Major Crush(12)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“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.”

The laughing look in Drew’s eyes faded. There was the look I’d come to know and love, the one that said he wanted to pitch me off the top of the bleachers.

We walked back toward the band together. “So, why did you get your nose pierced?” he asked.

“I don’t even discuss that with my real friends, much less my fake friends.”

I thought that would shut him down, and we would just blend in with the rest of the band wandering to their starting positions for the show, and not talk to each other for the rest of practice.

No, he wasn’t finished. “A ren’t you afraid it will get infected?” he asked.

“My dad’s a doctor. I have twenty-four-hour surveillance on my antibodies.”

We’d almost reached the band. A llison was talking to Drew’s best friend, Luther, and trying her best to look disinterested.

“Does it hurt?” Drew asked.

I wished I had a dime for every time someone had asked me that. Usually I told the truth: It hurt like hell when I had it done, but now I couldn’t feel it. Like getting your ears pierced.