Major Crush (5 page)

When Mr. Rush finally let us go, I jumped out the door of his office and ran to tell A llison the news that I had become a boots-wearing hussy of a drum major who seduced elderly men.

“Sauter,” Drew called after me.

I didn’t stop. The tile was cold on my bare feet.

I heard him speed up behind me. He caught up in two strides and touched my elbow once, lightly.

“Virginia,” he said.

I stopped and looked up at him.

“Since we’re supposed to be friends, ride up to the stadium in the truck with me. Please.”

I glanced back toward Mr. Rush’s office. He stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips, glowering at me, sending me a telepathic message: Remember the Pizza Hut.

“A ll right,” I muttered.

Drew always parked his dad’s farm truck in the band room driveway like he owned the place. Boys in the band had already dumped the daily load of hay bales and farm implements—scythes or whatever—out onto the grass.

A line of boys stretched from the truck through the band room and into the instrument storage room. They tossed drums and the biggest instrument cases all along the line to land in the truck bed so Drew could drive them up to the football stadium for practice. I stepped forward to join the brigade.

A nd promptly got hit in the chest with a bass drum. I nearly fell with it, which would have made three times in one hour, a record even for me.

“Girl in the line,” a boy murmured. A nother said in falsetto, “Mini-Me.”

I managed to hand off the bass drum just in time to get crushed by a tuba case. This time I smacked onto the cold floor with the huge black case on top of me.

“Ooooooh, aaaaaah,” said the line.

Drew didn’t say it. But Drew and the other trombones had started the “ooooooh, aaaaaah” to make fun of one of Drew’s brothers when he was drum major. It hurt like Drew was saying it to me.

Drew lifted the case off me with one hand and swung it by the handle back into the line. Then he helped me up. He cupped his hand to my ear and whispered, “I told you to ride with me in the truck. I didn’t tell you to load the truck. That case was bigger than you are.”

“You didn’t tell me to do anything,” I said, not bothering to keep it quiet. “You asked me nicely. When you start telling me to do things, that’s when—”

He glared at me, reminding me that I was about to get us fired. I glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Rush, who lurked, arms folded.

“That’s when I’ll go wait in the truck,” I said, forcing a smile.

I climbed up into the enormous cab and slammed the door. A llison passed by with the majorettes just then. She did a double take when she saw me in Drew’s truck. I could tell she was asking the other majorettes to wait for her, and I rolled down the window.

“How’d it go?” she asked. But then she saw the look on my face, and she understood exactly how it went. “That bad?”

“Drew told Mr. Rush that I spread my legs for Mr. O’Toole so he’d make me drum major.”

“Busy girl. You’re getting a lot of that lately.”

“I know it. Maybe someone’s trying to tell me something. My nightly sexual escapades are catching up with me.”

“Really,” said a passing drummer in mock shock. A nother put his hand up to his cheek, with his pinky and his thumb stuck out, and mouthed,

“Call me.”

I watched them walk up the hill toward the stadium. “Oh, and Mr. Rush doesn’t like my uniform. He wants me to dress like a trapeze artist.”

A llison was not the logical person to complain to about strange outfits. She wore three-inch heels with her holey jeans. She always wore heels so she would be used to wearing them and wouldn’t look uncomfortable in them onstage at pageants.

Drew slid into the driver’s seat of the truck and called across me, “Hello, A llison.” They were both seniors and had all the A P classes together.

“Hello, Flying Frogini,” she said.

Drew looked perplexed. He looked cute when perplexed. A cute, perplexed ass. “Pardon?”

“Mr. Rush wants me to dress like a trapeze artist,” I explained.

He pursed his lips to hold in a laugh. “I was going to say. I’ve been called a lot of names since Friday night, but that’s a new one on me.”

“Well,” A llison said through a tight pageant smile. “I guess I’ll leave you two alone in Drew’s truck. A gainst my better judgment.” She went back to the majorettes, and I rolled up my window.

