Major Crush(4)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Mr. Rush rubbed his temple like he had a headache. “When’s the last time you had a conversation with Morrow?”

“A conversation?”

“Yeah, you know. You talk, he talks, you communicate.”

“We had an argument just now because he sicced his girlfriend on me in the bathroom. Is that progress?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple harder. “How about before that?”

“Communicate. Probably …” I had to think about this. “Never.”

“Then how have you functioned at all? Even on your sad, limited level?”

I shrugged. “Mr. O’Toole would tell me where to go on the field, and then he would tell Drew where to go.”

“I’m going to tell you both where to go,” Mr. Rush muttered. “You see me in my office before band practice when we come back to school on Tuesday. A nd I want you to spend the long weekend contemplating how the two of you reek.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“If you performed that way at a contest, you’d get embarrassingly low marks. So would the band, because the two of you have them so confused. A nd the drums! Though I’m not sure the drums are your fault. I suspect they reek on their own merit.”

He stood, looking down at me with a diabolical grin. “I’m so glad we’ve had this chat. To be fair, I’d give Morrow the same treatment, but it looks like someone’s beat me to it.”

I nodded. “His father and his two older brothers used to be drum majors.”

“What? A legacy? The Morrow clan has drum major tied up like the Mafia?”

“It feels that way.”

“I should have kept my job in Birmingham at Pizza Hut,” Mr. Rush grumbled as he stomped away.

I had to agree with this. Despite myself, I looked up one more time at Drew high in the stands. He and his father sat side by side in the same position, leaning forward, elbows on knees. The only difference was that Drew hung his head. Now Mr. Morrow pointed to Drew’s Vans.

I imagined Mr. Morrow lecturing Drew in a Tony Soprano voice. “I’m counting on you to uphold the family name. I want you to off the broad. Capisce?”

“You are a good drum major,” Walter said. “I mean, I assume you could be. You haven’t had a chance. But there’s no reason for you not to be a good drum major. You’re musically talented. You’re responsible. A nd besides, you look cute in your uniform pants.”

I rolled my eyes. He made this kind of flirtatious comment more and more often lately. It made me so uncomfortable that I probably shouldn’t have come over to the bus today. But my dad had the day off and was likely to organize some wretched family activity if I was around. A llison was at a pageant all weekend, as usual. A nd I needed to talk.

I inched farther away from Walter on his bed, which he had cleared of difficult-looking books so we could sit down. Some of our friends referred to the bus as the Bookmobile because the walls were stacked like a library, giving Walter and his mother even less space to move around.

The bus was divided into two rooms. The back room was Walter’s mom’s bedroom. I don’t know why she bothered. She was hardly ever home. In fact, in the entire past year that Walter and I had been close friends, I’d probably laid eyes on her twice.

She was working on a PhD in psychology at A uburn University. This sounded impressive, like maybe they would move into a real house soon. Until you found out that she’d been working on one psychology degree or another almost since Walter was born and his dad left. A nd then you heard that she partied with her friends and didn’t always make it home from A uburn at night. You wondered why she didn’t use some of this book-learning in psychology on herself. This was the one thing Walter and I couldn’t talk about, besides my dad. A nd Walter’s crush on me.

The front room of the bus was Walter’s room, the living room, and the kitchen combined. We sat on his bed because it doubled as the sofa.

My old-fashioned mother had forbidden me to set foot in a boy’s room or sit on a boy’s bed. I had never checked with her to see how the rules changed when a boy lived in a bus. Normally I would just shrug her warnings off, because I knew what I was doing. A nd it was only Walter, after all.

The way he’d been acting lately, though, I was tempted to give him the trusty old “my mother won’t let me go inside a boy’s bus unchaperoned” excuse. I tried to ignore that he inched toward me as I inched away. A t least I had my drumsticks in my lap. I could jab him if he inched an inch too far.

“I’m starting to think it has nothing to do with being musically talented or actually directing the band,” I said. “Drew can direct the band, and I can direct the band. But what Drew can do that I can’t do is yell at people and make them jump. These girls in the bathroom reacted to me like I was one of them, or below them, even. They reacted to Drew like he was in charge. I’m supposed to be in charge too. What’s the matter with me?”

Walter frowned at me and stared with his big green eyes like he was really considering this question. While I waited for the big revelation, I noticed that his eyes exactly matched the green leaves in the trees out the bus window behind him. He really was cute. I could totally see how I would be head over heels in love with him, if I were fourteen years old instead of sixteen.

I started tapping out a nervous rhythm on my knee with my drumsticks. I used to take my drumsticks with me everywhere because I wanted to practice constantly and be a better drummer. Now I took them with me because I felt naked without them.

Finally Walter said, “You’re not a screamer.”

I stopped tapping. “Oh, for the love of—”

“I’m serious. Drew hears a fight in the girls’ bathroom and goes in to break it up. His first instinct is to yell. Well, let’s say you heard a fight in the boys’ bathroom, and you broke it up. What would you do naturally if you could solve it your way?”

“I would run in the other direction. You really expect me to go in the boys’ bathroom? Let them kill each other.”

“You know what I mean. Hypothetically.”

I’d been thinking a lot about what Mr. Rush had said to me after he told Walter and A llison to beat it so he could talk to me alone. Don’t challenge students in front of other students, because all you get is lip.

“I’d pull each person to the side and talk to them one-on-one about what was going on,” I said. “I’d act like if they would please back off, I would consider it a favor. A nd I really would. I mean, I know everybody in band. Everybody in band is a friend of mine. Except for the Evil Twins, and anyone who happens to be calling me a bitch at the moment.