“Gemma!” the majorettes squealed. All six of them hugged me. I did not make a sound. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt their hugs and considered what this meant. I would be head majorette my senior year. I wouldn’t have to try out for majorette again next year. Not that I would mind trying out again. I’d had so much fun performing tonight that I was already planning how I would keep performing after high school. I would try out for majorette at Georgia Tech, and maybe feature twirler.
“The band director will be so pleased,” Mrs. Baxter said, bustling away up the aisle and down the front stairs of the bus. The majorettes were telling the whole bus the news too. I saw Delilah several seats ahead, whispering to Robert. Soon he and the trumpets yelled in unison, “Congratulations, Gemma!”
“Congratulations, Gemma,” Addison said, squatting beside me in the aisle. “Though I know we’re not supposed to be friends anymore.”
Her sarcasm didn’t bother me, precisely because we weren’t friends anymore. That’s just how Addison was.
“I’m glad you’re going to be head,” she said.
“Thank you!” I exclaimed, not hiding my surprise very well.
“I didn’t want it,” she said. “Not really. This role model shit is for the birds. And I don’t like standing out there on the field with everybody watching me. I hated trying out, too.”
That’s because you dropped your batons both times and boys made fun of you, I thought.
“I might not even go out for majorette next year,” she said.
Great. Addison complained that she was bored of Monopoly and wanted to stop playing whenever I started to win. If she wasn’t the best at something, she didn’t want to try anymore. I could see her quickly devolving into the Bad Majorette, making a joke out of it, even earning a reputation for it and thinking it attracted boys. Which it might, honestly, because boys were weird.
She was part of the majorette line. If she tanked, we all would tank. I could not let that happen.
“It’s so early in the season,” I said. “We’ve only had one game. And your drops were at the very beginning, right? Nobody remembered them by the end. We’re going to have so much fun this year, and I’ll bet you’ll want to try out again.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You’re such a great sax player. You might want to concentrate on that next year and not go out for majorette after all. But gosh, you have until April to decide.” I sounded reasonable and authoritative, like a head majorette. Like a teacher. Like a counselor.
Like Max.
All the majorettes jumped and Delilah screamed at a sharp rapping on the emergency exit at the back of the bus. Addison stood up and opened the door.
“Is Gemma home?” came Max’s voice.
“Yes,” Addison said.
“May I come in and see her?”
Addison backed away in the aisle, making room for Max. Behind Addison, I saw Delilah grin and give me a thumbs-up before she leaned over Robert again.
Max climbed onto the school bus. Impossibly tall, head brushing the ceiling, he closed the door and sat down beside me. He wore track pants and a Japanese T-shirt, and his hair was wet from a shower.
He looked me up and down and back up, eyes slowly making their way from my knee-high boots to my skintight sequined leotard to my purple-streaked hair, and lingering on my tiara. He deadpanned, “You look good.”
“You do too,” I said truthfully.
He picked up my hand from my lap, his touch sending sparks up my arm. “Carter told me you did something nice for me today.”
“Well, it was Carter who did something nice for you,” I said. “I only warned him it was coming.”
“And you cheered for me.”
“I did cheer for you!”
“I heard you.” He turned my hand over and put his casted hand on top of it. Looking into my eyes, he said, “I nearly lost it out there, Gemma.”
“But you didn’t lose it, and that’s what counts. Obviously it’s lucky for us to make out the night before games, and then fight.”
He slid his hand up my sequined sleeve to my shoulder. “I don’t know about the fight. But if you’re willing, I definitely think we should make out every Thursday. At least until the end of football season.” He brushed his lips against mine, which sent a little shiver across my chest.
“Or longer,” I whispered.
He put his casted hand on my shoulder and set his forehead against mine. “Gemma.”
“Yes.”
“I have something to tell you.”
“I get it. You are making me cross-eyed.”
He grinned and backed away six inches. Very clearly, enunciating every syllable, he said, “I want to go out with you tomorrow. On a date. With you, Gemma Van Cleve. Alone.”
“I understand you,” I said just as clearly. “I am accepting your invitation to go on a date. With you. Because I like you in a romantic way.”
He laughed and squeezed my shoulders, sending a fresh chill down my arms. “So we’re clear on this?”
“If we’re not, we have much worse problems than we thought. Where do you want to go for our date? Aren’t you working tomorrow?”
“I have to coach my sister’s game at eight a.m. Oh God, eight a.m.” He looked at his watch ruefully.
“Can I come?” I asked.
“You want to watch me coach soccer?”
“I want to see you as the Justin Bieber of girls’ soccer.”
He frowned at me. “If you promise not to get jealous. Do you think you can handle it?”
I laughed. “I’ll try.”
“I don’t have to work for the rest of the day, though. There aren’t a lot of other games to ref because of the holiday weekend, so I let Carter have them. There’s something I need to do around lunchtime, and then I was hoping you would meet me at the park. You know, the park in my neighborhood?”
“How could I forget?”
He turned so red that I could see it even in the dusky bus. He was adorable.
Then he cleared his throat. “Our schools will have football games on the same night for the rest of the semester. I’ll never get to see you twirl your baton. When we go to the park, you could show me what you do.”
“My majorette routine?” I hid my mouth with one hand so the other majorettes couldn’t see as I whispered, “It’s kind of dull.” I put my hand down. “I could do it for you, though, and then I could do the routine I tried out with.”