"Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep first wrote about the concept of liminality when he developed the idea of the rites of passage. He defined a 'rite of separation' (preliminary rite), rite of transition (liminal rite), and rite of incorporation (post-liminal rite). This transition theory explained that changes in people's life stages follow this pattern." - Theodora Blanchfield, AMFT, VeryWellMind

o-o-o

Tuesday, November 29th

I wake up tired, but excited. Today the school paper was going to be published, and I couldn't wait for everyone to read all the amazing things that Donna wrote about me in her article.

I didn't read the school paper too often. Only when there was something really important, like about cheerleading, or a school dance. Or when I knew Donna had written a controversial piece that would shake up the school for a bit.

I definitely plan on reading her article this week and forcing everyone I know to read it too. I can't wait to be in the limelight, and I spend an extra twenty minutes picking out a cute outfit and making sure my make-up looks flawless.

I'd tried to get Donna to let me read the article early, but I hadn't seen her since last week. I'd avoided everyone after Thanksgiving, feeling very woeful after spending the night alone in my room while my parents got charismatically drunk with their guests downstairs.

But then, yesterday at school I hadn't seen Donna either. That wasn't entirely unusual; usually the Mondays before the paper was released, the journalism students spent every free moment working on printing and preparing the papers for distribution Tuesday morning.

I hurry into Homeroom early, wanting to get my hands on that newspaper as soon as possible. There are only a handful of other students. A quick glance in the corner where my friends and I usually sit shows that Lisa, Tracy, and Jenny are not here yet.

"Jackie, what can I do for you?" Mr. Webber says as he sees me approach his desk.

"Have the school papers been delivered yet?" I ask.

"Not just yet." He smiles, clearly pleased with my interest in a school-sanctioned activity. "I'm sure someone will drop them off soon."

I nod and return to my desk. I'm not able to sit still though, knowing that the paper is out there somewhere. I glance at the clock. My friends are not here yet, and there's still six minutes until the bell rings. Without a second thought, I hop out of my seat and dart into the hallway.

It doesn't take me long to find my friends. Lisa, Tracy, and Jenny are standing off to the side at the end of the hallway, huddled over…the newspaper! They're all smiling, no doubt excited to see that their friend made the paper.

"On your right," someone says before bumping into my shoulder.

I turn and find Timmy carrying a stack of newspapers. Bingo.

"Freeze!" I yank him back by the arm. "Gimme one of those."

"Jackie, I'm dropping them off to your Homeroom," Timmy whines.

"I don't care," I say as I wrestle a copy from the top of his stack. He darts off, rolling his eyes.

Spotlight on the Point Place Vikings Varsity Athletes of Tomorrow the title reads in bold across the top. On the front cover.

I nearly squeal. Front page, above the fold. I had no idea I was going to be the cover feature! I start jogging over to my friends to join in their excitement, reading more along the way.

There are many underclassmen athletes worthy of a spot on their respective varsity teams next year. This includes players on our JV football team, baseball team, and soccer team. But there is one team that represents the Vikings like no other, and that is our cheer squad. And after sitting down with the varsity cheerleaders, it quickly became clear that this spotlight belongs to three of the most promising JV cheerleaders: Lisa Cavendish, Tracy Brown, and Jenny Lawson.

I stop so suddenly that the person walking behind me stumbles into me, forcing me to take a step forward…right into the huddle of cheerleaders giggling over their feature in the newspaper.

"Jackie!" Jenny says, her voice laced with surprise and tension. She glances back and forth between me and the newspaper that I am holding. "You…you read the paper?"

Tracy and Lisa glance up, wide-eyed but won't meet my gaze.

I ignore Jenny and I scan the paper. There had to be a mistake. I must be mentioned somewhere in this paper. But I don't find my name, and offset to the right is a picture of the three of them, forming a small pyramid out on the football field while smiling from ear to ear. I know right away that this is a posed picture because we never do three-person pyramids, only five. And if this was a posed picture, then that means they must've known about the article. And didn't say anything to me.

I jerk my head back up and plaster an unbothered smile to my lips.

"Congratulations, ladies," I say, but my tone suggests anything but that. "And look at that, you're already acting like varsity cheerleaders! Lying to your friend and screwing her over."

I toss the newspaper I'm holding at their feet and hurry back to Homeroom before they can say anything. I don't care if I was being bitchy and hypocritical. I'd had a rough few weeks and didn't deserve this.

"Jackie, I left a copy of the school paper on your desk," Mr. Webber says when I enter the classroom. "Did you see? Your friends made the front page!"

