Biggest Flirts

by Jennifer Echols

“It’s the same,” he said. “You and Beverly are the same. I don’t want you back now that I know what you’re like.” He stalked to the driver’s seat of his car, slammed the door, and roared out of the alley.

  I was left standing in a cloud of the Mustang’s exhaust, the smell of frying food, and an utterly empty late summer night.

  17

  “DON’T YOU LOOK NICE,” MS. NAKAMOTO said as I sat down in the chair facing her desk. She closed the door on the noise of people dragging their instruments out of the storage room for practice.

  I supposed I did look nice. I’d set my alarm for school so I had time to iron my dress this morning. I’d fixed my hair and put on makeup. Violet had cooked me a balanced breakfast. I’d gotten my calculus homework finished during class since I wasn’t flirting with Will or even sitting near him. I’d taken great notes in history. I’d generally felt like I was about to lose my grip on my sanity.

  And didn’t Ms. Nakamoto sound nice? She’d never spoken so pleasantly to me before, possibly because she was usually yelling at me across a football field to stop screwing around.

  “Thank you,” I said politely, as though I was pleased with her comment and my brain had been eaten by zombies.

  “That usually means something’s gone wrong in your life,” she said. “Is there a problem you want to tell me about?”

  “There is a problem,” I affirmed, “but I don’t want to tell you about it.”

  “All right, then,” she said, because she was used to this kind of thing from me. “My news probably isn’t going to help. I called you in to let you know that Will Matthews has challenged you for drum captain.”

  “Really!” I crowed. Will was fulfilling his promise. He still cared about me!

  Wait a minute. He just wanted his drum captain position back. I amended my previous statement: “Really.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Ms. Nakamoto said. “I told him no.”

  “But that’s the rule,” I protested.

  “All rules are at my discretion,” she said firmly. “We have four contests coming up this season. We’re not going to ruin the cohesiveness of the drum line by switching leadership every week.”

  “I don’t want to be drum captain,” I whined. “I challenged Will, but it was a mistake.”

  “Correction: You meant to throw it, like every other challenge, but you made a mistake and played a perfect exercise.”

  I was afraid I would get in worse trouble if I copped to this. But I didn’t want to lie to her either, so I sat there blinking.

  “You’re crafty, I’ll admit,” Ms. Nakamoto said. “I didn’t get wise to you until Señorita Higgenbotham told me you made a C in her class even though you’re bilingual. And now there’s talk that you’ve scored high enough to be a National Merit Scholar. A faculty member would have to write you a letter of recommendation, and we’re not sure we can do that in good conscience. Why do you sabotage yourself, Tia?”

  I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, because that’s what respectable women did when they were in a meeting and wearing a dress. I had seen this on TV. “I don’t want to be in charge and ruin everything.”

  “How have you ruined the drum line in the past week? You haven’t.”

  Damn it. “Will would be better.”

  “I have no reason to think so,” she said. “I was happy you were drum captain, and I wasn’t looking for anyone to replace you when he showed up. You know when you impressed me?”

  “No, I have no idea,” I said honestly, refraining from laughing at the thought.

  “When Will cursed and threw his phone across the field on the first day of camp. I was going to kick him out of the position right then, but you handled him and you handled me. You saved drum captain for him, at least until you challenged him.” She stood as if the conversation was over.

  “No, wait a minute, nuh-uh,” I told her, keeping my seat. “I’m an underachiever. You don’t seriously want me in charge!”

  “Sometimes we put underachievers in positions of res­ponsibility and they rise to the occasion. You are one of those people. You’re a sharp young lady and a fine percussionist, Tia. You are the drum captain. Why not enjoy it? You only get one senior year in high school.” She opened the door for me, letting in the bustle of band, and nodded toward it, since I wasn’t budging. “Now I’m running late. Please tell DeMarcus to get practice started without me.”

  Grumbling under my breath, I trudged across the parking lot to Will’s car, where he’d left my drum propped against a tire. I was guessing that I was evicted again. I pulled my harness over my shoulders and carefully descended the stadium stairs.

