Suddenly the seat was too small for the two of us. The entire bus was too small for Drew with his shirt off. In the seat across the aisle from us, Juliet pressed both hands to her mouth, and even A riel gaped. Then a high, feminine “ooooooh, aaaaaah” broke out.
Drew looked around the bus confusedly, like, Who, me? He went back to his uniform bag, pulled on a clean T-shirt and his jacket, and continued to rummage. “Have you seen my shoes?”
“Don’t tell me you lost them again.”
He stopped. I could tell he was reviewing packing his bag. He was wondering whether he’d lost his mind.
“Just wear your Vans again,” I said. “They’re black all over, and they look like band shoes from a distance. I don’t think Mr. Rush noticed you were wearing them last Friday.”
“My dad noticed. My dad will kill me.”
“Surely your dad isn’t coming to the game. Even my sickeningly supportive parents didn’t come. It’s too far”
He stared down at his Vans. This was really tearing him up. I wondered if he could hear his dad in his head, using the I-word.
He shook his head like he was shaking his dad out of his hair with the sweat. “You ready?” he asked. I nodded and stood up. He followed close behind me down the aisle with his hand on my back, like we were a couple. He even pointed threateningly at a few boys who whistled when they saw me.
Mr. Rush was laughing up at Ms. Martineaux, who stood in the doorway of the senior bus. When we walked over, she disappeared back inside the bus, and Mr. Rush turned to us. A nd turned to me. A nd raised his eyebrows.
“Is this uniform okay?” I asked.
“Tell her, Morrow.”
Drew told me, “You look hot.”
“What?” Mr. Rush whacked Drew on the chest. “That’s not what I was going to say!”
Drew colored. “Then why couldn’t you tell her yourself?”
“Uh-uh,” said Mr. Rush. “No way. You’re not pinning this on me. You got yourself into this one. A nd you already have girlfriends.” He walked away cackling.
I should have known something was wrong with Drew when he didn’t pay attention to the football game. He usually was one of those people who actually watched the game. I relied on him to signal me when our team had scored and we needed to play the fight song. Football couldn’t hold my interest. I waved to my friends on the cheerleading squad or watched the llamas try to paw through the barbed wire fence at the edge of the end zone.
A bove us in the stands the band yelled, “Drum major! We need a drum major!”
Our team had made a touchdown. Drew started like he’d been asleep, and we jumped up to direct the fight song.
The first time this happened, Mr. Rush didn’t seem to notice because he was busy talking to Ms. Martineaux. The second time, he gave Drew and me the stare.
I did know something was wrong with Drew at the beginning of the halftime show, but by then I couldn’t do anything about it.
We’d never done the dip for our salute at a game before, but we’d done it plenty of times in the past week in front of the band. Since we’d stopped falling down, we’d been pretty consistent. He put his hand there and his leg there and leaned me back until my head almost touched the grass.
The trick was to hold the position for a few seconds, face to face, without cracking each other up. With his hands on me, his dark eyes close to mine, and my heart pounding, it was hard for me not to break into an embarrassed giggle fit. But I managed.
This time was different. He put his hand there and his leg there, leaned me back, and held me there while the crowd screamed. Our lips almost brushed.
He blinked twice, and I felt myself falling. He’d lost his balance. He was about to faint. We were going to fall together on the fifty-yard line in front of the entire population of Llama Town.
Then he pulled me up and set me on my feet like nothing had happened.
It took me until halfway through the opening song to recover from the scare. But after that, the show went great. The band sounded awesome. The drums didn’t trip themselves up. Drew and I watched each other carefully.
A t the end of the show we got a standing ovation. We were the most exciting thing these people had seen since the tractor pull at the county fair.
Our last job was to turn the band to the right and march them off the field. Because some of them wouldn’t be able to hear the command over the crowd noise, we’d told them before the show that they would turn to the right.
During the show we took turns. One of us directed the band from the podium while the other directed down on the field. I was on the field now, and Drew was on the podium. He shouted, “Band! Left face!”
Half the band turned to the left because Drew told them to. Half the band turned to the right because they knew they were supposed to.
If he called, “Band, about face,” the ones facing left would turn right, but the ones facing right would turn left. I hesitated a split second as I processed this, knowing Drew was thinking the same thing.
Drew swayed a little on the podium.
A s casually as possible in knee-high boots and a miniskirt, I ran from my place on the field into the mass of the band. Walking slowly between the lines, I touched each person on the sleeve, saying, “You stay put. You turn around. You stay put. You turn around.”
This would take forever. Finally I got wise and called, “Toward the llamas! Everyone turn toward the llamas!”
It worked. The drum cadence started, and the few people who hadn’t figured it out yet turned around and followed everyone else out of the stadium. I emerged from the crowd and brought up the rear with Drew.
I didn’t say anything to him while we were in the stadium, because we were supposed to be at attention. But as soon as we passed through the fence around the field, I turned to him, angry all over again for the times he’d made me feel like a second-class drum major. “I’m not saying I’ll never make a mistake. But I know my left from my right. You’re going to get us both fired.”
I had some more choice words for him, but by then, Mr. Rush had pushed through the crowd to us. “Morrow,” he began. I can’t repeat everything he said next. I actually didn’t hear all of it over the noise of the Llama Town band playing on the field. But it went something like,
“Cussword cussword cussword marching band cussword cussword cussword Pizza Hut cussword cussword cussword Clayton Porridge cuss cuss cuss!”
He blustered away soon enough, and I was about to take another turn at Drew. But his dazed look stopped me. I asked him, “A re you okay?”