There was a stretch of silence, then the sound of her measured inhale. I didn’t have time…but she went through the checklist anyway—Dr. Whitaker, breathe, name five things, call someone—the routine she’d drilled into me until I could recite it in my sleep.
“Text me after the game,” she said finally. “Just a quick ‘I’m fine.’ Don’t make me remind you.”
“I’ll text,” I said.
It was easier than arguing.
“Good.” And then the line went dead.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and pulled the tiger head on, the foam pressing in around my face until the world shrank to a narrow tunnel of fabric and mesh. The inside smelled like Febreze…not a crisp kind of clean, but the desperate kind, two quick sprays trying to cover a season’s worth of sweat.
The foam head scratched against my forehead every time I moved, the neckline rubbed the skin under my jaw until it burned, and my exhales came back at me hot and sour.
The crowd roared somewhere beyond the tunnel, the band already playing. I took a steadying breath and stepped out into the light.
Instantly, the noise hit…drums, whistles, a thousand voices melting into one. The world outside reduced itself to twograiny ovals of mesh, a tunnel of color and motion that made everything feel far away.
And honestly? I was glad for it. The narrowness. The heat. The way no one could see my face.
Underneath the fur and foam, nobody could tell how empty I looked. How much effort it took just to stand here, pretending to cheer when all I wanted was to disappear. The anonymity was the only thing that made it bearable, the only reason I could still show up without crumbling.
I hadn’t started out looking like this.
When I’d tried out, it was forhim. Because if I couldn’t sit beside him, couldn’t touch him, couldn’thavehim, at least I could stand twenty yards away instead of two hundred. Close enough to breathe the same air and pretend that was enough.
Now, it felt like punishment.
He was still here, out there on the field, helmet glinting under the lights…but every second, I had to remind myself I was done with him. I had to force my eyes to stay off number twenty-three, to cheer for the team without looking for him. And the worst part was, I’d be stuck in this suffocating suit for the rest of the season, waving and dancing and pretending like I wasn’t cheering with a broken heart.
I guess at least I was good at it. Once, tumbling had been mine. Saturday cheer gyms, chalk dust in the air, roundoffs and back handsprings until my wrists ached. Competitions where the mat smelled like rubber and sweat, and the sound of the crowd was enough to make me feel like I mattered.
The years away from a mat had rusted it all. So the week I saw that flyer and I’d gotten the idea to be the tiger, it had felt like starting over.
I’d practiced everywhere I could.
The rec center in the weird hour between intramurals and the janitor making his rounds. My dorm room with a pad thatwas basically a yoga mat pretending to be a spring floor. I pulled and stretched until my hamstrings cried, I rocked into bridges until my shoulders loosened, I did roundoffs into wobbly back handsprings until the fear shut up. The first time I didn’t fall, I lay on the floor and laughed until I was crying because I was so shocked that I’d managed to do it.
I auditioned. I got the phone call. I picked up the suit the same day they handed me the laminated schedule that said when I’d be on the field, when I’d learn dances with the team…when I’d be a cartoon with a permanent grin.
And since that moment, every eight-count had been for him.
Now, I didn’t know who it was for.
The speakers thumped, and the crowd swelled like a tide. The first horn stab of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” punched across the stadium, and the student section lost their collective minds. To my left, the dance team snapped into motion, ponytails arcing like metronomes, sequins strobing in the lights. Their smiles were a language; I didn’t speak it, so the suit did it for me. I raised my foam paws, tilted the tiger head on the beat, hit the arm sweeps big enough to read in the upper decks.
It was loud enough to make my bones hum. Bass rumbled through the turf. The drum line under the bleachers added a heartbeat to the song. The counts clicked in my head the way they always did now—five, six, seven, eight, hit-hit, travel, hold—and my body moved, grateful for the instruction manual. Grateful I was just the tiger…a joke everyone could love.
Instead of the joke I really was.
I clapped and popped my knees and threw in the back handspring on the diagonal I’d practiced three hundred times in the rec center when no one was looking. The head wobbled and then settled; I landed with my feet exactly on my taped marks. The crowd roared like I’d done something miraculous. The dancers next to me grinned toward the first row. My breathscraped my throat and came back to me damp. For a handful of beats, moving swallowed everything else.
My gaze finally slipped before I could stop it, though, drawn by something I couldn't seem to fight. It tunneled through the mesh, cutting past the dancers, the band, the cheer arc, the roaring crowd…past everything until it landed exactly where it always did.
Matty Adler stood at the sideline, his helmet tucked under one arm. His black hair was curled damp at the ends; the tape on his right wrist flashed white then dull then white again as he flexed his fingers. Parker said something, his mouth wide with a laugh, and Jace, because he was apparently incapable of not being a cartoon even when there was already a cartoon on the field, did a ridiculous shimmy the exact second the horns hit again.
Matty wasn’t paying attention to me. He just stood there. Calm. At ease. The sort of confidence that drew every eye without even trying.
And even though he wasn’t looking…I still danced harder.
