Biggest Flirts

by Jennifer Echols

  “Great,” Will exclaimed. “Now Angelica will find out for sure. Those assholes will run right back and tell her. Angelica may even be in that class.” He glared at me, then turned and stalked toward the door. Actually, I don’t think he stalked. Stalking was uncool and self-righteous, and Will didn’t move that way. He sauntered toward the door and threw it open like a rock star.

  And I stared after him with my mouth open, desperately grasping for something funny to say to lighten his mood. He would stop, turn on the step, and give me a grudging grin. I would know that, even if I’d messed up things between him and old Angelica, at least he didn’t hate me, and we’d be back to normal soon. But without a joke, I was lost.

  I turned to Harper. “Think of a joke.”

  Harper gaped at Will too. Without taking her eyes off him, she said, “I’ve got nothing. And I don’t think a joke would fix this.”

  The door slammed shut. Will was gone.

  “Of course a joke would have fixed it!” I squeaked. “Normally you’re hilarious. What kind of friend are you if you can’t think up jokes on cue?”

  She looked at me somberly through her glasses. “I’m the kind of friend who will support you during what comes next. If you two Biggest Flirts keep claiming you’re not going to flirt anymore, you’re going to blow each other’s lives wide open.”

  ***

  Angelica did indeed find out about her brand-spanking-new boyfriend kissing the girl he’d sworn off. And then everybody else found out from Angelica. During the break after history, I heard her before I saw her in the crowded hall outside my English class, looking small and dead serious as she pointed her finger in Will’s face and raised her voice at him. I gave them a wide berth and ducked into class without either of them seeing me, I thought—which didn’t change the fact that everybody in the room stared at me as I walked toward the back and plopped down, four rows away from where I’d sat behind Will on Friday.

  Will walked in on the bell, mouth set in a grim line, a pink flush crawling up his neck. I wondered if he’d gotten so angry with Angelica that he’d given her the “That’s enough!” line I kept getting from him when I pushed him past his breaking point. He didn’t look angry, though. He looked mortified. Apparently he got angry at a girl giving him heat only when he didn’t deserve it.

  Band that afternoon was exactly as awful as I’d suspected. Unlike in the other classes I shared with Will, I couldn’t avoid him. I was stuck right next to him for the whole hour. And he didn’t say a word to me unless he was barking orders to the section. He’d brought two bottles of water for himself so he wouldn’t run out, and he must have spread sunscreen on the back of his neck already. He sat on the grass by himself instead of sharing my towel. It was the first practice we’d had in which Ms. Nakamoto didn’t have to tell him to get off me.

  As we rehearsed the halftime show over and over, the hour flew by. But the heat was terrible, even to me, and Sawyer’s antics in the pelican costume weren’t funny. I tried to lose myself in the music and just enjoy it, forgetting Will was there. This was difficult when I was often sliding one stick sideways to play on his drum while Jimmy played on mine. Then we reversed direction, with me playing on Jimmy’s drum and Will’s stick in my personal space.

  I fantasized about switching places with Jimmy, so that I stood between him and Travis. Just moving one person down in the drum line would make all the difference. I wouldn’t feel Will beside me constantly, his arm brushing against mine and suddenly pumping my body full of adrenaline. I wouldn’t smell the spicy scent of him that dragged me back, against my wishes, to our hopeless night together. With him finally out of my life, I could spend my spare time floating in the waves at the beach rather than trying to party thoughts of him away.

  All it would take was one person in the snare drum line to challenge somebody else. Then we’d all have to try out, and I could carefully throw the competition so that I came in third. Problem was, except for Will, our snare drum line wasn’t very ambitious. I hadn’t convinced them to challenge me after begging them all summer. I wouldn’t convince them to challenge Will now.

  I could, however, challenge Will myself.

