Let's hear it for cheerleaders
By Chelsea Cain |
August 12, 2012, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
FICTION has not been kind to cheerleaders. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that future writers are more likely to be found scowling on the bleachers than doing back handsprings across the gymnasium floor. But now Megan Abbott has put her spirit fingers to the task of writing the Great American Cheerleader Novel, and - stop scowling - it's spectacular.
Addy is 16, and she and her friend Beth are the queen bees of their high school cheer squad. When a new coach is hired, feelings are hurt and friendships are tested.
Sounds terrible, right? But don't let Abbott fool you. "Dare Me," her sixth novel, is subversive stuff. It's "Heathers" meets "Fight Club" good. Abbott pulls it all off with a fresh, nervy voice, and a plot brimming with the jealousy and betrayal you'd expect from a bunch of teenage girls.
Cheering, for Addy, isn't about school spirit; it's about combating the mind-numbing abyss of teenage existence. "Ages 14 to 18, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something - anything - to begin."
Practice is the only thing that matters, followed by hanging out at the new coach's house. The coach is bent on whipping the squad into shape, and they push themselves to please her, living on broth and Adderall. Beth resists, but Addy thrives on the coach's attention. Soon Addy has taken to "driving by her house like a boy might do."
Addy just wants something to happen - to feel something real. "I guess I'd been waiting forever, my palm raised. Waiting for someone to take my girl body and turn it out, steel me from the inside, make things matter for me, like never before."
Abbott is unsentimental in her descriptions. Like most teenagers, Addy is world-weary and hard to impress. Even when Addy feels something, she doesn't trust it. "This feeling, this high, it's not real. It's that Jesus-love flooding through me, by which I mean the Adderall and the pro clinical hydroxy-hot with green tea extract and the eating-nothing-but-hoodia-lollipops-all-day."
When something happens - a suspicious death - it tests Addy's disengaged mien.
Abbott evokes cheerleading in all its sweaty, starving glory. "The air thick with Biofreeze and Tiger Balm and hairspray and the sugared coconut of tawny body sprays." As Addy explains, "Our tans are armor."
"Dare Me" reveals something of the consuming nature of female friendships. But Abbott is also on to something bigger. Addy describes a girl making out with a boy, "practicing the telling of the moment even as the moment slips from her." It is this moment of adolescence that "Dare Me" captures so beautifully, the in-betweenness; the story of girls old enough for sex but young enough that time still goes by at a crawl. "That was a long time ago," Addy says about an event at camp. "That was last summer."
Addy is 16, and she and her friend Beth are the queen bees of their high school cheer squad. When a new coach is hired, feelings are hurt and friendships are tested.
Sounds terrible, right? But don't let Abbott fool you. "Dare Me," her sixth novel, is subversive stuff. It's "Heathers" meets "Fight Club" good. Abbott pulls it all off with a fresh, nervy voice, and a plot brimming with the jealousy and betrayal you'd expect from a bunch of teenage girls.
Cheering, for Addy, isn't about school spirit; it's about combating the mind-numbing abyss of teenage existence. "Ages 14 to 18, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something - anything - to begin."
Practice is the only thing that matters, followed by hanging out at the new coach's house. The coach is bent on whipping the squad into shape, and they push themselves to please her, living on broth and Adderall. Beth resists, but Addy thrives on the coach's attention. Soon Addy has taken to "driving by her house like a boy might do."
Addy just wants something to happen - to feel something real. "I guess I'd been waiting forever, my palm raised. Waiting for someone to take my girl body and turn it out, steel me from the inside, make things matter for me, like never before."
Abbott is unsentimental in her descriptions. Like most teenagers, Addy is world-weary and hard to impress. Even when Addy feels something, she doesn't trust it. "This feeling, this high, it's not real. It's that Jesus-love flooding through me, by which I mean the Adderall and the pro clinical hydroxy-hot with green tea extract and the eating-nothing-but-hoodia-lollipops-all-day."
When something happens - a suspicious death - it tests Addy's disengaged mien.
Abbott evokes cheerleading in all its sweaty, starving glory. "The air thick with Biofreeze and Tiger Balm and hairspray and the sugared coconut of tawny body sprays." As Addy explains, "Our tans are armor."
"Dare Me" reveals something of the consuming nature of female friendships. But Abbott is also on to something bigger. Addy describes a girl making out with a boy, "practicing the telling of the moment even as the moment slips from her." It is this moment of adolescence that "Dare Me" captures so beautifully, the in-betweenness; the story of girls old enough for sex but young enough that time still goes by at a crawl. "That was a long time ago," Addy says about an event at camp. "That was last summer."
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