Major Crush Read online

  “That wasn’t too painful,” he said. A nd I did feel his breath on my cheek.

  Oh, wow. I wished we could stay this way forever. Okay, he would probably get a cramp eventually. But I wished he would keep holding me, looking down into my eyes as if he really enjoyed touching me.

  A t the same time, in the back of my mind, I knew I should say something so he wouldn’t think I’d been brain damaged in our fall. Finally I managed, “Easy for you to say. You didn’t get the life crushed out of you by Notorious B.I.G.”

  He pulled me up and set me back on my feet. Then he whirled around, grabbed me, and dipped me again, like he was practicing getting his pistol out of his holster fast for a gunfight.

  “Ooooooh, aaaaaah,” floated across the field from the band.

  “By George, I think you’ve got it,” Barry said.

  Drew ignored Barry at first. His dark eyes seemed to search my eyes for something.

  Then he pulled me up to standing. “Thanks, Barry,” he said. “I think we’re good to try it on our own. Grandparents Day is right around the corner, and we’ll get you something special.”

  I understood that Drew was dismissing Barry like he’d dismissed Mr. Rush. Barry did not seem to understand this.

  Barry asked Drew, “So, what are you and the twin doing Saturday night?”

  Drew dropped my hand. Poof, there went our romantic interlude. Thanks, Barry, my ass!

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Drew said. “I guess we might park in front of the furniture rental store and watch TV.”

  This seemed pretty uncreative of Drew. Sure, the movie theater had only two movies at a time to choose from instead of fourteen like the theaters in big cities, but we did have a movie theater. A nd there was always the bowling alley.

  I tried to catch his eye to give him a questioning look. No luck. He stared off toward the press box at the top of the stadium. Which was weird in itself. Drew always looked people in the eye. It was part of his drum major intimidation routine.

  It occurred to me that maybe he’d made up this date for my benefit. It was bad that he and the twin were going parking! It was good that they were parking in public, where down-and-dirty necking would be highly unlikely. Was he trying to tell me he wasn’t serious about the twin, and there was hope for me?

  Oh, good Lord. I was such a dork. He wasn’t going to ask me out. He didn’t like me that way. We weren’t even friends. I’d made sure of that with my stupid comment when I got out of the truck.

  “What about you, Virginia?” Barry asked without missing a beat, as if he hadn’t even heard Drew, much less found his date plans bizarre.

  “What are you doing Saturday night?”

  I was a half-second from blurting out the truth. Walter wasn’t coming home for the weekend—and anyway, I figured he was still mad at me, because he hadn’t called. A llison was competing in a pageant. So I planned a solo par-tay of practicing my drums, watching MTV, and then reading until two o’clock in the morning. When I relayed my schedule to Barry, I would edit out the part where I invented an excuse to drive into town for a few minutes and cruise by the Rent 2 Own store, checking for farm trucks.

  I stopped myself just before blurting. If Drew was parking with the twin at the Rent 2 Own, I didn’t want to let on that I was hanging out at home, alone. A nyone could guess this, but I didn’t have to admit it.

  Then I saw Drew’s dark eyes detach themselves from the press box and focus on me. Then flick to Barry and back to me. A nd I knew my instincts had been right about Barry liking me. Barry was about to ask me out.

  My mind went into overdrive. A n excuse. Where was my excuse? I could use A llison as an alibi. But what if Barry had already found out casually from A llison that she didn’t have plans with me? I knew the thing to do was be firm, stand my ground, and turn him down nicely.

  Otherwise he’d keep asking me out. But I didn’t know how to do that.

  Besides, Drew was standing there. I thought he might politely leave us alone for a minute. Then I could turn Barry down. Barry would still be mad, but at least I wouldn’t embarrass the crap out of him and give the trombones something else to make fun of him about.

  Drew said, “She’s dating Walter Lloyd.”

  “You are?” Barry asked, eyes wide again.

  I am? I thought.

  “I didn’t know that,” Barry said. “I knew you were friends with him, but … Isn’t he a year younger than you?”

  I nodded.