I say nothing and slump in my desk. Sure enough, Lisa, Jenny, and Tracy's smiling faces stare up at me from the front page. I glare at the picture long enough that their smiles turn taunting and sinister. I swipe the paper unceremoniously off my desk. I can't believe they knew about the article and said nothing about it to me. Some friends.

But the next thought is what really knocks the wind out of me. I reach to the ground and retrieve the discarded paper off the floor, searching for the byline. There, under the title: Written by Donna Pinciotti.

It was one thing for my cheerleading friends to betray me. That was part of being a cheerleader. You almost had to expect to be stabbed in the back at some point. And to be fair, I'd done my own share of mild backstabbing with the squad. Like when I'd all but abandoned them to hang out with Michael and his friends. Or when I'd replaced them with Donna as my best friend.

But Donna.

Donna's betrayal? That hurt.

Just as the bell rings, Jenny, Tracy, and Lisa saunter into the room. I avoid looking at them, instead shoving the paper into my backpack as I make my way to the front of the room.

"Mr. Webber. I don't feel so well. Could I go visit the nurse please?"

"Of course, Jackie," he says, concern written all over his face. He hands me a pass.

I nod a silent thank you and hurry out of the classroom. The hallways are blessedly empty now that the bell has rung, so I don't have to worry about running into anyone who would ask me about the article.

I hadn't lied to Mr. Webber. I didn't feel well. Donna's betrayal hurt worse than any illness could, but I still had to come up with something before I reached the nurse's office. I couldn't fake a cold - she'd send me right back to class when she saw that I didn't have a fever.

I end up telling the nurse that I have cramps, which gets me exactly what I want - the opportunity to rest alone in one of the cots in the back of her office. She hands me a heating pad that I dutifully place over my lower abdomen to keep up the pretense.

Once I'm alone, I pull the school paper out of my backpack. A glutton for punishment, I continue to read more of the article.

"We have a very promising cohort of JV cheerleaders that we are keeping an eye on for when tryout season for varsity starts soon. But I can say that we've been extremely impressed with the performance and attitude of Lisa, Tracy, and Jenny," said varsity assistant captain Leslie Cannon.

This statement is met with affirmative nods from the rest of the varsity team, and they all voiced their enthusiasm for this promising trio. When asked about the rest of the JV squad, Cannon added, "of course we are proud of all our underclassmen cheerleaders. We are watching everyone closely and we look forward to seeing what they can show us when tryouts roll around in January."

I skim through, feeling more and more nauseated until I reach the part where Donna discusses her interview with Jenny, Tracy, and Lisa.

"We've been dreaming of this for a long time," Lawson said. "And it's been our shared dream, the three of us," Brown added. All three of them voiced excitement about what it would mean for their 'shared dream' to become a reality.

And what did it take to make this a reality? "A lot of blood, sweat, and tears," Cavendish said, laughing. When asked to elaborate, I learn from the three cheerleaders that this means years of devotion to the sport. A strict diet, no dating, and no parties. Hours of workouts, early mornings, and late nights.

I grunt in disgust. Those girls were being so dramatic. High school cheerleading certainly did not require that level of effort, and unless they'd completely changed their ways when I had started spending less time with them, they were also big fat liars.

By the time third period rolls around, the school nurse decides I've had enough time to rest and ushers me back to class. I don't protest too much lest I get added to her 'red flags' list of frequent flyers to her office for an excuse to miss class.

And anyway, I've developed a plan for damage control and to get myself back on top. After all, I was Jackie Burkhart.

o-o-o

Phase one of the plan is apathy. I couldn't let the school see that I was bothered by the newspaper snub because that was a sign of weakness. Instead, I keep my head held high for the rest of the day, and even sit with the JV squad during lunch. I sit at the opposite end of the table from Jenny, Lisa, and Tracy, though.

We don't have practice until after school tomorrow, so it's hard to gauge how successful my nonchalant attitude is in elevating my status with the varsity athletes. But on my way out the door at the end of the day, Annabelle, one of the varsity cheerleaders stops me to compliment my boots, so that is encouraging.

On my way home from school, I start to flesh out phase two of the plan: confronting Donna. I am angry, and sad, and honestly, a little nervous to talk to her because of what she might say. But I remind myself to keep my head held high when I talk to her.

The plan was to call her on the phone when I got home, since my days of showing up unannounced to the Forman basement were no more. Or, at least on hold until I figured out the other issue in my life.

Just the thought of Steven makes my insides twist. Maybe I didn't have a crush on him anymore, but that didn't mean that I didn't want to at least be civil with him. After all, the plan had been for things to go back to normal after our failed date. And yet, he kept doing things to make that impossible.

So many plans have gone horribly wrong recently. I could only hope my plan to talk to Donna didn't fail miserably, too.

When I get home, though, I see that my plan is already going awry because sitting at my front step is Donna. I pause on my way to the front door. I don't think I'm ready to talk to her face-to-face just yet, but now I have no choice.

"Are you here to explain yourself?" I ask.

I join Donna on the doorstep, pulling my keys out of my backpack. Donna says nothing but follows me inside and up to my room.

"Well?" I ask her again, discarding my backpack on the floor by my bed.

Donna sighs and takes a seat at my desk. "Look, Jackie. I am sorry. But it was out of my hands."

I sit at the foot of my bed. I reach into my backpack and pull out the crumpled newspaper and point at her name in the byline. "You wrote the article!" I exclaim.

"Okay, calm down. Let me explain," Donna reasons, holding her hands up. "My assignment was to write an article about who the varsity athletes saw as rising underclassmen athletes. When I interviewed the varsity cheerleaders, your name never came up. Just Lisa, Tracy, and Jenny. So, I wrote about them, but I wrote an entire section on you as well.

"But then yesterday, the editor of the paper confronted me and made me rework the article so that it didn't include you. I was busy all day working on it, and didn't get a chance to tell you."

"You could've called me last night!" I pout.

"I was going to tell you in school today. In-person. Because of the last-minute edits, the editor said that my article would have to wait until the next publication. Then they decided to print it anyway, without my knowledge."

"Ughh," I scream, falling backwards on my bed. I don't even know what to say.

A beat later, Donna kicks her foot against mine. "Jackie? Are you still mad?"

"Yes!" I say, exasperated. I sit up and sigh. "But not at you," I admit. "You really wrote about me?"

"I did. Want to read it?" Donna asks.

"Of course! Who do you think you're talking to?" I say.

Donna laughs and rises from the chair. "All right, midget. It's back at my house. Let's go."

"Oh, uh…" I stall. "Maybe later? I've got a lot of homework to do and -"

"Okay, Jackie. When are you going to come back to the basement?" Donna says, impatient.

I lift my backpack onto my bed and start to rifle through it so I have an excuse not to look at Donna. "The basement? I thought you said it was at your house?"

"You're avoiding the question."

"Yeah, and?" I say, turning to glare at her angrily. "I have a life outside of the basement, you know. And thanks to your article, now I have a ton of damage control to do if I want to make varsity next year."

Donna chews her lip. "I thought you weren't mad at me anymore."

"I'm not," I sigh, trying to force myself to calm down. "I'm not mad at you. I guess I'm mad at Tracy, Jenny, and Lisa. They didn't tell me about the article either."

I rise and move to my closet, swinging open the door then getting down on my knees. "Varsity has been our 'shared dream'," I place emphasis on these words from the article, "since the four of us were in middle school. We even made a vision board. I still have it somewhere in here…"

I reach for the back of my closet, shoving things to the side to get to the board I know is back here somewhere. I feel my finger scrape against cardboard and glitter glue and pull it out.

"See?" I hold it up. Donna comes and kneels on the ground next to me. "Here's the four of us in middle school. Tracy's mom used to take us to the Vikings football games to watch the cheer squad. We even got a picture with some of them."

Donna grabs at the board. "Huh. You know, I kind of forget that you led a completely different life before you dated Kelso."

"Yeah, well, I guess they forgot, too," I mutter.

Donna puts my vision board on the ground behind us. "Yeah well, then they're not your real friends. But I am. So…you should come back to the basement."

"Not this again," I say under my breath. I reach behind me to pick up the vision board and start to shove it in the back of my closet again, shuffling things around in the process.

"Is this still about Hyde?" Donna asks. "Because I thought - "

"It's not about Steven," I say, cutting her off.

For a moment, Donna doesn't say anything. From inside my closet, I can't see her.

"Are you sure about that?" she says after a beat. And her tone is peculiar enough now to draw me out of my closet to see why she's acting strange.

"Of course," I say, sitting up, wiping my hair out of my face. "Would you - oh."

My eyes dart down to what Donna is holding in her hands. Steven's denim jacket.

"Oh yeah?" she asks, lifting her eyebrows in question. She tosses Steven's jacket in my lap. "Then do you care to explain this?"

Author's Note: Chapter 8: Coats & Pie will be posted Friday, March 15, 2024.