CHAPTER 1
The Deep Lagoon is an evergreen paradise where the creek bends and the earth rises behind it, creating a wide, full belly of a pool. A rope swing hangs from a tree limb high above the river’s edge, and if I let go at exactly the right spot, I can flip and land in the deepest part.
George stands near the water, angling her phone to catch the best selfie light. In her bikini top and cutoff shorts, a crystal pendant tangled in her wavy hair, my sister fully embodies the latest incarnation of her brand, George of the Wild. Back to nature, but like … with crystals and astrology memes. Her previous fashion project, Specs and the City, featured “hot girls wearing glasses in Brooklyn”—the actual tagline.
I’m pretty sure George only came to the Deep Lagoon because she needs me to take pictures of her looking hot in the woods. You’ve heard of the Instagram boyfriend? Meet me: the Instagram sister.
I used to feel like, if I watched George closely enough and tried my hardest to be just like her, someday I actually might be. But George is so George—and I’m still just so … me.
“Still rocking the boy shorts, huh, Bird?” George says, and I look down at my favorite swimsuit.
It feels like she’s calling me a little kid and I try not to let it show.
“I know, I know. I should switch to a string bikini so I, too, can constantly pick my own wedgie while I swim,” I say. But inside, I’m already shopping for something more grown-up. Less me. And then cringing at the thought of wearing it.
Boy shorts is a stupid name, anyway, for something girls wear.
George always jokes that Mom and Dad’s entire plan—naming her George, dressing her in a whole lot of yellow, trying to delay the inevitable onslaught of the world shoving what it means to be a girl down her throat—backfired. Instead, she became obsessed with all things pink and sparkly. She swears that’s why they gave up by the time I was born.
And it’s true. George, through all her many incarnations, is a legit femme icon. You’d think it’d rub off on me by proxy, and believe me, I’ve tried to absorb it. I spent the first two years of middle school trying to reinvent myself as George, but every time I curled my long hair or put on lip gloss, I felt like a kid in a costume, not a grown-up version of myself.
No matter what makeup I play with, or which outfits I try on: Inside, I’m still George’s tomboy (also kind of a stupid name for girls) kid sister. Which is why it’s ridiculous that I’ve let Lexie talk me into trying out for cheerleading.
The creek is so cold my breath catches, but I wade into the current and plunge my head under. The water smells like rocks, like snowmelt from the mountain, and it wakes me up the same way it does every summer we come to visit my grandparents. Only now, thanks to Mom’s midlife crisis, I live here.
I snake around the riverbank, up to where the rope hangs, and it feels like stepping back inside my skin, dripping in the warm summer air. My bare feet press into years of soft orange-brown pine needles layered over the cool soil, grounding me.
My best memories are tucked here in these mountains. Hiking Overlook, swimming anywhere the water’s deep and clear. The smell of evergreens stretching for miles. Fireflies floating like flickering lanterns. Campfires and s’mores. Spinning our names in sparkler script across the night sky, chins sticky with watermelon and river water.
I grip the rope and inhale the familiar mix of sap and needles, bark and forest floor, the water calling to me. I take a few steps back from the edge to get a running start. When I launch off the cliff and swing out, I recognize the familiar arc. I feel for it, the exact moment where the rope is at the perfect angle for release, and then—let go—I fly free, tuck my knees to my chest, and roll back, spinning.
I crash soles-first into the pool and come up for air, joy lighting up my cells like a full body smile.
“I got the best video of that,” George says. “And … uploaded.” I step out of the water and grab my towel, hardly believing.
She holds it up for me to see.
The post is titled POETRY IN MOTION: the video of me with an unattributed Keats quote—Beauty is truth, truth beauty. The Deep Lagoon. If ten years from now the internet misattributes the Keats line to a beauty influencer named George, I know why.
“There’s nothing more beautiful than someone doing what they’re meant to do,” George says. “I know you think Mom’s full of crap right now, but she’s right. It really is the privilege of a lifetime to be who you are.”
I shake my wet hair like a dog coming out of the water. I don’t need to hear any more about Mom’s midlife crisis. How her sudden need to find her bliss means we have to live here, now.
