Then, knowing he’d be leaving near the beginning of the school year anyway, he sleepwalked through summer band camp. He let Drew and me avoid working together. I couldn’t imagine what the new band director would be like, but any change had to be for the better.
Or not. Mr. Rush didn’t seem like he was in any position to change the status quo. He was fresh out of college and looked it, maybe twenty-two years old. He could have passed for even younger because he was only about five foot six, the height of sophomore boys like Walter who weren’t fully grown. I mean, I was five two, and Drew was impressively tall. I thought that made a huge difference in how the band treated us. I wondered how Mr. Rush thought he could handle a hundred and fifty students.
I was about to find out.
“A mscray,” Mr. Rush growled at Walter. Walter leaped up and crossed behind me to sit on A llison’s other side.
Mr. Rush stared at me. Not the stare you give someone when you’re starting a serious conversation. Worse than this. A deep, dark stare, his eyes locking with mine.
He meant to intimidate me. He wanted me to look away. But I stared right back. It felt defiant, and I wondered whether I could get suspended for insubordination just for staring.
I guess I passed the test. Finally he relaxed and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Virginia Sauter.”
He nodded. “What’s the other one’s name?” He didn’t specify “the other suck-o drum major,” but I knew what he meant.
I shuddered. “Drew Morrow.”
Walter leaned around A llison. “His friends call him General Patton.”
A llison laughed.
Mr. Rush ignored them. He asked me, “What’s with the punky look? You’ve got the only nose stud I’ve seen in this town.”
“Would you believe she entered beauty pageants with me until two years ago?” A llison asked. A llison always rubbed this in.
“I developed an allergy to taffeta,” I said.
“No, she didn’t,” A llison said. “On the first day of summer band camp in ninth grade, she walked by Drew in the trombone section. The trombones called her JonBenét Ramsey, and it was all over. She quit the majorettes and went back to drums.”
“Is that true?” Walter asked me.
“You think I was born with a stud in my nose?”
“A nd she stopped wearing shoes,” A llison added.
Mr. Rush eyed my band shoes.
“Well, I’m wearing shoes now,” I said. “Of course I can’t be out of uniform at a game.”
“Of course not,” Mr. Rush said, looking my uniform up and down with distaste.
“More people might get their noses pierced if I started a club,” I said. “Would you like to be our faculty sponsor?”
“A nd an attitude to match the nose stud,” Mr. Rush said. He leaned across me to point at A llison and Walter. “You, princess. A nd you, frog.
Beat it.”
They scattered, leaving Mr. Rush and me alone on the bench.
Mr. Rush explained, “You learn in teacher training classes not to challenge students in front of other students, because all you get is lip.”
“Did they tell you not to make fun of your students’ appearance? I have every right to wear a stud in my nose.”
He laughed shortly. “I doubt that would stand up in court. Not in A labama.”
“Then I’m moving to Oregon.”
He cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. “Come off the defensive, would you? I happen to agree with you. I’m just figuring out what’s going on here.” He glanced over his shoulder at Drew and his father at the top of the stands. “What’s up with you and Morrow?”
“He was drum major by himself last year,” I said. “Everybody knew he’d be drum major again this year. But Clayton Porridge was trying out against him. I wanted to be drum major next year, after Drew graduated. I figured I’d better go ahead and try out, just for show, so Clayton wouldn’t have anything on me.”
I looked down into my cup of ice. “I never thought I’d make it this year. A girl has never been drum major. A nd we’ve never had two drum majors. Mr. O’Toole decided after the vote that we’d have two this year, the two with the most votes, and that was Drew and me. I don’t know what he was thinking.” I made a face. “Though I’m pretty sure what Drew’s thinking.”
“So a girl’s never been drum major,” Mr. Rush repeated slowly. “A nd all the flutes and clarinets are girls, and all the trombones are boys.
Gotta love a small town steeped in tradition. Who needs this diversity crap?”
It bothered me, too, or I wouldn’t have tried out for drum major. But it made me mad that Mr. Rush would come here from the outside and attack my hometown. “Where did you grow up?” I asked.
“Big Pine.”
“Oh, like that’s any better. Big Pine is just as small and just as backward as this place. Plus, the paper mills make it smell like last week’s Filet-O-Fish.” A ctually, my town was too isolated to have a McDonald’s, and Big Pine had one, which weakened my argument. I had very limited personal experience with the Filet-O-Fish.
“I’m really liking this lip,” he said.
I knew I’d better back off.
“Which one of you got the most votes?” he asked.
“Mr. O’Toole wouldn’t tell us.”
A llison had a theory, though. She thought I won, and Mr. O’Toole just didn’t want me to be drum major by myself. I mean, he didn’t even want to let a girl try out. My dad had to threaten to call the school board.
Drew had been a terrific drum major last year. He’d won all these awards. But A llison’s theory was that the band thought he was stuck-up.
Before, when he was just a sophomore trombone, he cut up with the other trombones. They would let out a low “ooooooh, aaaaaah”
whenever Mr. O’Toole or the previous drum major, one of Drew’s older brothers, said anything profound. Drew was happy-go-lucky.
Everyone loved him. Especially girls.
But as soon as he got drum major last year, he buttoned up. He hardly even laughed any more. A llison thought the band had gotten tired of it and voted him out. There was no way of knowing, when Mr. O’Toole wouldn’t tell us who really won.
I went on, “Mr. O’Toole said that since we were both drum majors, it didn’t matter who got more votes. He didn’t want to generate bad blood between us.” I smiled. “It worked.”