The band and the cheerleaders burst into laughter. Sawyer folded his wings and stomped his huge bird-feet back toward the cheerleaders in a huff. Chuckling, I said, “He’s going to be good.”
“Or dead,” Will grumbled. “How does he wear that getup in this heat?” I could see why Will was concerned. Even in his shorts and tee, with his hair as short as Izzy could have cut it without shaving it, sweat dripped down his temple, and his cheeks gleamed with it.
“I told him not to put on the costume in practice during the heat of the day,” I said. “He says he wants to get used to it so he doesn’t pass out during a game.”
“So you’re seeing him again?” Will asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”
His question shocked me. He hadn’t mentioned Sawyer, or sounded particularly jealous, since Monday.
No, I wasn’t seeing Sawyer. That is, I’d never been seeing him in the way Will meant. And something about bantering with Will during practice had made me feel almost like I was seeing him, and going out with Sawyer would be cheating.
Of course, if that was true, Will was cheating on me every night with Angelica. And Will had no business thinking I should keep him updated on whether I was seeing Sawyer or not.
Logically I knew this. But Will and I were operating on a different plane from everybody around us, it seemed to me. He was in a relationship. He thought I was in a relationship. We shouldn’t have feelings for each other, but we did, and they were more important than anything else—at least when we were together.
“Um,” I said as he tapped one stick lightly on the rim of his drum, nervous for my answer. Part of me wanted to tell him I was seeing Sawyer, just to give him a taste of what I’d felt like when he’d lain on the beach with his hand on Angelica.
The school bell rang through a speaker on the outside of the school, loud enough for us to hear across the parking lot and down in this hole. It was the signal for the end of the period and the beginning of announcements. The rest of the school sat in classrooms and listened to the principal go over test schedules, game schedules, and threats of no more artificial sweetener for anyone if students kept sprinkling Equal on the floor of the lunchroom and yelling “blizzard!” Though the announcements had never struck me as earth shattering, the principal thought they were so important that she typed them up and e-mailed them every afternoon to DeMarcus so he could read them to the band and cheerleaders (and insane school mascot) using Ms. Nakamoto’s microphone. I explained this to Will, and we dumped our drums and harnesses onto the grass.
DeMarcus’s reserved monotone was great for being the guy in charge of the band, but not so good for reading announcements. Bo-ring. In fact, though we were supposed to be paying attention, I thought we were veering toward dangerous territory where Will would ask me again whether I was seeing Sawyer. I preferred to let the question hang there, unanswered. That way, I wasn’t telling a lie, but Will had to wonder about Sawyer and me.
So, to spice up the announcements a bit, I started translating them into Spanish in an even worse monotone than DeMarcus’s. After an initial burst of laughter that made the cymbals turn around, Will pressed his lips together while I entertained him with the Telemundo version of soporific crap.
“That’s all wrong,” he said. “The Spanish I’ve learned has been super animated. I thought that was part of the language.” He took a stab at the next announcement, enunciating it like an overenthusiastic thespian.
“You just mixed up ‘swimming pool’ with ‘fish,’ and ‘swimmer’ with ‘matador,’ ” I informed him. “I’m glad you’re not really announcing this, or people would be dressing very strangely for the swim meet tomorrow.”
“That’s it.” He grabbed me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, threatening the headlock.
“No fair!” I squealed. “The terms of the headlock are very clear. I did not mention lutefisk.”
“Mr. Matthews, get off Ms. Cruz,” Ms. Nakamoto called through the microphone. When Will stood me up straight, she was handing the microphone back to DeMarcus so he could finish the announcements.
Turning around on the towel he was sharing with a trombone, Jimmy tapped his watch and told Will and me, “Fifty-six minutes. Not a personal record, but a damned good time.”
In answer, Will held one drumstick out beside him, flipped it into the air so that it tumbled three or four times, and caught it without looking at it. This was his answer to pretty much everything drummers said to him that he didn’t like, and it was effective at awing them into silence.
