Major Crush, Page 2

  I shuddered. “Drew Morrow.”

  Walter leaned around A llison. “His friends call him General Patton.”

  A llison laughed.

  Mr. Rush ignored them. He asked me, “What’s with the punky look? You’ve got the only nose stud I’ve seen in this town.”

  “Would you believe she entered beauty pageants with me until two years ago?” A llison asked. A llison always rubbed this in.

  “I developed an allergy to taffeta,” I said.

  “No, she didn’t,” A llison said. “On the first day of summer band camp in ninth grade, she walked by Drew in the trombone section. The trombones called her JonBenét Ramsey, and it was all over. She quit the majorettes and went back to drums.”

  “Is that true?” Walter asked me.

  “You think I was born with a stud in my nose?”

  “A nd she stopped wearing shoes,” A llison added.

  Mr. Rush eyed my band shoes.

  “Well, I’m wearing shoes now,” I said. “Of course I can’t be out of uniform at a game.”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Rush said, looking my uniform up and down with distaste.

  “More people might get their noses pierced if I started a club,” I said. “Would you like to be our faculty sponsor?”

  “A nd an attitude to match the nose stud,” Mr. Rush said. He leaned across me to point at A llison and Walter. “You, princess. A nd you, frog.

  Beat it.”

  They scattered, leaving Mr. Rush and me alone on the bench.

  Mr. Rush explained, “You learn in teacher training classes not to challenge students in front of other students, because all you get is lip.”

  “Did they tell you not to make fun of your students’ appearance? I have every right to wear a stud in my nose.”

  He laughed shortly. “I doubt that would stand up in court. Not in A labama.”

  “Then I’m moving to Oregon.”

  He cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. “Come off the defensive, would you? I happen to agree with you. I’m just figuring out what’s going on here.” He glanced over his shoulder at Drew and his father at the top of the stands. “What’s up with you and Morrow?”

  “He was drum major by himself last year,” I said. “Everybody knew he’d be drum major again this year. But Clayton Porridge was trying out against him. I wanted to be drum major next year, after Drew graduated. I figured I’d better go ahead and try out, just for show, so Clayton wouldn’t have anything on me.”

  I looked down into my cup of ice. “I never thought I’d make it this year. A girl has never been drum major. A nd we’ve never had two drum majors. Mr. O’Toole decided after the vote that we’d have two this year, the two with the most votes, and that was Drew and me. I don’t know what he was thinking.” I made a face. “Though I’m pretty sure what Drew’s thinking.”

  “So a girl’s never been drum major,” Mr. Rush repeated slowly. “A nd all the flutes and clarinets are girls, and all the trombones are boys.

  Gotta love a small town steeped in tradition. Who needs this diversity crap?”

  It bothered me, too, or I wouldn’t have tried out for drum major. But it made me mad that Mr. Rush would come here from the outside and attack my hometown. “Where did you grow up?” I asked.

  “Big Pine.”

  “Oh, like that’s any better. Big Pine is just as small and just as backward as this place. Plus, the paper mills make it smell like last week’s Filet-O-Fish.” A ctually, my town was too isolated to have a McDonald’s, and Big Pine had one, which weakened my argument. I had very limited personal experience with the Filet-O-Fish.

  “I’m really liking this lip,” he said.

  I knew I’d better back off.

  “Which one of you got the most votes?” he asked.

  “Mr. O’Toole wouldn’t tell us.”

  A llison had a theory, though. She thought I won, and Mr. O’Toole just didn’t want me to be drum major by myself. I mean, he didn’t even want to let a girl try out. My dad had to threaten to call the school board.

  Drew had been a terrific drum major last year. He’d won all these awards. But A llison’s theory was that the band thought he was stuck-up.

  Before, when he was just a sophomore trombone, he cut up with the other trombones. They would let out a low “ooooooh, aaaaaah”

  whenever Mr. O’Toole or the previous drum major, one of Drew’s older brothers, said anything profound. Drew was happy-go-lucky.

