Gray-red droplets slide down her wrists. She wants to drink beef juice instead of electrolytes. She wants to end homelessness for dogs. She wants pop music to move like it used to but doesn’t get her hopes up.

The problem isn’t cheerleading. She likes the sharp angles, the tension between geometry and sex appeal. She likes the applause, which she can feel through the racetrack, up her twice-shaven legs. But she wants more for herself than the things people want for her. She wants her uniform and glitter-glue bow to catalyze her potential and not be the summation. She wants to drink coffee on a train through snowy mountains. To dye her hair and dye it back again. To love a thousand men and one incorrigible woman. To cut roses. To grow aloe. To change her name to Cordelia or Trinity. To paint crostini with garlic-infused oil. To cut mazes of cornfields. To read Rilke. To enjoy stillness. To fall off a bull. To be photographed in black and white. To see a fjord. To wear matching lingerie. To feed a duck. To bloom like forsythia in March. To bleed without hurting. To believe in things like she used to. To play the fiddle. To build a house in a tree, which is not to say a treehouse. To not tell lies. To collect something that is both cheap and rare. To have quick wit and a slow smile. To taste a Snowball again.

She wants to want less, or more, or to want to be here. She wants to eat a burger like her life depends on it. Defying her cheerleader mystique won’t guarantee any of the above. The burger is only a moment between moments.

The rain is clearing up. Sunshine knifes off windshields and mirrors. One day, she will drive through here and marvel at how much she’s forgotten after how much she’s done.