  Barry plucked his trombone from the grass. “Okay, then. Y’all have fun. Break a leg.” He jogged across the field to the rest of the band.

  Drew turned to me and smiled. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s practice the dip a few more times so I can really get the feel of you.”

  We stared at each other.

  “That’s not what I meant.” He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. “Every word out of my mouth this afternoon—”

  “I know. Me too.” I laughed so he wouldn’t feel so self-conscious. Which was kind of hard to do, when I was more self-aware than I’d ever been in my life.

  He opened those beautiful dark eyes and grinned at me. “You know what I mean.”

  Oh, yeah. “I know what you mean.” I just wished he really meant it the other way.

  He put his hand there and his leg there—gently this time. He dipped me slowly, with control. Holding me steady, he shifted his hands a little.

  If I didn’t know better, I would have said he did enjoy touching me, after all.

  “I’m not dating Walter,” I breathed.

  “I know you’re not,” he said, his lips close to my lips. “I was just trying to get you out of dating Barry. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  I struggled until he set me on my feet. “Then why’d you tell Mr. Rush in his office that I was dating Walter?”

  “Oh. That was just to make you mad. You know, before we suddenly became chums.” He nudged me on one shoulder with his fist, chumly.

  “You didn’t want to go out with Barry, did you?”

  “No,” I said emphatically. “A nd I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I also didn’t want to lie to him. It seems under-handed.”

  Drew shrugged. “Then why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was too stunned by your rude interruption.”

  “Oh, come on.” He put his hands on me and dipped me slowly, gently. “Barry only asked you out in front of me so you couldn’t say no. He knew you wouldn’t want to embarrass him. One underhanded trick deserves another.”

  “But it’s going to get around the whole school that I’m dating Walter. What if I wanted to go out with someone else?” Too late I realized that I probably sounded like I wanted to go out with Drew.

  Which I did.

  “What if you did?” he asked evenly, holding my gaze with his dark eyes.

  “Then he wouldn’t ask me out now.”

  Drew smiled. “Maybe he would.”

  I wanted to know how this mythical boy could ask me out. Would he brick his girlfriend and her twin sister up in the instrument storage room like in ‘The Cask of A montillado’?

  Maybe Drew was just flirting with me, pointlessly, for fun. Maybe he did like touching me during the dip, even though it didn’t mean anything to him. That was cool. I could enjoy a football season of flirting with Drew and touching Drew. If I didn’t die of heart palpitations.

  Or heartbreak.

  He set me up standing. “It was meant as a favor. Just take it as a favor and say, ‘Thank you, Drew.’”

  “Thank you, Drew. May I have another?”

  “Drum majors,” the band called across the field. It was time to run through the halftime show, and Mr. Rush was motioning us over.

  “Horrible drum majors,” someone else called. “Hey, really bad drum majors.”

  The laughing look in Drew’s eyes faded. There was the look I’d come to know and love, the one that said he wanted to pitch me off the top of the bleachers.

&n
bsp; We walked back toward the band together. “So, why did you get your nose pierced?” he asked.

  “I don’t even discuss that with my real friends, much less my fake friends.”

  I thought that would shut him down, and we would just blend in with the rest of the band wandering to their starting positions for the show, and not talk to each other for the rest of practice.

  No, he wasn’t finished. “A ren’t you afraid it will get infected?” he asked.

  “My dad’s a doctor. I have twenty-four-hour surveillance on my antibodies.”

  We’d almost reached the band. A llison was talking to Drew’s best friend, Luther, and trying her best to look disinterested.

  “Does it hurt?” Drew asked.

  I wished I had a dime for every time someone had asked me that. Usually I told the truth: It hurt like hell when I had it done, but now I couldn’t feel it. Like getting your ears pierced.

  But after all Drew’s fake flirting, I didn’t feel like telling him the truth. I felt like embarrassing him, if I could. I gave it my best shot.

  “Poor Drew,” I said. “You’re so innocent.”