  Everyone loved him. Especially girls.

  But as soon as he got drum major last year, he buttoned up. He hardly even laughed any more. A llison thought the band had gotten tired of it and voted him out. There was no way of knowing, when Mr. O’Toole wouldn’t tell us who really won.

  I went on, “Mr. O’Toole said that since we were both drum majors, it didn’t matter who got more votes. He didn’t want to generate bad blood between us.” I smiled. “It worked.”

  Mr. Rush rubbed his temple like he had a headache. “When’s the last time you had a conversation with Morrow?”

  “A conversation?”

  “Yeah, you know. You talk, he talks, you communicate.”

  “We had an argument just now because he sicced his girlfriend on me in the bathroom. Is that progress?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple harder. “How about before that?”

  “Communicate. Probably …” I had to think about this. “Never.”

  “Then how have you functioned at all? Even on your sad, limited level?”

  I shrugged. “Mr. O’Toole would tell me where to go on the field, and then he would tell Drew where to go.”

  “I’m going to tell you both where to go,” Mr. Rush muttered. “You see me in my office before band practice when we come back to school on Tuesday. A nd I want you to spend the long weekend contemplating how the two of you reek.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “If you performed that way at a contest, you’d get embarrassingly low marks. So would the band, because the two of you have them so confused. A nd the drums! Though I’m not sure the drums are your fault. I suspect they reek on their own merit.”

  He stood, looking down at me with a diabolical grin. “I’m so glad we’ve had this chat. To be fair, I’d give Morrow the same treatment, but it looks like someone’s beat me to it.”

  I nodded. “His father and his two older brothers used to be drum majors.”

  “What? A legacy? The Morrow clan has drum major tied up like the Mafia?”

  “It feels that way.”

  “I should have kept my job in Birmingham at Pizza Hut,” Mr. Rush grumbled as he stomped away.

  I had to agree with this. Despite myself, I looked up one more time at Drew high in the stands. He and his father sat side by side in the same position, leaning forward, elbows on knees. The only difference was that Drew hung his head. Now Mr. Morrow pointed to Drew’s Vans.

  I imagined Mr. Morrow lecturing Drew in a Tony Soprano voice. “I’m counting on you to uphold the family name. I want you to off the broad. Capisce?”

  “You are a good drum major,” Walter said. “I mean, I assume you could be. You haven’t had a chance. But there’s no reason for you not to be a good drum major. You’re musically talented. You’re responsible. A nd besides, you look cute in your uniform pants.”

  I rolled my eyes. He made this kind of flirtatious comment more and more often lately. It made me so uncomfortable that I probably shouldn’t have come over to the bus today. But my dad had the day off and was likely to organize some wretched family activity if I was around. A llison was at a pageant all weekend, as usual. A nd I needed to talk.

  I inched farther away from Walter on his bed, which he had cleared of difficult-looking books so we could sit down. Some of our friends referred to the bus as the Bookmobile because the walls were stacked like a library, giving Walter and his mother even less space to move around.

  The bus was divided into two rooms. The back roo
m was Walter’s mom’s bedroom. I don’t know why she bothered. She was hardly ever home. In fact, in the entire past year that Walter and I had been close friends, I’d probably laid eyes on her twice.

  She was working on a PhD in psychology at A uburn University. This sounded impressive, like maybe they would move into a real house soon. Until you found out that she’d been working on one psychology degree or another almost since Walter was born and his dad left. A nd then you heard that she partied with her friends and didn’t always make it home from A uburn at night. You wondered why she didn’t use some of this book-learning in psychology on herself. This was the one thing Walter and I couldn’t talk about, besides my dad. A nd Walter’s crush on me.

  The front room of the bus was Walter’s room, the living room, and the kitchen combined. We sat on his bed because it doubled as the sofa.

  My old-fashioned mother had forbidden me to set foot in a boy’s room or sit on a boy’s bed. I had never checked with her to see how the rules changed when a boy lived in a bus. Normally I would just shrug her warnings off, because I knew what I was doing. A nd it was only Walter, after all.

