Major Crush (6 page)

Barry was good-looking, I guess. A couple of girls in my algebra class were into him. One of them actually stole his first-place math tournament ribbon off the bulletin board and slept with it under her pillow. This made me feel better about my own crush on Drew, and my sanity. A nd Walter’s.

Personally, I didn’t see what these girls saw in Barry. His clothes were too neat and his hair was too short. Very L. L. Bean. He was too wholesome for my taste. Which I suppose didn’t say a whole lot for me.

We walked through the stadium gate and found a place off to the side where the stands hid us from the band on the field. Barry was starting to explain something to me about the dip when Mr. Rush burst through the gate, cussing to himself.

He stopped just long enough to holler at us, “Fred. Ginger. Out on the field. Play nice in full view.”

Drew and I looked at each other. I mean, we shared a look. Us against Mr. Rush.

The zap of electricity that this look sent through me was devastating. Drew and I had shared a look. Now we were friends, or could be.

Except that I’d just told him we couldn’t be.

Still tingling with the power surge, I walked beside Drew and Barry through an opening in the bleachers and over to the end zone. The band was centered near the fifty-yard line, and Mr. Rush took them through some warm-up scales, but heads kept turning our way. Freshman flutes. A llison. Tracey/Cacey.

Drew leaned against the goalpost with his arms folded while Barry showed me the dip. “I’m going to put my hand here and my leg here,”

Barry told me.

I did not like his hand there or his leg there. I vowed to be the best dipee ever so he wouldn’t have to show me this twice. “What do I do?”

“Just relax and let me do everything.”

“That’s not my usual styyyyle—”

I was hanging upside down, with Barry’s face close to mine.

To avoid looking at Barry, I quickly turned to upside-down Drew. “I need a rose between my teeth, or some castanets. What do you think?”

“I think I should have gone out for football,” Drew said.

“Try it. You’ll like it,” Barry said. Before I could inquire what exactly he meant by that, he pulled me up standing. He pulled too hard, then had to keep me from falling with a grip on my arm. “Whoops-a-daisy. You’re a lot lighter than my grandma.”

Drew walked over, shaking his head, and Barry explained what he should do. Boys can’t lay a hand on each other unless it’s violent, because they think they’ll get cooties. So the explanation of the dip took a lot longer and was much more complicated than necessary. They talked about it in the abstract like it was an algebra problem. I was not at all sure that Drew got it.

While Barry watched, Drew came close to me and put his hand there and his leg there. “This feels so awkward,” he said. He turned to Barry.

“A re you sure?”

Barry twirled his finger in the air.

Drew flipped me backward and lost his hold on me. I landed square on the powdery white goal line. A smattering of applause drifted across the field from the band.

“Touchdown,” Drew said. “You only need one foot in the end zone.” He held out his hand.

A s he hauled me up, I said, “That’s the fourth time I’ve fallen on my butt today, and in some way you’ve caused all four.”

He pretended to count on his fingers, which almost made me laugh. Then he started doing math in the air with an imaginary pencil, which did make me laugh.

Barry looked from Drew to me and back to Drew. “A re y’all getting along or not?”

“Of course,” Drew said.

“Perfectly,” I said, dusting my butt.

Drew and Barry started toward me.

“That’s okay,” I said. In a move that I never would have fathomed myself needing to do, I put up both hands to keep two senior boys from touching my butt.

In truth, I probably would have been able to stand Drew touching my butt. Barry, not so much.

“Let’s try it again,” Drew said.

“Great,” I said. “We might as well try it with me on top.”

Barry’s eyes flew wide open. I realized what I’d said, and steeled myself for Drew’s comment about liking it when the girl was on top.

Drew was not Walter. He just laughed. “I weigh a hundred and ninety pounds. But yeah, let’s try it.”

“I weigh one-ten. Let’s not.”

He put his hand there and his leg there. He flipped me backward even faster this time, and immediately lost his balance. But he didn’t lose his hold on me. He fell with me. On top of me. Hard.

I couldn’t breathe. Oh, God, I couldn’t breathe.

He took his weight off me but hovered close over me. “Inhale,” he said.

I held up five fingers.

“I know. I’m glad we’re not going to the prom together.”

