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 half-time show ever to shatter a hot September night. A nd I’d been in charge of it.
Me and the other drum major, Drew Morrow.
A llison 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 A llison’s help, before I had to be back in the stands to direct the band playing the fight song during fourth quarter.
I felt A llison’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.
You think it hurts your feelings that girls talk about you behind your back, until they tell you to your face. A nd they each wanted a turn. Every time, it started with “girlfriend” and ended with “bitch.”
“Girlfriend, you think you’re hot stuff, doctor’s daughter. I like the nail through your nose, bitch.”
“Girlfriend, you need to give it up. You call yourself the leader of the band. You only led us into sounding like crap, bitch.”
A llison 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.
“You voted for Virginia,” she reminded them.
“I didn’t vote for her,” called a clarinet.
“Well, somebody did.”
“That’s not what I heard,” the Evil Twin said.
The Evil Twin was either Tracey or Cacey Reardon—I wasn’t sure which one, and no one else seemed to know either. A ll 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.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, walking forward to face her. I didn’t understand what Drew saw in her besides heavy makeup, long hair, and enormous boobs. Maybe that was enough. “What do you mean, you heard nobody voted for me?”
“I mean, Mr. O’Toole quit his job in an awful big hurry, and right at the beginning of school. Maybe he had to leave because you convinced him to count the votes in your favor, if you know what I mean.”
My jaw dropped at the twin and her bad blue eyeliner. I couldn’t quite get my brain around what she was saying. She wasn’t really accusing me of having sex with the band director, was she? So ridiculous. I was the world’s least sexy sixteen-year-old. I mean, there’s a reason my parents named me Virginia.
“That’s disgusting,” A llison said to the twin. “Only a whore like you would think that up.” A llison really was disgusted, or she wouldn’t have talked that way. Usually she was above using words like “whore,” calling people names, starting catfights in the bathroom—
“A nd you,” the twin said to A llison. “Your daddy must have bought your votes for majorette. I know Mr. O’Toole didn’t want any of that.”
I wasn’t sure the twin meant this as a racist comment. But that’s the way the A frican-A merican girls in the bathroom took it, and maybe they knew best. Previously they’d wanted to stuff me down the sink. Now they came at the twin to flush her down the toilet.
I took the opportunity to pull A llison toward the door. I could cry later.
Before we managed to leave, the twin turned back to A llison and made the mistake of touching her majorette tiara.
A llison 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. A nd I was about to be the costar.
“Hey!” Drew boomed in his drum major command voice. His tall frame filled the doorway.
A llison 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. A nd 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’ 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. It 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, A llison waited for me against the wall, arms folded, tiara askew.