Biggest Flirts (Superlatives #1)(25)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Sawyer turned his bird head pointedly to Will, then just as pointedly to me.

“What?” I yelled at Sawyer. It was bad enough that Will was embarrassed to be associated with me. Having a huge bird exaggerate the situation made it worse.

Sawyer had told me before that he never talked in costume, which might have been the weirdest thing about his act, because when he wasn’t wearing the bird getup, he never shut up. This time he didn’t even pantomime a reaction to me shouting at him. He simply reached into his beak, pulled out my drumsticks, wiped the imaginary spit on his big bird ass, and handed them to me between two fingers like they were so gross that he was reluctant to touch them.

The field was full of noise and movement. DeMarcus must have finished the announcements. Most of the cheerleaders and the band moved toward the stadium exit, with a few trumpets playing runs, like anybody was going to be impressed. Those of us who’d ditched our heavier instruments during the announcements bent to pick them up now, Will and me included.

Normally this would be the time at the end of practice when Will and I would get in one last laugh for the road, some meta-analysis of the sorry excuse for a newscaster that was DeMarcus. But Will was very obviously keeping himself turned away from me as he hooked his snare onto his harness to carry it off the field. It was like we were having a sullen lovers’ quarrel without the benefit of making out first.

Across the field, Kaye turned toward me. Anticipating her move, Sawyer had crept up behind her, if that was possible while wearing three-foot-long bird shoes, and stepped into her path. She ran right into his padded belly. “Ooof!” she cried. “Get out of my way, pelican!” Sawyer pumped her hand up and down, congratulating her on being named Most Likely to Succeed. When she didn’t protest, he tried to put his wing around her. This time she shoved him away.

She walked toward me with her arms out for a hug. I put my arms out too. We couldn’t really embrace because my drum stuck out in front of me like I was fifteen months pregnant, but we leaned around the obstruction and patted each other on the shoulder, then walked toward the stadium exit together.

“Congratulations, princess!” I sang. “I want to go down on record as the first person to ask you for money. I’ll give you ten years to become a millionaire before I cash in, but I’m asking you in advance.”

“So noted,” she said, like we were in one of the club meetings she ran so well. “And congratulations to you!”

Despite myself, my gaze floated ahead of us to Will. Every band practice after the first, Angelica had waited for him, smiling brightly, at the gate separating the field from the stands. Today she frowned at him, hands on her hips.

I had mixed emotions about this. I could actually feel the emotions churning like a couple of different kinds of acid in my gut. If Angelica broke up with Will for being named Biggest Flirt, that would make him available for me again. But I’d already decided I didn’t want him. It would be my fault if he lost his girlfriend, and I was afraid he wouldn’t forgive me.

Dejected, I asked Kaye, “Congratulations for what?” I doubted she’d be happy for me, even in jest, for being elected Biggest Flirt. Not after her lecture at the antiques shop last Monday.

“For not getting elected Biggest Party Animal,” she explained. “What if a college admissions board saw that when they looked you up online?”

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “That’s your neurosis, not mine.” I planned to go to college, eventually, when I got around to it, but not one with an admissions board that ran background checks through Homeland Security.

She stomped her petite cheerleader shoe in protest that I wasn’t taking this seriously. “What about your dad? Your dad might have grounded you.”

This was Kaye’s vivid imagination. She was superimposing her own family life on mine. My dad would never find out what I’d been elected. I could have been voted Biggest Ho, or Greenest Teeth, and he wouldn’t have noticed. And he couldn’t very well ground me even if he wanted to, since he was either asleep or gone whenever I went out. Parents who made their kids stay home had to be home themselves.

“Dodged a bullet there,” I said.

“Of course, getting elected Biggest Flirt with Will Matthews when he already has a girlfriend is pretty awkward too.”

“Can it, would you?” I knew she was only teasing, but I wasn’t in the mood. “You haven’t given me helpful advice about boys since the sixth grade.”

“Yeah. That was the last time you turned one down.”

I glared at her and considered giving her a good whack with my drum, but we were on the stairs.

“I’m kidding!” she exclaimed. “Come on. You’ve cultivated this reputation yourself. You act like you’re upset that you got the title.”

“I just didn’t think Will and I were attracting that much attention,” I confessed. “We’re friends, and we horse around, but I wouldn’t have thought we would stick out to the whole school after four days of band camp.”

“You’re hard to miss,” she said. “You’re both six feet tall.”

“We are not.” I looked up at Will, who was cresting the stairs with tiny Angelica beside him. I was only five nine, which admittedly was tall for a girl, but not so tall for people in general. Will, on the other hand, had a good four inches on me, maybe more. I corrected myself: “I am not.”

“The two of you are probably six feet tall on average,” Kaye said as we reached the top of the stairs ourselves. Out in the parking lot, Will stood in front of the open trunk of his car, talking to Angelica. He leaned way down. She gave him a peck on the cheek. She flounced smiling across the melted asphalt, toward the band room. Obviously being elected Biggest Flirt hadn’t hurt his relationship with Angelica after all.

He pulled off his T-shirt, rubbed it across his muscular chest and arms, and ducked into his trunk again for a dry one. He had a whole pile of them in there.

“Wow,” Kaye said reverently.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“And we’re heading over there,” Kaye noticed, “when he’s half-naked, his girlfriend just kissed him, and you and he were chosen Biggest Flirts together? This is messed up.”

“He invited me to keep my drum in his trunk,” I explained as we reached him. Considering our new title, I thought it might help to remind him that this storage option had been his idea, not mine.