Major Crush (2 page)

“I hate this town, I hate this town, I hate this town,” A llison chanted for a few minutes after we sat down in the stands. I sent Walter to fetch her makeup case from her car, knowing that makeup could distract her from anything. She would feel better when she was back to looking like her usual self.

Walter held up her mirror while she primped in the bleachers, since the bathroom was off-limits for the time being. She looked perfect again, dolled up in her glittering majorette costume, hair sculpted and curled around her tiara, eyes smoky, maroon lipstick perfect. A s if she hadn’t been about to kick the Evil Twin’s ass only five minutes before.

Walter offered to brave the concession stand for us. The entire band was there, and I didn’t want to deal with a hundred and fifty people who hated my guts. Twenty girls and one drum major had been enough.

Walter galloped down the stairs, and A llison turned to me. “You look like death. Let me put some makeup on you for once.”

I laughed. “I can’t wear your makeup. I’d really look like death in your Rum Raisin lipstick.”

A llison’s dad and my dad were business partners, and we lived next door to each other. So even though she was a year older than me, we’d always been inseparable. That is, until I quit the beauty pageant circuit. We’d grown apart in the past couple of years. But I needed to be a good friend to her because I was her only good friend.

Everybody liked A llison, but nobody wanted to get close to her. She came from the richest A frican-A merican family in town. Black kids made fun of her and called her snooty when we were in grade school. On the other hand, her family was one of only three A frican-A merican families in the country club on the lake that catered mostly to wealthy families vacationing from Montgomery or Birmingham. She didn’t like to play tennis with me there because she thought people were looking at her funny.

We both knew, and her parents kept telling her, that when she got to college, everything would be different. She was smart and beautiful, and it wouldn’t matter anymore that she was a rich A frican-A merican girl from a tiny town in A labama. The only sad thing was that she wouldn’t leave for college for another year. A year was a long, long time for her to tread water.

But Walter had escaped already. He’d just started boarding at the State School for Fine A rts in Birmingham, and he was home for Labor Day weekend. I was happy for him, because his home life wasn’t great—he lived with his mother in a bus at a campground. A nd because the State School for Fine A rts was one of the best high schools in A labama.

I was also happy for me. I’d spent practically the whole summer hanging out with him while A llison was at pageants, and I’d missed him for the week he’d been gone. But it was also a relief, because I was pretty sure he liked me as more than a friend. Walter was adorable, with big green eyes and an interesting sense of fashion that he’d developed from having to shop at the Goodwill store. But he wasn’t for me.

Maybe part of what made me so uncomfortable with him was that I understood completely how he’d developed a crush on me. I was a year older than he was, and I’d been his drum section leader in the band for the past year. He looked up to me. It was natural that he would have a crush on me.

Like I had one on Drew.

A llison leaned closer and said quietly, “You don’t want him to know you’re upset.”

Then, like the dorks we were, we both turned around and looked at Drew, who sat with his dad at the top of the football stadium. Grouped on the rows between us and Drew, several trumpet players and saxophone players glared at me like they wanted to pitch me off the top railing. In fact, Drew and his dad probably would have been glad to help me over.

I felt a pang of jealousy. Drew was close to his dad. I could tell the conversation Drew and his dad were having at the moment wasn’t pleasant, but at least they were having one. I hardly talked to my dad anymore.

“Foul!” Walter jeered at the game, startling me and making A llison jump on my other side. “Dom Perignon?” he asked in his normal voice as he slid onto the metal bench and handed a Coke to A llison and one to me.

I drained the Coke. The night was way too hot for a wool band uniform.

Walter watched me. “I put Drew’s band shoes back in his truck, like we found them.”

“Thanks.” Drew made me mad playing Mr. Perfect all the time. I had thought it would make me feel better to hide his lovingly polished band shoes so he had to wear his Vans with his band uniform. It hadn’t.

“So, what happened in the halftime show?” Walter asked. “It reminded me of the A labama Symphony Orchestra, but not in a good way. You know, before they start playing together, when they’re tuning up.”

A llison nodded. “There’s a point in the majorette routine when I’m supposed to throw the baton on one and turn on two. I looked up at Drew and thought, Is he on one? No, two. A nd then I looked over at you, and you were on, like, thirty-seven.”

I just shook my head. I was afraid that if I tried to talk about it right now, the pissed feeling would fade, the mortified feeling would come back, and I’d start bawling in front of the tuba players.

Walter slid his arm around my waist, and A llison draped her arm around my shoulders from the other side. I tried to feel better, not just sweatier. They were the two best possible friends.

But instead of appreciating their support, I was thinking what a bizarre trio of misfits we must have made from Drew’s high view. A llison, looking as glamorous as possible in her majorette uniform. Me, looking as unglamorous as possible in my masculine drum major uniform.

A nd Walter, a fifteen-year-old boy who’d finally made it out of the bus.

Someone slid onto the bench beside Walter. Oh no, Luther Washington or one of Drew’s other smart-ass trombone friends coming to rub it in. Or worse, the Evil Twin. I peered around Walter.

It was the new band director, Mr. Rush. Before I’d seen him today, I’d hoped that getting a new band director might help my predicament as queen band geek. Mr. O’Toole, who’d been band director for as long as I could remember, had gotten us into this mess by deciding we’d have two drum majors this year.

Then, knowing he’d be leaving near the beginning of the school year anyway, he sleepwalked through summer band camp. He let Drew and me avoid working together. I couldn’t imagine what the new band director would be like, but any change had to be for the better.

Or not. Mr. Rush didn’t seem like he was in any position to change the status quo. He was fresh out of college and looked it, maybe twenty-two years old. He could have passed for even younger because he was only about five foot six, the height of sophomore boys like Walter who weren’t fully grown. I mean, I was five two, and Drew was impressively tall. I thought that made a huge difference in how the band treated us. I wondered how Mr. Rush thought he could handle a hundred and fifty students.

I was about to find out.

“A mscray,” Mr. Rush growled at Walter. Walter leaped up and crossed behind me to sit on A llison’s other side.

Mr. Rush stared at me. Not the stare you give someone when you’re starting a serious conversation. Worse than this. A deep, dark stare, his eyes locking with mine.

He meant to intimidate me. He wanted me to look away. But I stared right back. It felt defiant, and I wondered whether I could get suspended for insubordination just for staring.

I guess I passed the test. Finally he relaxed and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Virginia Sauter.”

He nodded. “What’s the other one’s name?” He didn’t specify “the other suck-o drum major,” but I knew what he meant.

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.