My entire life used to be gymnastics, and since I quit, I’ve had one focus. Not friends. Not fun. Not some cliché list of how to seize the day before graduation.
I focus on my future. Which, for the record, has more to do with how many AP classes I ace, how many competitive internships I rack up, and how often and impressively I volunteer. All of which are harder to do out here in the middle of nowhere.
I don’t get into it, but what George says hurts more than it helps. Flying through the air and nailing a complicated move is my bliss. Not that gymnastics always felt that way. It was all-consuming. Painful. Incredibly hard. And then over.
A hundred and fifty pounds of pure, unadulterated muscle, I used to boast. Back before Coach told me that with my body growing as it was—taller, thicker, wider—my shot at making it from Level 10 to Elite was shrinking. That it didn’t matter how many twenty-hour weeks I put in. How hard I trained to be the best. I grew too big. Coach said it like he was doing me a favor.
It’s nothing personal, he said. As if there’s anything more personal than your body.
“Some things never change,” George says, looking around as we leave the Deep Lagoon, and I want to believe that’s true. Even though all signs currently point to the fact that it’s definitely not.
CHAPTER 2
I’m sitting shotgun on my way to cheerleading tryouts in Lexie’s beloved ride, Ted—named for the used car salesman she bought him from, the one who told her cars deserve pretty names like pretty girls. It feels like I’m being held hostage, even though no one is making me do this. I have actual glitter in my hair courtesy of the palmful Lexie blew at me when I got into the car. With her work visor hanging from the rearview mirror, Ted smells like the inside of a Stewart’s Shop: coffee, ice cream, and apple fritters.
I text George: Remind me again why I’m doing this, even though I know exactly what she’s going to write.
“You guys are so lucky your mom had a nervous breakdown,” Lexie says, riding the air with her palm out the window. “My migratory summer Birdie, finally here forever.”
“Hardly,” I say. “It’s the summer before senior year, so unless I fail out of life, forever’s kind of a stretch.” Even if my parents have sabotaged my future by dragging me to this Podunk town, I think.
To bloom where you’re planted, George writes back. It’s her mantra every time I complain about moving and having to be here now. Apparently blooming where I’m planted has something to do with a face full of glitter and a stomach knotted with dread.
I love Lexie, but it’s different up here in the mountains. At my high school back in New Jersey, all anyone talked about last semester was their SAT scores and what internships they wanted to get this summer so they could go to Yale instead of Penn. Lexie and her friends don’t worry about any of that.
Lexie’s trying out for cheer for the first time because she loves making TikTok dance videos with her cheerleader best friend, and she works as many shifts at Stewart’s as she can. Unless I never want to see her once school starts—and she’s literally my only friend, here or otherwise—I’ve got to make the squad, too. I haven’t had any real friends since I quit gymnastics and lost all of mine. It’d be kind of nice to start the year on a team.
The thing is, even though I can knock out a floor routine in gymnastics, I couldn’t be less … cheerleader-y. I mean, I admire them. All that pep. The unfailing, season-long, outcome-independent optimism. The wholehearted embrace of all things glitter.
I even actually really like glitter. It’s just, when you put all those pieces together, I can’t do it. I know there’s not one right way to be a girl. But sometimes it feels like the world thinks there is, and I’m not it. Cheerleaders, though? They nail it.
We pull into the parking lot and the knot in my stomach burns. Kayleigh, Lexie’s best friend, who’s vying for captain, spots us and runs over, her curled and glitter-sprayed pigtails trailing behind her like handlebar streamers. I’ve never felt so unprepared for anything in my life.
“Are we ready for this or what, bitches?” Kayleigh shakes her pom-poms in the air and executes a perfect double cross, a term I just learned.
Lexie bounds out of the car, beaming. “I practiced only a million times more when I got home last night, and I finally nailed that eight-count I’ve been stumbling on.”
“Shut up! Seriously?” Kayleigh shoves her the way only friends can without consequence, and I wonder if there’s a maximum capacity for loneliness, or if it’s the kind of thing that can keep expanding forever until it’s completely overtaken all other feelings. Like an invasive species.