“How do you do that?” I asked. If he managed to escape back to Minnesota early and left me high and dry as drum captain, I could sure use a trick like that. I’d never awed anyone into silence in my life.
“Like this,” he said, showing me his drumstick in his palm. I imitated him. “Now . . .” He raked his thumb under the stick and flipped it into the air. He caught it neatly. I tried it and accidentally launched the stick at his head. He caught that, too.
“Not quite,” he laughed. “Look.” He took my hand in his, pressed my stick into my palm, and showed me how to scoop the stick out and upward with my thumb. I wanted to learn this trick, really. All the warmth spreading across my cheeks had everything to do with excitement at learning a stunt, and the oppressive heat of the afternoon, and nothing to do with Will standing inches from me, his hands on mine.
“Oooooh,” the band moaned loudly enough that I glanced up to see what the commotion was. The entire band, all hundred and eighty of them extending in lines and curlicues across the grass, turned around in one motion to stare at us.
At least, that was my first impression—that they were staring at both Will and me. Maybe DeMarcus had paused in his drone to hand the microphone to Ms. Nakamoto, who’d scolded Will and me for touching again, and we hadn’t heard her over our own laughter. But DeMarcus was still reciting the announcements.
I hit on the answer. The band was staring at Will, not me. I still didn’t know why, but I wasn’t surprised anymore. People stared at Will a lot, even when he was wearing a shirt. I spent a good portion of my day trying not to do it myself.
No, that didn’t seem right either. Girls might gaze longingly at Will as they passed him on the grass, but the whole band wouldn’t turn around to say “Oooooh!” unless he’d gotten in trouble.
“What is it? I wasn’t listening,” I said to Will as a joke, because the fact that I hadn’t been listening was pretty obvious.
“I don’t know,” he said, giving the band a suspicious once-over, “but they’re still pointing at us.”
At me, I thought. I glanced around the drum line to pinpoint someone I could ask, but everybody else had abandoned their drums to sit down with trumpets or clarinets who had towels to spread out. Will and I were the only ones left standing. Nobody was offering an explanation.
“Whatever it is,” Will said, “it must be very good, or very bad.” He mouthed a question to Angelica way across the field. It was probably my imagination, but I thought she turned away on purpose.
Maybe I would have better luck. I peered in the direction of Kaye and the group of cheerleaders huddled up front. Sure enough, she was waving her arms, trying to catch my attention, mouthing something. I read her lips. “Biggest fart,” I said. “I let out the biggest fart? I am sure I did not. Only freshman trumpets have contests like that.”
“I’ve got it,” Will said. “Biggest Flirt.”
“Oh!” I understood now. DeMarcus must be announcing the winners of the Senior Superlatives titles we’d voted on first thing that morning. In fact, he was calling out Most Athletic right now. And while I wasn’t listening, I’d been elected Biggest Flirt. “I’m not sure I like this. It has a slut-shaming flavor, like they really wanted to give me Biggest Ho.”
“No, Tia.” The worry line formed between Will’s brows as he explained, “We’re both Biggest Flirts.”
“You?” I laughed. “Why would anybody elect you Biggest Flirt?”
“Because of you!” Those bright blue eyes glared at me over his sunglasses.
I’d withstood the Florida heat for an hour with no problem, but suddenly I felt sweat break out on my forehead. Will had been chosen Biggest Flirt because of me? The school thought we were flirting with each other?
Well, if I was honest with myself—a twisting pain settled in the pit of my stomach, which was what I got for being honest with myself—I had been flirting with Will all week. I just hadn’t known anybody had noticed. Except for Chelsea and Brody and DeMarcus. . . . The list got longer as I remembered all the people who’d asked me about Will in the past few days. For some reason I’d had the impression we were invisible here at the back of the field with the whole band turned the other way. Now I knew we’d been in a fishbowl for anyone to see.
Worst of all, Will had been elected Biggest Flirt too. I’d felt like I was only teasing him, but the school thought he’d been flirting back. That gave me a head rush. Will secretly liked me.