  That fantasy turned into an idea. The idea turned into a plan, because I had plenty of peace to think it through without the pesky drum captain teasing and distracting me. By the time DeMarcus started reading the end-of-day announcements, I’d made up my mind. Without a word to Will or Jimmy, I hefted my drum onto my shoulders, marched across the field, and climbed the stadium steps, making a beeline for Ms. Nakamoto. I whispered in her ear.

  When DeMarcus finished his monotone of the day, Ms. Nakamoto held out her hand for the microphone. “One last announcement,” she said. “Snare drums, report to the band room before school tomorrow. Ms. Cruz is challenging Mr. Matthews for drum captain.”

  “Oh, man!” was the first cry to come out of the snare drums, followed by some lower-key cursing—likely because they didn’t want to come to school early, not because they were worried about keeping their positions in the section. Then came a swell of “oooooh” as the rest of the band realized I must be trying to make Will’s life as miserable as possible.

  While I had their attention, I used my drumstick to point at him far away across the field, like a tough boxer talking smack at the press conference before a big match: You, my friend, are dead meat.

  ***

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever cried at school before. My decision never to have a boyfriend had come early, so nothing much had bothered me even during middle school when everything bothered everybody and girls broke down because a stranger insulted their sandals.

  And now, as a senior, I’d been alternating between swallowing tears and outright sobbing for hours, since I’d beat Will and all the other drums in the challenge to become drum captain.

  “This is so frustrating,” Kaye said. “Why do you get upset when you do well? It makes no sense!”

  She and Harper and I stood in the hall outside Mr. Frank’s classroom before study hall. Kaye kept Sawyer and other curious boys at bay with the glare of a student council vice president. I ached to talk to Sawyer about what I’d done too. He understood my problem with responsibility a lot better than Harper and Kaye. But he and they did not get each other at all. I couldn’t talk to the three of them at the same time.

  “I’m not upset for doing well,” I grumbled. “I always do well on drums. I’m a good drummer. I just don’t want to come in first, because first chair is drum captain and has to be in charge.”

  “If you didn’t want to be drum captain,” Harper puzzled, “and Will was drum captain before, why’d you challenge him?”

  “Because he’s furious with me for breaking him and Angelica up, and I didn’t want to stand next to him every day for the rest of marching season. I challenged him and intended to get third.”

  “Get third,” Kaye repeated. “Like, you can decide ahead of time what your rank will be.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Will should have played perfectly and snagged drum captain again, like he did last week when he challenged me. Travis is good, but he has trouble with the roll at the beginning of the bridge, so he should have placed second. Jimmy doesn’t quite understand the syncopation in the chorus, so he should have placed behind Travis. Actually, he did. The drum line goes downhill from there. All I had to do was throw a couple of minor things and I could have slid in perfectly between Travis and Jimmy at third chair. That way I wouldn’t have to slum with the freshmen at the bottom of the section, but I wouldn’t have to stand next to Will anymore.”

  Kaye and Harper shared a look. Harper said, “We know you’ve thrown challenges before, but I had no idea you were approaching this with the precision of a brain surgeon. Is this how you always try out?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what happened?” Kaye asked flatly. I could tell she was exasperated with me, but she was
humoring me. For now.

  “I was upset about the whole thing with Will”—I paused to sniffle—“and I forgot to mess up. Now he’s even madder at me for taking drum captain away from him. But I didn’t want it!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kaye said firmly. “You’ve told us some doozies before. You’ve been irresponsible and a goofball. But trying to throw a challenge when you love band borders on insane. I can’t believe you! You’re so smart, Tia. You’re so smart that you can pull off looking like an imbecile, just because you don’t want to be in charge? You’re going to let a guy be in charge so you don’t have to take responsibility?”

  I had stood there through Kaye’s lecture, taking it. I was used to her talking to me like my mom. I didn’t mind most of the time, since my mom was gone. It wasn’t as if I was getting it twice.

  But by the end of Kaye’s speech, I was ticked off. She wasn’t even through, but I was done listening.

