I held out a little hope, though I wasn’t sure what I hoped for. “When you got the job, did you count the votes again?”
“Yes.”
“How many did I get?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Seventy-something.”
“How many did Drew get?”
“Three fewer than you.”
I could tell by the way my heart sank that I’d hoped I had lost. To keep up the image that I was just checking his math, I asked, “How many did Clayton Porridge get?”
“Two.”
I swallowed. “I think Drew may quit.”
Mr. Rush nodded again. “I think you’re right.”
“We’ve gone all this time with Drew as drum major. We have a game tonight and the contest tomorrow. Drew should stay drum major with me.”
“I agree.”
“But he’s humiliated,” I said. “A nd he thinks the job is rightfully mine. He won’t do it.”
“No, he won’t.”
I closed my eyes, breathed the humid air, and listened to the noise outside the office. We couldn’t practice on the football field in the rain.
People hauled their instruments out of cases into the band room.
The familiar sounds of clarinets warming up and boys laughing should have been comforting. My whole life hadn’t changed. Just this one thing. Really, everything was back to normal, with Drew hating my guts. It was the past few weeks that had been unusual.
I knew the tractor love was too good to be true.
I opened my eyes. “A nd I bet you plan to drop another bombshell at the faculty meeting this afternoon.”
“I can cause us trouble without even going to a faculty meeting,” Mr. Rush said proudly. “For the contest tomorrow, I entered us two classes up from where we should be for the size of the school.”
“So well be competing with all the huge, rich bands from Birmingham and Montgomery. Why did you do that?”
“It’ll look so much more impressive when we beat the pants off them. I’ll get my contract renewed for sure.”
“Except that we won’t beat the pants off them with Drew gone,” I pointed out.
“There’s that. I entered us two classes up before I knew this secret had gotten out.” He winked. “No pressure.”
Frustrated, I stood and jerked the door open, hoping I might find some snooping flutes to vent my anger on.
No one was there but Drew, leaning against the wall with his arms folded.
His dark eyes stared right through me, chilling me down to the bone.
He didn’t say a word as he brushed past me into Mr. Rush’s office and closed the door.
Immediately Mr. Rush opened the door again. “Sauter, go take roll and tune them up. I may be a minute.” He closed himself in the office with Drew.
I stood on the podium in the band room and called names. Cacey and then Tracey Reardon answered after a long pause. I never looked up from the roll book. I was more interested in the voices of Drew and Mr. Rush that sometimes reached me through the closed office door.
I dragged the roll out as long as I could, then directed the band to play a note and hold it. Under the clean clarinets and the rich mellophones, I thought I heard an off-key flute.
But it didn’t matter, because people stopped playing and strained to hear what Drew shouted at Mr. Rush.
The door to Mr. Rush’s office crashed open and Drew stormed across the band room. The heavy door out to the driveway slammed behind him.
Mr. Rush walked into the band room and up to the podium. Everyone watched us.
“Where’s Drew?” I whispered.
“I sent him to run laps around the football field.”
“In the rain?”
“It’s good for him.” He turned to the band and yelled, “Holy crap, is it stuffy in here? Washington, open some windows.”
Luther dutifully weaved between the rows of chairs, stood precariously on a tuba case, and cranked open the windows high in the wall. Girls in the back row squealed as rain blew in and wet them.
Mr. Rush handed me a sheet from a yellow pad. “Here’s a list of trouble spots in the music that you need to rehearse them on.”
“Me? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to play drums.”
“You flunked percussion.”
“I know. I need to improve. Whoever heard of a band director who can’t play drums?”
I had just become the lone drum major. The last thing I needed was to be put in charge! Reluctantly, I finished tuning the band and started rehearsal.
But at least with Mr. Rush in the drum section, the left half of the room behaved themselves for fear of pissing him off. That included the twins and their flute friends.
The trombones were another story. The talking and cutting up slowly welled until I turned to them with my hands on my hips and sent them an outraged glare. They would titter and shush themselves. Then the talking would well up again.
I knew what was going on. They were angry with me about Drew. They were showing their loyalty to Drew by giving me a hard time.
A nd Mr. Rush was letting them do it. He was giving me a trial by fire.
Thunder boomed too close, and the lights flickered.
Girls screamed.
The heavy band room door banged open, and there were several more slams in the storage room. Drew appeared with his trombone, kicked Luther’s chair so that all the trombones moved down one chair, and sat without saying anything to anyone. A s if no one would notice him.
He was completely soaked.
Luther slid toward Barry to avoid getting dripped on.
I restarted rehearsal. The noise in the trombone section grew again, and expanded to the trumpets. I let it go on for a few minutes. It was only natural for them to talk. A down-and-out Drew was something to gossip about.
The noise expanded to the saxophones. I could hardly hear the flutes I directed. Then, from somewhere low in the trombones, an “ooooooh, aaaaaah” boiled up.
“Trombones,” I called.
Drew leaned over Luther, talking to trombones farther down the line.
That was the last straw.
“Hello, trombones!” I yelled. “Drew!”
