Dreamland

While Caitlin suffers through cheerleading, she watches her mother light up with delight about the games and fundraisers. Caitlin is the smallest of the cheerleaders and is appointed to the top of the pyramid. Whenever Caitlin thinks about quitting the team, she thinks about her mother “beaming” (42) at her and decides to keep going.

Even as Mrs. O’Koren becomes deeply invested in the cheerleading team, she also picks up a new hobby of collecting Victorian decorations via a sales show on TV. Caitlin and Rina observe this behavior and laugh about it together. Caitlin thinks her “mother thought she could replace Cass if she filled the house with enough clutter” (43).

At the biggest game of the year, as the cheerleaders run out on the field, Caitlin hears someone call the name Cass. She feels that this is a message from beyond, and falls from the top of the pyramid. Another girl, Eliza, steps out of the pyramid and catches her, though this makes a third cheerleader, Lindsay, fall and break her nose. Amidst the chaos after the fall, Caitlin is focused on the feeling that “from wherever she was, Cass had finally spoken to [her]” (48).

Instead of going right home, Caitlin goes to the team party, though her ride, Kelly, has to stop to wash out her car from her boyfriend’s vomit.