Major Crush

by Jennifer Echols

  “Before eight a.m.?”

  “Um, no. But it will just get worse. You won’t be in any condition to do anything at eight a.m. Why? Do you have a hot date? Or two?”

  He shook his head. “I’m driving to A uburn.”

  The A uburn University football team had an away game. I asked, “What for?”

  “I’m taking the SA T.” He swallowed. “Oh, my God, I’m taking the SA T with scarlet fever.”

  I grasped his gloved hand and led him toward the band’s place in the stands. On the way we passed A llison. She glanced down at our hands, then looked at me with both expertly shaped eyebrows raised. I shook my head and asked her to get Drew a Coke.

  I sat him down in the stands, then found Mr. Rush with Ms. Martineaux again. “Drew’s sick,” I said. “Do we bring a first aid kit with us to games? Do you think it might have Tylenol in it?”

  “A re you shitting me?”

  Ms. Martineaux stared in shock at Mr. Rush, like any sensible person would when he opened his mouth.

  He went on, “I’d get sued up, down, and sideways if I gave a child a pill without the school nurse filling out a form in quadruplicate.” He turned back to sweet-talk Ms. Martineaux, who now looked like she was not at all sure about this.

  I gazed up into the stands next to the band, but I didn’t recognize any parents. Nobody but the cheerleaders and the band was stupid enough to come all this way to watch our football team get their butts kicked.

  I turned to the clarinets. They were a resourceful lot. “Do y’all have any pain pills on you?”

  A ll the clarinets rummaged through large purses. This amazed me because we weren’t allowed to bring purses or bags of any kind into the stadium. If Drew or I had seen them with a purse, we would have sent them back to the bus to get rid of it. A really resourceful lot. They passed a band hat down the line with pills in it.

  A llison came back with Drew’s Coke and peered into the hat with me. I took some painkillers and the Coke down to Drew.

  The Evil Twin already sat beside him.

  If she’d brought him a Coke and some Tylenol, I would feel like a fool. A fool in a miniskirt.

  But no, she only took up where she left off venting at him because he’d ridden on the freshman bus. With me.

  I sat on his other side and handed him the Coke and the pills. While he drank, I leaned across him and said to the twin, “Not right now. He’s sick.”

  Drew choked on the Coke.

  I pounded him on the back.

  The twin was still going.

  When Drew could talk again, he interrupted her in a rough voice, “Really, could you give it a rest? I can’t even, like …” He squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Think?” I suggested.

  “I can’t even think right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She left in a huff. Drew and I both took a deep breath and sighed together.

  “Why do you let her talk to you like that?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem like you.”

  “You’re not supposed to yell at girls,” he told me again, hoarsely. “Besides, I’ve known her forever. I’ve had class with her since kindergarten.

  I’m used to it. It rolls off.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you would go out of your way to date it. What are you doing? Trying each flute until you find one who puts out?”

  He was quiet so long that I thought I’d pushed him too far and insulted him on a sensitive topic. Maybe he was “sexually active,” as they referred to it in the ob-gyn office, with the twin. Yikes!

  But then he said, “What are you doing? Using Walter as a human shield so you don’t have to put out?”

  We gave each other a long look. It was like we were back in the farm truck, just the two of us, with the windows rolled up and the band muffled around us. He was dead-on about something I’d only half-realized about myself.

  He cleared his throat like it hurt. “I’m dating her because she’s pretty and she’s nice.”

  This had not been my experience with the twins. I didn’t challenge the pretty part, but I asked him, “Nice? Which one are you dating?”

  “The nice one.”

  “Which one is that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Drew. Do you know which twin you’re dating?”

  Slowly, like he was sore, he set down his Coke, pulled off his gloves, and ran both hands back through his wet curls. “I’ve only dated her since the beginning of summer band camp. Five weeks.”

  “Five weeks is a long time to date someone without knowing her name.”

  “Right,” he said emotionlessly. “It went too far. I can’t admit it to her now.”

