“You are incredibly dumb for a smart person,” he said.
I laughed. “I’ve never denied this.”
“You’re just confirming, over and over, that you’ve been lying to me.”
“I haven’t,” I insisted. I knew he was only teasing, but something about being called a liar, by Will, when I really hadn’t meant to mislead him that first night, ticked me off. “You’re the one who’s so closed minded that everything has to line up perfectly or it doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I be an underachiever? This is America. I can be anything I want. Besides, you’re the one who lied to me. When we first met at Brody’s party, I thought we were kindred spirits. You gave me the impression that you were a pirate, with your earring.”
“Oh.” Surprised, he put his hand to his earlobe like he’d forgotten all about his earring.
“I had no idea you turn in your homework,” I said. “Traitor.”
“You mistook me for something else, and that’s the only reason . . .” As we reached our starting spot on the field and faced the home side, his voice trailed off, but his silence told me the rest of what he was thinking. All of it was true. Yes, I’d lured him home last Sunday night only because I thought he was a slacker like me. Yes, he’d ruined everything by being an upstanding Future Pharmacist of America. Yes.
He nodded as if accepting his fate. “So listen, I wanted to ask you something. It’s not about a date.”
I laughed to show him I wasn’t uncomfortable that he’d read my mind. And then I kept laughing uncomfortably.
He talked over me. “I’m trying out for Spirit of Atlanta in late November. My parents promised me I could try out for drum corps this year, but that was when we lived in Minnesota and there were three corps right next door in Wisconsin. Now that Atlanta is the closest one, I wondered if you wanted to try out with me.”
My heart was beating so hard it hurt. He’d said he wasn’t asking me for a date, but he was issuing me an invitation for something sweet, something kind, something I almost wanted.
Drum corps were basically marching bands with superpowers. They took only the best players from high school and college. They toured the country, competing against each other. It sounded like the perfect place for Will to pass the summer between high school and college—especially if most of it was spent bopping around the northern states, where he wouldn’t overheat at eight a.m. I could tell from the way he talked so wistfully about it that this was one more thing he’d had to give up when he moved.
“I don’t see what my PSAT score has to do with trying out for corps,” I said.
Gathering his thoughts, he tapped his stick on my drumhead a few times. “When I met you, I thought you were a random person who randomly was an excellent drummer. Now I know you’re an excellent drummer on purpose, the type of person who goes out for corps.”
“You’re wrong about me,” I insisted. “You were right the first time. I’m random. When I succeed, that’s the mistake.”
“You make a lot of mistakes.” He sounded hurt. I hoped we weren’t going to have another silent practice like after we argued last Monday.
But he was only waiting for Jimmy, Travis, and the rest of the drummers to arrange themselves in line. When they’d passed, he said quietly, “It would be better to have a friend in corps than to go knowing absolutely nobody, don’t you think? Plus, you have to be there one weekend a month during the school year for practice, and my parents don’t want me to make that seven-hour drive twice in one weekend by myself.”
I turned to look at him. He wasn’t the bad boy he’d seemed at first. Another admission that his mom wanted to keep him safe shouldn’t have surprised me. But that just didn’t jibe with the tall drummer in front of me, looking so serious with his hair cut short, his expression inscrutable behind his mirrored shades.
“What do you think?” he prompted me. “Would your dad let you spend the night in a car with me?”
He was kidding. This was exactly the kind of joke I ribbed him with constantly.
But I found myself speechless. I was imagining spending the night in Will’s car with him. Driving through the night to Atlanta. Talking. Touching. Keeping each other awake behind the wheel.
Then I was thinking about my first night with him. How good he’d made me feel. How I’d decided that one night was enough. How wrong I’d been.
“Tia,” he said.
I snapped, “My dad wouldn’t notice.”
Will’s dark brows knitted behind his sunglasses, and that worry line appeared. “You should try out, then.”
“I couldn’t afford corps.” This wasn’t exactly true. My dad worked so much, and our house was in such a state of disrepair, that a lot of my friends assumed we must be at the brink of bankruptcy. We weren’t. But my dad was very tight with our savings. He’d had to support Izzy and Sophia and their kids for a while. Violet hadn’t gotten knocked up and abandoned yet, but we figured she would. By now we both expected the worst.
For that matter, I could have paid for corps myself. I’d saved a lot working two jobs. But saying no to Will was a foregone conclusion. I wanted to get involved with him, but I just couldn’t do that to myself. I knew what would happen next.
Will had an answer for everything. “It’s expensive, but you could apply for a scholarship, or you could get some business in town to sponsor you.”
A business like the antiques shop, I thought grimly as I pulled my vibrating phone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. I used to answer every time Bob and Roger called, because I was afraid Bob had taken a turn for the worse. But lately they’d started calling me about the shop, of all things—where the vintage handbags were on the network of shelves, and how to access the catalog of sterling flatware I’d set up in their computer so they wouldn’t have to call me.
As I slipped my phone back into my pocket, unanswered, Will was saying, “I mean, corps isn’t for everyone. Don’t let me talk you into it if you’re not a fan.”
“No, I love corps,” I said. “People complain about traveling the whole summer, eating peanut butter sandwiches three meals a day, and sleeping on school gym floors all over the country, but that sounds fun to me. And not too far removed from my current life. I always wanted to try out.”
He moved his drumsticks apart, a drummer’s version of spreading his hands to shrug. “Why didn’t you?”
“I figured I wouldn’t make it.” A half truth this time. I had a lot of confidence in my ability as a drummer, because I’d listened carefully and compared myself to other players when our band went to games or contests. But I had no confidence in my ability to lead a section or arrive at practice on time. God only knew what I’d be getting myself into in an organization that was actually rigorous.
