Playing by the Rules

by D'Ann Burrow

  Every girl wanted to be queen.

  “Tanner? We’re waiting.”

  I wasn’t going to be able to outlast her. Fresh out of college, Ms. Shelton was too new to understand the way things worked around here. She didn’t play by the rules.

  “Um, how far back do you want me to go?” I flashed her my best studious smile. Lucky for her, I could play the game, and not just football. Without flinching, I turned back a few pages in my binder, past the page listing Saturday’s college games, beyond the notes when I was thinking about the films from Pineview’s game last weekend, and I stopped on the first, mostly-empty page where I’d copied the title of today’s lecture, “Do Negative Campaign Ads Help or Hurt a Candidate Running for Office?”

  “That’s probably far enough.” She narrowed her eyes, rocking onto her toes.

  “Cool.” I smoothed the page, clearing my throat. “Here goes.” I refused to mumble. And then that blessed crackle from the speaker in the ceiling interrupted me. Music to my ears. I paused, politely waiting for what was coming next.

  “Ms. Shelton.” The school secretary’s boredom-laced voice commanded our attention.

  “Yes, Mrs. Vickers?”

  “Can you send Tanner Shields to the office?” She paused a beat, just long enough for her to take a wheezy breath. “And have him bring his things.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ms. Shelton answered smoothly.

  But her eyes told the truth. That speaker was lucky she decided not to use it for target practice. Her knuckles whitened on her grip around the pen. She turned in my direction, but I was three steps ahead of her.

  Already on my feet, I slipped by backpack over one shoulder while picking my notebook off my desk. “You want me to pick up where I left off tomorrow? Don’t want anyone to miss out on my notes.”

  “No. That’ll be fine.” The throbbing vein on her temple said it was definitely not fine. She spoke like my mom did when she was talking with one of Addy’s teachers. “Make sure you get the rest of the notes today from someone. Remember, there’s a test tomorrow.”

  “Sure thing.” Three girls were already waving papers in my direction. “I’ve got that under control.”

  I closed the door behind me, stepping into the hallway. It looked like a ghost town. We were still too early in the school year for those less inclined to be in class to have figured out how to convince their teachers to let them leave. Amazing how long it could take some people to go to the bathroom or the nurse or a coach who really didn’t need them at the moment.

  Cowboy boots echoed on tile from somewhere around the corner. Mr. Morrison was on patrol. It didn’t matter if he caught me. Good excuse or not, he’d never mess with his team’s star quarterback—not this close to a game against our biggest rival.

  Still, no reason to take too long. While I had to applaud Mrs. Vickers’ timing, getting called to the office was never a great thing. Coach Dillon always warned me before someone from the local paper was coming, and we weren’t far enough into the season for a reporter from the news to be here. That normally came when we made it to the playoffs.

  I jogged down the stairs. Voices came from the senior locker bank. Not everyone was scared to skip class this early in the year. I recognized Alex’s voice. Maybe he’d get caught.

  And maybe the football coaches would start letting girls play on our team.

  As I got closer to the office, Mrs. Vickers was already looking for me. Her eyes were narrowed tightly behind glasses so far on the end of her nose they could be a science experiment in defying gravity. Her lips were puckered even more than normal.

  Even if I’d tried to make it in without being noticed, the way the office door screamed in protest of being opened announced my arrival. Every pair of eyes in the office fixed on me. I shot a half-grin and nodded at the office aides. It never hurt to have friends in all the right places.

  “Mr. Shields, I presume?” A woman I didn’t recognize leaned out of my old counselor’s office. Not seeing Mr. Childress standing there seemed just wrong.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Right this way.” She took a step back, beckoning me in her direction. That solved the question of why I’d been called to the office, but it raised others. Her expression wasn’t excited enough for her to be about to tell me good news. Instead, she’d barely looked at me once she saw I was on my way. She eased herself behind her desk and into a leather chair that hadn’t been here when this office belonged to Mr. Childress.

