Biggest Flirts (7 page)

“Stuff like what?”

“Stuff requiring effort.” As I said this, I turned away from Will. DeMarcus motioned to call the band to order and open practice. It was the drum captain’s job to play a short riff that the rest of the drum line echoed, snapping the whole band to attention. I did the job this time, startling Will.

The entire band went completely still, except for Will, who really had gotten caught off guard. He eased his head forward and slowly folded his sticks on top of his drum in our attention position so he wouldn’t get in trouble for failing to keep his eyes up front.

The whole standing-at-attention thing was just a little game we played for a few seconds at the beginning of band sometimes. It was a tool Ms. Nakamoto used to make us listen to her if she couldn’t convince the trumpets to shut up otherwise. Usually it bored me to death. Today I heard the cars swishing by on the street outside the stadium, the cries of seagulls gliding overhead, a breeze through the palms that definitely didn’t make it down to the bottom of the bowl we were standing in, the tiniest tap as Will finally set his sticks down on his drumhead, and his long sigh. Maybe he sighed with relief that he hadn’t gotten caught. I was afraid he sighed with frustration that I was playing impossible to get.

Most boys who pursued me stopped trying eventually, frustrated. I would miss Will. I hoped he wouldn’t stop trying for a while.

Of course . . . he had already, when he asked out Angelica. Funny, even though I could see her from where I was standing, way up near the home bleachers in the majorette version of standing at attention with her toe pointed and two batons crossed on her hip, I’d forgotten all about her when Will stood so close.

“At ease,” DeMarcus hollered. “At ease” didn’t mean “collapse,” but that’s what happened. The tubas and drums slid their instruments off their shoulders and dumped them on the ground. While Ms. Nakamoto told us through her microphone what we’d be rehearsing for the next hour, Will took off his harness, handed me his hat and shades, then pulled his shirt over his head, just like in every other practice this week.

Much as I wanted to see this, I told him quietly, “You can’t take your shirt off.”

“Yes, I can,” he said through the material. “Watch, it’s stretchy.”

“No, I mean . . .” I said to his naked torso.

I stopped and just watched him. This was the hottest thing I’d ever seen at school. His paleness had mellowed into a gentle tan that would protect him from the sun, and his strong build gave him the look of a proud lifeguard. He took his hat and shades back from me. The lenses reflected the palm trees behind me.

“Not during school hours,” I managed. “It’s against the dress code.”

“Suddenly you care about the rules.” He cracked a lopsided grin at me, twirling his shirt cheekily in one hand.

“Mr. Matthews,” Ms. Nakamoto called through her microphone. “Put your shirt on. We don’t allow students to break the dress code when school is in session.”

I started to taunt him but thought better of it. He really might be upset that he’d gotten in trouble, and for something so silly.

Just as I was thinking this, he roared back at Ms. Nakamoto across the field, “It’s. Three. Thousand. Degrees!”

“Mr. Ma-
tthews
?” Ms. Nakamoto’s tone had changed to the one I’d heard her use only on me, last year, when I overslept and made all four buses half an hour late leaving for a contest in Miami.

“He’s doing it,” I called to placate her. I held out my hands and snapped my fingers for his hat and shades.

He gave heaven a sour look for a second, then obediently passed me his cap and sunglasses again while he pulled on his shirt. Then he took his hat and shades back. From the side, I could see he’d closed his eyes behind the lenses as he inhaled a long, calming breath through his nose.

With Ms. Nakamoto issuing clipped instructions through her microphone, I whispered to Will, “What are you thinking about? Revenge?”

“Snow.”

Ms. Nakamoto drilled us for most of practice, so we didn’t get to chat. We played and marched through the opening number probably eleven times. In the pauses between, while Ms. Nakamoto stood way up in the stands with DeMarcus and they pointed at the lopsided loops in the formation (not our problem; drums stood in rows), we watched Sawyer working the field in his pelican costume. It was impossible not to watch him.