  We’d walked close enough to the band that Luther heard this. He laughed really, really hard. Drew just stood there. Luther ,put his arm around Drew’s shoulders. “Bro, we need to talk.”

  A s Luther led Drew away, Drew gave me a sideways glance. He didn’t look mad at me anymore. Dark eyes darker, long lashes heavy. He looked … I wasn’t sure what that look was.

  But he wasn’t mad.

  I watched him duck with Luther past the flags. Then I turned to A llison. “Luther’s cute,” I said hopefully. He was in her A P classes, like Drew.

  I had thought before that Luther might have taken a shine to her, and that the shine might be mutual.

  Well, maybe not. A llison tossed her head. “He dresses like the ’hood.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re such a snob. He dresses cool. A nd our town isn’t big enough to have a ’hood.”

  She sniffed. “So, did Drew ask you out yet?”

  “No, Barry asked me out. Drew just went down on me. Did you see it?”

  She fluttered her eyelashes, like a well-bred hostess whose cocktail party had just been crashed by a motorcycle gang. “For a virgin, you have the dirtiest mind.”

  “You’re one to talk, Rapunzel. Let down your hair.” I poked one of her gelled finger waves.

  She removed my hand with two manicured fingers. “A re you kidding? It took me hours to get it this way.” She glanced after Luther and Drew, like she was concerned about what Luther thought of her finger waves, after all.

  Then she said, “Speaking of hairdos. The majorettes wanted me to tell you that your dip with Drew is so romantic.”

  I shouted laughter, and the nearby saxophones turned to stare at me. “Y’all are real bored over there,” I said.

  “A nd that in the third grade, one of the Evil Twins attacked a girl’s hair with safety scissors because of a boy.” She touched the back of my head, where my short hair grazed the nape of my neck, like she was worried.

  Despite myself, I searched the milling crowd for Tracey/Cacey, and found at least one of them giving me an unfriendly look.

  I said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  For the rest of the week I took Walter’s advice and ran a one-woman public relations campaign. First, on Wednesday morning, I cornered Tonya, Paula, and Michelle in algebra and told them I didn’t appreciate the way they’d treated me in the restroom at the game. Now that they were away from the mob, they said they were sorry. I fed them some touchy-feely lines about how Drew and I were having a hard time adjusting to the partnership but were dealing with our problems.

  A fter Tonya, Paula, and Michelle, I worked my way through the rest of the band, talking to all one hundred and fifty of them alone or in small groups. A ll of them, that is, except Drew’s senior trombone friends. A nd the Evil Twins.

  People actually were nice to me about it and at least pretended to understand and cooperate. By practice on Friday, I could feel a change in the atmosphere, like the pressure had dropped.

  Or the reason for the weather change could have been that the band sounded so much better with a solid rhythm section underneath it. I’d worked hard with the drums all week. They finally sounded like they were playing their parts rather than dropping their drums and drumsticks from a ten-story building.

  Friday after school four buses parked in front of the band room. The band was headed for the farthest football game of the year, down somewhere in southern A labama. It would take forever to get there. We were only waiting for Mr. Rush to show up from his faculty meeting.

  I was stuck chaperoning the freshman bus. I should have complained that I got the freshman bus and Drew got the senior bus. It made me look like assistant drum major. A nd I didn’t look forward to the three-hour ride with screaming freshmen. That was a downside of being drum major—the responsibility. I’d claimed the front seat as a sort of escape hatch.

  I sat on the stairs of the freshman bus, tapping my drumsticks on the rubber footpad of the stair. Drew sat with the twin on the wall next to the band room door.

  I tried not to look at them, but it was only natural that I would glance in their direction every now and then. They were the only thing to look at against the expanse of concrete and grass. A nd I was there first.

  Drew glanced over at me. You dummy, I thought. Of course the twin caught him looking at me, and she glared at me like I’d drawn his eye on purpose. Then they had a little chat. He glanced up at me again, uncomfortably. She glared at me.

  Finally I got tired of the whole thing. I put my drumsticks down, put my knees up and my elbows on my knees and my chin on my fists, and just stared the hell out of them. I stared Drew up and down like he was something good to eat. I even licked my lips when he wasn’t watching and the twin was.

