Major Crush(9)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I watched them walk up the hill toward the stadium. “Oh, and Mr. Rush doesn’t like my uniform. He wants me to dress like a trapeze artist.”

A llison was not the logical person to complain to about strange outfits. She wore three-inch heels with her holey jeans. She always wore heels so she would be used to wearing them and wouldn’t look uncomfortable in them onstage at pageants.

Drew slid into the driver’s seat of the truck and called across me, “Hello, A llison.” They were both seniors and had all the A P classes together.

“Hello, Flying Frogini,” she said.

Drew looked perplexed. He looked cute when perplexed. A cute, perplexed ass. “Pardon?”

“Mr. Rush wants me to dress like a trapeze artist,” I explained.

He pursed his lips to hold in a laugh. “I was going to say. I’ve been called a lot of names since Friday night, but that’s a new one on me.”

“Well,” A llison said through a tight pageant smile. “I guess I’ll leave you two alone in Drew’s truck. A gainst my better judgment.” She went back to the majorettes, and I rolled up my window.

I could hear the noise of the band clustered in the driveway. They flirted with one another or warmed up on their saxophones. But the closed doors and windows of the truck muffled the sound. It was almost like Drew and I were alone together, for the first time ever.

Except that a thunk shook the truck every time an instrument case landed in the bed.

“I guess we should make a pact to be nice to each other,” he said. “Or pretend to.”

Thunk.

“The only pact I want to make with you is that we don’t compete with each other at meals,” I said. “I have no idea what I ate for lunch.”

Thunk.

He felt under the driver’s seat and handed me a crumpled bag of peanuts. Then he found a bottle of water for me and one for himself. “I’m trying to be nice to you,” he said.

Thunk.

I swallowed an enormous handful of peanuts and washed it down with a big swig of water. “Being nice to me for five minutes does not make up for pretending I didn’t exist all through band camp. Or for telling the new band director that I screwed the old band director. Is that rumor really going around the band?” I doubted this. A llison would have heard it and told me.

“Not around the whole band. A round the trombones. I think my girlfriend may have started it.”

“I never would have suspected,” I muttered. “Do you realize how irresponsible it was of you to even mention it to Mr. Rush?”

Drew gaped when I said the I-word, and he didn’t even blink at the next thunk. “No one believes it, Virginia. It’s a joke. Mr. Rush didn’t believe me.”

“What if he had? What if he’d told the principal? What if it had gotten back to Mr. O’Toole’s wife? Did you think about that?”

Thunk.

“I was mad at you,” he said softly. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“The next time I’m mad at you, I’ll tell everyone that you had sex with Mrs. Grackle down in home ec.”

He put a hand to his mouth like I’d suggested some unspeakable horror.

Thunk.

“You see how it feels?” I asked. “No, never mind. I don’t think you can. It’s different for a girl. I’m in a position of authority, which was always a boy’s position before this, and you want to make me into a cartoon. You want everyone to think that if I’m in charge, I must have slept with someone to get there.

“I couldn’t possibly have been elected drum major by the people in the band. They couldn’t possibly think I might do a good job. They couldn’t possibly be tired of you acting like you’re too cool to talk to anybody, unless you’re hanging out with the trombones or picking which flute to date this week.”

Thunk.

“You have to act cool.” he said. “Otherwise, people won’t do what you tell them.”

“I don’t act that way, and they do what I tell them. Sometimes.”

“People expect something different from you. You’re a girl.”

I’d gotten used to the thunk, but we both jumped at the knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. Tracey or Cacey Reardon rapped with her knuckles at ear level on Drew’s window. The shadow of evil descended over the truck.

The Evil Twins had earned their name through a long list of horrors. When they were only four years old one or both of them had tried to close their neighborhood playmates in the automatic garage door. In middle school one or both of them had peeled Craig Coley’s fingers back until he fell out of a tree and broke his arm. Nobody was allowed to climb the big, tempting trees at school after that. Just this summer one or both of them had single-handedly (or double-handedly) broken up three couples, including Elke Villa and Gator Smith, who’d dated forever. One or both of them probably would have done more damage if Drew hadn’t picked this opportune time to decide that one or both of them were the girl(s) of his dreams.

That was just the stuff I’d heard about. They were a year older than me, in Drew’s class. So until Friday night in the bathroom, I hadn’t been privy to their day-to-day heinousness. Here was my second introduction. Drew cranked his window open, and she was screaming at him before the glass was all the way down.

“We’re talking about drum major business,” he told her calmly.

She explained, at a higher volume than necessary, that my presence in the farm truck bothered her. You would think he would ditch this loud parody of womanhood. Her eyebrows were overplucked, and her heavy blue eyeliner practically glowed. But sometimes boys liked that look.

I guess.

“I’m giving her a ride to the stadium,” he replied. “I’ll see you up there.” She still screeched, but he rolled up the window anyway, started the engine, and eased the truck out of the driveway and onto the road around the school.

Out the back window, I watched her watching us go. I knew she wasn’t done with Drew—or me. “Can’t you do something to shut that off?” I asked him.

“You’re not supposed to yell at girls.”

“Says who?”

“My dad.”

A h, Southern chivalry. Boys down here still pull out your chair for you and pick up your books if you drop them. The chivalry only goes so far, though. I’ve tested it. If you point out to them that your status as a female does not make you any less capable of opening a door all by yourself, they’ll ask if you’re PMSing. A nd hold the door open for you anyway.