  From this height, the band formation looked beautiful. The circles and curlicues weren’t squashed anymore. They were as precise as if Will had drawn them.

  He stood in his place in the drums, close to Travis, leaving an empty space for me. And—wonder of wonders—today he was talking to Travis. As I watched, he threw back his head and laughed.

  He glimpsed me on the stairs. His smile faded. He turned back to Travis.

  This was how it was going to be from now on. He must have been furious that he couldn’t get his drum captain position back. He’d already been furious with me at school all day. But furious on Will was the silent treatment. He simply didn’t interact with me. He stayed away from me. The only time he’d acknowledged I existed was in English when a couple of basketball players hit on me. He’d gone out of his way to walk slowly down the row where we were standing, and he’d shouldered each of them in turn, saying “Excuse me” as if he simply wanted to get by. They’d watched him wide eyed and told me they would catch me later. They’d gotten the message.

  I should have been angry. Will didn’t want me back. Where did he get off elbowing basketball players away from me? Apparently I had a better chance of hooking up with someone new now that I was stressed out and practicing good grooming habits. I had tried to lay out my room and bathroom so that when this stress reaction inevitably faded, I would still be organized enough to look decent in the morning. I’d enjoyed the attention I’d gotten at school all day, along the lines of Ms. Nakamoto’s Don’t you look like you’ve bathed this year! Too bad the one guy I’d really craved that comment from no longer wanted to take a selfie with me.

  When I reached the sidelines, I gave Ms. Nakamoto’s message to DeMarcus. He glanced down at his watch, then up the stairs at the stragglers. We had a little time left before practice began. Rather than spend it in a shroud of silent treatment beside Will, I dumped my drum and sat down on a bench, next to Sawyer. I’d never seen him sit down in his costume. He immediately leaned over until his huge pelican head lay in my lap. I stroked his feathers absently.

  “Being in love totally sucks when they don’t love you back,” I said.

  He felt for my hand and held it in his feather-covered pelican glove.

  Kaye looked over at me from a cheerleader huddle and stuck out her bottom lip in sympathy. She and Harper had taken one look at me when I got to school and had known my talk with Will hadn’t gone well.

  DeMarcus climbed to the top of his podium. He was about to start practice. I needed to be in the drum section when that happened, ready to play my riff. “Sawyer,” I said, “I have to go.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “Sawyer,” I complained, “not funny. You’re going to get me in trouble. You know I’m stressed out, so I actually care about that shit today.”

  He was incredibly heavy in my lap.

  “Now you’re worrying me,” I said. “You’re making me think you’ve passed out in there. Come on, Sawyer. Joke’s over.”

  DeMarcus made his move and Will played the riff, which the rest of the drum line repeated. The boom of drums echoed around the stadium, followed by silence, just as I pulled Sawyer’s pelican head off.

  Sawyer’s soaked blond head and broad sh
oulders lay limp across me. He really had passed out.

  “Will!” I shrieked.

  DeMarcus turned around on his podium. The cheer­leaders off to the side of the band rushed over. “No, no, no,” I yelled as they gathered around, “Don’t crowd us. I need Will.”

  And then he was there, towering over the girls. “Back up,” he told them. They all stared at him with wide, heavily made-up eyes and took two steps back. He shouted to DeMarcus, “Call 911.” He told me, “Hold him,” and when I put my arms around Sawyer, Will pulled off the rest of his costume. Sawyer wore only a pair of gym shorts. His muscular body flopped like a rag doll. That’s when I really got scared.

  Will knelt down under Sawyer, then stood so Sawyer’s whole body draped over one shoulder. “Come on,” he told me. “Get them out of my way.”

  I jumped up. “Move,” I barked to the cheerleaders and majorettes gawking at us. They parted, clearing a path to the gate. I stepped aside to let Will pass, then closed the gate behind me, glaring at the girls and daring them to cross me. I turned and jogged up the stairs behind Will, who was making great time up the incline despite carrying a hundred and fifty pounds.

