Page 9 of The Cheerleader

Linda smiles. “He’s only the star running back and the best player on the team.”

“He may be the star running back,” Carol says, “but he’s no match for Liz the whirling tornado.”

Everyone laughs, including Liz. “That’s right,” she adds. “But don’t warn him. I prefer a sneak attack.”

“That’s crazy,” Carol says. “I’ve never seen him out. I hear he’s quiet—the dark silent type you need to watch out for.”

“He is, but I know him from home,” Liz says.

Carol says, “He’s a cool dreamboat—like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. And I hear he has professional prospects.”

I raise my brows. “Professional prospects? As in the NFL?”

Liz nods with a Cheshire Cat look.

I blow out a low whistle.

Judy rolls her eyes and pushes back from the table. “He has a lot of girls after him. Good luck.”

Liz maintains her confident expression. “I’m not worried about that. Bryan and I go way back. Our families went to the same church forever. We have a strong bond.” She turns to me. “You might know him or have heard of him. He was a football star at Suffield Academy.”

I shake my head and then whisper to her, “Don’t tell anyone, but I was never into sports.”

She widens her eyes in mock surprise and laughs. Then she immediately claps a hand over her mouth. But her laugh is contagious, and I join her.

“What’s so funny?” Judy says.

“Nothing.” Liz calms down.

“I hear Bryan’s an Agriculture major.” Judy screws up her face like she can smell the fertilizer. In fact, her expression convinces me she’s knee-deep in a pile of shit.

“He is,” Liz says unfazed, not put off in the least by Judy’s mean judgment.

The conversation turns to majors, and a knot of tension lodges between my shoulder blades, but I admit to being an engineering major without letting on that I’m having second thoughts.

Liz says, “I’m in accounting. Cha-ching.”

Judy’s eyebrows shoot up. But after she just admitted to being a Home Economics major as if she were proud and ashamed at the same time, I wonder why she’s taking an attitude.

“You? Accounting?” she says. “Sounds hard. I thought only guys took accounting. Same with Engineering.” She glances at me as if I’ve done something wrong. “It all seems like such a waste when we’re going to end up staying home and raising children. What are you going to do about that?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Liz says, “but I’m thinking I’ll make a lot of money before I think about kids. Besides, I’m good at it, and I don’t have to take any lab classes.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say, looking around at the nods of approval and biting my lip. We were in math classes together in junior high, and we were the best students—better than all the boys in our advanced classes—and we thought that was so cool.

Liz was never afraid of competing with the boys. Neither am I. That’s not why I’m reconsidering engineering.

Linda says, “I suppose there’s an advantage to being in classes with mostly boys.” The others laugh.

All of us want both careers and family, I think, even if some girls are choosing more traditional careers than others.

Maybe a teacher or a nurse will have an easier time fitting in motherhood. And maybe that’s a good reason to choose those careers. But I think if you’re going to work hard at something, you should have a talent for it, and you should like it, feel fulfillment somehow.

For me, I’m convinced that would be teaching. I hope deep down Dad agrees with me.

All I know is that I need time to work up my courage to go against my Dad’s advice. And to figure out if I can get a student loan on my own if I need to.

The waitress arrives at our table with another bottle of wine, and my glass is empty.