Major Crush
By Jennifer Echols
A new Romantic Comedy from Simon Pulse
I could keep my expressionless drum major face on while I strode under the bleachers and around the stadium to the bathroom. But then I was going to bawl.
Six thousand people, almost half the town, came to every home game of the high school football team. Tonight they crowded the stadium for the first game of the season. They had expected the band to be as good as usual. Instead, it had been the worst halftime show ever to shatter a hot September night. And I’d been in charge of it.
Me and the other drum major, Drew Morrow.
Allison knew exactly what I was doing. She handed her batons to another majorette and hurried close behind me.
The band always took third quarter off. So I had about half an hour to get myself together, with Allison’s help, before I had to be back in the stands to direct the band playing the fight song during fourth quarter.
I felt Allison’s hand on my back, supporting me, as I stepped through the bathroom door. My eyes watered, my nose tickled, I was ready to let loose—
Unfortunately, about twenty girls from the band were in the bathroom ahead of me. Including Drew’s girlfriend of the month, the Evil Twin.
Allison stepped in front of me, putting herself between me and them. She seemed nine feet tall. She was a lot more threatening dressed in her majorette leotard than I was dressed like a boy. But she pulled at her earring with one hand, so I knew she was stressing out.
The Evil Twin was either Tracey or Cacey Reardon—I wasn’t sure which one, and no one else seemed to know either. All we knew for sure was that the twins were evil. Or, one of them was evil and the other just looked the same.
I assumed the one currently dissing me was the one dating Drew. Because she sure seemed to have it in for me.
I pulled Allison toward the door. I could cry later.
Before we managed to leave, the twin turned back to Allison and made the mistake of touching her majorette tiara.
Allison whirled around with her claws out.
“Fight!” someone squealed. Several freshmen made it out the door, still shrieking.
I hadn’t witnessed a fight like this since a couple of girls got into it over a Ping-Pong game in seventh grade PE. And I was about to be the costar.
“Hey!” Drew boomed in his drum major command voice. His tall frame filled the doorway.
Allison and the twin stopped. There was complete silence for two seconds at the shock of getting caught. Then everyone realized it was Drew, not a teacher, and screamed because there was a boy in the girls’ bathroom.
Drew reached through the girls. I thought he was reaching for the twin to save her from herself. But his hand closed over my wrist. I stumbled after him as he dragged me out of the bathroom and through the line at the concession stand, to a corner behind a concrete pillar that held up the stadium.
He let go of my wrist. “What. Were. You. Doing?”
I was gazing way up at the world’s most beautiful boy. Drew was a foot taller than me and had a golden tan, wavy black hair, and deep brown eyes fringed with dark, thick lashes. And these were almost the first words he’d spoken to me since the band voted us both drum majors last May.
“Your girlfriend started it. Why don’t you talk to her?”
“My girlfriend isn’t drum major.”
“So?”
“So, it’s bad enough that I have to be drum major with you. It’s bad enough that the band sounded like crap tonight. But you are not going to get in fights with people in the band. We have the same position. If you stoop to that level, I’ve stooped to that level. I’m not going to let you make me look irresponsible.”
I had already known this was the way he felt about me. He’d tried his best during summer band camp to act like I didn’t exist. Except when he spoke low to the trombones and they muttered under their breath as I passed.
“You’re not my boss.” My voice rose. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
He leaned farther down toward me and hissed, “We are not going to yell at each other in public. Do you understand?”
“You are not going to get in my face and threaten me. Do you understand?”
“Good job, drum majors!” called some trumpets passing by. They gave us the thumbs-up and sarcastic smiles. “Teamwork—who needs it?”
Behind them, Allison waited for me against the wall, arms folded, tiara askew.
I turned my back on Drew. We weren’t through with our discussion, but we weren’t going to solve anything by trading insults. And I wanted to make sure all Allison’s cubic zirconia were in place.
I was glad about the quasi-catfight. I was glad Drew had reprimanded me too. Now I was pissed with the band and with Drew, instead of mortified at myself for being such a bad drum major on my first try.
And it was nice to find out that Drew knew I existed, after all.
“I hate this town, I hate this town, I hate this town,” Allison chanted for a few minutes after we sat down in the stands. I sent our friend 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.
Allison 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 Allison jump on my other side.
Walter handed Allison her makeup case and looked at me. “I also 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 Alabama Symphony Orchestra, but not in a good way. You know, before they start playing together, when they’re tuning up.”
Allison 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. And 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 Allison 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.
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, and I wondered how Mr. Rush thought he could handle a hundred and fifty students.
I was about to find out.
“Amscray,” Mr. Rush growled at Walter. Walter leaped up and crossed behind me to sit on Allison’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 Allison. “His friends call him General Patton.”
Allison 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?” Allison asked. Allison always rubbed this in.
“I developed an allergy to taffeta,” I said.
“No, she didn’t,” Allison 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?”
“And she stopped wearing shoes,” Allison 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?”
“And an attitude to match the nose stud,” Mr. Rush said. He leaned across me to point at Allison and Walter. “You, princess. And you, frog. Beat it.”
They scattered, leaving Mr. Rush and me alone on the bench.
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. And 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. “And 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.
“Which one of you got the most votes?” he asked.
“Mr. O’Toole wouldn’t tell us.”
Allison 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.
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 and said sarcastically, “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.”
Mr. Rush muttered, “You see me in my office before band practice when we come back to school on Tuesday. And 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. And 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 down the bleachers.
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?”