I was holding out for a miracle.
I wandered into the kitchen, where my dad, in grease-stained jeans and a polo shirt with the logo of the boat factory where he worked, stared into the open refrigerator. Good luck finding anything in there. It was packed to the brim, and most of the contents were no longer edible. I was pretty sure the meat drawer contained ham that my sister Violet had bought before she moved out last March.
I kissed my dad on the cheek. “Morning.”
“Hey there, lucita.” He hugged me with one arm while drawing a questionable bag of bagels out of the fridge with his other hand. In Spanish he said, “I thought band camp started today.”
“Not until eight,” I answered in English. My Spanish was rusty now that my sisters were gone.
“I’m late getting home because we had a safety meeting.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight-oh-five.”
“Shit!” I squealed. “I don’t have time for a shower! Do I smell?”
He sniffed the top of my head. “On a scale of one to ten? Six point five.”
“I’ll take it.” I didn’t ask whether six point five was closer to the stinky or the odorless end of the scale. I dashed for the bathroom, scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth in thirty seconds flat, and grabbed sunscreen and a beach towel. I spent considerably more time in my bedroom looking for my drumsticks and my flip-flops and a big hat and a bag to stuff everything into. I didn’t have time to stuff it then. It was just another part of the panicked bundle. I ran back to the kitchen for a sports drink, which was safe to drink because it was sealed, and a pack of Pop-Tarts from the box on the counter. I didn’t feel too hungover, but something told me that might change in the heat of ten a.m. if I didn’t put something in my stomach. “Love you,” I called to my dad, who’d given up on the fridge and disappeared. He was probably in bed already.
Outside on the porch, I locked the door—my keys were still in my pocket from last night—and found my sunglasses in my other pocket. I dashed down the street to the school fence and pitched my drumsticks over, then the sunscreen and my drink and the towel and the bag and the Pop-Tarts. I kicked off my flip-flops, knowing from experience that I couldn’t climb the fence with them on, and hiked myself over. I was lucky I had long legs. Kaye refused even to try this stunt. Too-adventurous-for-her-own-good Harper had attempted it and gotten stuck with one leg hooked over. The trick was lifting myself high enough that the rough tops of the boards didn’t scrape my thighs. Triumphant, I dropped to the other side and gathered up the stuff I’d thrown over.
The drums were already rehearsing. Their racket carried out of the football stadium, around the school, and across the parking lot. And then I realized that I’d left my flip-flops on the other side of the fence. There was no time to go back.
“Shit shit shit.” I took off across the parking lot, loose shells from the pavement cutting into the soles of my feet. I couldn’t even go straight to the stadium. I had to stop at the band room first to drag my drum out of storage. By the time I made it to the field, I was twenty minutes late instead of five.
The stadium entrance was at parking-lot level, but the bleachers rose above me and also sank into the ground. As I hurried through the gate, I was high enough in the stands to see that Ms. Nakamoto had put DeMarcus to work pushing flutes into place according to the diagram she’d drawn for the start of the halftime show. Ms. Nakamoto had backed the drums into a corner of the field and appeared to be lecturing them. Maybe I could sneak up behind her and pretend I’d been there the whole time. Maybe I would also be elected the senior class’s Most Likely to Succeed. Fat chance.
As I left the stands, hit the grass, and hurried past the majorettes tossing their batons in a bored fashion, Angelica asked, “Isn’t that the same thing you were wearing last night?”
Despite that I was very late, I stopped. Angelica wasn’t normally one to confront people or throw insults—at least not at me. She was more crafty, getting people in trouble behind the scenes. For her to call me out like this, she definitely had shared a look with Will last night. Since I’d screwed up everything with Will, he was sure to move on to another girl. It was none of my business, but I didn’t want that new girl to be old Angelica.
I told her, “Why, no. Last night I was wearing that new guy.”
A couple of majorettes standing close enough to overhear us cackled loudly. My friend Chelsea said, “Girl, you are crazy.”
“It’s a little early to be dressed to impress,” I told her, talking over Angelica’s scowling head. Angelica would be sorry she insulted me before nine a.m. I was not a morning person. I turned my back on them and waded through the dewy grass to the drums.
One of whom was Will Matthews.
I didn’t recognize him at first in his mirrored aviator shades. He hadn’t shaved, so his dark stubble made him look even scruffier than he had last night. But he wore a Minnesota Vikings baseball cap. And he stood tall like a warrior, out of place in our dopey drum line. He’d already taken off his shirt in the oppressive morning heat. His snare drum harness covered most of his chest and hooked over his shoulders, but he held his muscular arms akimbo, with his hands and sticks folded on top of his drum. His earring winked at me from underneath his dark hair.
What was he doing here?
As I tried to sneak past Ms. Nakamoto into the end of the drum line, a rumble through the drummers told her I was coming. She glanced over her shoulder at me, then down at her watch. “Ms. Cruz!” she called sharply. “You’ve been challenged, and you were about thirty seconds from forfeiting.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry,” I said with a sigh, trying to sound sad that I would have to give up my drum captain position if someone beat me. Really I was ecstatic. I’d been saved!
And I’d arrived at just the right time. She wasn’t making me forfeit. If she had, I would have been dead last in the snare drum line, which could have been a fate worse than being first. Then I would have had to stand between some scared freshman on snare and a timid sophomore on quads. I had a tendency to frighten underclassmen.
With everyone staring at me, including Will, and a couple of juniors, Jimmy and Travis, who were making a point of looking bored to death, I pitched everything I’d been carrying off the top of my drum. Sunscreen, bag, drink, towel, Pop-Tarts. Ms. Nakamoto watched the process like she’d come to count on this sort of thing from me. Then I started the part of the drum cadence that we used for tryouts.