  While I waited for her to tell me why I was in her office, I studied the room. The old pictures of past graduating classes were gone. So were the yellowed snapshots of his kids when they were babies. The digital frame displaying his grandkids was gone too. I wondered if Mrs. Childress let him hang the two-foot mounted bass on a wall at home somewhere. He loved that fish. No one escaped his office without hearing the story of how he’d caught it in the middle of a thunderstorm. I’d heard it at least ten times.

  Now the office looked like it had been hit by the Pink Fairy. The lampshade was pink. The curtain was pink. I didn’t even know tape dispensers and staplers came in pink, but Mrs. Ross found them.

  “Well now, Tanner, I don’t believe we’ve met, have we? I’m Mrs. Ross.” Her fingers picked at the pile of papers in the center of her desk. Definitely nervous. My name was written on the top one. “I believe your counselor last year was Mr. Childress?”

  “Yep. He was.” All she had to do was look at my files to see that answer. Idle chatter never signaled good news. Like the time the lady came to our house to talk with Addy—maybe stare at her while she refused to talk was a better description. That lady talked about the weather, our dog and the train set Christian was playing with before she finally said the word autistic.

  I didn’t trust people who talked around a problem.

  Her forehead furrowed so deeply she was going to need Botox before she turned thirty. I was surprised it could move with how tightly her hair was pulled into a bun. She finally picked up the stack of papers, her eyes darting across the page as nervous as a rabbit with a hunting dog on its trail.

  If I said boo, she’d jump out of her chair.

  “Is something wrong?” I figured I’d start with an easy question and work my way up.

  “Now, you’re a senior this year, is that correct?” She licked her lower lip so quickly, I doubted she even realized she’d done it.

  “Yeah.”

  Her shoulders stiffened, and she reached for a water bottle sitting next to her phone. Her jaw didn’t relax as she took a drink. Her tongue darted out to lick her lips again. No way was she that thirsty. Now I was on edge. She shifted in her chair. “Tanner, it seems we have a bit of a problem.”

  “A problem?”

  “Perhaps it would be better if we called your parents. Would you like them to come?”

  “We don’t need to bother my mom.”

  “Your mom.” She corrected herself, putting too much emphasis on the last word. My parents had been split long enough it didn’t bother me, but the whole single-parent thing probably didn’t fit into Mrs. Ross’s Barbie-pink world.

  “We don’t need to call her.” No need to explain that she wouldn’t come even if we did. She’d already missed too much work this month meeting Addy’s teacher, the counselor and the principal. If she went to any more school meetings, she wouldn’t have a job left.

  “Are you sure? We seem to have a small problem.”

  I was getting really tired of the word we. “How small?”

  “I’m sure Mr. Childress was a great man.” She stumbled over her words. “I’m sure he was a wonderful counselor. The other students I’ve spoken with…they’ve been very complimentary in how much he loved each of you.”

  Other students. At least I wasn’t alone here. Still, it didn’t make me feel any better.

  She cleared her throat, rolling her shoulders back. “But in reviewing his files, he didn’t seem to have kept up with all the state’s graduation requirements. A
nd it seems we have a small issue.”

  “How small?”

  “Something we can fix. Certainly not too big. But it might just take some creative scheduling.” Now I was on edge. Each word she used to stall went up my spine like nails on a chalkboard. “Do you recall taking any type of fine arts course since you’ve been in high school?”

  “Fine arts?”

  “Such as choir, band or art, maybe drama.” Her eyes pleaded with me to say yes.

  But if I said yes, I’d be lying.

  “I took band back in middle school. Teacher kicked me out. Said I didn’t have rhythm. I didn’t care. We couldn’t afford the instrument rental anyway.” Damn. There was the standard look of pity. “Didn’t matter. I didn’t like the trumpet, and it saved me the trouble of dropping the class.”