  The way he’d been acting lately, though, I was tempted to give him the trusty old “my mother won’t let me go inside a boy’s bus unchaperoned” excuse. I tried to ignore that he inched toward me as I inched away. A t least I had my drumsticks in my lap. I could jab him if he inched an inch too far.

  “I’m starting to think it has nothing to do with being musically talented or actually directing the band,” I said. “Drew can direct the band, and I can direct the band. But what Drew can do that I can’t do is yell at people and make them jump. These girls in the bathroom reacted to me like I was one of them, or below them, even. They reacted to Drew like he was in charge. I’m supposed to be in charge too. What’s the matter with me?”

  Walter frowned at me and stared with his big green eyes like he was really considering this question. While I waited for the big revelation, I noticed that his eyes exactly matched the green leaves in the trees out the bus window behind him. He really was cute. I could totally see how I would be head over heels in love with him, if I were fourteen years old instead of sixteen.

  I started tapping out a nervous rhythm on my knee with my drumsticks. I used to take my drumsticks with me everywhere because I wanted to practice constantly and be a better drummer. Now I took them with me because I felt naked without them.

  Finally Walter said, “You’re not a screamer.”

  I stopped tapping. “Oh, for the love of—”

  “I’m serious. Drew hears a fight in the girls’ bathroom and goes in to break it up. His first instinct is to yell. Well, let’s say you heard a fight in the boys’ bathroom, and you broke it up. What would you do naturally if you could solve it your way?”

  “I would run in the other direction. You really expect me to go in the boys’ bathroom? Let them kill each other.”

  “You know what I mean. Hypothetically.”

  I’d been thinking a lot about what Mr. Rush had said to me after he told Walter and A llison to beat it so he could talk to me alone. Don’t challenge students in front of other students, because all you get is lip.

  “I’d pull each person to the side and talk to them one-on-one about what was going on,” I said. “I’d act like if they would please back off, I would consider it a favor. A nd I really would. I mean, I know everybody in band. Everybody in band is a friend of mine. Except for the Evil Twins, and anyone who happens to be calling me a bitch at the moment.

  “For instance, Tonya, Paula, and Michelle were in the bathroom. I’ve had almost every class with them for years. A nd still they didn’t stand up for me. Michelle brandished her flagpole at me like a Power Ranger. But they were caught up in the mob mentality and wanted blood. If Drew and Mr. Rush let me, I’d always talk to people on a personal level rather than yelling at them, because that’s how I function.”

  “Then that’s what you should do,” Walter said. “You have to yell on the football field. But in rehearsal, you don’t have to act like General Patton. Be yourself rather than trying to be a small, blond Drew, and you’ll probably get better results.”

  This made sense, but it seemed too simple “Can I do that? I’ve never heard of a drum major doing that.”

  “We’ve never had a girl drum major.”

  This took a few seconds to sink in. “Walter,” I said in awe.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “I know all about my own eye-hurting brilliance.”

  I waited for him to ruin it by suggesting some way I could repay him for his eye-hurting brilliance. That’s what he usually would have done.

  But he didn’t.

  “Walter,” I repeated, “you are so helpful. Except for the gross, horny, fifteen-year-old boy comments along the way.”

  “Hey. I am not gross.”

  “Thank you so much,” I kept gushing. “See, that’s what I like so much about you. You’re a boy, but it’s like you’re not. Talking serious with you is like talking to a girl.”

  I meant every word. But when I finished, I could tell from the look on his face that I should have edited my gushing.

  “It’s like I’m not a boy?”

  I looked away from his angry green eyes and started tapping my drumsticks again. “You know what I mean.”

  His voice rose. “Talking to me is like talking to a girl?”

  “That’s a compliment,” I said weakly.

  “You can’t say stuff like that to me.”

  Still tapping, I tried to act casual and blow it off. “Yes, I can. We’ve always been able to say anything to each other.” A lmost.

