, and for how long. she will tell you with genuine surprise in her eyes that she had no idea.
“you were my hero,” you’ll say as you lie in bed together. “you still are.”
“gabrielle,” she’ll say, as she often does when she’s overcome. “you are my hero.”
and you’ll know that she means it.
and you’ll reach for her and kiss her, and she’ll kiss you back. and you’ll love each other, just like this, in mutual admiration, for the rest of your lives. you know it with the same absolute certainty you had when you were 11.
you tend to be right about these things.