Drew’s head snapped up in surprise, scattering raindrops. His eyes were wide, and a blush crept into his cheeks.
He’d been trying to get the trombones to shut up. He’d been discussing the problem with them. For me. He felt hurt.
I didn’t care. I felt abandoned.
“It doesn’t matter what’s happened today,” I said to Drew. Then I let my glance fall across the rest of the band, as if I were talking to them.
“We still have a game tonight and a contest tomorrow.”
I let the uncomfortable silence settle. If another “ooooooh, aaaaaah” broke out, I would throw up.
But it didn’t.
A t the back of the band, where no one else could see, Mr. Rush gave me a thumbs-up.
A ny other time I would have felt proud of myself for handling the band and finishing what turned out to be a pretty productive rehearsal. I smoothed out all the rough spots on Mr. Rush’s list, plus some I’d heard myself or that Drew had pointed out to me before. I thought we would sound a lot better after this.
But under the circumstances, I just wanted to get through it and go home and hide.
Which I did. For about an hour. Then I had to come right back to school to pile onto the bus for the away game in Birmingham.
A s we stood outside the waiting buses, A llison gave me one last supportive hug underneath her umbrella. Then she got onto the senior bus.
Drew was already on it in his regular band uniform, I guessed. I walked alone through the rain to the freshman bus. It didn’t matter how wet I got. I couldn’t use an umbrella at the game, anyway. Drum majors had more important things to worry about.
I took roll, made my way down the aisle over coolers and uniform bags, and sat in the backseat, reviewing the changes I would
have to make in the halftime show now that Drew was gone. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see the curious looks from the freshmen or the concerned look from A riel and Juliet across the aisle.
“Virginia,” someone called. Then a chorus of voices: “Virginia, Virginia.”
I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut. I hated band.
“Virginia.” I recognized A llison’s voice. She stood at the front of the bus.
I wove back up the aisle and followed her down the stairs, into the soupy grass.
“The twins are spreading another rumor about you,” she said. She pulled at her earring.
She held her umbrella over us, but even out of the rain, the air practically dripped humidity. This afternoon, in the hour we’d had at home, I’d curled her hair carefully around her tiara while she chatted about whether Luther liked her bangs down or away from her face. If she was braving the elements to tell me about a rumor, it was bad, bad, bad.
“How bad can it be?” I asked.
“Did your dad have an affair?”
By kickoff time the rain had stopped. First quarter, our team made a touchdown and two field goals. I sat at the bottom of the stands with my back to the band, watching the game closely. I was terrified I’d miss when we were supposed to play the fight song.
Conveniently, while I was watching the game, I didn’t have to look at the twins, who had told everyone about the drum major fiasco. Or at Drew, who had told the twins about my dad.
Second quarter, our team made a touchdown and a field goal. I realized there was a pattern to the way the teams threw and kicked and ran.
A lmost like a game. A cold mist began to fall.
I was supposed to lead the band toward the field for the halftime show at the six-minute marker. A s the time ticked down, I watched the clock, and then the game. The clock, then the game. Then Walter.
Walter passed in front of the chain-link fence that separated the band section from the lower section of bleachers. His beard was fuller now. I wouldn’t have recognized him except for the way he walked, and then I caught a glimpse of his big green eyes. He was with a girl wearing black. A nother girl wearing black and a boy with a long ponytail followed close behind them.
Walter dropped the girl’s hand, stared straight at me, and held both arms up. He mouthed, “Touchdown.”
What? Walter was sexually active?
“Drum major!” the band called behind me.
Oh, that kind of touchdown. I turned around casually and directed the band, as if I meant all along for there to be a time delay between the team scoring and the band playing the fight song.
A s soon as the song was over, before Drew or a twin or anybody could even put their instrument down and catch me with their evil eye, I whirled back around.
Walter had his hand cupped to his girlfriend’s ear. His friends moved down into the lower stands without him. He stepped closer to me and put his hands on the fence between us.
I put one hand up to touch his. But I watched the game over his shoulder. “Thank you,” I whispered. I wanted to tell him so much more.
How grateful I was that he would hitch a ride across Birmingham and drag his cool friends to his country high school football game to see me. If this whole horrible experience had taught me nothing else, at least now I knew who my friends were.
Of course, he might have brought his girlfriend just to make me jealous. But that’s not how it felt when our fingertips touched.
“What happened to Patton?” he asked.
Forget the emotionless drum major face. I screwed my eyes shut to keep the tears away.
“Okay, okay,” he said soothingly. “Watch the game. I’ll call you tomorrow. You still have a contest tomorrow?”
I nodded.
“I’ll call you tomorrow morning.” We couldn’t squeeze our hands through the fence, so we just did a pinky-swear, and laughed. A nd then he was gone.
The clock read six minutes, and I motioned for the band to follow me. Thank God I didn’t have to keep up with the game for the next six minutes.
By halftime the mist had turned to drizzle. The dip did not work so well with only one drum major. It took two to tango. I did the military salute Drew and I did the first game, back when we weren’t speaking to each other.
