One

IT WAS JUST supposed to be an afternoon of pool fun to beat the Texas heat. Joy was not expecting to fall in love.

It was the first full week of summer vacation after sixth grade, and Joy’s good friend, Maxine Newman—Max for short—had invited her over to cool off. The hot, humid air lay over everything like a wet wool blanket. It felt hard to breathe.

“Come on through to the back,” Max said when she opened the big front door of her family’s elegant two-story suburban house. “Did you bring your bathing suit?”

“Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d rather just sit in the shade.”

“Really? You don’t want to swim? That’s cool.”

The pool was encircled by pretty landscaping with a concrete fountain, a fancy swing set, a couple of big shade trees, and a table with an umbrella. On the way through the kitchen, they picked up lemonade and crunchy snacks.

Someone who saw the two girls together might have thought they were sisters. They both had the same brown hair, a sprinkle of freckles across their cheeks, and skin that tanned easily in the Texas sun. Joy’s hair was longer, reaching down to the middle of her back in a long, straight fall. Max’s was cut shoulder-length and had a touch of curl to it.

In the pool, Max’s older sister, Priscilla, and her three friends were trying to do something, but Joy couldn’t figure out what. They were in the part of the pool where the water came up to just under their arms, standing all clustered together, and Priscilla and two of the friends kept throwing the fourth girl up into the air, high enough to try to do a sort of flying dance move. Then when she came down again, it looked like they were trying to catch her, but mostly they were diving out of the way. Each time they all laughed about it and tried again.

“What are they doing?” Joy asked.

“They’re trying to do a pike open.”

“What’s a pike open?”

Max dropped her mouth open in an exaggerated expression of surprise. “You don’t know what a pike open is?”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s a basket toss in cheer. You know what cheer is, right?”

“Not really, no.”

This time Max’s surprise was real. “How can you live in Appleton and not know cheer? It’s like the official sport of Texas. Well, besides football, of course.”

Joy felt a little defensive now, but Max wasn’t being mean—Max was never mean—so she felt comfortable saying, “You know we only moved here four months ago.”

“Oh, right. Remind me again, where did y’all live before?”

“Minnesota.”

“Gucci.” Max pushed her hair to the side of her forehead. “Anyway, we have got to get you up to speed right away, because you can’t live in Texas and not know cheer.”

From the water came the sound of a shriek and a splash, followed by laughter. The two girls looked back toward the pool. Max said, “Okay, check it out. See Priscilla and her friend Renee, there, standing on the sides? They’re the bases. And then Claire, the girl with the green bathing suit, she’s the spotter. She stands behind. Allie is the flyer. She’s the one they throw up in the air and catch.” As they watched, the girls in the pool clustered together again, did a countdown, and shouted like they were pushing extra hard. Allie flew higher than before and did the dance move, touching her toes and then arching her back. When she came down, the three other girls stayed in close and caught her. Then all four of them whooped and danced in the water.

“Yes!” Max hollered. “That was totally dope! They did it!”

Joy’s heart was beating in her ears, and she felt a warm rush go through her body that had nothing to do with the swampy summer air. Something about what Priscilla and her friends were doing called powerfully to her. “Max, can you show me more?”

“Sure. We need more lemonade anyway. Let’s go inside and check out some videos.”

Inside the house, the AC felt cold after the heat of the backyard. Between that and the excitement she was feeling, Joy began to shiver. Max’s dad was sitting on the couch, scrolling on his phone. “Hello, girls,” he said. “All done swimming today?”

“Joy wants to learn about cheer,” Max said. “Can we use the computer in your office?”

“You sure can, kiddo. Go right ahead.”

In the office Joy and Max pushed aside the rolling office chair and stood side by side at the big desk. Max did a quick search, and then they were watching videos together of people dressed in flashy spandex and sequins, dancing and vaulting and spinning and flying through the air.

Joy gripped the edge of the desk. Her body buzzed with excitement. All her life she had been an athletic kid, loving the feeling of throwing herself through space. She had learned to do a cartwheel when she was four. The acrobatics in cheer looked like the most fun thing to do in the world. Plus, the clothes and sparkles and the big bows in the girls’ hair looked incredibly fabulous. Joy felt her heart open like a flower . . . and that was the moment she fell in love with cheer.