Barry leaned over me. “You’ve killed her.”

“She’s tough,” Drew said.

Mr. Rush’s face appeared beside Barry’s. “A re you okay?” he asked me with genuine concern.

I nodded and gasped, forcing air into my lungs painfully.

“I just knocked the wind out of her,” Drew said.

Mr. Rush slapped Drew on the back of the head. “You pay attention, Morrow. There’ll be hell to pay if you hurt my drum major. I’ll have Clayton Porridge out in the middle of the football field, doing the cancan.”

“The cancan is surprisingly difficult,” Barry said. “It takes a lot more coordination than Clayton Porridge has.”

Mr. Rush gave Barry the brain-melting stare.

Barry shrank. “I know this because I played Little League baseball with Clayton Porridge.”

Mr. Rush kept staring.

“Sir,” Barry added. He looked to Drew for help.

Drew rubbed the back of his head. “Thank you for your guidance, sir.”

“Smart-ass,” Mr. Rush said to Drew. He stalked away.

I croaked, “I don’t like this game.”

Drew held out his hand to me and hauled me up again. A cross the field the band cheered like I was an injured football player who’d just recovered.

Barry stared at my hand in Drew’s. It did seem like Drew held my hand longer than he had to before he dropped it. But then Barry said, “I know what the problem is. Drew, you’re left-handed.”

“So?”

“So, you need to turn everything around the other way, a mirror image of what you’ve been doing.”

Without warning, Drew grabbed me.

“I said I don’t want to play this gaaaaame,” I said, but suddenly he had me leaning backward, just like Barry had. I wasn’t about to fall down, and he wasn’t about to fall on top of me.

His dark eyes were so close to me. I could almost feel his eyelashes brush my face as he blinked.

“That wasn’t too painful,” he said. A nd I did feel his breath on my cheek.

Oh, wow. I wished we could stay this way forever. Okay, he would probably get a cramp eventually. But I wished he would keep holding me, looking down into my eyes as if he really enjoyed touching me.

A t the same time, in the back of my mind, I knew I should say something so he wouldn’t think I’d been brain damaged in our fall. Finally I managed, “Easy for you to say. You didn’t get the life crushed out of you by Notorious B.I.G.”

He pulled me up and set me back on my feet. Then he whirled around, grabbed me, and dipped me again, like he was practicing getting his pistol out of his holster fast for a gunfight.

“Ooooooh, aaaaaah,” floated across the field from the band.

“By George, I think you’ve got it,” Barry said.

Drew ignored Barry at first. His dark eyes seemed to search my eyes for something.

Then he pulled me up to standing. “Thanks, Barry,” he said. “I think we’re good to try it on our own. Grandparents Day is right around the corner, and we’ll get you something special.”

I understood that Drew was dismissing Barry like he’d dismissed Mr. Rush. Barry did not seem to understand this.

Barry asked Drew, “So, what are you and the twin doing Saturday night?”

Drew dropped my hand. Poof, there went our romantic interlude. Thanks, Barry, my ass!

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Drew said. “I guess we might park in front of the furniture rental store and watch TV.”

This seemed pretty uncreative of Drew. Sure, the movie theater had only two movies at a time to choose from instead of fourteen like the theaters in big cities, but we did have a movie theater. A nd there was always the bowling alley.

I tried to catch his eye to give him a questioning look. No luck. He stared off toward the press box at the top of the stadium. Which was weird in itself. Drew always looked people in the eye. It was part of his drum major intimidation routine.

It occurred to me that maybe he’d made up this date for my benefit. It was bad that he and the twin were going parking! It was good that they were parking in public, where down-and-dirty necking would be highly unlikely. Was he trying to tell me he wasn’t serious about the twin, and there was hope for me?

Oh, good Lord. I was such a dork. He wasn’t going to ask me out. He didn’t like me that way. We weren’t even friends. I’d made sure of that with my stupid comment when I got out of the truck.

“What about you, Virginia?” Barry asked without missing a beat, as if he hadn’t even heard Drew, much less found his date plans bizarre.

“What are you doing Saturday night?”

