Chapter 2

"I hate this town, I hate this town, I hate this town," Allison chanted for a few minutes after we sat down in the stands. I sent Matt to fetch her makeup case from her case from her car, Knowing that makeup could distract her from anything. She would feel better when she was back to looking like her usual self. Matt held up her mirror while she primped in the bleachers, since the bathroom was off limits for the time being. She looked perfect again, dolled up in her glittering majorette costume, hair sculpted and curled around her tiara, eyes smoky, maroon lipstick perfect. As if she hadn't been about to kick the Evil Twin's ass only five minutes before. Matt offered to brave the concession stand for us. The entire band was there, and I didn't want to deal with a hundered and fifty people who hated my guts. Twenty girls and one drum major had been enough. Matt galloped down the stairs, and Allison turned to me."You look like death. Let me put some makeup on you for once." I laughed. "I can't wear your makeup. I'd really look like death in your Rum Raisin lipstick."

Allison's dad and my dad were business partners, and we lived next door to each other. So even though she was a year older than me, we'd always been inseparable. That is, until i quit the beauty pageant circuit. We'd grown apart in the past couple of years. But I needed to be a good friend to her because I was her only good friend. Everybody liked Allison, but nobody wanted to get close to her. She came from the richest African-American family in town. Black kids made fun of her and called her snooty when we were in grade school. On the other hand, her family was one of the only three African-American families in the country club on the lake that created mostly to wealthy families vacationing from Montgomery or Birmingham. She didn't like to play tennis with me there because she thought people were looking at her funny.

We both knew, and her parents kept telling her, that when she got to college, everything would be different, and it wouldn't matter anymore that she was a rich African-American girl from a tiny town in Alabama. The only sad thing was she wouldn't leave for college for another year. A year was a long, long time for her to tread water. But Matt had escaped already. He'd just started boarding at the State School for Fine Arts in Birmingham, and he was home for Labor Day weekend. I was happy for him, because his home life wasn't great-- he lived with his mother in a bus at a camp-ground. And because the State School for Fine Arts was one of the best high schools in Alabama.

I was also happy for me. I'd spent practically the whole summer hanging out with him while Allison was at her pageants. and I'd missed him for the week he'd been gone. But it was also a relief, because I was pretty sure he liked me as more than a friend. Matt was adorable, with his big brown eyes and an interesting sense of fashion that he'd developed from having to shop at the Goodwill store. But he wasn't for me. Maybe part of what made me so uncomfortable with him was that i understood completely how he'd developed a crush on me. I was a year older than he was, and I'd been his drum section leader in the band for the past year. He looked up to me. It was natural that he would have a crush on me. Like I had one on Oliver.

Allison leaned closer and said quietly. "You don't want him to know you're upset." Then, like the dorks we were, we both turned around and looked at Oliver, who sat with his dad at the top of the football stadium. Grouped on the rows between us and Oliver, several trumpet players and saxophone players glared at me like they wanted to pitch me off the top railing. In fact, Oliver and his dad probably would have glad to help me over. I felt a pang of jealousy. Oliver was close to his dad. I could tell the conversation they were having at the moment wasn't pleasant, but at least they were having one. I hardly talked to my dad anymore.

"Foul!" Matt jeered at the game, startling me and making Allison jump on my other side. "Dom Perignom?" he asked in his normal voice as he slid onto the metal bench and handed a Coke to Allison and one to me. I drained the Coke. The night was way too hot for a wool band uniform. Matt watched me. "I put Oliver's band shoes back in his trunk, like we found them."

"Thanks." Oliver made me a mad playing Mr.Perfect all the time. I had thought it would make me feel better to hide his lovingly polished band shoes so he had to wear his Vans with his band uniform. It hadn't. "So, what happened in the halftime show?" Matt asked. "It reminded me of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, but not in a good way. You know, before they start playing together, when they're turning up." Allison nodded. "There's a point in the majorette routine when I'm supposed to throw the baton on one and turn on two. I looked up at Oliver and thought, Is he on one? No, two. And then I looked over at you, and you were on, like, thirty-seven." I just shook my head. I was afraid that if I tried to talk about it right now, the pissed feeling would fade, the mortified feeling would come back, and I'd start bawling in front of the tuba players. Matt slid his arm around my waist, and Allison draped her arm around my shoulders from the other side. I tried to feel better, not just sweatier. They were the two best possible friends. But instead of appreciating their support, I was thinking what a bizzare trio of misfits we must have made Oliver's high view. Allison, looking as glamorous as possible in her majorette uniform. Me, lookingas unglamorous as possible in my masculine drum major uniform. And Matt, a fifteen-year-old boy who'd finally made it out of the bus.

