And I burst into tears.
15
To my mom’s credit, she didn’t lose it. One of us had to hold it together. She guided me into the library, pushing me gently from behind as I stumbled along, blinded by tears. We sank onto the leather sofa, and I cried into her lap.
After a few minutes, when I was mostly cried out, I told her the whole story of Max and Carter and Addison and me. It sounded stupid to my own ears, like a list of Poor Teen Decisions from tenth-grade health class. What had set this chain of events in motion was the sight of Max at camp, long black hair in his eyes, body hard and lean, kicking goal after goal through the uprights. And Max wasn’t here, so I couldn’t expect any of this to ring true to my mom.
But she had met Max, and maybe that was why the story seemed to make some sense to her. When I finished with a gargantuan sniffle, she said, “This is my fault. We don’t have to eat cobbler together, or even eat dinner together every night, but we should be talking every day. I should know who you’re going out with.” She put her hands up, stopping herself. “I did know who you were going out with. I should know which one you like.”
She used one finger to pull a purple strand of hair out of my eyes. “We will start over. We will be closer, starting now. Okay?”
I nodded. I wished I could have told her how relieved I felt when she said this, but I was all talked out.
She sat back and grimaced at me. “I never have approved of the way Addison treats you. I’m surprised you’re still friends with that girl.”
I wiped my wet eyes. “What are you talking about? You made me be friends with her.”
“I certainly did not!” my mom exclaimed.
“You made me take baton lessons with her when we were ten!” I cried.
Her brow furrowed, thinking. “Did I?”
“Yes! You told me poor Addison didn’t want to take baton by herself.”
She sighed and leaned back against the sofa. “Your father had just left, Gemma, and you were moping around the house. He wasn’t taking you to football games anymore, or on hikes and bike rides, and you had stopped playing outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. I’d loved baton when I was young. I thought it would be something fun for you to do to get some exercise, and Addison was doing it too, and her parents were divorcing. You’d have a friend who was going through some of the same things you were going through. I don’t remember how I put it to you, but maybe I did say ‘poor Addison,’ just to convince you to try it. You seemed so unhappy, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t do anything to make it better.”
She looked down at her lap. I thought she would start crying. I sniffled again and prepared to dry up so I could comfort her instead of the other way around.
But she was only checking her watch again. She reached out and framed my face with her hands—just as Max’s mom had held him the night before. “You relax for a while, eat a good supper, and put on your majorette outfit, pretty girl. I will speak to Mrs. Baxter and take care of this for you.”
“I don’t see how,” I wailed. “Majorettes have to keep their noses clean, and I knew that going into this. It’s a rule.”
“It’s a sexist rule,” she snapped. “You don’t see anybody at Max’s high school trying to kick him off the football team for kissing you, do you? That would be ridiculous, right?”
“Right,” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt.
“Mrs. Baxter will not kick you off the squad for this, Gemma, I promise.” She patted my knee. “You’ve worked too hard, and I will stand up for you. If I have to, I’ll threaten a lawsuit.”
“That won’t help,” I moped. “A lawsuit would take months. Years.”
“The lawsuit might, but the threat is instant.” My mom grinned. “I’ll drive to the front of the school and park in the principal’s space in my Aston Martin.”
We both giggled as she stood and crossed the library. But when she turned in the doorway, her face was serious again. “And in case that doesn’t work, I will have a long talk with Addison’s mother.”
The game was held at Max’s school this year, so we were the away band. That meant the majorettes’ only performance before halftime was marching into the stadium to the drum cadence—which still involved a lot of kicks and horizontal spins. It was easy to drop your baton if you weren’t paying attention. Nobody had a drop but Addison. She dropped hers twice. When we got to the stands, she cried and made a big dramatic deal out of it like her life was ruined.
I couldn’t worry about her. I was too busy watching the game. I wanted my team to win, but I also wanted Max to win. There had been no nail-biters yet. He hadn’t been called on to make a kick for points—no field goal for him, but no extra point for one of Carter’s touchdowns, either. Max had only performed a few flawless kickoffs and punts. Even among the identical football uniforms and helmets, he was easy to pick out with his casted arm. If it hadn’t been for that, I still would have recognized him by the way he walked.
And in between plays, I was trying to talk Delilah out of fainting.
“You were fine during tryouts,” I reminded her. “That decided whether you would be a majorette or not, so that was a lot more stressful than a game.”
“That was in front of twelve hundred people,” she wailed. “This is in front of five thousand. Plus, at tryouts, I watched you in the stands the whole time. You kept me calm.”
“Watch your parents,” I suggested.
“They are judging me,” she whispered.
I looked over my shoulder, craning my neck toward the stands behind the fifty yard line. “Watch my mom.” I pointed her out. I drew my hand back in surprise at the sequins covering my arm and catching the light, then laughed at myself and pointed again. “My mom is there next to the aisle, six rows down, in pink. She will not judge you. She will support you. Doesn’t she look sweet?”
Looks could be deceiving, though. My mom might act sweet to most people, but she’d made her point at the school. Mrs. Baxter had given me a bigger hug for luck than any other majorette before we marched into the stadium. She was very careful not to look askance at my purple-striped curls artfully arranged around my tiara.
And my mom had made her point to Addison’s mom too. Right before the game, Addison had called me to apologize.
There was a commotion around us as the head majorette, Susan, stood and made her way down the row to the aisle. The band officers from Max’s high school had walked over to our side of the stadium for the traditional second-quarter visit. I peered at their drum major in his green and gold military uniform. We wore red and blue, but otherwise, the bands looked a lot alike. I wondered whether Max was friends with their majorette squad, and whether he had made any of these girls mad.