I could hear the noise of the band clustered in the driveway. They flirted with one another or warmed up on their saxophones. But the closed doors and windows of the truck muffled the sound. It was almost like Drew and I were alone together, for the first time ever.

Except that a thunk shook the truck every time an instrument case landed in the bed.

“I guess we should make a pact to be nice to each other,” he said. “Or pretend to.”

Thunk.

“The only pact I want to make with you is that we don’t compete with each other at meals,” I said. “I have no idea what I ate for lunch.”

Thunk.

He felt under the driver’s seat and handed me a crumpled bag of peanuts. Then he found a bottle of water for me and one for himself. “I’m trying to be nice to you,” he said.

Thunk.

I swallowed an enormous handful of peanuts and washed it down with a big swig of water. “Being nice to me for five minutes does not make up for pretending I didn’t exist all through band camp. Or for telling the new band director that I screwed the old band director. Is that rumor really going around the band?” I doubted this. A llison would have heard it and told me.

“Not around the whole band. A round the trombones. I think my girlfriend may have started it.”

“I never would have suspected,” I muttered. “Do you realize how irresponsible it was of you to even mention it to Mr. Rush?”

Drew gaped when I said the I-word, and he didn’t even blink at the next thunk. “No one believes it, Virginia. It’s a joke. Mr. Rush didn’t believe me.”

“What if he had? What if he’d told the principal? What if it had gotten back to Mr. O’Toole’s wife? Did you think about that?”

Thunk.

“I was mad at you,” he said softly. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“The next time I’m mad at you, I’ll tell everyone that you had sex with Mrs. Grackle down in home ec.”

He put a hand to his mouth like I’d suggested some unspeakable horror.

Thunk.

“You see how it feels?” I asked. “No, never mind. I don’t think you can. It’s different for a girl. I’m in a position of authority, which was always a boy’s position before this, and you want to make me into a cartoon. You want everyone to think that if I’m in charge, I must have slept with someone to get there.

“I couldn’t possibly have been elected drum major by the people in the band. They couldn’t possibly think I might do a good job. They couldn’t possibly be tired of you acting like you’re too cool to talk to anybody, unless you’re hanging out with the trombones or picking which flute to date this week.”

Thunk.

“You have to act cool.” he said. “Otherwise, people won’t do what you tell them.”

“I don’t act that way, and they do what I tell them. Sometimes.”

“People expect something different from you. You’re a girl.”

I’d gotten used to the thunk, but we both jumped at the knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. Tracey or Cacey Reardon rapped with her knuckles at ear level on Drew’s window. The shadow of evil descended over the truck.

The Evil Twins had earned their name through a long list of horrors. When they were only four years old one or both of them had tried to close their neighborhood playmates in the automatic garage door. In middle school one or both of them had peeled Craig Coley’s fingers back until he fell out of a tree and broke his arm. Nobody was allowed to climb the big, tempting trees at school after that. Just this summer one or both of them had single-handedly (or double-handedly) broken up three couples, including Elke Villa and Gator Smith, who’d dated forever. One or both of them probably would have done more damage if Drew hadn’t picked this opportune time to decide that one or both of them were the girl(s) of his dreams.

That was just the stuff I’d heard about. They were a year older than me, in Drew’s class. So until Friday night in the bathroom, I hadn’t been privy to their day-to-day heinousness. Here was my second introduction. Drew cranked his window open, and she was screaming at him before the glass was all the way down.

“We’re talking about drum major business,” he told her calmly.

She explained, at a higher volume than necessary, that my presence in the farm truck bothered her. You would think he would ditch this loud parody of womanhood. Her eyebrows were overplucked, and her heavy blue eyeliner practically glowed. But sometimes boys liked that look.

I guess.

“I’m giving her a ride to the stadium,” he replied. “I’ll see you up there.” She still screeched, but he rolled up the window anyway, started the engine, and eased the truck out of the driveway and onto the road around the school.

