Drew was still sitting down. “I’m afraid to stand up,” he said.
I directed the fight song for the skeleton crew of drums and trumpets who’d stayed in the stands during third quarter. I kept my eyes on Drew. He must be half dead to sit out the fight song and risk Mr. Rush calling him the I-word. But Mr. Rush was absorbed in arguing with Ms.
Martineaux.
When I sat down again, Drew leaned his damp head on my shoulder.
I took a long breath, slow enough that he wouldn’t notice, I hoped. I told myself that his head on my shoulder didn’t mean anything. He was just sick.
I glanced down at his bare hands, and felt a little sick myself. He wasn’t wearing a class ring. A lmost all senior boys wore one. Unless they had given it away. “Does she have your class ring?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Good question.”
“Oh.” He held up his hand and examined it. “I don’t have a class ring. I ordered one, but we canceled a lot of orders all of a sudden during the summer. A nyway, she and I aren’t that serious.”
I laughed. “Does she know that?”
Luther, Barry, and a few more trombones banged down the stadium stairs and crowded around us. I still thought Luther was cute, and I didn’t understand why A llison didn’t think so too. Somehow he managed to wear his band uniform in that ultra-casual way he wore all his clothes, even though it was the same uniform everyone else wore.
He poked at Drew with the end of his trombone slide. I think this was a boy version of concern. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked.
“I have scarlet fever,” Drew said.
“Ooooooh, aaaaaah,” the trombones chorused as they ran away.
Only Luther stayed. “You can’t be sick. You’re taking the SA T tomorrow.”
“Helpful, Luther,” I said.
Luther studied Drew’s head on my shoulder. “Looks like he doesn’t need any more help. Drew, you know the Evil Twin won’t like this.”
Drew shot Luther the bird. I think this was how boys showed appreciation for concern.
Luther cussed at Drew and stomped up the stairs.
Drew nuzzled my shoulder.
By the end of the game his face felt cooler, but he had chills. I tried not to be disappointed. I’d been half-hoping he’d be hot and the shirt would come off again. Instead, he stumbled into the seat at the back of the bus and asked me to borrow a blanket for him.
I used the blanket as a cover to take his band shoes from A llison at the bus door and slip them back into his bag at our feet. But then, over the bus engine starting, I told him, “I don’t think the blanket is a good idea. You only think you’re cold. You don’t want to get overheated when you have a fever.”
I glanced over at A riel and Juliet. They watched us like we were the latest Orlando Bloom movie, but maybe they wouldn’t tell on us. Surely nobody felt any loyalty to the twin.
A nd then the lights in the ceiling of the bus blinked out.
“I’ll keep you warm,” I whispered into the darkness. I wrapped my arm around him.
This seemed fine with Drew. He relaxed into me. I decided I kind of liked this fever thing.
Then he bent down to his bag. He stayed bent for a few long seconds. He must have realized his band shoes were back. Then he shrugged and brought out the SA T book and a little flashlight.
“Not again,” I said. “Why are you taking the SA T tomorrow, anyway? You knew you wouldn’t get home tonight until one thirty.”
“It’s the last time I can take it before the scholarship deadline at A uburn.”
“Why’d you wait so long to take it, then?”
He sighed the longest sigh. “I took it last fall. I didn’t do well on the critical reading. But I did well enough to get into A uburn. I didn’t know then that I needed a scholarship.” He leaned against me again, heavily, like giving up.
“Do you want me to quiz you?”
He handed me the book and held the flashlight for me. I kept one arm around him and thumbed through the book with the other hand. I found a good word right off. “Captious.”
“Finding fault with every little thing.”
I thumbed some more. “Vituperate.”
“To find fault.”
I skipped a whole section of pages to find one he hadn’t studied. “Excoriate.”
“To denounce severely.”
“You know all of these,” I said. “Invective.”
“A n insult.”
“Bravado,” I said.
“A pretentious display of courage. Do you mean me?”
“A bjure,” I said. “A bjure” was like “abdicate.” Give up the throne. Give up the drum major position.
Drew didn’t recite the definition, but he knew what I was getting at. “You wish,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m dying of scarlet fever and you’re using SA T words to argue with me.”
“I’m not using SA T words to argue with you.”
“You’ve got that whole book, and you just happen to vituperate and excoriate and throw invectives at me? A nd you say my girlfriend is evil?”
I had thought it was funny, but now I felt bad. Captious, even.
I leaned down into the aisle and arranged a couple of coolers so that he’d have a footrest. “Switch with me,” I said. I slid around him to sit next to the window. “Lie down,” I told him.
“Can’t. Have to study.”
“You won’t get a good score if you’re sleep deprived, no matter how many words you know. Lie down.”
“You have to ask me words,” he said. But he lay down with his shoulder on the seat and his head on my thigh. His legs stretched across the coolers in the aisle, and his feet almost touched A riel in the next seat. The school bus was definitely too small for Drew.
It had to be the most uncomfortable sleeping position ever. Each time the bus braked, he nearly rolled off the seat. Finally he braced himself by putting his hand on my knee.
“A sk me words,” he murmured.
I stayed with lullaby words like “genial” and “bonhomie.” His answers got softer, and there was a longer and longer silence before he prompted me to ask another. He was asleep.
The whole bus was asleep except me.
There was no way I could fall asleep in the next three hours. My knee under his hand and my thigh under his head were on fire. Gently I ran my fingers through his wiry black curls. In the faint moonglow through the window, I saw him smile a little, eyes still closed, lashes dark against his cheeks.