Or, he had. I could tell by the way he was looking up at the sky that he was angry. Angelica had turned her back on him because she didn’t like her boyfriend being named Biggest Flirt with another girl. And that meant my delicious friendship with Will was about to come to a screeching halt.
7
STRANGELY, WILL SEEMED LESS CONCERNED about what Angelica would think, and more concerned about what his parents would think. With DeMarcus announcing Senior Superlatives titles in the background, Will told me, “You don’t understand what a big deal this is. My parents are going to look through my yearbook next May and see I won Biggest Flirt. If they make friends and start talking to other parents, the rumor may get back to them even sooner.”
“So?”
“So, I’m trying to convince them I’m responsible enough to drive up to Atlanta for drum corps in a couple of months, and to go to college in Minnesota like I always planned. They say the extra expense for out-of-state tuition has to be worth their while. In other words, I can’t screw up or seem like I’m not serious about school. If I’d stayed in Minnesota, I would have been Most Academic.”
“There’s no way you would have gotten that here,” I said. “A lot of people are in the running for valedictorian, but Xavier Pilkington sewed up the title of Royal Nerdbait in third grade when he made a working dishwasher out of Legos.”
“Right. I understand that. I don’t belong here, and everything’s already taken. So why couldn’t I get no title, rather than Biggest Flirt? If the school puts that stuff on the Internet, my friends at home are going to see it.”
“Your friends who cheated on you within two minutes of you leaving?”
He drew back from me and stood up straighter, looking down at me over his shades with astonishment and hurt in his blue eyes.
“Cheap shot,” I admitted, “but you have taken on an accusatory tone. You’re standing here blaming me when we both got elected Biggest Flirt. We achieved that honor together. It’s like a guy blaming a girl for getting pregnant.”
Instantly I was sorry. I’d blurted out my resentment from a fight Izzy had had with her ex a couple of years ago. Will already had a low enough opinion of me. I hadn’t meant to make it worse.
His mouth flattened into a grim line. I thought he was going to yell at me.
Instead, he opened his arms and slid them around me, stepping forward until he was giving me a full-body hug. My ear pressed against his damp T-shirt. He was getting me sweaty. I didn’t mind. I could hear his heartbeat thumping as the low notes of his voice vibrated in his chest. “I’m not blaming you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
I allowed myself to stay in his arms, enjoying the way his body made mine feel, for three deep breaths before I started to back away.
“Mr.,” Ms. Nakamoto said through the microphone, which she’d taken away from DeMarcus again, “Matthews.”
Will put his hands up, a drumstick in each, in the pose he assumed at least once per practice.
Jimmy called from his towel, “Double header!”
Ms. Nakamoto gave the microphone back to DeMarcus, who resumed his slow recitation of the senior titles.
“Are you okay?” I asked Will. His eyes were closed behind his shades.
“It’s so hot,” he said. “I might vomit.”
I glanced toward the sidelines. The lunchroom workers had already taken away the cooler of water they’d set out for us at the beginning of practice. “You don’t have any water left?”
He tapped the plastic bottle in his back pocket, which made a hollow sound, and shook his head. A drop of sweat slid from his cheek, over his chin, and down his neck.
“Here,” I said, trying not to sound alarmed. I handed him my own half-full bottle from my pocket.
“Thanks.” I watched his throat working as he drank all of it in one long draw and tossed the bottle toward his drum on the grass. Then he pulled up the hem of his shirt to wipe his face. Glancing over at me, he said, “I’m okay.”
“You worry me.”
“I just get kind of dizzy sometimes,” he said. “I feel like a dork.”
“You are a dork,” I said, “but not because of that.”
He started toward me. I recognized his headlock stance by now.
“Mr. Matthews,” I warned him in Ms. Nakamoto’s voice.
“Kaye Gordon and Aidan O’Neill.” DeMarcus’s monotone had continued through the microphone all this time, but he caught my attention only when he mentioned my friend. “Most Likely to Succeed.”