  “Why weren’t you honest with her in the first place?”

  “I should have been. I realized later. I was kind of distracted that week.”

  I tried to imagine what could distract a boy from figuring out which girl he’d asked to watch TV at the Rent 2 Own. “Distracted by what?”

  “You. Drum major stuff. A nd I had some stuff going on at home.”

  “Drum major!” the band yelled above us. Our team had scored a field goal. I jumped up.

  Drew was still sitting down. “I’m afraid to stand up,” he said.

  I directed the fight song for the skeleton crew of drums and trumpets who’d stayed in the stands during third quarter. I kept my eyes on Drew. He must be half dead to sit out the fight song and risk Mr. Rush calling him the I-word. But Mr. Rush was absorbed in arguing with Ms.

  Martineaux.

  When I sat down again, Drew leaned his damp head on my shoulder.

  I took a long breath, slow enough that he wouldn’t notice, I hoped. I told myself that his head on my shoulder didn’t mean anything. He was just sick.

  I glanced down at his bare hands, and felt a little sick myself. He wasn’t wearing a class ring. A lmost all senior boys wore one. Unless they had given it away. “Does she have your class ring?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Good question.”

  “Oh.” He held up his hand and examined it. “I don’t have a class ring. I ordered one, but we canceled a lot of orders all of a sudden during the summer. A nyway, she and I aren’t that serious.”

  I laughed. “Does she know that?”

  Luther, Barry, and a few more trombones banged down the stadium stairs and crowded around us. I still thought Luther was cute, and I didn’t understand why A llison didn’t think so too. Somehow he managed to wear his band uniform in that ultra-casual way he wore all his clothes, even though it was the same uniform everyone else wore.

  He poked at Drew with the end of his trombone slide. I think this was a boy version of concern. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  “I have scarlet fever,” Drew said.

  “Ooooooh, aaaaaah,” the trombones chorused as they ran away.

  Only Luther stayed. “You can’t be sick. You’re taking the SA T tomorrow.”

  “Helpful, Luther,” I said.

  Luther studied Drew’s head on my shoulder. “Looks like he doesn’t need any more help. Drew, you know the Evil Twin won’t like this.”

  Drew shot Luther the bird. I think this was how boys showed appreciation for concern.

  Luther cussed at Drew and stomped up the stairs.

  Drew nuzzled my shoulder.

  By the end of the game his face felt cooler, but he had chills. I tried not to be disappointed. I’d been half-hoping he’d be hot and the shirt would come off again. Instead, he stumbled into the seat at the back of the bus and asked me to borrow a blanket for him.

  I used the blanket as a cover to take his band shoes from A llison at the bus door and slip them back into his bag at our feet. But then, over the bus engine starting, I told him, “I don’t think the blanket is a good idea. You only think you’re cold. You don’t want to get overheated when you have a fever.”

  I glanced over at A riel and Juliet. They watched us like we were the latest Orlando Bloom movie, but maybe they
wouldn’t tell on us. Surely nobody felt any loyalty to the twin.

  A nd then the lights in the ceiling of the bus blinked out.

  “I’ll keep you warm,” I whispered into the darkness. I wrapped my arm around him.

  This seemed fine with Drew. He relaxed into me. I decided I kind of liked this fever thing.

  Then he bent down to his bag. He stayed bent for a few long seconds. He must have realized his band shoes were back. Then he shrugged and brought out the SA T book and a little flashlight.

  “Not again,” I said. “Why are you taking the SA T tomorrow, anyway? You knew you wouldn’t get home tonight until one thirty.”

  “It’s the last time I can take it before the scholarship deadline at A uburn.”

  “Why’d you wait so long to take it, then?”

  He sighed the longest sigh. “I took it last fall. I didn’t do well on the critical reading. But I did well enough to get into A uburn. I didn’t know then that I needed a scholarship.” He leaned against me again, heavily, like giving up.

  “Do you want me to quiz you?”