  Well, that was it. Now she really glared at me. We eyeballed each other like it was a game of eye-chicken. A nd it wouldn’t be me who blinked first.

  Drew passed a hand in front of her face like she was blind, and she blinked. Then he pushed her off the wall with a very inappropriate love pat to the derrière that was probably against school rules, and she scampered to the senior bus.

  Mr. Rush was finally walking down the hill from the school. With him came Ms. Martineaux, the track coach, who was about his age and two inches taller. He said something to her and pointed her toward the senior bus. Then he motioned to me. I met him in the grass, along with Drew.

  Mr. Rush rubbed his hands together. “The two of you are getting along great, right?”

  Drew and I looked at each other uncomfortably. It wasn’t the us against Mr. Rush look anymore.

  “The show is coming along well for the contest, right?” Mr. Rush went on. “Because I may have gotten myself in some more trouble.”

  I asked, “Can’t you just stop going to the faculty meetings?”

  “This had to be done, Sauter. You know how you have a white Miss Homecoming and a black Miss Victory every year? This violates desegregation laws. I can’t believe no one’s questioned it before.”

  “Probably because it’s a holdover from forty years ago,” Drew said, “when the black and white high schools were separate. The white high school had their Miss Homecoming, and the black high school had their Miss Victory. When they integrated, they kept both.”

  “Right,” I said, nodding. “People get very, very touchy when you mess with their traditions.”

  Drew poked me once in the ribs. I might have flirted back with him, or at least stepped a little closer to him. Except that a poke in the ribs meant nothing next to a love pat to the derrière.

  Mr. Rush continued like he hadn’t noticed Drew touching me. “Separate but equal. Illegal. A nd I said so loudly enough in the faculty meeting that the tradition is no more. From now on, the girl who gets the most votes will be Miss Homecoming. A nd the runner-up will be Miss Victory. No matter what race they ar
e.”

  I thought about how this would affect A llison. She probably would be a candidate for Miss Homecoming/Miss Victory when the nominations were counted next week. She’d always been a maid on the homecoming float. She expected to be Miss Victory. Probably everything would stay the same under Mr. Rush’s new rules.

  Mr. Rush still ranted. “You can’t designate school positions by race. I don’t care what the tradition is. A nd I don’t care what the principal thinks of me for saying so.”

  Drew and I looked at each other again.

  “Okay, that last part is bullshit,” Mr. Rush admitted.

  Drew gestured toward the senior bus. “What’s Ms. Martineaux here for? Your bodyguard after the faculty meeting?”

  “I almost forgot to tell you,” said Mr. Rush. “Morrow, you and Sauter will be in charge of the freshman bus.”

  I hadn’t wanted the freshmen, but now that part of my responsibility was being taken away, I wanted it back. I didn’t need Drew’s help. I said, “The bus is packed. There’s not enough room for Drew to have a seat.”

  “Share a seat,” Mr. Rush said. “In fact, share the backseat. Lord knows we don’t want kids feeling each other up back there.”

  I felt myself flash red at the idea. I must have looked like a traffic light every time I got around Drew and Mr. Rush started in with his comments.

  Worse, Drew didn’t hide that he hated this idea. “I’m supposed to be on the senior bus”

  “Right, with your squeeze,” Mr. Rush said. He reached up to grip Drew’s shoulder sympathetically.

  “Squeezes,” I corrected him.

  Mr. Rush laughed. “Good one.” He gripped Drew so hard that Drew winced. “You’re out of luck, Morrow. The flag coach is chaperoning the sophomores, I’ve got the juniors, and Ms. Martineaux has the seniors. We need to break her in gradually. I don’t expect seniors to throw each other out the window. Freshmen, I’m not so sure. It may take both of you to handle them.”

  “We don’t need another chaperone,” I said. “I can handle the freshmen fine.”

  “He’s using this as an excuse to come on to Ms. Martineaux,” Drew said.

  Mr. Rush folded his arms and gave Drew the stare.