Most nights before turning out her light, Joy wrote in a journal. The night of the day she fell in love with cheer, she lay looking around her room for a minute before starting her entry. The room was small, with a low ceiling. The one little window looked out at the back side of the hedge in their tiny front yard, and several times a minute the sound of cars passing on their busy road could be heard. With her mom’s help, Joy had done what she could to make the room prettier and more pleasant. Joy especially liked the colorful cloth thumbtacked to the ceiling, and the strings of soft white lights strung around the walls.

Joy had started her first journal when she was eight, and she had carefully written Joy’s Journal on the first page. Then she noticed that both words started with “Jo,” which was the reason for how, four years later, she started her entry each night. She rolled over onto her stomach and started to write.

Hey Jojo,

Today I learned what I want to do for the rest of my life! Well, besides drawing and sewing, my other two loves. Cheer is my destiny. I want to be a flyer. It’s a good thing I’m so small for my age.

After Max and I watched videos, we went out and practiced handstands and stuff on the lawn until it got too hot. I couldn’t wait to tell Mom, even though I wasn’t sure what she would say. I wish she liked girly stuff as much as I do, just like I wish she cared as much about church as I do. Anyway, she said, “That’s nice,” in that distracted way she does sometimes, so that was pretty okay, I guess.

Of course, Will had to comment. He said cheer was stupid, because why should girls be on the side, cheering for the boys? He said it was sexist. I tried to tell him it wasn’t like that, that it is its own sport, but he never listens, and then Mom did that sigh she does and rubbed between her eyes. My brother is so basic.

After dinner, I watched more videos and found a list of cheer words to learn, and tomorrow I’m going over to Max’s house again to learn some more. This is so totally lit! I hope I can sleep.

God bless Mom, and Max, and her sister and her sister’s friends, and cheer, and, fine, God bless Will too, even though he is such a jerk all the time.

Two

JOY STARTED WATCHING every cheer movie and show and video and visiting every cheer website she could find. She and Max and another friend of Max’s named Steph Carter formed the Sparkle Squad, which was the name they came up with together for their team of three. The squad had one mission: to all make it onto the Appleton East Middle School cheer team when seventh grade started in the fall. Tryouts were the last week of summer before school, and it was reportedly a very hard team to make, especially because everyone had to try out again every year.

When it came to tryouts, Joy faced a challenge the other two girls didn’t. She had to get her mother to agree. Jenny Simmons tended to worry, too much in Joy’s opinion, and to be cautious about things that might cost money. Joy found it difficult to stay silent when she was feeling so eager, but she knew from experience that it was best to wait for the right moment. A morning came when Mom was humming as she made her coffee. “Mom?” Joy said.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“You know I’m having so much fun with Max and Steph, learning cheer.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s really good for me, physically and mentally.” These were ideas Joy knew her mother liked.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“So, what I was wondering was, can I try out for cheer at school in the fall?” Mom stopped humming and frowned. “Please? I just love it so much.”

“I’ll think about it,” Mom said, but she smiled and nodded as she said it, and Joy knew she was in.

At first when Max suggested inviting Steph to join the Sparkle Squad, Joy wasn’t sure it was a good idea. The upside was that, of the three of them, Steph was the only one who was already on the cheer team. She had a lot of skills, and there was so much that Joy could learn from her. The downside was that Steph was an intense, bossy girl, not afraid to tell you that you were doing something wrong in a way that sometimes seemed just plain mean. Steph had pale skin but black hair and eyebrows, and when she frowned, Joy felt intimidated.

Joy never said anything, though, because in her research she was learning that in cheer, attitude and teamwork were just as important as strength and flexibility and skill. Cheerleaders were not just athletes—they were team players and ambassadors of school spirit.

Learning this only made Joy love cheer more. It was like there were two teams, the cheer team itself, and then the bigger team of the whole school, in which the cheer team had an important role. It felt just right. It felt like home.

Another reason Joy never said anything when Steph was bossy or mean was that Steph’s house, even though it was almost as small and old as Joy’s, had a trampoline in the backyard, which was excellent for practicing jumps. Mostly they practiced at Max’s house, because it had by far the best shade, and because of Priscilla, who was in high school cheer and who would come outside sometimes and coach them.

They only practiced at Joy’s house once, and it didn’t go well, because the Simmons’ tiny backyard had no shade, no trampoline, and hardly any lawn. Besides that, there was a lot of noise from the auto body shop on the other side of the high wooden fence in back; and Viking, the Simmons’ rambunctious black lab, went nuts watching them and got in the way if he was outside, or barked and barked through the sliding glass door if they shut him inside.