  He handed me the book and held the flashlight for me. I kept one arm around him and thumbed through the book with the other hand. I found a good word right off. “Captious.”

  “Finding fault with every little thing.”

  I thumbed some more. “Vituperate.”

  “To find fault.”

  I skipped a whole section of pages to find one he hadn’t studied. “Excoriate.”

  “To denounce severely.”

  “You know all of these,” I said. “Invective.”

  “A n insult.”

  “Bravado,” I said.

  “A pretentious display of courage. Do you mean me?”

  “A bjure,” I said. “A bjure” was like “abdicate.” Give up the throne. Give up the drum major position.

  Drew didn’t recite the definition, but he knew what I was getting at. “You wish,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m dying of scarlet fever and you’re using SA T words to argue with me.”

  “I’m not using SA T words to argue with you.”

  “You’ve got that whole book, and you just happen to vituperate and excoriate and throw invectives at me? A nd you say my girlfriend is evil?”

  I had thought it was funny, but now I felt bad. Captious, even.

  I leaned down into the aisle and arranged a couple of coolers so that he’d have a footrest. “Switch with me,” I said. I slid around him to sit next to the window. “Lie down,” I told him.

  “Can’t. Have to study.”

  “You won’t get a good score if you’re sleep deprived, no matter how many words you know. Lie down.”

  “You have to ask me words,” he said. But he lay down with his shoulder on the seat and his head on my thigh. His legs stretched across the coolers in the aisle, and his feet almost touched A riel in the next seat. The school bus was definitely too small for Drew.

  It had to be the most uncomfortable sleeping position ever. Each time the bus braked, he nearly rolled off the seat. Finally he braced himself by putting his hand on my knee.

  “A sk me words,” he murmured.

  I stayed with lullaby words like “genial” and “bonhomie.” His answers got softer, and there was a longer and longer silence before he prompted me to ask another. He was asleep.

  The whole bus was asleep except me.

  There was no way I could fall asleep in the next three hours. My knee under his hand and my thigh under his head were on fire. Gently I ran my fingers through his wiry black curls. In the faint moonglow through the window, I saw him smile a little, eyes still closed, lashes dark against his cheeks.

  I liked touching him on purpose.

  When the buses parked at the high school, Drew was burning up again. It had been about four hours since he took a pill. I dug more of the clarinet stash from my pocket and gave him a drink out of my cooler.

  Clearly he was in no shape to drive him-self home. I would ask Luther to give him a ride. But by the time we climbed down the stairs of the empty bus, almost all the cars had left the parking lot.

  A nd then I had a better idea. Dad was on call, which meant that he might be at the hospital delivering a baby. If he was home, though, he could start Drew on antibiotics. Drew would still be sick tomorrow at 8 a.m., but at least he might be on the road to recovery, with the edge taken off the fever. Not stupid-sick like he was now, and getting worse.

  A llison was asleep in the passenger side of my car. Without arguing with me, Drew stretched out on the backseat, and I drove to my house.

  When I parked in the driveway, A llison got out of the car and wandered over to her house without saying good-bye or taking her stuff. Her bags and boots and sequined leotard and tiara sat in the passenger seat like a pool of melted majorette. Drew didn’t wake up.

  Inside the house Dad dozed on the couch with the Weather Channel on. I pinched him a little harder than necessary, and he started up. I explained the situation with Drew.

  “I can’t just give him an antibiotic,” Dad said. “He has to take a strep test first.”

  “Do you have one on you? Come on, Dad. They’re my germs. It’s my fault if he gets a three-twenty on the critical reading.”

  I followed Dad as he grabbed a flashlight from a drawer and walked out to the car. When he opened the back door, Drew still didn’t wake up.

  “Drew,” Dad said gently.

  Drew opened his eyes and sat up. “Hello, Dr. Sauter.”

  I wondered how Drew knew Dad. Of course, most people did. Dad and A llison’s dad were well known. They’d delivered half the town.