I held the salute, blinking the raindrops away, until the announcer had run through all the band officers’ names. Mr. Rush had forgotten to change the list. “Drum majors,” the announcer called. “Drew Morrow and Virginia Sauter.”
My mother waved frantically to me from the stands. She blew me a kiss in support, then took my dad’s hand again under their umbrella.
During the brief time I was home after school, I’d told them Drew quit. I hadn’t gotten into why, because I didn’t want to break down. A nd of course they didn’t know about the other rumor.
Yet.
I thought the show sounded good. I couldn’t be sure. I had to pay close attention to what I was doing. There were a hundred little differences that I needed to remember now that I was covering Drew’s job as well as mine. It would be like me to turn the band to the left when I meant the right.
Drew would love that. A nd there was no way I would give him the satisfaction.
Though it really didn’t make any sense for Drew to have betrayed me. I’d pondered it for the whole bus trip. The more I considered it, the less sense it made. Drew wasn’t vindictive. Impatient, yes. Hotheaded, yes. Vindictive, no.
Then again, when my dad cheated on my mom, she never saw it coming, because it didn’t seem like him.
My mom had forgiven my dad. I wasn’t ready to forgive Drew.
But my dad had asked to be forgiven. Drew apparently couldn’t care less.
By third quarter the drizzle had turned to a deluge, and the band dashed under the bleachers. I’m sure Mr. Rush would have made us stick it out, except that some instruments like flutes and clarinets would be ruined if they got too wet.
I wished he would let us give up and go home. But he seemed to think that the rain would stop and we would go back to the stands to play some more. A nyway, we had to wait for the rain to let up just to get the flutes and clarinets back to the U-Haul.
Under cover of the bleachers, I walked toward a cluster of majorettes. I had been able to deal with the rumors while I had a job to distract me and I had my back turned to the stares and the whispers. Now that I was exposed in the middle of the band, I wanted A llison for support.
Drew watched me as I passed. He said something to the trombones grouped around him, and they all turned to stare at me too. Why they didn’t go ahead and give me a big “ooooooh, aaaaaah,” I didn’t know.
One of the twins and her friends sat near the trombones, against the cement block wall of the concession stand. They mumbled my name, and something about my boots.
I walked over and stood very close to the twin, so my boot almost touched her band pants. I looked down at her. “Why don’t you stand up and say it to my face?”
She gaped up at me, clearly shocked that someone would call her on her evilness.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. I turned to find A llison.
There was a commotion behind me. The twin had gotten up to kill me.
Instantly there were trombones surrounding her, preventing her from clawing me. A ll she could do was shriek at me.
Drew had me by the wrist. He pulled me a few paces, then backed me against the cement wall. “You’re drum major,” he whispered hoarsely.
“You can’t stoop to that level.”
I looked up into his beautiful dark eyes. “You would know.”
He gave me the hurt look again, like I’d wronged him instead of the other way around.
That just made me angrier. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I went on. “Don’t you dare give me any more pointers.”
I pulled away from him.
I could still feel the tingle of his hand on my wrist. Just what I needed.
I walked over to Mr. Rush. He
didn’t look particularly absorbed in his conversation with Mr. Scott, the biology teacher. A pparently Ms.
Martineaux couldn’t handle being a band chaperone. Or Mr. Rush’s date. Mr. Scott was her replacement on the senior bus.
“Holding up okay?” Mr. Rush asked me. “I knew you would.” A pparently he hadn’t witnessed the scene of evil.
“Yes. But I’m taking ten.” I gestured to the band. “Can you handle this while I’m gone?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Grabbing A llison as I passed the majorettes and dragging her with me, I stalked across the cement. My expressionless drum major face held until A llison and I got inside the door of the empty restroom. Then I started bawling.
I was short and she was model-tall. She held me tightly while I cried into her chest and told her the whole story. If she was miffed at me for spilling the beans to Drew and not her, she didn’t mention it. Maybe she understood why her parents couldn’t know. Or maybe she figured I’d suffered enough. It was a good thing tears didn’t stain sequins.
A fter a long time I straightened, and she let me go. “I thought I wanted to be drum major by myself,” I sobbed. “I got what I wanted. A nd I’m back where I started, crying in the restroom. With you.”
“Yes,” A llison said somberly, “but in the meantime, we’ve grown closer.”
I snorted, and started to laugh, and choked myself.
She was pounding me on the back when someone knocked on the restroom door.
“Yes?” A llison called.
The door opened a crack, and Luther’s voice echoed through the room. “Virginia, Drew wasn’t trying to cause trouble in band practice today.
He was trying to get the other trombones to lay off you.”
A llison crossed the room and swung the door wide open. “You go back and tell Drew Morrow that’s the least of his problems.” She closed the door in Luther’s face. A s an afterthought, she opened the door again. “A re you still coming over after the game?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good.” She closed the door in his face again. Then she wet her hands in the sink and began to pat the hissy fit off my skin.
“Maybe you should forgive him,” she said.
I sniffed. “He hasn’t asked me to forgive him.”
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