“Because people have apologized to me for things they said to me last Friday night.”
“See?” I grinned. “A ren’t you glad you have me on your side?”
“If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t be a problem.” A lmost as soon as the words left his lips, he followed quickly with, “I’m sorry, Virginia. It slipped out. I’m still a little touchy about the whole thing, okay? Virginia.” He put a hand on my shoulder.
But I’d turned my back on him. If he was going to be an ass, I didn’t care how long his eyelashes were.
He took his hand off my shoulder.
The foothills of the A ppalachians around our town flattened into farmland on the hour’s drive southwest to Montgomery. I knew from trips to the beach with my parents that from there, cotton fields, soybean fields, peanut fields, and cow pastures stretched all the way to the ocean.
Of course, we weren’t getting anywhere near the ocean this time. The game was in the middle of nowhere. A s if our own town hadn’t been nowhere enough already.
I spent the trip talking to A riel James, a shy freshman who wanted to try out for drum major when I graduated. She was teaching herself to write music for band, but she played saxophone and needed help with the drum parts. I tapped rhythms for her with my drumsticks on the metal back of her seat.
This probably annoyed everyone else on the bus. I know it annoyed Barry’s little sister, Juliet, who shared the seat with A riel, because she kept telling me so.
I’d hoped it would annoy Drew. But the few times I stole a glance at him, he seemed absorbed in studying a book of SA T words. Which was strange. I’d never noticed Drew studying anything before. A nd I always noticed Drew.
A s soon as the buses parked, he edged around me in the seat and left the bus without another word. I knew he had to help the boys unload the U-Haul of instruments. A fter he disappeared down the stairs, I dove for his uniform bag and pulled out his band shoes. A riel and Juliet watched me. I put my finger to my lips.
“Virginia,” A llison called from outside the bus, right on schedule.
I dropped Drew’s shoes through the window to her, then leaned out. “Thanks,” I said.
“No prob.” She tucked the shoes into the back waistband of the sweatsuit she wore with her majorette boots and tiara, as if nobody would notice the large growth on her butt. “So, you really rode all the way down here in the make-out seat with Drew Morrow?”
“He talked my ear off the whole time. A nd the perv wouldn’t keep his paws off me. I had to beat him away with my drumsticks. Be sure to tell his girlfriend the serial killer.” I laughed at my own jokes. “A nd how was your trip? Did you suddenly bond with everyone on the bus and decide you want to spend the rest of your life in your hometown?”
“No, but it does look pretty good compared to this place.” She nodded into the sunset at a barbed wire fence that ran along the back of the football stadium. Behind the fence was a herd of … I think llamas.
I was about to tell her about the Miss Homecoming/Miss Victory trouble that Mr. Rush had stirred up, when I heard a scuffle and a scream behind me on the bus. Time to break up a fight over an iPod, which was strictly prohibited on band trips. The iPod and the fight.
It quickly turned into trumpets versus tubas. I tried to talk them down soothingly. When that didn’t work, I threatened them with laps around the football field during band practice on Monday. I couldn’t tell them I’d tattle on them to Mr. Rush, because that would undermine my own authority.
Drew climbed back up the stairs. Just what I needed—Drew to save the day. His T-shirt stuck to his chest with sweat, and beads spilled from his hairline down his cheeks as he walked down the aisle. “Sit down,” he said in passing.
Instantly the fight broke up, and everyone sat down in silence. The whole bus turned to watch Drew make his way over uniform bags and around coolers in the aisle to our seat in the back.
I stood in the aisle, looking like an idiot. It didn’t seem possible that a fight so big was over so quickly. There ought to be something left for me to take care of.
But Drew was in charge.
It was all I could do to keep from giving him a piece of my mind. But I didn’t want to get fired. A s I walked slowly toward him down the aisle, I recited to myself, Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut.
The silence shifted and then lifted around us as everyone unzipped their uniform bags and started to change clothes. Without looking at Drew, I sat beside him and pulled my T-shirt halfway off over my head.
Nobody wanted to sit in their band uniform on the bus for three hours. It felt uncomfortable and looked dorky. But there wasn’t anywhere to change except the bus. The trick was to wear something skimpy but decent under your clothes, like a bathing suit or a sports bra, so you could change on the bus while boys watched.
I hadn’t really cared when I chose my tank top with a built-in bra, because I had thought I would be stuck alone on the freshman bus. Now I suddenly cared very much what I looked like changing while a boy watched.
When I tugged the T-shirt the rest of the way off my face, Drew was sitting with his back to the bus windows, staring at me. Hard.
“Do you mind!” I asked.
“I just wanted to see what you got.”
My heart stopped.
His dark eyes widened. “Your uniform! I wanted to see the uniform you got.”
Rats.
I shrugged my uniform coat on over my tank top. I fastened my miniskirt over my shorts, then pulled my shorts out from underneath. I was wearing matching briefs like cheerleaders wore so the crowd wouldn’t get an eyeful if my skirt flipped up. But I wasn’t sure whether the briefs qualified as decent, like bathing suit bottoms, or indecent, like underwear. I figured I’d better not expose them to the freshmen and, uh …
Despite myself, I glanced at Drew. He was still staring at me, all right. A nd not at my face, either. Then his eyes slowly traveled up to meet mine.
I turned away to zip up my knee-high boots. Finally I leaned back in the seat and crossed my ankles on an ice chest in the aisle, as if I were cool. Which, I assure you, I was not. “Well?” I asked.
“Well,” he said. A nd he pulled off his sweaty T-shirt.
My mouth dropped open. A s he rummaged in his bag, I tried to find a good time to repeat snippily, “I just wanted to see what you got.” But my brain wasn’t working.
I’d expected him to be thin, with a farmer’s tan ending just above his elbows. Instead, he had the strong, tanned body of a farm boy used to baling hay, or swinging scythes, or whatever it was farm boys did in modern times, with his shirt off.