  “Open your mouth and say ‘ah,’” Dad told him. He used the flashlight to peer into Drew’s throat. “Good news,” he said, clicking the flashlight off. “You’re not pregnant.”

  I was horrified at Dad for the stupid joke. It was bad enough that he was an obgyn. He didn’t have to go around reminding people.

  But Drew laughed. A nd laughed. A nd laughed. He was really sick.

  Dad rolled his eyes and closed the car door. “Does he live across town? You can’t take him home. Let him borrow your car. Your mother will take you to get it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think he should drive, Dad. He’s comatose.”

  “Well, you’re not driving him. It would be past two before you got home.”

  “Can you drive him?”

  “Hell, no. I’m on call.” Being on call made him testy. “He can stay in the guest room.”.

  “What about the antibiotic?”

  “Maybe. I’ll call his mother.”

  How embarrassing. “You don’t even know his mother.”

  “She’s my patient. I just saw her yesterday.” He went into the house.

  I opened the car door again. Drew had fallen asleep sitting up.

  “Drew,” I said.

  Slowly he opened his eyes and turned to me. His expression changed. I recognized that dark-eyed look. It was the same look he’d given me last Tuesday at practice, when I accused him of being innocent.

  I understood what the look meant now. Drew wasn’t innocent. He was anything but.

  Ever so briefly, I thought about what it would be like to make out with a feverish Drew in the backseat of my car.

  I might have tried to find out, too, if Dad hadn’t been just inside the house, on the phone with Drew’s mother.

  “Come on.” I took Drew’s hand and pulled.

  He didn’t budge. Instead, he pulled me, and kept me standing beside the car.

  I thought he might pull me into the car. He couldn’t quite decide.

  He swallowed, and winced.

  “You’re sick,” I whispered.

  He slid off the seat and let me lead him across the driveway, into the house, and onto the living room couch. When we sat down next to each other, I released my grip on his hand.

  But he didn’t release his grip on mine.

  A nd then he moved his thumb up to the tip of my thumb and do
wn the other side.

  A chill washed over me.

  He reversed direction and moved his thumb to the tip of my thumb again, down into the sensitive hollow between my thumb and finger. Up to my fingertip and down the other side. Up to the next fingertip and down the other side. Over and over, all the way to my pinky, where he reversed direction and did it again.

  I stared at my hand open to his hand. I glanced up at him once, but he was watching our hands too. So it wasn’t some kind of feverish spasm. He knew what he was doing.

  I could hear Dad still talking on the phone in the kitchen. I willed Dad to stay on the phone for a really long time. I stopped breathing every time Drew s thumb neared my fingertip. A nd each time his thumb dipped into the hollow between my fingers, a new chill washed from my face, down my neck, down my arms, and all the way to my toes.

  A beep sounded as Dad hung up the phone. I jerked my hand back into my lap.

  Dad walked into the living room. “It’s a go,” he said. “Drew, you look better.”

  A nd just like that, it was over. Dad found Drew an antibiotic, and I gave him a glass of water. Then I prodded him toward the guest bedroom. He stretched out on the bed without looking back at me, and without pulling down the covers. He was already gone. There didn’t seem to be much point in suggesting that he take off his Vans. I found another blanket in the closet, covered him, turned off the light, and left the room, closing the door behind me.

  A nd stood there staring at the closed door. I was like an amputee who still thought her missing leg was there. I could feel his cheek on my thigh and his hand on my knee and his thumb tracing up and down the outline of my hand.

  I should have hated him for his snarky comment when we first got on the bus: If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t be a problem. I should have hated him for making me feel like Mini-Me. I knew he just had a fever, he was out of his mind, he wanted some lovin’, and I was convenient. If he really liked me and wanted to date me, he would have broken up with the twin by now.

  I knew all this. A nd he still had me lit up like the Fourth of July. In September.

  I went to my room and changed into pajamas. Then changed into different pajamas. A ctually stood in front of the full-length mirror to see what I looked like in pajamas. I was going crazy.