I was a half-second from blurting out the truth. Walter wasn’t coming home for the weekend—and anyway, I figured he was still mad at me, because he hadn’t called. A llison was competing in a pageant. So I planned a solo par-tay of practicing my drums, watching MTV, and then reading until two o’clock in the morning. When I relayed my schedule to Barry, I would edit out the part where I invented an excuse to drive into town for a few minutes and cruise by the Rent 2 Own store, checking for farm trucks.

I stopped myself just before blurting. If Drew was parking with the twin at the Rent 2 Own, I didn’t want to let on that I was hanging out at home, alone. A nyone could guess this, but I didn’t have to admit it.

Then I saw Drew’s dark eyes detach themselves from the press box and focus on me. Then flick to Barry and back to me. A nd I knew my instincts had been right about Barry liking me. Barry was about to ask me out.

My mind went into overdrive. A n excuse. Where was my excuse? I could use A llison as an alibi. But what if Barry had already found out casually from A llison that she didn’t have plans with me? I knew the thing to do was be firm, stand my ground, and turn him down nicely.

Otherwise he’d keep asking me out. But I didn’t know how to do that.

Besides, Drew was standing there. I thought he might politely leave us alone for a minute. Then I could turn Barry down. Barry would still be mad, but at least I wouldn’t embarrass the crap out of him and give the trombones something else to make fun of him about.

Drew said, “She’s dating Walter Lloyd.”

“You are?” Barry asked, eyes wide again.

I am? I thought.

“I didn’t know that,” Barry said. “I knew you were friends with him, but … Isn’t he a year younger than you?”

I nodded.

Barry plucked his trombone from the grass. “Okay, then. Y’all have fun. Break a leg.” He jogged across the field to the rest of the band.

Drew turned to me and smiled. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s practice the dip a few more times so I can really get the feel of you.”

We stared at each other.

“That’s not what I meant.” He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. “Every word out of my mouth this afternoon—”

“I know. Me too.” I laughed so he wouldn’t feel so self-conscious. Which was kind of hard to do, when I was more self-aware than I’d ever been in my life.

He opened those beautiful dark eyes and grinned at me. “You know what I mean.”

Oh, yeah. “I know what you mean.” I just wished he really meant it the other way.

He put his hand there and his leg there—gently this time. He dipped me slowly, with control. Holding me steady, he shifted his hands a little.

If I didn’t know better, I would have said he did enjoy touching me, after all.

“I’m not dating Walter,” I breathed.

“I know you’re not,” he said, his lips close to my lips. “I was just trying to get you out of dating Barry. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

I struggled until he set me on my feet. “Then why’d you tell Mr. Rush in his office that I was dating Walter?”

“Oh. That was just to make you mad. You know, before we suddenly became chums.” He nudged me on one shoulder with his fist, chumly.

“You didn’t want to go out with Barry, did you?”

“No,” I said emphatically. “A nd I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I also didn’t want to lie to him. It seems under-handed.”

Drew shrugged. “Then why didn’t you say something?”

“I was too stunned by your rude interruption.”

“Oh, come on.” He put his hands on me and dipped me slowly, gently. “Barry only asked you out in front of me so you couldn’t say no. He knew you wouldn’t want to embarrass him. One underhanded trick deserves another.”

“But it’s going to get around the whole school that I’m dating Walter. What if I wanted to go out with someone else?” Too late I realized that I probably sounded like I wanted to go out with Drew.

Which I did.

“What if you did?” he asked evenly, holding my gaze with his dark eyes.

“Then he wouldn’t ask me out now.”

Drew smiled. “Maybe he would.”

I wanted to know how this mythical boy could ask me out. Would he brick his girlfriend and her twin sister up in the instrument storage room like in ‘The Cask of A montillado’?

Maybe Drew was just flirting with me, pointlessly, for fun. Maybe he did like touching me during the dip, even though it didn’t mean anything to him. That was cool. I could enjoy a football season of flirting with Drew and touching Drew. If I didn’t die of heart palpitations.

Or heartbreak.

He set me up standing. “It was meant as a favor. Just take it as a favor and say, ‘Thank you, Drew.’”

“Thank you, Drew. May I have another?”

“Drum majors,” the band called across the field. It was time to run through the halftime show, and Mr. Rush was motioning us over.

“Horrible drum majors,” someone else called. “Hey, really bad drum majors.”