The varsity cheerleaders began to disperse to the side as a drum roll announced their last bit before our entrance.

"Okay, ducks, it's show time." My best friend looked back at me with a wink, her blonde curls rolled up to her shoulders. Her blue eyes dazzled under her white suede hat tied tightly under her chin and her red lipstick parted into a smile when I shot her the finger. The freshman girls on the line froze in fear as she, a captain of our drill team walked toward me, now expressionless, and no doubt mustering up quite a show for retaliation.

She stood directly behind me, pulled one of my dark brown curls like a child until she bent my ear toward her, and spoke firmly into it where the group could hear.

"These new uniforms are too short, they are far too tight, and yes, our asses are going to show. We look like a bunch of bitchy, hillbilly call-girl sluts in very nice "Annie Oakly" hats. The Lycra tops are going to ride up to our ribs the first time we raise our arms above our waists, and just standing here I can already see your left ass cheek where your trunks have ridden up. Now remember, you wanted to be a part of this, or rather your mother is making you.

"I'm a captain, and I chose these new uniforms for us, and you are my best friend... So are you."

Reagan grabbed a junior officer and fellow captain from the front row who was pretending not to know us. It was my other best friend Lynn Stokes, and the three of us were in what you would call a major uniform debacle. Our drill team Pep rally uniforms had not come in at the start of football season. They arrived that morning. Reagan had picked these out of some wayward dance catalog because they were a shiny, lighter royal blue color she thought would really make us stand out. She certainly called that one. They were going to get us banned from preforming at the pep rally if principal Sabella was there. When we put the spandex skirts on, we all realized the sides of the skirts dipped up to showcase the sides of the top of each of our thighs. That was just a bonus compared to the rest of the shit show. The good news was our monogramed names on our upper right chest just above our boob on most of us had, in fact, been spelled correctly. That's a win you seldom get.

"You two are going to strut out onto the middle of that gym floor with me with your hats held high, while these other little shits struggle to keep their dignity or duck for cover. We are going to kick higher than you've ever kicked, smile bigger, and when you land in your final jump split, you will forgive me, knowing this will not in fact be the most embarrassing moment of our junior year."

Reagan pinched my butt cheek and pushed me to the front of the line. She locked arms with Lynn and physically raised a smile on her face with her fingers as they stepped into their own line of the drill team officers.

"Tits up!"

A whistle blew from the band's end of the gym, and we knew our drum major was counting them off to start our music.

Lynn stopped in her tracks before allowing the officers to take the last step onto the gym floor. "I'd just like to say, I'm almost a foot taller than the rest of you," she looked back at me, then at Reagan, "The exposure is far greater on my end. I'd like you both to think about that while we're doing the star kick to each corner of the gym in what our peers and teachers will basically perceive as bikini bottoms with a ruffle on me."

The band began the intro to the 1969 hit "The Spinning Wheel." I had to smile as I strutted out shortly after my two best friends, after all, the first verse of the song, had there been lyrics to the instrumental was, "What goes up...must come down," then there's something about riding a painted pony... You couldn't help but laugh, especially when the varsity cheerleaders' jaws dropped in unison.

I didn't know teenagers could whistle as loud as the ones in our student body crowd did. Everyone was cheering and yelling so loudly that I couldn't even hear the cow bell on my favorite part of the song. The whole thing was beyond absurd. It was so not Pure Pines, instead it felt more like a Parker Posey moment in the indie movie Party Girl. Maybe they thought it was a prank. I think I would have if I were watching from the stands.

Just when I thought we had to be over halfway through it, that I could just close my eyes the rest or the way until it was over...too late. We turned the corner to start the succession of star kicks that would eventually end in the jump splits, and there they were...the huddle of varsity cheerleaders fixated on the shitshow in front of them. Hey, the crowd was loving it, and if they were going to stare, I should probably make it worth their while. I couldn't help myself, as I high kicked their direction, I plastered the biggest fake, over-obnoxious, cheerleading-spirit smile I could achieve, and I winked as we fell into the splits ending the routine.

It must have been one hell of a kick routine. We got a standing ovation. We were supposed to march back into the stands to the drumbeat, but with all the chaos and a few unhinged faculty members, Reagan and Lynn led us back to the double doors we came from. The football team opposite us, sitting on their thrones on the gym floor where all the entertainment was perceivably for them, were on their feet whistling and cheering for us as if they were at a strip club.

The underclassman on the drill team looked as if they'd just gone skinny dipping for the first time and loved it. Their eyes were wide as they tried to catch their breath while still peeking out the double doors at the crowd.