  I straightened to my full height, feeling like Godzilla rising out of the Gulf of Mexico to tower over Greater Tampa Bay, and pointed down at her. “You’re vice president of the student council,” I said. “Your boyfriend is president of the student council. Is that because you ran for president and he beat you? No, it’s because you ran for vice president in the first place. And how did that happen? Either he decided he was going to take the front seat while you took the back, and he informed you of his decision, or you decided to take the back seat, so he wouldn’t be mad at you.”

  Kaye’s mouth crumpled in a little frown, and her dark eyes blazed. “And how is that worse than what you’re doing, trying to make sure Will is in charge instead of you?”

  “It’s worse because I’m not giving you a damn lecture!”

  She stomped off. All I could see was her hair twists bopping down the hall. I had tunnel vision, which happened to me when I got really angry, about once a year.

  “Breathe,” Harper said.

  I’d forgotten she was standing there. Looking around the hall, I saw that I’d attracted everyone’s attention, which I was getting really good at lately. Sawyer leaned against the lockers, watching me, waiting to listen to me when I was ready.

  Will stood talking with Brody and some other guys from the football team. I was glad Brody had reached out to Will, because otherwise Will probably didn’t have a friend in the school. He watched me too, his face stony. When he saw me looking in his direction, he turned away.

  I didn’t blame him. I’d taken him down in the most public way possible—on purpose, he thought. For the millionth time that morning, I remembered pointing at him with my drumstick yesterday, in front of the whole band. A lot of my problems would be solved if I stopped trying so hard to be funny. I took a long breath. “Do you hate me too?” I asked Harper.

  “No. Kaye doesn’t hate you either.”

  “We’ve never had a fight like that before.”

  Harper shifted the strap of her camera bag to her other shoulder. “You never told her she was wrong quite so firmly before.”

  “Do you think I was right, to tell her that?”

  Harper raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t have to yell in front of everyone. I’ve never seen you act like this. Will has really thrown you for a loop.”

  I looked around the hall again. A few people who’d still been staring at me turned away. I didn’t want to sit under their gaze all through study hall. I definitely didn’t want to spend study hall in the same classroom as Will. “I’m going to clean the band storage room.”

  “Uh-oh,” Harper said. “Like last March?”

  “Maybe.” I’d gone on a cleaning spree when Violet moved out.

  “What are you going to do about Will?” Harper asked.

  “I can’t do anything.”

  She shook her head. “If you don’t try to fix it, it won’t get fixed.”

  “I tried to fix it by challenging him on drum. You see how that turned out.”

  “I don’t mean cook up some cockamamy scheme,” she scolded me. “Actually talk to him, face to face, and explain how you feel.”

  I didn’t think that was possible. I wasn’t sure how I felt myself. And even if I had known, the last person I would have wanted to explain it to was Will.

  “Later.” I held up my hand until she gave me a fist bump. Then I told Mr. Frank I was spending study hall in the band room. Over in Ms. Nakamoto’s office, I grinned and sounded perky as I respectfully requested that she loan me a spray bottle of cleaner and a rag.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, looking up from her desk. “Like last March?”

  “Everybody seems to remember that episode as if it was so horrible,” I said, dropping the upbeat act after a total of ten seconds. “You got your sousaphones scrubbed, remember?”

  “What’s happened?” she asked. “Are you upset about the challenge?”

  “Yes,” I said, actually relieved that she’d guessed.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Yes,” I repeated with gusto. “I want to undo the challenge and go back to the way we were before, with Will drum captain and me second.”

  “No.” So much for talking about it. She found the cleaner and rag on top of a filing cabinet and handed them to me.

  The storage room was tall and narrow, snaking back thirty feet underneath the stage and the auditorium, and lit by a single bulb in the ceiling. The ceiling itself was so high that the janitor had to use a special ladder when the bulb went out, which meant it was sometimes dark in here for days, with everybody falling all over each other trying to locate their instruments and drag them out of their cases. It wasn’t much lighter in here even when the bulb worked.

