As Andy bounced around inside Cordelia’s pink gym bag, surrounded by her multi-colored cheerleading uniform and white skirt and dozens of girl-related articles that he swore never to get this close to, he questioned his very reason of living. Every time Cordelia would take a step, which was often considering the school was a mile away, he would bounce against her thigh and slide towards one end of the bag. Then she would step with her other foot, the bag would swing the other direction, and he’d find himself being hurled downwards again with all her various articles.

“This is the best way to carry you,” Cordelia said from outside the bag. Little did Andy know, though, that she was purposely swinging the bag extra high. He didn’t notice until she decided to twirl the bag around in a complete 360 and then she heard him scream.

“Cordelia!”

“Oops, sorry!”

Andy crawled out from under her uniform and was about to stand up when she started swinging the bag, purposely high, again. Then he was thrown back down and sent into a scrambling race for the low end of the bag. He was met face-first with her skirt, which covered him like a giant parachute.

“So how do I play this stupid game?” Cordelia asked.

“You should know. You’ve been cheering us for the past three years.” He crawled out from under her skirt.

“Like I watch for the game.”

“Just like we watch the cheerleaders for the game, huh?”

Cordelia ignored him. “We’re almost there. How am I supposed to sneak into the boy’s locker room without being seen?”

“I’m sure I could do it.”

“Yeah, that really helps me…”

Cordelia looked around. She was just on the other side of the school, staring out at the football field full of guys in their uniforms, running around and screaming and sweating and making gross noises and doing just about every other ignorant and rude things guys do on a daily basis. “I’m really sure I can fit in with these shmucks, Andy. Like a lamb in a pigpen.”

“Hey, you get a little dirty and nobody will know the difference.”

“You owe me so much for this,” she mumbled as she walked towards the locker rooms, hiding her face behind the shadow of her hand. The last thing she needed was somebody on the team recognizing her and demanding to know where Andy was. She could already hear what they were saying about him. She hoped Andy couldn’t hear them, though.

“I’ll show them who is a lazy and useless bastard!” Andy yelled from the bag.

Cordelia sighed and slipped around the back of the girl’s locker room, glancing around the corner at the football field. The boy’s locker room was only a couple yards away, but there were most certainly eyes on it, expecting Andy to either walk in or out of the front doors at any time.

“I’m going to make a sprint for it,” Cordelia whispered into her bag, setting it down on the grass. Just then, she heard the shrill cry of the coach’s whistle and looked around the corner again as two guys on the team were pounding away at each other in a fist brawl. The coach was trying to pry them apart and the other guys were all rooting them on and placing bets on who would be the first to fall.

“Thank the stars for your stupid gender,” Cordelia said, picking up her bag by its strap and strolling through the boy’s locker room doors without so much as a glimpse her way.

 She grimaced when she saw was inside. Between the smell, the graffiti on the wall, and the lack of an attempt of preserve at least a little sanitary hygiene, it was like stepping into the restroom of a gas station on the bad side of town. She stepped around something gross by the doorway, not wanting to even imagine what it was, and found herself standing in a large room full of lockers wall-to-wall. Fluorescent lights flickered above her and she wandered, suddenly feeling really small, over to a nearby bench and plopped her bag down.

“I should’ve expected this, I guess,” she said as she unzipped the bag. “You still alive in there, Andy?”

“If your deodorant hasn’t crushed my lungs.”

She brushed the stick of deodorant away and found Andy underneath, discernibly out of breath. “Sorry about that.”

“You’d do it again.”

“Yeah, I would.” She pulled him out of the bag and gently placed him on the bench. “Now where’s your bag?”

“In my locker.”

“No, really? And let me guess. The key is the under the mat.”

“Actually, yeah…” Andy pointed to an oversized locker, separate from the others, sprayed in gold paint and covered in football jerseys and cut-out pictures of magazine girls. It really did have a mat, too, like a red carpet rolling out from the bottom lip of the locker. Cordelia stared at it for a moment, mouth agate, and then turned back to Andy.

“A quarterback’s quarters,” he shrugged.

“I hate you beyond all reason and doubt.”

“Just hurry it up before we both get caught and have to explain why we’re here. I don’t know how I could weasel my way out of this one.”

Cordelia bent down on one knee, threw back the carpet, and peeled a golden key off the dirty floor. She clicked it into the lock, looked over her shoulder at Andy again, and opened the door.

Andy closed his eyes. He knew what was coming again.

Cordelia screamed. “You have a shrine of me built into the back of your locker!? And where the hell did you get these pictures!? What the f…!? ANDDDDDY!”

“Most girls would find it flattering,” Andy grumbled as Cordelia continued to flip out over the cut-outs of her in strange positions, the awful poems (that he wrote himself, and that’s not why they were awful), and…oh, he sure hoped she didn’t see the caricatures.

Suddenly, Andy’s gym bag hit the floor, the locker door slammed shut, and Cordelia turned around very, very slowly with a stoic look washed over her face. “…These eyes have seen things the devil would forbid. Let us never speak of this moment again.”