  At the top of the stairs, he grunted, “Help me.” I reached up to ease Sawyer onto the ground, in the shade underneath the bleachers. Will nodded toward a hose coiled next to the concession stand. “Turn that on.”

  I dragged the hose over and let the water gush over Sawyer’s legs, then his torso—soaking his gym shorts, which I would have made a joke about any other time—then his arms and his neck, keeping the flow away from his face so I didn’t drown him.

  “No, get his head.” Will turned Sawyer on his side.

  I wet Sawyer’s hair, then looked to Will for guidance.

  “Keep doing it,” Will said. “We just need to cool him down.” He pressed his thumb over Sawyer’s wrist to feel his pulse.

  “How do you know this?” I asked, moving the hose down to Sawyer’s chest again.

  “I googled ‘heatstroke’ because I’ve spent the last two weeks thinking I was going to have one.” Will glanced up. “You must have known, or you wouldn’t have called to me for help.”

  “I called to you for help because you’re you. I knew you would keep your shit together in a crisis.”

  I sighed with relief as sirens approached. And then ­Sawyer blinked his eyes open and tried to sit up. “Stay cool, man,” Will said softly, pressing one hand on Sawyer’s chest. He told me, “One of us should go with him to the hospital.”

  I wanted desperately to go. More than that, I wanted what was best for Sawyer. “You go, because you’ll be more helpful.”

  “I’ll go,” Will agreed, “because you have to work after school.” He looked up at me. “Kaye and Harper told me you took off work and cleaned your house yesterday. Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  Sawyer tried to sit up again, struggling against Will’s hand. “What the fuck,” he said weakly. “Get the fuck off me.”

  Will glanced at me. “He’ll be okay.”

  All at once, the parking lot was bursting with sirens, louder and louder until Will and I put our hands over our ears. An ambulance arrived, plus an overkill pumper truck from the fire department, a couple of police cars that had come to see what all the excitement was about, and Ms. Nakamoto, followed by the principal, who was really booking it across the asphalt. I’d never seen an old lady run that fast, especially in heels. I was impressed.

  With all those folks crowding around, there wasn’t anything left for me to do but turn off and coil up the hose and watch the paramedics argue with Sawyer, who insisted he was fine, and promptly threw up. I shared one last look with Will before the paramedics closed him and Sawyer inside the ambulance. As it retreated across the parking lot, I heaved a long sigh and realized for the first time how tense my shoulders had been.

  I wandered back down the stairs to the stadium. The band was running through the halftime show. While I watched, four people tripped over Will’s drum, which nobody had the foresight to remove from the middle of the field where he’d dropped it. Before I retrieved my own drum from the bench, I took Kaye aside from the rest of the cheerleaders.

  “When class is over,” I whispered, “could you hang out around the boys’ locker room and ask someone to get Sawyer’s stuff for you? I have to work.”

  Kaye frowned. “You want me to take it to him? His homework can wait until tomorrow.”

  “No, he needs his wallet with his insurance card,” I insisted. “He needs his phone to call people because he won’t remember anybody’s number off the top of his head, and he needs his keys to get inside his house in case he’s actually released from the hospital today.”

  “What about his dad?”

  “His dad is up in Panama City, selling blown-glass figurines on the pier. They have a bigger Labor Day crowd than we do.”

  The resistance on her face melted into sympathy. “What about his brother?”

  “You can’t count on his brother for anything.”

  I snagged my drum and made my way through the band to my place. As the rest of the period crawled by, I decided it was too bad I couldn’t take the SAT on demand. Right this second I would have made a perfect score.

  ***

  Violet was in a job interview with Bob and Roger in the back office, and I was manning the front counter, when the antique cowbell rang. Will came through the door, his big body blocking so much sun that he made the room turn dark.

  “How’s Sawyer?” I asked. I hoped he hadn’t come by to give me bad news personally.