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Get off the bus.”

  I stopped tapping. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  I wanted to poke him with my drumstick, to tease him back into his usual good mood. But his green eyes were hard. I walked down what used to be the aisle, before the seats were removed to make room for stacks of books, and opened the folding bus door with the lever. I padded down the steps to the dirt outside and turned around to see if he’d changed his mind yet.

  He closed the door behind me.

  I walked along the side of the bus, standing on tiptoes to peer in. It was dark inside compared to the sunny day, and I couldn’t see. But the bus wasn’t air-conditioned, and all the windows were open to the breeze.

  “Walter,” I called. When he didn’t answer, I rapped on the inside of a window frame with my drumstick.

  “Stop,” he yelled over the racket. “You’re being disrespectful of my home.”

  I stepped back and looked up at the bus doubtfully. Once upon a time, it had been a yellow school bus. But as Walter told the story, when he was twelve, he’d painted it brown in a futile attempt to make it look more like a house.

  “When you remind me that you live in a sixty-room lakeside mansion,” he exaggerated, “you’re just making it harder on yourself.”

  I glanced through the trees at the sunlight glinting off the deep green water. “You live on the lake too, Walter.”

  “You know what I mean. I live in a bus in a campground on the lake. This is my mother’s idea of permanent housing. I do not have my own private beach.”

  A squeak cut through the soft sound of wind in the trees as he opened the bus’s emergency exit. He jumped to the ground with a towel draped over his shoulder. “Don’t follow me,” he said. “The public shower doesn’t have a lock, and it’s not fair. I couldn’t follow you into your freaking boudoir.” He walked down the hill toward the campground bathrooms, muttering about sixty-room houses and private beaches.

  I wasn’t naive. I understood there was a money difference that made people uncomfortable with me. It was always there between Walter and me, between me and almost any boy. For instance, today I wore ratty jeans and a faded T-shirt. Walter wore ratty jeans and a faded T-shirt.

  We looked like twins, or at least like brother and sister. But I paid full-price for my c
lothes at A bercrombie & Fitch in the Birmingham Mall, and Walter bought his at the thrift store.

  But I wasn’t going to let him get away with changing the subject. “Walter, if you’re mad at something I said, okay. Let’s talk about it.”

  He didn’t even slow down. He kept stalking away from me under the trees.

  “Walter, come on,” I called. “You’re going back to school tomorrow. I won’t see you again for, what? A nother two weeks?”

  “If you’re lucky,” he yelled without turning around.

  I wondered whether he meant I’d be lucky if he showed up again in two weeks, or I’d be lucky if he stayed away until then.

  On Tuesday I begged my English teacher to let me out of class ten minutes early. When she gave me the nod, I bolted out the door and down the stairs to the lunchroom.

  Mr. Rush had told me to come to his office before band. That meant during my lunch period. Through long years on the pageant circuit, I was used to watching my weight, but I kept it down by jogging and by laying off the Doritos. I’d never skipped a meal in my life. A nd I didn’t intend to start because of Drew Morrow. No matter how long his eyelashes were.

  Seems Drew had the same idea. By the time I burst through the lunchroom doors, he already sat across the empty room, alone in the rows of tables and chairs, wolfing down a hamburger. He watched me as I dashed for the salad bar.

  Usually I was picky, but today I grabbed a plate, piled it with lettuce, and spooned on whatever else was handy. I think this involved beets. I wasn’t sure. It was red, whatever it was. I sat in the chair nearest the salad bar and shoveled it in without tasting it.

  We faced each other across the rows, stuffing our faces, monitoring each other. There was no way I would let him beat me to that band room.

  He made a move toward the doors like he was leaving, which made me start. You would think that if I was coordinated enough to walk down a pageant runway in high heels, or to direct the band, I could shove a fork in my mouth and stand up at the same time. A pparently not. I lost my balance, my chair scraped out from under me, and I landed on the floor.