"Why don't you all go ahead and get changed for class?" Lynn recommended to them. "I know we normally stay in..." She cleared her throat. "In uniform for the entire pep rally, but under the circumstances you should probably go get changed."

"Good idea." Reagan chimed in. "We'll let Mr. McClendon and the drum major know we dismissed you all early." Reagan nodded at Lynn. Seconds later, there was a hand on her shoulder.

"Ladies, would you mind making your way toward the principal Sabella's office as soon as the pep rally dismisses, um...before you change into your regular clothes."

Great. She wanted the evidence.

Mrs. Bishop, the office administrative assistant, did not wait for our response. "I can let Mr. McClendon know we've requested your presence, although in his defense he did appear to be as shocked as the rest of us when he turned from conducting the band to see what all the excitement was about, no doubt you ladies certainly made an impression. We'll see you in ten." And she was off.

"You're coming with us," Reagan said before I could open my mouth.

"I'm not an officer."

"There are no senior officers. We are the three juniors who started this line, and we're in it together. She tapped you on the back too."

"She was reaching passed me to get Lynn's attention." Lynn had walked a few feet away to open the door for the rest of the girls to go get changed.

"May I remind you, it was you who chose to back down and not try out for officer. Some misguided scruple about being fair to others because you were already in so many electives, when the truth is, you wanted to punish yourself for not making varsity cheerleader and you didn't want people to perceive you as a showoff." Trust me, we all showed something today."

Thank God, Lynn was headed back toward us from ushering off the others. She'd say I didn't have to go.

"Just remember for life, that's the difference between you and I. I still would have competed against you to be feature twirler, or Lynn for drum major, this just pissed my mom off way more than if either of you had ended up beating me."

"I hate you." I smiled endearingly at my best friend.

"Do you? Or do you admire my keen ability to see the truth?"

Lynn made an about face between the two of us and hooked her arms to ours. Come on ladies, and I use that term loosely given our current attire. "Let's go take our first beating of the year."

"It won't be our last time in the office together." I smiled triumphantly and walked with them. Although, I had nothing to do with the uniform debacle, and had advised against ordering them...the truth was it felt good to be included, especially when they didn't have to. Reagan was right though. In a way, she had taken one for the team and done this for me, Lynn as well if you got right down to it.

It was a funny thing that sort of trickled into our laps. The times changing so rapidly are what got the three of us into this pickle. The thing about East Texas back in the day is that it was, in fact, as pretentious and competitive as it sounded, but it was also about skill. Baby Boomers were determined their children would have, do, and be everything they couldn't and weren't. It was a lot of pressure to put on Generation X, hence enough teen angst to create the grunge phase. Somehow not caring seemed like the most impactful way to rebel, even though it would have been complete treason at Pure Pines. The skill part was somewhat due to not having Xbox or Game Boys when we were little. We barely just got Nintendo.

Thus, you had to put your kids in something to get them out of your hair. Most girls took dance and twirling or gymnastics. By the late 90s baton twirling, the really tiny attractive girl with a bun and diamond leotard who looks like she's freezing as she tosses multiple silver batons like daggers, spins around three to seven times, and catches one in her mouth, one between her legs and the other in her hand as she tosses another and bows to the crowd while leading the Christmas parade...had kind of played out. I guess no one wanted to practice that hard for anything anymore. Maybe it became more freakish as there was only one spot, whereas cheerleading had multiple spots available and was becoming more and more of a competitive sport. Enter the popularity of gymnastics. At last year's tryouts, well over half the girls competing could do a standing back flip if not a round off back handspring. I tapped out at the cartwheel.

Meanwhile, the feature twirler was fading into most schools barely having a majorette line that was becoming more and more mediocre and less skilled. When I cheered, Lynn and Reagan twirled on the last majorette line available to Pure Pines. It was a dying art. By the time they got to try out their sophomore year, anyone else who could twirl had just graduated. There weren't enough girls who could twirl a baton to make a majorette line. It nearly killed our mothers. In their day, cheerleaders were just a glorified pep squad that barely moved and did good to hold up pom poms.

The twirlers were the elite who had to stretch, dance, and bust their noses open trying to catch a "three-turn." Thus, one band director, three mothers, a school board decision, me, who did not make cheerleader due to my lack of tumbling skills, and three best friends later...we had the first Pure Pines High Stepping Drill Team.

