Despite my obvious deficits in grace and skill and attitude, everybody thinks being a cheerleader is good for me. My gold sweater and earrings attract this positive energy from all directions, which I find disorienting. But for my upward mobility project, I find that people are a lot more willing to talk to a cheerleader about what their parents do for work, or don’t, than to a girl in a Red Army hat. I also get my calculus, French IV, AP English, and physics homework done every day. I get into the class discussions in Western Civ and even start to enjoy it. I get the best grade in AP English for a Gatsby essay. The teacher writes me a note on the bottom saying that it is one of the best high school papers she’s ever read, but my statements about God are too extreme, and I need to back them up with quotes from the text. I stare at that A like I have a vitamin deficiency. It inspires me. It isn’t throbbing and ugly and red, like one of my F’s. It’s small and black and elegant.

Even though the class has moved on to Shakespeare, I go back to the book and look for quotes, and I do more research on Fitzgerald, about his life, his books, his booze, his early death. I reread the book as I rewrite the paper, fixing and fiddling with the words. The only sound in the room is the quiet scratch of my pen on paper.

Days later, it’s two a.m. and I should be starting Othello when I come to the sentence that Fitzgerald wrote almost a hundred years ago, which my teacher said described the eyes of God: They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose. Suddenly, I feel a presence in the room, and I get a prickly sensation on the back of my neck, because I know who it is. I can even smell tobacco from his cigarette and a whiff of whisky and hear the rustle of his white linen suit.

It’s him. It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’s in my room.

He’s standing behind me, looking out the window at the Minnechaug Valley, just like Gatsby stood at the edge of his lawn and looked at the lights across Long Island Sound. When I turn around, he’s gone. He was just checking in. I put the book away. I like knowing that he agrees with me about God being nearsighted and depressed and too old to take care of his creation. He doesn’t think there’s anything extreme about my statements.

seven

Gold is our color

And purple is the other

So split the V

And dot the I

And roll the C - T - O - R - Y!