The truck bashed over a curb and onto the grassy hill up to the stadium. The instrument cases, the peanuts, and I went airborne.
“Sorry,” Drew murmured when we landed with a crash. “Look, I’m sorry for everything. I had no idea until the meeting with Mr. Rush—” He stopped and glanced over at me, then wisely turned forward again and steered the truck before we hit the stadium bleachers.
“I’m sorry for that JonBenét comment two years ago,” he went on. “I remember thinking it was funny that you changed after that. But I never made the connection. We stand over there in the trombone section and basically foam at the mouth. We don’t mean anything by it.”
“That’s not exactly how it went down. That’s what A llison told Mr. Rush, and she may believe it. But you’re flattering yourself if you think your opinion matters to me,” I lied.
He stomped the brakes, and the truck spun to a halt in the dust. The rest of the band had hiked up the hill from the school. Boys jumped into the bed of the truck and slid the instrument cases out, or peered through the back window of the cab and put their lips to the glass.
“I have an idea for the dip Mr. Rush wants us to do,” Drew said. “We can ask Barry Ekrivay to help us. He took ballroom dance lessons with his grandmother at the junior college.”
I laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“I swear. We spent all last year giving him hell about it.”
I thought it was a good idea. But I wasn’t going to tell Drew so. I took a long sip of water.
“I’m trying to be nice to you,” he repeated. He gripped the steering wheel hard, looking away from me, barely controlling his temper. I could tell it was a good thing his daddy didn’t let him yell at girls. “Wouldn’t you rather suffer through being drum major with me than let Clayton Porridge have it all?”
The sliding noises in the bed stopped, and the dust settled around the truck. The majorettes paraded in front of us on their way to the field.
A llison gave me a look that said Hey, how’s it going with the boy you have a crush on who happens to hate you?
Behind the majorettes, both twins eyed me while talking behind their hands to their friends. I was definitely in trouble.
“Well?” Drew prompted.
“I’m waiting for you to come around the truck and open the door for me.”
He rolled his eyes, cussed, and bailed out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. But by the time he reached the passenger side, he had a fake smile plastered to his face. He opened the door and extended his hand to help me out.
“Yes,” I said as I stepped primly to the ground, the dust soft on my bare feet. “I’d rather be drum major with you than not be drum major at all. I’ll pretend to be nice to you so I don’t get fired. But don’t expect me to be your friend.”
Drew caught Barry Ekrivay as he passed the truck, and talked quietly to him.
“You’re going to do what?” Barry exclaimed.
Drew continued talking while Barry looked me up and down.
“The Evil Twin is going to be so pissed at you,” Barry told Drew. “I shouldn’t help you, anyway. You owe me an apology for an entire year of senior citizen jokes.”
“I’m sorry,” Drew said.
Barry still pouted. “The trombones better not send me a card on Grandparents Day again this year.”
“Drew’s sorry, Barry,” I called. “We need your help. It’s for the good of the band.”
Barry looked up at me again. “Okay,” he said so quickly that I was a little alarmed. Ever since school started last week, I’d had the feeling he was interested in me. Nothing big—I’d just caught him looking at me in band practice a few times when I wasn’t directing. But I really couldn’t tell. No one ever asked me out. A nd he certainly wasn’t making nonstop sex jokes like Walter. I had shrugged it off as a figment of my imagination. Now I hoped he wasn’t getting excited about being close to me as he helped us figure out this dance move.
Barry was good-looking, I guess. A couple of girls in my algebra class were into him. One of them actually stole his first-place math tournament ribbon off the bulletin board and slept with it under her pillow. This made me feel better about my own crush on Drew, and my sanity. A nd Walter’s.
Personally, I didn’t see what these girls saw in Barry. His clothes were too neat and his hair was too short. Very L. L. Bean. He was too wholesome for my taste. Which I suppose didn’t say a whole lot for me.
We walked through the stadium gate and found a place off to the side where the stands hid us from the band on the field. Barry was starting to explain something to me about the dip when Mr. Rush burst through the gate, cussing to himself.
He stopped just long enough to holler at us, “Fred. Ginger. Out on the field. Play nice in full view.”
Drew and I looked at each other. I mean, we shared a look. Us against Mr. Rush.
The zap of electricity that this look sent through me was devastating. Drew and I had shared a look. Now we were friends, or could be.
Except that I’d just told him we couldn’t be.
Still tingling with the power surge, I walked beside Drew and Barry through an opening in the bleachers and over to the end zone. The band was centered near the fifty-yard line, and Mr. Rush took them through some warm-up scales, but heads kept turning our way. Freshman flutes. A llison. Tracey/Cacey.
Drew leaned against the goalpost with his arms folded while Barry showed me the dip. “I’m going to put my hand here and my leg here,”
Barry told me.
I did not like his hand there or his leg there. I vowed to be the best dipee ever so he wouldn’t have to show me this twice. “What do I do?”
“Just relax and let me do everything.”
“That’s not my usual styyyyle—”
I was hanging upside down, with Barry’s face close to mine.
To avoid looking at Barry, I quickly turned to upside-down Drew. “I need a rose between my teeth, or some castanets. What do you think?”
“I think I should have gone out for football,” Drew said.
“Try it. You’ll like it,” Barry said. Before I could inquire what exactly he meant by that, he pulled me up standing. He pulled too hard, then had to keep me from falling with a grip on my arm. “Whoops-a-daisy. You’re a lot lighter than my grandma.”
Drew walked over, shaking his head, and Barry explained what he should do. Boys can’t lay a hand on each other unless it’s violent, because they think they’ll get cooties. So the explanation of the dip took a lot longer and was much more complicated than necessary. They talked about it in the abstract like it was an algebra problem. I was not at all sure that Drew got it.