  “He’s fine,” Will said. “He’s dehydrated. He’s getting an IV.” He touched the back of his hand with two fingers, which I assumed was where the IV went. “A bunch of people from school are there with him now. He wants you to come by after work.”

  I nodded.

  Will looked uncomfortably around the shop, as if he didn’t want to meet my gaze, then pointed at the floor. “I’m going to borrow this dog.”

  “Okay,” I said, like that was not weird.

  “Come on,” he said. Even though his voice hadn’t changed and the dog wasn’t looking at him, she jumped up when he spoke to her. They disappeared out the door.

  I stared through the window and into the street, which looked like it always did, as though the boy I loved most in the world hadn’t just bopped in to steal the shop dog. If it wasn’t for the antique bell still swinging on its ribbon and chiming gently, I would have suspected it hadn’t happened at all.

  I slid down from my stool, emerged from behind the counter, and leaned out the door, peering down the street. Far away, past all the shops, in the tree-shaded park next to the marina, the dog was chasing Will. Will stopped suddenly and reached for the dog, who bent her body just out of his reach and scampered away. Now Will chased the dog. The dog spun to face him. They both crouched in the stance of a dog at the ready, each daring the other to jump first. Will made a grab and the dog dashed away.

  I knew Will was still missing a lot of what he’d had back home. But at least he’d taken this first step toward finding what he needed here in town. I watched him and the dog for a while, playing together in the long shadows of the trees.

  ***

  By the time I made it to the hospital that night, everybody else had cleared out. Sawyer was alone in a room for two patients. The other guy must have died. Sawyer was curled into the fetal position with an IV tube snaking to his hand. He faced away from the door, and his hospital gown fell open to reveal his butt crack, because Sawyer did not care.

  “Nice ass,” I said from the doorway.

  “Thanks,” he said without moving.

  I walked to the other side of the bed. “Are you hungry at all? I thought you might be, since you lost your lunch. I brought you something.” I peeled the aluminum foil off the plate of amarillos, beans, and an e
mpanada. “Violet made it vegan for you.”

  He sat up, took the plate and fork I handed him, and shoveled in a mouthful. He swallowed and rolled his eyes. “Oh. My. God. They don’t do vegan at this hospital. I was starving. This is so good.” After a few more bites, he held the plate out to me, offering me some.

  “I ate already,” I said.

  “Good, because I didn’t really want to give you any.” He ate another mouthful. “Violet should be cooking at the Crab Lab.”

  “Nah. She’d rather explain to two old men where their antiques are.”

  He swallowed. “It’s been forever since I had Puerto Rican food. I forget y’all are half Puerto Rican.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Yeah, a Sprite. My eleventh Sprite. Down the hall in the fridge.”

  Wandering back in with the can, I asked him, “When are they letting you out?”

  “They would have let me out already, but someone is supposed to watch me. They need somebody to release me to. My dad isn’t coming home, and my brother won’t get off work until after visiting hours are over. He said he’ll come buy me out tomorrow morning.”

  I flopped down in the chair beside the bed. “Will they release you to me?”

  “No. I took the liberty of asking, but when I said your name, the nurse looked all outraged and hollered, ‘That girl who—’ Well, never mind what she said.”

  I knew which nurse he was talking about. I’d seen DeMarcus’s mom on my way in. DeMarcus had thrown a big Halloween party in seventh grade, and his mom had walked in on me teaching him to French kiss. I guess I didn’t have a reputation for being nursing material.

  “I can get somebody down here to spring you,” I said. “Harper’s mom, or—you know who would be perfect? Kaye’s mom.” She was the president of a bank and looked it. Nobody messed with her.

  “I don’t want to do that to anybody who isn’t you,” Sawyer said.

  “Aw. Hugs.” I stood up and wrapped my arms around him, careful to keep my dress out of the amarillos.

  “I’m swearing it all off,” he said into my hair. “Alcohol and weed. All mind-altering substances.”