stacey is walking to school one morning when she is beaned in the head by a snowball. she's ready to yell at the kid who threw it, but when that kid ends up being basketball hotshot RJ blaser, stacey forgets all about being mad. he apologizes & asks to walk her the rest of the way to school. she accepts. when they get inside, he asks her to see "mall warriors 2" with him at the mall that weekend. she accepts again. she is totally ecstatic about having been asked out by one of the most popular guys in school. some of his friends observed the interaction, & in class, one of the cheerleaders passes her a note, telling her that RJ likes her. in the hallway after class, the cheerleaders make a point of talking to stacey & being nice to her. stacey has never really talked with them much before, but is excited to give it a whirl.all week, she is distracted by & excited about her upcoming date. the cheerleaders continue to be friendly with her. they even let her know that one of their squad left & needs to be replaced. they encourage her to start putting together a routine for tryouts.but when the date finally rolls around, stacey is disappointed. she realizes quickly that she really doesn't have anything in common with RJ. he wants caramel popcorn, which stacey of course cannot eat, & he assumes that she is just one some goofy girly diet as opposed to having a real health issue. she thinks the movie is stupid but RJ likes it. he wants to go to pizza express after, which is not stacey's favorite restaurant. but they go anyway, a bunch of cheerleaders & basketball players are there. stacey has fun hanging out with all of them, although there is an awkward moment when a classmate walks up & embarrasses himself a little cheering the team on for the big game the next night. before the evening is over, stacey notices robert brewster & thinks that he is extremely cute, though she assumes he is going out with the cheerleader he's seated next to, corinne. the next night, the whole babysitters club goes to the basketball game. stacey begins to feel embarrassed a little bit by her friends. she thinks claudia's outfit is kind of silly, & she cringes when jessi gushes over getting to stay up late for the game. the stoneybrook team wins by one point & the whole crowd surges on to the court to celebrate. i am second-hand embarrassed for stacey by her descriptions of trying to crowd around the players & cheerleaders to congratulate them. i mean, she just started talking to them a few days ago. & everyone seems to want a piece of them. she even loses track of her babysitters club friends, until kristy blows on her trusty whistle & the entire gym falls silent. kristy hollers down to stacey that she has to go out & get in the van right now if she's going to the slumber party that night. the cheerleaders laugh at her, but stacey leaves to go the the slumber party. man. that seriously is really embarrassing.the next week in school, the cheerleaders tell stacey that robert noticed her & he is interested, assuming things didn't pan out with RJ. stacey is pumped. the cheerleaders tell her robert will call, which he does, right when stacey should be leaving for a BSC meeting. she takes the call anyway & agrees to a date for friday. man, two boys in one calendar week. stacey doesn't mess around. she's late to the meeting, but she doesn't care because she's so excited for her date with robert. she is also busy preparing for cheerleader try-outs. she has enlisted jessi to help choreograph a routine.the date with robert goes well. they have more in common than she did with RJ, & robert is a more engaged listener. he really wins stacey over by being sensitive & understanding about her diabetes. she tells him she's trying out for the cheerleading squad, & he begins to explain that sometimes the other students & teachers give the athletes & cheerleaders special treatment, like letting them skip class, leave school during lunchtime, or copy homework. he tells her a story about how he knows he did really badly on an english test, but scraped a C, while the kid next to him worked a lot harder & understood the material a lot better, but only got a C-. robert doesn't think any of this stuff is fair, but he doesn't know what to do about it--especially because most of his teammeates take full advantage of it. he impresses stacey again with his thoughtfulness & honesty. they decide to go out again the next weekend.meanwhile, stacey tries out for the cheerleading squad. he try-out goes really well & the babysitters club (who came along for moral support) assures her that she was the best of the bunch. stacey's closest new friend on the squad also gives her a thumbs up, so stacey thinks she has a good chance. but she's still nervous about being rejected. the day the new member is announced, stacey is in the bathroom when the squad comes in & starts fixing their hair. she stays in her stall when they start talking about her & how well she did at try-outs. they comment that her routine was great, & plus she's really pretty, smart, & nice. corinne complains a little about how she'd still be dating robert is stacey hadn't swooped in & distracted him with her bouncy hair, but the other cheerleaders tell her to can it. stacey starts to think she may have landed a spot on the squad for real.but that afternoon, the squad announces that the newest cheerleader is kathleen lopez. stacey is dumbfounded. she realizes that she KNOWS her routine was better than kathleen's, so she storms up to the squad to ask why she was rejected. they're like, "sorry, the best girl won, better luck next year," but corinne takes her aside to explain that the squad decided stacey was just TOO good. she made the existing cheerleaders look bad. kathleen is less competition. stacey wonders why corinne is telling her this, until she realizes that it's the truth & corinne will know the truth will hurt. um...this makes no sense. why would stacey be hurt by being informed that the squad thinks she is better, prettier, nicer, & smarter than them? that is like the most ineffective way to hurt someone ever. there's some explanation about how it was like the squad was threatening her to not try to outshine them, but that doesn't really make sense either. i find all of this really aggravating because it's another example of a member of the babysitters club just inherently being amazing at something they try to do. like claudia & her art, or jessi when she took up synchronized swimming, or mallory's natural gift for archery. i could go on. sometimes a person may be interested in something, & even extremely passionate about it, & still not good enough to really do it well. isn't it more realistic that stacey, who has never before shown any interest in athletics, would maybe want to be a cheerleader to experiment with being in the popular crowd, but just wasn't as good as another girl that tried out? but we can't have that because i guess it makes stacey look shallow or something. it's stupid.anyway, stacey tells robert the news & if you can fucking believe this, he quits the basketball team in protest. for a girl he's been "dating" for like eight days. & it becomes this huge controversy that divides the school. some of the students think stacey is a sore loser & robert's an idiot for standing up to the athletes & popular kids on her behalf, & some of the kids agree that the athletes & cheerleaders get unfair special treatment & iced stacey out because they were jealous. & this is how the book ends.i'm sure there was a babysitting sub-plot somewhere in there, but i have no recollection of what it was.
Do You like book Stacey And The Cheerleaders (1997)?
