“In the meantime, I would help you with the house,” I said.
“I would too,” Violet chimed in.
“I’ll only be here for a year before I leave for college,” I said, “but we could get a lot done.”
Dad put down his fork and nodded, staring into space. “I was about to sign up for another month of weekends at work. I didn’t know how to break it to you, lucita, but I was going to miss all your band performances at the ball games. It’s funny how you work so much that you don’t even have time to think about how much you’re working, or what you’re working for.”
“Yeah,” said Violet. “Sometimes when you’re in the thick of something, you lose perspective.”
I put my fist to my mouth and squeezed a sob back in. Talk about being in the thick of things. I’d been so caught up in my own childish way of dealing with my fears that I’d driven off my favorite pirate, maybe forever. But before that possibility settled into fact, I had to try to get him back.
I stood to take my plate to the sink. On my way, I stopped and kissed my dad on the cheek. “Please consider it. We’d rather have you home.”
***
I’d never been inside Will’s house, but he’d pointed it out to me on our tour of town last Wednesday. I rode my bike into his neighborhood, a newer development where the trees were small, the houses all looked the same, and there weren’t any unique architectural details for Will to draw. I felt a little sick as I laid my bike carefully on the lawn and walked up to the door. I put out a finger to ring the doorbell and noticed my hand was trembling.
Will’s mom was as tall as me, with Will’s worry line between her brows. She wore a tank top and shorts. Those clothes would have made sense if she was walking at the beach or working in the yard, but I was surprised she wasn’t freezing when she had the air-conditioning in the house set below zero. It seeped out, surrounding me and making me shiver as she said in her own clipped Minnesota accent, “Oh, hello. Will’s talked about you a lot. I’m afraid he’s asleep right now, though. He said he was feeling sick.”
“Sick?” I repeated. “Is he okay?”
His mom nodded. “I think he’s just homesick.”
I nodded too, because that seemed to be the thing to do. “Homesick.”
“There’s no cure for that but time,” she said sadly. “But thanks for coming by, Tammy. I’ll tell him you were here.” She backed me out of her house and onto her porch. She shut the door, sealing out my voice, before I could tell her my name wasn’t Tammy.
I stood there for a moment in the quiet night, listening to the breeze rattle the palm fronds. It was an evening for staying inside, where it was cool, and wishing you were back in Minnesota, away from me.
I walked down the sidewalk and picked up my bike. What else could I do? Yes, Will and I had argued, and we’d been genuinely mad at each other, with reason. But in the back of my mind, I suppose I’d assumed that we could fix it. We hadn’t flirted like we used to since the trouble began—it all started with that stupid title—but I’d thought we would get back there.
And now I knew we wouldn’t. I was such a poor replacement for his friends that I made him sick.
I got back on my bike and rode. The Sunday night was bustling with traffic. Folks were driving inland after a day at our beaches, one last weekend before Labor Day. Families had eaten one last meal out on the main drag and were packing into their cars to go home and prepare for work and school. I was riding the wrong way, heading downtown. I steered into the alley and propped my bike against the railing of the Crab Lab.
Employees kept the lights out on the restaurant’s back porch so they could do what they wanted without being seen from the alley. I was all the way up the steps before I could make out Sawyer’s shape in the darkness. When he saw me, he put down his beer. I walked into his open arms.
“Things didn’t work out with Will?” he asked, his breath warm in my ear. “You wouldn’t be hugging me otherwise.”
I sighed as I collapsed on the bench beside him. “I broke up with him.”
“Why?” Sawyer asked.
“Violet finally decided to come home, and we went to get her, and . . . I don’t know. I guess I started comparing Will and Ricky.”
“Will is not a shit like Ricky,” Sawyer said. “I am a shit like Ricky.”
This seemed like a new low of self-deprecation, even for Sawyer. I nodded toward his beer. “Starting early, aren’t you? How many of those have you had?”
He didn’t respond to my question but asked, “What happened then?”
“I cleaned my entire house.”
“Oh, poor baby,” he cooed. “You are upset. I’ve got something for you.” He pulled a joint from his pocket. I watched him light it, closing his eyes against the smoke. He took a long toke and handed it to me.
I held it between my fingers and looked at it. This was what I needed: to forget a problem that couldn’t be solved. But my brain was stressed, which put my body in organization mode. It did not want this weed. I needed to take my hit so Sawyer’s pot didn’t burn down and go to waste, but every atom inside me screamed to hand the joint back.
Sawyer snatched it from me. When I looked at him in surprise, he was staring past me. I turned. Will was on the top step.
“That’s exactly what I thought,” Will said. He jogged down the stairs again.
“Go.” Sawyer nodded at Will, urging me to follow him. “Go, go, go.”
I ran after Will, leaping down the last two stairs in my effort to catch him before he reached his car at the end of the alley. Sweating in the hot night, I grabbed his elbow.
He stopped short and whirled to face me. “Don’t. I told you that I was done with you. You’re just like Beverly. When my mom said you came by, I thought maybe my instincts were wrong, but now I see I was right about you the whole time. I left town for five minutes and she was cheating on me. You and I have one little fight—”
“Little?” I broke in. “I put a lot of effort into that fight.”
He raised his voice for some reason. “—and you just move on like nothing happened, and go back to doing drugs and God knows what else with Sawyer De Luca.”
“I was not,” I said emphatically. “I was in the process of politely refusing a joint. Even if I had taken a hit, calling that ‘doing drugs’ makes it sound like I was shooting up heroin.”
“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.