“You would make it.” He looked sidelong at me beneath his shades. “But maybe you don’t want to chance getting stuck next to me again.”
The highlight of my day, even a fun first day of school like this, was standing next to Will. But I brushed him off. “Maybe you don’t want to chance getting stuck next to me again, and you regret bringing it up.”
He shut me down. “Nope. So let’s make it official. Will you drive to Atlanta with me for tryouts in November?”
The last thing I wanted was to have a real conversation with Will in which we confronted our issues. But he was watching me with his brows raised behind his shades, which I interpreted as hope in his eyes. Just like Sunday night all over again. I knew he would keep bringing up the idea and I would continue to string him along to avoid either committing to him or disappointing him, unless I went ahead and cut him off. I said, “You think you’ve got me all figured out, but you’re way off the mark. I don’t do stuff like that.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Stuff requiring effort.” As I said this, I turned away from Will. DeMarcus motioned to call the band to order and open practice. It was the drum captain’s job to play a short riff that the rest of the drum line echoed, snapping the whole band to attention. I did the job this time, startling Will.
The entire band went completely still, except for Will, who really had gotten caught off guard. He eased his head forward and slowly folded his sticks on top of his drum in our attention position so he wouldn’t get in trouble for failing to keep his eyes up front.
The whole standing-at-attention thing was just a little game we played for a few seconds at the beginning of band sometimes. It was a tool Ms. Nakamoto used to make us listen to her if she couldn’t convince the trumpets to shut up otherwise. Usually it bored me to death. Today I heard the cars swishing by on the street outside the stadium, the cries of seagulls gliding overhead, a breeze through the palms that definitely didn’t make it down to the bottom of the bowl we were standing in, the tiniest tap as Will finally set his sticks down on his drumhead, and his long sigh. Maybe he sighed with relief that he hadn’t gotten caught. I was afraid he sighed with frustration that I was playing impossible to get.
Most boys who pursued me stopped trying eventually, frustrated. I would miss Will. I hoped he wouldn’t stop trying for a while.
Of course . . . he had already, when he asked out Angelica. Funny, even though I could see her from where I was standing, way up near the home bleachers in the majorette version of standing at attention with her toe pointed and two batons crossed on her hip, I’d forgotten all about her when Will stood so close.
“At ease,” DeMarcus hollered. “At ease” didn’t mean “collapse,” but that’s what happened. The tubas and drums slid their instruments off their shoulders and dumped them on the ground. While Ms. Nakamoto told us through her microphone what we’d be rehearsing for the next hour, Will took off his harness, handed me his hat and shades, then pulled his shirt over his head, just like in every other practice this week.
Much as I wanted to see this, I told him quietly, “You can’t take your shirt off.”
“Yes, I can,” he said through the material. “Watch, it’s stretchy.”
“No, I mean . . .” I said to his na**d torso.
I stopped and just watched him. This was the hottest thing I’d ever seen at school. His paleness had mellowed into a gentle tan that would protect him from the sun, and his strong build gave him the look of a proud lifeguard. He took his hat and shades back from me. The lenses reflected the palm trees behind me.
“Not during school hours,” I managed. “It’s against the dress code.”
“Suddenly you care about the rules.” He cracked a lopsided grin at me, twirling his shirt cheekily in one hand.
“Mr. Matthews,” Ms. Nakamoto called through her microphone. “Put your shirt on. We don’t allow students to break the dress code when school is in session.”
I started to taunt him but thought better of it. He really might be upset that he’d gotten in trouble, and for something so silly.
Just as I was thinking this, he roared back at Ms. Nakamoto across the field, “It’s. Three. Thousand. Degrees!”
“Mr. Ma-tthews?” Ms. Nakamoto’s tone had changed to the one I’d heard her use only on me, last year, when I overslept and made all four buses half an hour late leaving for a contest in Miami.
“He’s doing it,” I called to placate her. I held out my hands and snapped my fingers for his hat and shades.
He gave heaven a sour look for a second, then obediently passed me his cap and sunglasses again while he pulled on his shirt. Then he took his hat and shades back. From the side, I could see he’d closed his eyes behind the lenses as he inhaled a long, calming breath through his nose.
With Ms. Nakamoto issuing clipped instructions through her microphone, I whispered to Will, “What are you thinking about? Revenge?”
“Snow.”
Ms. Nakamoto drilled us for most of practice, so we didn’t get to chat. We played and marched through the opening number probably eleven times. In the pauses between, while Ms. Nakamoto stood way up in the stands with DeMarcus and they pointed at the lopsided loops in the formation (not our problem; drums stood in rows), we watched Sawyer working the field in his pelican costume. It was impossible not to watch him.
Sawyer and I were good friends. I knew there was a lot more to him than being the screwed-up son of a felon. But I’d been just as astonished as everybody else when he tried out for school mascot last spring—and made it. He’d told me excitedly about the school paying for him to go to mascot camp a few weeks ago. He’d learned a ton, and he was over the moon the day the school handed him the mascot costume they’d ordered. The new pelican wasn’t especially for him, of course. It was just time for a new one. The old pelican had been shedding faux feathers and looked like it had spent time in an inland pond and caught a disease that caused its beak to disintegrate. When the drum line had been bored in the stands at a lackluster football game last fall and feeling snarky, we’d taken to calling it the Pelican’t.
This was our first time seeing Sawyer the New Pelican in action, and his hold on everyone’s attention had very little to do with the bird’s blinding whiteness. He performed an exaggerated version of the cheerleaders’ chants and dances while standing right behind Kaye, and he wasn’t dissuaded when Kaye frequently spun around and slapped him. His outfit was padded. Eventually he wandered over to bother the majorettes until Ms. Nakamoto called, “Mr. De Luca, remove yourself from the band, and keep your wings to yourself.”