“I just want tryouts to be over so my mom will chill the F out,” Kayleigh says. “She’s obsessed with me being named captain. She’s such a dance mom.”
“Like they’d choose anyone else,” Lexie says, shooting a dismissive glance at the other girls in the lot.
At the door to the gym, we’re greeted by a petite woman with pink lipstick. Her brown hair is pulled into a ponytail, the collar of her polo shirt popped around her tanned neck.
“Welcome, ladies!” she calls out, her voice huskier than I expected. “New faces!”
“These strays are with me, Mo,” Kayleigh says, and it’s a relief the way she claims me as her own.
“What’s Creepy doing here?” Lexie nudges Kayleigh in the ribs and points to the back hallway door of the gymnasium. A girl in hole-ridden black jeans, wearing intense eyeliner, leans against the wall, notebook and pen in hand. Her hair is dyed black, with two chunks of bright purple framing her face, and her shirt is homespun—a white T-shirt with BOW TO THE QUEEN written in Sharpie.
“Probably trying to poach our talent for her family’s freak show,” Kayleigh says.
“Or she’s come to harvest bodies for the bone store?” Lexie says, and they both laugh.
“Seriously?” I whisper to Lexie.
“Once upon a time, she was halfway normal,” Kayleigh says.
When she stares at the girl against the wall, the girl stares back. She doesn’t even blink.
A group of guys—football players, from the look of their necks—pass by the girl, and one of them hits the notebook in her hand, knocking it to the floor. Lexie laughs and shakes her head, but the girl looks unflustered. She juts her chin out at him, like she dares him to try something else, and when the group disappears into the weight room, she picks up her notebook and returns her intense focus to the tryout. Like it never happened.
I blink.
Mo steps to the front and beams a quintessential cheerleader smile.
I’m not cut out for this. The girls wear so much glitter it coats the gym floor, which sparkles under fluorescent lights, and I watch them, wishing I could just do what George says. Bloom here—out of this rock-hard bleacher seat where I’ve been planted—like the flower I’ve always been meant to be.
But flowers need sunshine to bloom, and soil to sink roots into. They don’t bloom on command in a high school gymnasium under flickering banks of fluorescent lights.
Kayleigh jumps up when she’s called to the front. Two other girls flank her sides, and in unison, they chant, “Five, six, seven, eight,” and then launch into dance moves.
I told myself it would all be OK. I’d impress them with my floor work. I half imagined myself bounding into the room, handspring after handspring, a human Slinky. I’d land the final flip, and a crowd would have gathered, in awe. Intimidated by the new girl.
But the only one intimidated here is me.
The dance goes as badly as I fear. Everyone else follows along—even the guys shake their hips like Shakira—and though my body is flailing its limbs in somewhat similar directions to what the choreography intends, the movements themselves can hardly be called dancing.
Mo roams the floor, making notes on her clipboard and giving suggestions, all while beaming a cheek-cramping smile. I can barely breathe when she stops at me, her head tilted.
“You’re not as far off as it feels,” Mo says. “Try this.” She starts to sway to the beat, leading with each shoulder and then curving back on herself at the waist. The others continue around us, and I feel singled out.
If I try to do that, I won’t look like she does.
“Aren’t you even going to try?” The music ends and Mo’s husky voice is the only sound in the gym. “It’s called a tryout for a reason.”
“I am trying,” I whisper, paralyzed by the spotlight suddenly on me. I look for Lexie, in the front row right behind Kayleigh, but she doesn’t even meet my eyes.
“Kayleigh says you’re a heck of a gymnast, so I’ve got high hopes for you. But you’ve got a lot to learn, and you’re going to need to be a team player,” Mo says.
Everyone else is silent and watching, catching their breath from dancing. My face grows hot. I can’t do what she’s asking me to do. I just can’t. But maybe if I show her what I can do, she’ll give me a shot anyway.
I spot a long clear space to take off running and launch into the opening sequence I imagined for myself. I round off into a triple back handspring and close with a backflip, sticking the landing like I never stopped training. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