Out the back window, I watched her watching us go. I knew she wasn’t done with Drew—or me. “Can’t you do something to shut that off?” I asked him.

“You’re not supposed to yell at girls.”

“Says who?”

“My dad.”

A h, Southern chivalry. Boys down here still pull out your chair for you and pick up your books if you drop them. The chivalry only goes so far, though. I’ve tested it. If you point out to them that your status as a female does not make you any less capable of opening a door all by yourself, they’ll ask if you’re PMSing. A nd hold the door open for you anyway.

The truck bashed over a curb and onto the grassy hill up to the stadium. The instrument cases, the peanuts, and I went airborne.

“Sorry,” Drew murmured when we landed with a crash. “Look, I’m sorry for everything. I had no idea until the meeting with Mr. Rush—” He stopped and glanced over at me, then wisely turned forward again and steered the truck before we hit the stadium bleachers.

“I’m sorry for that JonBenét comment two years ago,” he went on. “I remember thinking it was funny that you changed after that. But I never made the connection. We stand over there in the trombone section and basically foam at the mouth. We don’t mean anything by it.”

“That’s not exactly how it went down. That’s what A llison told Mr. Rush, and she may believe it. But you’re flattering yourself if you think your opinion matters to me,” I lied.

He stomped the brakes, and the truck spun to a halt in the dust. The rest of the band had hiked up the hill from the school. Boys jumped into the bed of the truck and slid the instrument cases out, or peered through the back window of the cab and put their lips to the glass.

“I have an idea for the dip Mr. Rush wants us to do,” Drew said. “We can ask Barry Ekrivay to help us. He took ballroom dance lessons with his grandmother at the junior college.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“I swear. We spent all last year giving him hell about it.”

I thought it was a good idea. But I wasn’t going to tell Drew so. I took a long sip of water.

“I’m trying to be nice to you,” he repeated. He gripped the steering wheel hard, looking away from me, barely controlling his temper. I could tell it was a good thing his daddy didn’t let him yell at girls. “Wouldn’t you rather suffer through being drum major with me than let Clayton Porridge have it all?”

The sliding noises in the bed stopped, and the dust settled around the truck. The majorettes paraded in front of us on their way to the field.

A llison gave me a look that said Hey, how’s it going with the boy you have a crush on who happens to hate you?

Behind the majorettes, both twins eyed me while talking behind their hands to their friends. I was definitely in trouble.

“Well?” Drew prompted.

“I’m waiting for you to come around the truck and open the door for me.”

He rolled his eyes, cussed, and bailed out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. But by the time he reached the passenger side, he had a fake smile plastered to his face. He opened the door and extended his hand to help me out.

“Yes,” I said as I stepped primly to the ground, the dust soft on my bare feet. “I’d rather be drum major with you than not be drum major at all. I’ll pretend to be nice to you so I don’t get fired. But don’t expect me to be your friend.”

Drew caught Barry Ekrivay as he passed the truck, and talked quietly to him.

“You’re going to do what?” Barry exclaimed.

Drew continued talking while Barry looked me up and down.

“The Evil Twin is going to be so pissed at you,” Barry told Drew. “I shouldn’t help you, anyway. You owe me an apology for an entire year of senior citizen jokes.”

“I’m sorry,” Drew said.

Barry still pouted. “The trombones better not send me a card on Grandparents Day again this year.”

“Drew’s sorry, Barry,” I called. “We need your help. It’s for the good of the band.”

Barry looked up at me again. “Okay,” he said so quickly that I was a little alarmed. Ever since school started last week, I’d had the feeling he was interested in me. Nothing big—I’d just caught him looking at me in band practice a few times when I wasn’t directing. But I really couldn’t tell. No one ever asked me out. A nd he certainly wasn’t making nonstop sex jokes like Walter. I had shrugged it off as a figment of my imagination. Now I hoped he wasn’t getting excited about being close to me as he helped us figure out this dance move.