Sawyer and I were good friends. I knew there was a lot more to him than being the screwed-up son of a felon. But I’d been just as astonished as everybody else when he tried out for school mascot last spring—and made it. He’d told me excitedly about the school paying for him to go to mascot camp a few weeks ago. He’d learned a ton, and he was over the moon the day the school handed him the mascot costume they’d ordered. The new pelican wasn’t especially for him, of course. It was just time for a new one. The old pelican had been shedding faux feathers and looked like it had spent time in an inland pond and caught a disease that caused its beak to disintegrate. When the drum line had been bored in the stands at a lackluster football game last fall and feeling snarky, we’d taken to calling it the Pelican’t.

This was our first time seeing Sawyer the New Pelican in action, and his hold on everyone’s attention had very little to do with the bird’s blinding whiteness. He performed an exaggerated version of the cheerleaders’ chants and dances while standing right behind Kaye, and he wasn’t dissuaded when Kaye frequently spun around and slapped him. His outfit was padded. Eventually he wandered over to bother the majorettes until Ms. Nakamoto called, “Mr. De Luca, remove yourself from the band, and keep your wings to yourself.”

The band and the cheerleaders burst into laughter. Sawyer folded his wings and stomped his huge bird-feet back toward the cheerleaders in a huff. Chuckling, I said, “He’s going to be good.”

“Or dead,” Will grumbled. “How does he wear that getup in this heat?” I could see why Will was concerned. Even in his shorts and tee, with his hair as short as Izzy could have cut it without shaving it, sweat dripped down his temple, and his cheeks gleamed with it.

“I told him not to put on the costume in practice during the heat of the day,” I said. “He says he wants to get used to it so he doesn’t pass out during a game.”

“So you’re seeing him again?” Will asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

His question shocked me. He hadn’t mentioned Sawyer, or sounded particularly jealous, since Monday.

No, I wasn’t seeing Sawyer. That is, I’d never been
seeing
him in the way Will meant. And something about bantering with Will during practice had made me feel almost like I was seeing
him
, and going out with Sawyer would be cheating.

Of course, if that was true, Will was cheating on me every night with Angelica. And Will had no business thinking I should keep him updated on whether I was
seeing
Sawyer or not.

Logically I knew this. But Will and I were operating on a different plane from everybody around us, it seemed to me. He was in a relationship. He thought I was in a relationship. We shouldn’t have feelings for each other, but we did, and they were more important than anything else—at least when we were together.

“Um,” I said as he tapped one stick lightly on the rim of his drum, nervous for my answer. Part of me wanted to tell him I
was
seeing Sawyer, just to give him a taste of what I’d felt like when he’d lain on the beach with his hand on Angelica.

The school bell rang through a speaker on the outside of the school, loud enough for us to hear across the parking lot and down in this hole. It was the signal for the end of the period and the beginning of announcements. The rest of the school sat in classrooms and listened to the principal go over test schedules, game schedules, and threats of
no more artificial sweetener for anyone
if students kept sprinkling Equal on the floor of the lunchroom and yelling “blizzard!” Though the announcements had never struck me as earth shattering, the principal thought they were so important that she typed them up and e-mailed them every afternoon to DeMarcus so he could read them to the band and cheerleaders (and insane school mascot) using Ms. Nakamoto’s microphone. I explained this to Will, and we dumped our drums and harnesses onto the grass.

DeMarcus’s reserved monotone was great for being the guy in charge of the band, but not so good for reading announcements. Bo-ring. In fact, though we were supposed to be paying attention, I thought we were veering toward dangerous territory where Will would ask me again whether I was seeing Sawyer. I preferred to let the question hang there, unanswered. That way, I wasn’t telling a lie, but Will had to wonder about Sawyer and me.

So, to spice up the announcements a bit, I started translating them into Spanish in an even worse monotone than DeMarcus’s. After an initial burst of laughter that made the cymbals turn around, Will pressed his lips together while I entertained him with the Telemundo version of soporific crap.

“That’s all wrong,” he said. “The Spanish I’ve learned has been super animated. I thought that was part of the language.” He took a stab at the next announcement, enunciating it like an overenthusiastic thespian.

“You just mixed up ‘swimming pool’ with ‘fish,’ and ‘swimmer’ with ‘matador,’ ” I informed him. “I’m glad you’re not really announcing this, or people would be dressing very strangely for the swim meet tomorrow.”