Lynn and I had danced our entire lives. She was an excellent twirler as well. Her sister was a head majorette and taught her everything she knew. Reagan and I had been twirling together since we were four. I guess I did that instead of gymnastics. Either way, you had two roles available, a feature twirler that Pure Pines had already done away with, as there was no one good enough to try out the last five years before us, and drum major. It was already unfair to set Lynn and Reagan up for those odds, and then I came along, rejected by the cheerleading squad and my mom pushing me forward with baton in hand.

Two unequal positions for three girls talented enough for the feature twirler spot. With all baton twirling upperclassmen having graduated and no one left but the three of us to duke it out, Lynn and Reagan looked around at our competing schools that were fanatical about the surrounding college drill teams. We didn't live far from America's first drill team... The Rangerettes.

Most of the surrounding high schools already had kick and dance lines. Reagan proposed that the popularity of drill teams via the skill of high kicking, dance, and falling into the jump splits while wearing white boots and a hat could be one more thing for Pure Pines to excel in. Our mothers let go of their twirling or die mentalities and brought in Mrs. Tandy, a retired dancer from Dallas who apparently privately choreographed tryout routines for America's Sweethearts, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. A woman who would require at least three years of dance for anyone who tried out, a weigh in, and both the left and right leg splits. The school board had to fight her on the weigh in. Thank God.

It wasn't the fairest solution in terms of giving more girls an opportunity, but it did give nineteen skilled dancers in our high school one, which was more than any majorette line of twelve or varsity cheer squad of nine had ever done. Beyond that, it was extremely fair of Lynn and Reagan to do for me. That is why I refrained from officer tryouts. I thought that should be theirs.

I followed my two captains dressed like shiny blue Smurf-Barbies into the office and tried not to laugh out loud every time one of us had to pull Lycra out from riding up and exposing one a butt cheek. All I could say at this point was Thank God for Mrs. Tandy and her old school flesh color dance tights. We all called them ice skater-pantyhose, but they were as thick as a tarp, if a tarp could be made of flesh colored spandex, and the only saving grace to our uniform debut.

Lynn hated them because they did not make them yet for women of color. There were basically only "light, "toast" and "tan" to choose from. That was odd if you thought about it. Why wouldn't all human skin tones be available solely because they existed? Surely the 1980s FAME craze had demanded a pair of flesh color tights for black women? Hello...Irene Cara and Debbie Allen. There had been incredibly successful black and brown dancers for decades. It was really fucked up when things didn't make sense even beyond Pure Pines.

Not that Lynn needed flesh-colored tights anyway. She was tall, lean, and had the most gorgeous skin and legs you could imagine. Her skin was the perfect combination of onyx and mahogany, or midnight combined with honey. Not an ounce of cellulite. Her overall look of intelligence and gregarious wit were completed by two dimples on her cheeks you could not hide if you tried. She was famous for them, and they belonged on an ad for face wash, lipstick, or some luxury item that demanded a smile one could not resist. Lynn had face, body, and smarts.

I hadn't thought much about being friends with two people that attractive until I stood next to them in the office across what appeared to be Principal Sabella with...Coach Craig...and...Adrian Reed? His football jersey was folded and sitting on the desk. I couldn't help but wonder if he had gotten in trouble or suspended, but there was no way that would happen to him. I wanted to tug Reagan and Lynn and have them look, but I realized as I turned to Lynn they were already making crazy kiss faces and exploiting our shit show of a uniform at him, trying to make him laugh between Coach Craig's pacing and Principal Sabella's office window. We would no doubt be in there next. Too bad we couldn't fold these things up and leave them on his desk. I was then reminded what I too had on and that the top of Lynn's Rockette-length leg was practically up to my waist. I had not yet gotten that growth spurt Mom and I prayed for. I plopped down in a chair behind me immediately while Mrs. Bishop addressed Reagan and Lynn letting them know Sabella would be available shortly.

I peeked back up at the window just in time for Coach Craig to pace the opposite direction leaving Adrian's gaze directly on mine. He stared at me a moment through the window until a crooked little smile encroached his face. "What is that?" He mouthed with animated brows pinched together, waving his hand across his own body motioning the area of my outfit as much as he could without being seen by the two gentlemen pacing about him. I smiled back and my middle finger rose yet again.

I watched as Principal Sabella lowered the blinds on it. Not really, he was closing the blinds as he realized more people were trailing into the office area and Coach Craig was looking more and more upset in whatever dispute they were all having. I dropped my finger when I was in the clear from him. That was the last time things were normal between Adrian and I. Well, as normal as they could be at Pure Pines.