Also, in one part of my reading, some lines of poetry came wafting over my hippocampus.

"Somehow I get the fear

of living in the world's unlove forever

better than I get the cheerleaders' braced grins."

~ Alice Fulton in the poem "Maidenhead"

"Felt: Poems by Alice Fulton" | Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/845421.Felt

A lot of that poem deals with certain kinds of feelings, like what happens when an aunt is considered "mental."

"Shooting Snakes" (by S. Cokal) on JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40638382

But going back to "Shooting Snakes"... Golly, why couldn't her friend fit in with the cheerleaders? She sounds like she tried really hard, too. And it still didn't work.