“That’s it.” He grabbed me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, threatening the headlock.

“No fair!” I squealed. “The terms of the headlock are
very clear
. I did not mention lutefisk.”

“Mr. Matthews, get off Ms. Cruz,” Ms. Nakamoto called through the microphone. When Will stood me up straight, she was handing the microphone back to DeMarcus so he could finish the announcements.

Turning around on the towel he was sharing with a trombone, Jimmy tapped his watch and told Will and me, “Fifty-six minutes. Not a personal record, but a damned good time.”

In answer, Will held one drumstick out beside him, flipped it into the air so that it tumbled three or four times, and caught it without looking at it. This was his answer to pretty much everything drummers said to him that he didn’t like, and it was effective at awing them into silence.

“How do you do that?” I asked. If he managed to escape back to Minnesota early and left me high and dry as drum captain, I could sure use a trick like that. I’d never awed anyone into silence in my life.

“Like this,” he said, showing me his drumstick in his palm. I imitated him. “Now . . .” He raked his thumb under the stick and flipped it into the air. He caught it neatly. I tried it and accidentally launched the stick at his head. He caught that, too.

“Not quite,” he laughed. “Look.” He took my hand in his, pressed my stick into my palm, and showed me how to scoop the stick out and upward with my thumb. I wanted to learn this trick, really. All the warmth spreading across my cheeks had everything to do with excitement at learning a stunt, and the oppressive heat of the afternoon, and nothing to do with Will standing inches from me, his hands on mine.

“Oooooh,” the band moaned loudly enough that I glanced up to see what the commotion was. The entire band, all hundred and eighty of them extending in lines and curlicues across the grass, turned around in one motion to stare at us.

At least, that was my first impression—that they were staring at both Will and me. Maybe DeMarcus had paused in his drone to hand the microphone to Ms. Nakamoto, who’d scolded Will and me for touching again, and we hadn’t heard her over our own laughter. But DeMarcus was still reciting the announcements.

I hit on the answer. The band was staring at Will, not me. I still didn’t know why, but I wasn’t surprised anymore. People stared at Will a
lot
, even when he
was
wearing a shirt. I spent a good portion of my day trying not to do it myself.

No, that didn’t seem right either. Girls might gaze longingly at Will as they passed him on the grass, but the whole band wouldn’t turn around to say “Oooooh!” unless he’d gotten in trouble.

“What is it? I wasn’t listening,” I said to Will as a joke, because the fact that I hadn’t been listening was pretty obvious.

“I don’t know,” he said, giving the band a suspicious once-over, “but they’re still pointing at us.”

At
me
, I thought. I glanced around the drum line to pinpoint someone I could ask, but everybody else had abandoned their drums to sit down with trumpets or clarinets who had towels to spread out. Will and I were the only ones left standing. Nobody was offering an explanation.

“Whatever it is,” Will said, “it must be very good, or very bad.” He mouthed a question to Angelica way across the field. It was probably my imagination, but I thought she turned away on purpose.

Maybe I would have better luck. I peered in the direction of Kaye and the group of cheerleaders huddled up front. Sure enough, she was waving her arms, trying to catch my attention, mouthing something. I read her lips. “Biggest fart,” I said. “I let out the biggest fart? I am sure I did
not
. Only freshman trumpets have contests like that.”

“I’ve got it,” Will said. “Biggest Flirt.”

“Oh!” I understood now. DeMarcus must be announcing the winners of the Senior Superlatives titles we’d voted on first thing that morning. In fact, he was calling out Most Athletic right now. And while I wasn’t listening, I’d been elected Biggest Flirt. “I’m not sure I like this. It has a slut-shaming flavor, like they really wanted to give me Biggest Ho.”

“No, Tia.” The worry line formed between Will’s brows as he explained, “We’re
both
Biggest Flirts.”

“You?”
I laughed. “Why would anybody elect
you
Biggest Flirt?”

“Because of you!” Those bright blue eyes glared at me over his sunglasses.

I’d withstood the Florida heat for an hour with no problem, but suddenly I felt sweat break out on my forehead. Will had been chosen Biggest Flirt because of me? The school thought we were flirting with
each other
?