  She cursed under her breath. “Then I’m afraid the problem is real. You don’t have all the required classes to graduate.”

  Her almost-squirrel-like-movements weren’t funny anymore. The woman was actually scared of my reaction. Probably freaked out that I’d send one text to my mom and she’d storm the office. I’ll bet she thought my mom was going to raise hell.

  Good thing my mom only had enough energy to fuss about one of us. And it wasn’t me.

  If Mrs. Ross was waiting for me to scream, complain or wallow in self-pity, she didn’t know me very well. I looked her dead in the eye. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  She let out a sigh of relief so loud they probably heard it in the front office. “It’s really fairly simple. It’s still early enough in the year for us to just switch a class in your schedule.”

  “But my schedule’s full.”

  A muscle at the corner of her eye twitched as her teeth bit down on her lower lip. I was surprised I didn’t see blood. “Well, I’ve already spoken with the coaching staff. Coach Dillon was very accommodating once I explained the situation.”

  Coach Dillon. Accommodating? I wished I’d seen that.

  She forced a smile she probably thought looked comforting. “The coaches agree completely. They totally understand. Graduation has to be our top priority.”

  “And?”

  “And they’ve agreed to let you drop your weight training class.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  She held up a hand to stop me before I totally lost control. “You can make up the hours in the gym before school. One of the trainers will be more than happy to supervise you. So the question really is, which class would you rather take?” She squinted at me, cocking her head to the side as if I had something only she could read written on my face. “You don’t exactly strike me as an art kind of guy.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then we’ll definitely do choir. Yes, choir. That’s just about perfect. No after school rehearsals to conflict with football.” Mrs. Ross scribbled on her notepad, her eyes darting between my face and her notes so quickly, her head bobbed like a chicken chasing a worm and losing. “It’ll just take a little shuffling.” She rubbed her eraser over the page, puffing at the eraser bits like she was blowing out birthday candles and brushing them off the page. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem at all. We can manage it just fine.”

  My head was spinning so badly I felt like I’d gotten off a roller coaster. I was still waiting for someone to jump into the room and scream this had been a joke. Some kind of initiation to see just how committed I was to the football team.

  But Mrs. Ross wasn’t smiling.

  And no one was coming into the room with a video camera.

  This was real.

  I’d been in the choir room. Once. During the eighth grade tour of the building. We’d loaded up the bus from Piney Bluff Middle School and tried to act cool while we drove five minutes across town to the school that would be our future home in four short months. Back then, it was probably the biggest building I’d ever stepped foot in, and I was mainly worried about not losing my tour group. I was worried about a lot back then.

  I was worried about Dad ever coming home.

  I was worried about what we were going to eat that night.

  I was worried about what the guys were going to say if they ever found out about Addy. Of course, that would have meant someone crossed to my side of the tracks and came to my house. All that time being freaked out about something that still hadn’t happened.

  That was before football. The first day in gym class, Coach Espinoza tossed me a football, and I tossed it right back. Caught him so off-guard, he stumbled into a recycling bin.

  He didn’t stumble when he walked me straight to the office to sign me up for athletics.

  My world had never been the same.

  And my world had definitely included choir or even thoughts of choir. Right now, as I stood in front of the double doors leading to the unknown, I wished I didn’t have to think about choir now. I grabbed hold of the door, and the conversation in the room stopped.

  “You in the wrong room?” A guy from my English class stared at me from behind glasses so thick I figured they were fake. He’d achieved maximum hipster vibe.

  “Nope.” The corner of the schedule moistened under my fingertips. Crap. My hands didn’t even sweat before a game. “I’m supposed to be here.”

  “Really?” A skeptical voice came from the side of the room. A red-haired man with a scruffy beard stood to his feet from his place at the piano bench. I hadn’t even noticed Mr. Curtis sitting at the piano.

  “Schedule change.” I held the pink slip out in front of me as if it were a weapon.

  “I wasn’t told about a new student.”