By the end of the first week with the Sparkle Squad, Joy had made a vow to turn herself into the best possible cheerleader she could be. There was a lot to learn—jumps and tumbling and stunts. There was also the challenge of getting her body in shape. In particular, at the start of the summer, she was not as flexible as she needed to be. To be in cheer, you needed to be able to kick your legs high and bend them every which way, and at first Joy’s body just wouldn’t do what she wanted it to.

She loved a challenge, though, so she set herself a specific goal: by the end of the summer, she wanted to do a scorpion. In the video she watched over and over, a girl who looked like a ballet dancer kicked one leg up and back, so high that her foot was behind her head. Then she reached both arms back over her shoulders and caught the raised foot in both hands, so that her arms and legs and curved back made a circle.

In June, practicing in her room, Joy wasn’t even close to being able to catch her foot behind her head, so she worked first on doing a good arabesque, which was standing on one leg and pointing the other leg straight out behind your body, then leaning forward, with your upper body arching up and your arms held out to the sides. That was easy, so then she moved on to a scale, which was holding one leg straight up and to the side and lifting it with one hand, while putting the other arm up to form a V position. She could do a pretty good scale by the end of July, but she still couldn’t catch her foot behind her head. Luckily, her body seemed like it was willing to get more flexible, so she just kept stretching and working, and finally, in the second week of August, she caught her foot!

She knew it wasn’t a very good scorpion yet, but it was still a thrill. She was alone when she did it, practicing in the weedy backyard, despite the machine shop noise and the sticky late summer heat. Max was on vacation with her family, and Joy didn’t want to practice with with Steph alone, who was still more Max’s friend than hers. She had to tell somebody, though, so she ran inside, looking for her mother.

The poky kitchen with its old banged-up cabinets and brown-green linoleum floor was empty. So was the tiny laundry room. In her bedroom, maybe? Joy ran down the one short hall. The door was open a little bit, and she barged through. Her mom was sitting on her bed with her head bowed, and she had a tissue in her hand. Joy screeched to a halt. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Mom looked up. She had tear tracks on her face. “It’s okay, honey.”

Joy knew that her mother got sad and stressed sometimes. Joy’s father had left when Joy was still a baby, so Mom was on her own raising Joy and Will. Joy moved the rest of the way around the bed and gave her mom a hug. Her mother hugged her back and cried a little more. They didn’t need to say anything. Then Mom wiped her eyes and patted herself on the knees. “Back to it,” she said. “What did you want to tell me?”

Joy shared her scorpion news, and her mom said encouraging things. She had always been the kind of mom who supported what her kids wanted to do once she decided it was okay, even if she didn’t care about those things herself, and even though she also worried. A couple of times she had warned Joy not to stretch quite so much quite so fast, and Joy actually paid attention to that after a time when she tried harder than usual to do a split and felt a ripping sensation on the inside of her leg, and had to stop practicing for a couple of days.

There was another thing to worry about too. They had quickly learned that cheer was expensive, and the Simmons family did not have any money to spare. So Mom fretted. But she also always remembered to say, “If it’s important to you, sweetheart, we’ll find a way,” and Joy loved her for it.

Hey Jojo,

I finally did a scorpion today! It wasn’t very good yet, but it was still amazing to do it. I can’t wait to show Max and Steph.

I wish I knew how to help Mom feel less sad. I think it would help if she listened more to Reverend Morales when she talks about hope and trusting in the Lord, but that one time I said something to her about that, it was like she didn’t hear me. Maybe I could put together a cheer routine just for her, but I guess that probably wouldn’t help. She still doesn’t really get how much I love cheer, but at least she’s letting me do it.

Ten days until tryouts! And only six practice days, after Max gets back from vacation. I hope I make the team! It’s all I ever wanted in the whole world.

God bless Mom and Will, and Max and Steph, and God bless cheer!

Three

ONCE MAX GOT home from vacation, the Sparkle Squad put all their energy in their last week of practice into learning skills they would have to demonstrate at tryouts. There were some basic drills to do, which Joy felt confident about, and a routine to learn, which made her more nervous. She could do all the moves—that wasn’t the problem. The hardest things were a toe touch and a herkie, and she was good at both. The problem was that sometimes in the middle of the routine she couldn’t quite remember fast enough what the next move was, so she hesitated, or even, once or twice, had to bail out. When that happened, she didn’t need Steph’s sarcastic eyebrows to know that it wasn’t good enough.