Someone slid into the bench beside Matt. Oh no, Luther Washington or one of Oliver's other smart-ass trombone friends coming to rub it in. Or worse, the Evil Twin. I peered around Matt.

It was the new band director, Mr.Rush. Before I'd seen him today, i'd hoped that getting a new bad director might help my predicament as queen band geek. Mr.O'tootle, who'd been band director for as long as I could remember, had gotten us into this mess by deciding we'd have two drum majors this year.

Then, knowing he'd be leaving near the beginning of the school year anyways, he sleepwalked through summer band camp. He let Oliver and me avoid working together. I couldn't imagine what the new band director would be like, but any change had to be for the better. Or not, Mr.Rush didn't seem like he was in any position to change the status quo. He was fresh out of college and looked it, maybe twent-two years old. He could passed for even younger because he was only about five foot six, the height of sophomore boys like Matt who weren't fully grown. I mean, I was five two, and Oliver was impressively tall. I thought that made a huge difference in how the band treated us. I wondered how Mr.Rush thought he could handle a hundred and fifty students. I was about to find out. "Amscray," Mr.Rush growled at Matt,Matt leaped up and crossed behind me to sit on Allison's other side. Mr.Rush stared at me. Not the stare you give someone when you're starting a serious conversation. Worse than this. A deep, dark stare, his eyes locking mine. He meant to intimidate me. He wanted me to look away. But i stared right back. It felt defiant, and I wondered whether I could get suspended for insubordination just for staring. I guess I passed the test. Finally he relaxed and asked, "What's your name?"

"Lilly Truscott." He nodded. "What's the other one's name?" He didn't specify."the other suck-o drum major," but I knew what he meant. I shuddered. "Oliver Oken."

Matt leaned around Allison. "His friends call him General Pattons."

Allison laughed. Mr.Rush ignored them. He asked me, "What's with the punky look? You've got the only nose stud I've seen in this town."

"Would you believe she entered beauty pageants with me until two years ago?" Allison asked. Allison always rubbed this in. "I developed an allergy to taffeta," I said. "No, she didn't," Allison said. "On the first day of summer band camp in ninth grade, she walked by Oliver in the trombone section. The trombones called her JonBenet Ramsey, and it was all over. She quit the majorettes and went back to drums."

"Is that true?" Matt asked me. "You think I was born with a stud in my nose?"

"And she stopped wearing shoes," Allison added. Mr.Rush eyed my band shoes.

"Well, I'm wearing shoes now," I said. "Of course I can't be out of uniform at a game."

"Of course not." Mr.Rush said looking at my uniform up and down with distaste.

"More people might get their noses pierced if I started a club," I said.

"Would you like to be our faculty sponsor?"

"And an attitude to match the nose stud," Mr.Rush said. He leaned across me to point at Allison and Matt. "You princess. And you, frog. beat it"

They scattered, leaving Mr.Rush and me alone on the bench.

Mr.Rush explained, "You learn in teacher training classes not to challenge students in front of other students, because all you get is lip."

"Did they tell you not to make fun of your students' Appearance? I have right to wear a stud in my nose." He laughed shortly. "I doubt that would stand up in court. Not in Alabama."

"Then I'm moving to Oregon."

He cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. "Come off the defensive, would you? I happen to agree with you. i'm just figuring out what on here." He glanced over his shoulder at Oliver and his father at the top of the stands. "What's up with you and Oken?"

"He was drum major by himself last year." I said. "Everybody knew he'd be drum major again this year. But Clayton Porridge was tryng out against him. I wated to be drum major next year, after Oliver graduated. I figured I'd better go ahead and try out, just for show, so Clayton wouldn't have anything on me." I looked down into my cup of ice. "I never thought I'd make it this year. A girl has never been drum major. And we've never had two drum majors. Mr.O'Toolte decided after the vote that we'd have two this year, the two was Oliver and me. I don't know what he was thinking." I made a face. " Though I'm pretty sure what Oliver's thinking."

"So a girl's never been drum major," