Lay It on My Heart by Angela Pneuman Page B

made me sad for him, and for all men. And now my father has burned himself there, which is impossible to picture.
    After fourth period there’s “activity,” for which our English class follows Mrs. Teaderman to the gym and up into the bleachers to an assigned section near the top. I find a seat against the wall as the entire seventh grade files in, a sea of people, with teachers waving their arms and trying to make themselves heard. If you plug your ears and don’t think of them as teachers and just watch their faces, you get a good idea of what they might look like when they are in pain or about to cry. I’m trying to spot Mary-Kate, Karen, or even the red-haired girl from the bus when the bell rings right over my head, loud enough to loosen my brain in my skull. The brown-haired girl with the ponytail is beside me, and she jumps and claps her hands over her ears, too. Down below, the doors on either side of the gym clang shut. On stage, the PE teacher, Coach Doran, steps to the podium.
    â€œQuiet,” he says into a microphone, which buzzes then squeals. Coach Doran waits for the sound to peter out, then explains that on some days, activity will involve a dance contest or spelling bee. Other days we can talk or balance our homework on our knees. When one of the sports teams has a game, activity will become a pep rally, and today the cheerleaders are on hand to show us the meaning of school spirit. Coach Doran motions to someone offstage, and in two seconds rock music blares from the speaker above me.
    By now, most of the boys in the bleachers have parked thick slugs of chewing tobacco under their bottom lips. They try to hide it, but if you turn too quickly, you’ll catch them spitting into empty pop cans.
    â€œDisgusting,” says the girl with the ponytail as a boy wipes his lips with the back of his hand.
    I pull out the letter from my father and smooth it against the cover of my social studies book. I read it once through and start in again, as though it will begin to make more sense.
    â€œWho’d you get the letter from,” says the girl.
    â€œMy dad.”
    The song ends and then they restart it louder. “Eye of the Tiger.” Beside me, the girl dances with the upper half of her body.
    â€œI’m going out for cheerleading,” she says. She stops dancing and starts making the rigid motions of a cheer with her arms. “My sister used to cheer at my old school. My used-to-be stepsister. My parents are divorced, too. My dad lives in Omaha.”
    â€œMy parents aren’t divorced.”
    â€œThen how come your dad’s writing you letters?”
    I look down at the letter in my lap, which is starting to fold itself back into thirds. “He’s just away for a while.”
    â€œIn prison?”
    â€œNo,” I say. I hadn’t considered prison or expected anyone else to. The girl has straight dark eyebrows, and when she speaks, her lips move carefully over a delicate set of braces. After she stops speaking, it is hard to believe her face ever moved, much less that she was talking about prison.
    â€œTheresa’s dad is in prison,” she says. “It sucks that there’s no one popular in English. No offense.”
    I dimly perceive the insult and shrug it off. “Who’s Theresa?”
    The girl lifts a thin, graceful arm and points to where the cheerleaders have sprung out onto the floor in their blue-and-white uniforms, doing an “Eye of the Tiger” cheer routine. At the song’s chorus, a blond girl in ribboned pigtails, legs tight with muscles, takes a running start and turns handsprings down the entire length of the gym floor. The rest of the girls in the squad wait their turn under the basketball hoop. “I can only do a round-off back handspring,” says the girl beside me. “I can’t do a standing back tuck, and that’s what you have to do to make cheerleader. I have a week to learn,