  “Mrs. Ross changed it this morning.”

  “Did she?” Mr. Curtis took the paper and examined it like he thought it might be counterfeit. “It’s a little late to join the class. We have a concert next week.”

  School hadn’t even been in session for a month, and it was too late? Studying the expression on his face, I suspected I was the problem, not adding a new student to his class. How many football players pushed Mr. Curtis around in high school?

  “Voice part?” He asked the question like I should have known the answer.

  I just raised an eyebrow in reply.

  “Tenor or bass?” Now he’d moved into an I’m Talking To A Preschooler tone of voice. “This is the easy part.”

  Did I look like someone who’d spent much time in a choir room? I didn’t think Mr. Childress deserved a high-five anymore. “Which one’s lower?”

  “Bass.”

  “Then I’m a bass.”

  “Bass it is.” Mr. Curtis used his pen to gesture in the general direction of the guy with the glasses. “You stand over there. But stay after class, we need to get you sized for your tux.”

  “Tux?”

  “For the concert.” He answered with the same level of exasperation Christian typically used when he was trying to get Addy to do something. “And you can look at Spencer’s music for now. I’ll have a binder ready for you tomorrow.” He moved back to the piano and disappeared when he sat on the bench.

  While he rustled through papers, I had a chance to look around. I was definitely not in the locker room. A series of charts with some kind of hand signs hung above the white board. A poster covered with lines and dots was stuck to the wall behind the piano. Another one with dots in different spots between the lines was stapled just below the first one.

  “Here.” The guy who must have been Spencer shoved the black binder into my hand.

  “That’s fine. I can see it just fine.” I was at least four inches taller than he was. I could look over his shoulder.

  “I don’t need it.” Now I was confused, and he could tell. “I’ve already memorized it.” The way he emphasized memorized suggested he probably worked at a coffee shop that was out of my price range.

  I flipped open the front cover and found four bundles of paper.

  “We’re working on that one.” Obviously deciding I needed remedial help, he turned the pages for me until he arrive
d at a green page with a song title on it. A song title I couldn’t read.

  “It’s in German. It’s required if you’re trying out for All State.”

  “I normally make All State.” I’d been on the state football team since freshman year.

  “But not in choir.” He squinted at me like this was going to be a very long year. I couldn’t agree more. One more flick of his fingers, and we were staring at a page filled with lines and dots like the ones displayed on the front wall.

  Choir people must know some kind of secret code. I was screwed.

  I pretty much just stood there the first time we went through the song. And the second. And the third. By the fourth time, Mr. Curtis wasn’t even pretending to play the piano anymore. He was just standing there watching me trying not to look like I was watching everyone else in the room who wasn’t him.

  “Tucker, do you know how to read at all?”

  “It’s Tanner, sir.” I tried not to get angry at him. No need to make a return trip to the office twice in one morning. “And, yeah, I can read.”

  “I meant read music.” He thumbed toward the posters on the wall behind him. The guy behind me snickered so violently, he misted the back of my neck with spit.

  “Um, no. Can’t say that I’ve learned that.”

  Mr. Curtis’ expression went from suspicious to annoyed. He backed toward the posters I’d already started to hate and pointed at one of the dots. “What’s this?”

  I knew dot wasn’t the answer. I tried to remember from my failed attempt at band. “A note?”

  “Which note?”

  The answer wasn’t a round one. I shook my head while an unfamiliar feeling crept into my stomach. Doubt. Fear. Maybe a mixture of both. At any other time, the guys in this room would be looking at me and wishing they were me.

  Right now they were the star players, and I was the guy who’d be better off just sitting the bench.

  Mr. Curtis and I played the ‘What is This?’ game for a while. Long enough for his face to go from kind of olive to a splotchy white to a hint of pink crawling from beneath the collar of his shirt. Finally, he put me and the rest of the class out of our misery. He took a deep breath through his nostrils and tried not to shake his head, but I still saw the look in his eyes.