Major Crush(17)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“I think I’m coming down with something.”

I pulled off my uniform glove, then reached up and pressed my bare hand to his forehead. This was weird. Other than the dip, I’d never touched him on purpose before.

A nd then I fought the instinct to jerk my hand away in alarm. He was hotter than a human should be.

Temperature. He was hot in temperature. Hot had nothing to do with his dark eyes clouded by fever, or the black curls plastered to his neck with sweat like he’d just enjoyed a long make-out session.

With some lucky flute.

Ugh!

I pulled off the other glove and pressed both my hands on his cheeks to make sure.

He watched me warily like he thought I was about to slap him.

I took my hands away. “Is your throat killing you? It came on all of a sudden? But your head isn’t plugged up like a cold?”

He nodded.

“It’s probably strep throat. It’s been going around. You might even have caught it from me.”

“You—” His voice came out a whisper. He cleared his throat and started again. “You haven’t been sick.”

“I felt it coming on last Sunday. My dad took me to his office and gave me a strep test and antibiotics. You definitely need to go to your doctor tomorrow. If you don’t, it could develop into scarlet fever.”

“Before eight a.m.?”

“Um, no. But it will just get worse. You won’t be in any condition to do anything at eight a.m. Why? Do you have a hot date? Or two?”

He shook his head. “I’m driving to A uburn.”

The A uburn University football team had an away game. I asked, “What for?”

“I’m taking the SA T.” He swallowed. “Oh, my God, I’m taking the SA T with scarlet fever.”

I grasped his gloved hand and led him toward the band’s place in the stands. On the way we passed A llison. She glanced down at our hands, then looked at me with both expertly shaped eyebrows raised. I shook my head and asked her to get Drew a Coke.

I sat him down in the stands, then found Mr. Rush with Ms. Martineaux again. “Drew’s sick,” I said. “Do we bring a first aid kit with us to games? Do you think it might have Tylenol in it?”

“A re you shitting me?”

Ms. Martineaux stared in shock at Mr. Rush, like any sensible person would when he opened his mouth.

He went on, “I’d get sued up, down, and sideways if I gave a child a pill without the school nurse filling out a form in quadruplicate.” He turned back to sweet-talk Ms. Martineaux, who now looked like she was not at all sure about this.

I gazed up into the stands next to the band, but I didn’t recognize any parents. Nobody but the cheerleaders and the band was stupid enough to come all this way to watch our football team get their butts kicked.

I turned to the clarinets. They were a resourceful lot. “Do y’all have any pain pills on you?”

A ll the clarinets rummaged through large purses. This amazed me because we weren’t allowed to bring purses or bags of any kind into the stadium. If Drew or I had seen them with a purse, we would have sent them back to the bus to get rid of it. A really resourceful lot. They passed a band hat down the line with pills in it.

A llison came back with Drew’s Coke and peered into the hat with me. I took some painkillers and the Coke down to Drew.

The Evil Twin already sat beside him.

If she’d brought him a Coke and some Tylenol, I would feel like a fool. A fool in a miniskirt.

But no, she only took up where she left off venting at him because he’d ridden on the freshman bus. With me.

I sat on his other side and handed him the Coke and the pills. While he drank, I leaned across him and said to the twin, “Not right now. He’s sick.”

Drew choked on the Coke.

I pounded him on the back.

The twin was still going.

When Drew could talk again, he interrupted her in a rough voice, “Really, could you give it a rest? I can’t even, like …” He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Think?” I suggested.

“I can’t even think right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She left in a huff. Drew and I both took a deep breath and sighed together.

“Why do you let her talk to you like that?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem like you.”

“You’re not supposed to yell at girls,” he told me again, hoarsely. “Besides, I’ve known her forever. I’ve had class with her since kindergarten.

I’m used to it. It rolls off.”

“That doesn’t explain why you would go out of your way to date it. What are you doing? Trying each flute until you find one who puts out?”

He was quiet so long that I thought I’d pushed him too far and insulted him on a sensitive topic. Maybe he was “sexually active,” as they referred to it in the ob-gyn office, with the twin. Yikes!

But then he said, “What are you doing? Using Walter as a human shield so you don’t have to put out?”

We gave each other a long look. It was like we were back in the farm truck, just the two of us, with the windows rolled up and the band muffled around us. He was dead-on about something I’d only half-realized about myself.

He cleared his throat like it hurt. “I’m dating her because she’s pretty and she’s nice.”

This had not been my experience with the twins. I didn’t challenge the pretty part, but I asked him, “Nice? Which one are you dating?”

“The nice one.”

“Which one is that?”

He didn’t answer.

“Drew. Do you know which twin you’re dating?”

Slowly, like he was sore, he set down his Coke, pulled off his gloves, and ran both hands back through his wet curls. “I’ve only dated her since the beginning of summer band camp. Five weeks.”

“Five weeks is a long time to date someone without knowing her name.”

“Right,” he said emotionlessly. “It went too far. I can’t admit it to her now.”

“Why weren’t you honest with her in the first place?”

“I should have been. I realized later. I was kind of distracted that week.”

I tried to imagine what could distract a boy from figuring out which girl he’d asked to watch TV at the Rent 2 Own. “Distracted by what?”

“You. Drum major stuff. A nd I had some stuff going on at home.”

“Drum major!” the band yelled above us. Our team had scored a field goal. I jumped up.