At one August practice in the Newmans’ big playroom—they were practicing inside because of the thunderstorm happening outside, making a field of splashes out of the swimming pool—Max’s big sister, Priscilla, had helpful advice. “Lots of cheerleaders have a hard time remembering routines,” she said. “The answer is practice, practice, and more practice.”

So Joy practiced every day. She practiced with the Sparkle Squad, and at home on her own. Remembering her mom’s warnings about over-doing it, she sometimes only hinted at the moves with gentle gestures, but in her mind she was cementing the order in place, until, by the last few days before tryouts, the routine was running on a loop in her head, all day and all night long.

When tryout day finally came and her mom drove her to the school, Joy was feeling a mix of confident, nervous, and excited. She was wearing her favorite lucky shorts, the lavender ones her grandmother back in Minnesota had helped her sew, and an Appleton East Cheer T-shirt that Priscilla had given her. At the dollar store Mom had helped her pick out a purple bow with sequins for her hair.

The Sparkle Squad had decided they would all meet in the parking lot before tryouts. When they got together, Max looked as excited as Joy felt. Steph never showed her feelings much, but she had on her intensity face, tight around the eyes and mouth.

Toward the end of the summer, the Sparkle Squad had started making up cheers of their own. Now, they did one of the short ones for getting pumped up, standing in a tight triangle with their hands together in the middle, and chanting:

Sparkle Squad is on the floor.

Look out, world, here we come!

Joy the rock star,

Max the GOAT,

Steph the queen,

Here we come!

Goooooooo, Sparkle Squad!

Then they went in together, ready to dazzle the judges.

Inside, a scary surprise was waiting. At least, it was scary for Joy. She had assumed that they would get to try out together, but it turned out not to be so. They were given paper numbers to pin to their shirts, and then they were called into the gym in groups of three by number, and you didn’t get to pick who the other two were.

Joy’s heart started to race. “Wait, what?” she said. “I don’t know if I can do this without you guys.”

“It’s always like this,” Steph said, in her usual hard voice. She shook her head.

Max was kinder, as always. “Come on, Joy, you’ve got this. You know the routine as well as either of us, and if you’re going to be on the team, you’re going to have to be able to cheer next to anyone. Just remember to give it everything you’ve got.”

Joy smiled at her friend, but she was still scared, and before she had figured out a way to get her confidence back, her number was called. She gave Max one last frightened glance and then went through the door into the gym.

The judges were the cheer coach, Emily Porter, and four mom-aged ladies. Coach Porter was in her twenties and looked younger, almost like a teenager. She was a small but muscular woman, a former flyer, with dark brown skin and tight curly hair cut short. She stood a little apart, watching with a still, unreadable face. The four other judges sat on folding chairs at a table with clipboards and papers in front of them, and they looked like they might be former cheerleaders. You could see it in their pulled-back ponytails and heavy eyebrow makeup, and in their faces, which had different versions of the same kind of intensity that was often visible on Steph’s face.

Joy’s fear spiked as she walked up to the line, but as she took her position, she felt something shift inside her. She wasn’t going to let Steph or these judges or anyone make her feel like she wasn’t good enough. Was she or was she not in love with cheer? She was. Had she or had she not practiced and studied and trained for hours and hours all summer long? She had. And didn’t she have just as much intensity inside her as anyone else on the whole planet? Why, yes, she did. As she put her hands on her hips for the first drill, she tossed her ponytail back, held up her chin, and stared at the four women behind the table. “I can so do this,” she whispered to herself.

Hey Jojo,

Tryouts went pretty well, I think. I messed up one part—the toe touch—but I kept moving, so it was seamless. Fingers crossed! Max said hers didn’t go well, but she’s always hard on herself, so I bet she did better than she thinks. Steph didn’t say much, so I don’t know how she did, but probably fine. She was already on the team last year, and she’s just really good at cheer.

Now comes the waiting part. I hate waiting! They said we’ll get a phone call either way the Saturday before schools starts. That’s five days that I have to wait. This is going to be the longest week of my life.

If I don’t make the team, I will be so bummed. But Mom and Priscilla both said the same thing about that. They said if you don’t get in, you can practice some more and try again next year. It’s just like when I missed the toe touch. I found my place and kept going. So either way I won’t give up. I am still praying that I get in, though, praying so hard.

God bless Mom and Will, and Max and Priscilla and Steph and Coach Porter and those nice judge ladies, and God bless cheer!