  I decided to start with the shady shelf at the back of the room and work my way forward. This involved tugging tubas down and cleaning the dusty wood underneath. Right away I found the trumpet mute that Shelley Stearns had lost and accused the trombone section of stealing last February.

  I heard Will’s voice out in the hall, creeping into the storage room and echoing weirdly against the concrete block walls. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Why do you want to retake a yearbook picture in the storage room? It’s dark in there even with the light on.”

  Suddenly Will came reeling into the room, shoved from behind. Off balance, he couldn’t catch himself until he’d already tripped over some trumpet cases and hit the wall.

  “Enjoy!” came Harper’s voice. The big door slammed.

  Will leaped back over the cases and jogged for the door, but the sound of the key turning in the lock outside already echoed through the storage room. He rattled the knob, then pounded the door. “Harper!” he roared. When there was no answer, he called, “Ms. Nakamoto?”

  “She’s gone to lunch,” came Harper’s bold little voice through the steel. “I’ll come back to let you out at the end of the period. I hope you don’t have to pee.”

  “Damn it, Harper!” Will backed up a pace and rammed the door mightily with one shoulder. It made a terrific noise but didn’t budge.

  To stop him before he hurt himself, I spoke up. “It’s my fault. I left the key in the lock. I should have known she’d try something like this.”

  He whirled around, squinting in the dim light.

  I stepped out from the dark shelves, where he could see me. “She locked us in here together so we’d have to talk about what happened.”

  His shoulders sagged. “I hate Florida.”

  10

  WELL, I HADN’T WANTED TO talk to him, either, but the idea of five minutes of conversation wih him wasn’t loathsome enough to make me despise the entire state.

  “Tia,” he said softly. “Don’t look like that.”

  How did he want me to look? Like a girl who didn’t mind being insulted? I tried that, crossing my arms in front of me, which was awkward because I was still holding the filthy rag in one hand and the spray bo
ttle in the other.

  He frowned. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Cleaning.”

  “You?”

  “You know, just shut up. If I never bathed, you would have smelled me by now. The sun makes that worse. Another reason for you to hate Florida.”

  He put his hands in his hair, looked perplexed, and then took his hands away again, as if he’d forgotten momentarily that his long hair was gone. “You’ve ruined my life, but you’re going to make me feel like I’ve done something wrong.”

  I squinted to keep the tears from slipping out of my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was totally to blame for our kiss yesterday, or for us getting elected Biggest Flirts. But I was to blame for boasting about knocking him out of drum captain, and then actually doing it. I’d been angry with Will, but I cared about him—way too much—and the last thing I’d wanted was to ruin his life.

  I’d never been a girl who cried or otherwise showed my emotions just to get my way. I did occasionally let an emotion slip, but never to manipulate anyone. I’d noticed, though, that my mood swings really worked on Will. He was a sucker for a sad girl. He actually watched my face in band, and if I looked genuinely hurt at a pretend insult he’d thrown at me, he apologized. Now his voice softened. “Hey.”

  I was too far gone already. Cleaning for a few minutes had helped me put my brain on the right track, but now I was back where I’d spent the whole morning, in tears. “I didn’t mean to beat you,” I sobbed. “I know you won’t believe that now, but you thought last Monday that I’d thrown the challenge. I meant to throw it again. I wanted to get third. I didn’t want to stand next to you when you hate me.” Stating the case that plainly, I sounded like a kindergartener, but the truth was simple.

  He put out one hand, pulled me toward him, and sat me down on a tuba case. With a big sigh, he sat down next to me. The flagpoles behind us, probably twenty of them wrapped in their flags, slid sideways along the wall and draped the silks over us. I had always thought “silks” was a strange thing to call band flags, because clearly they were made of polyester.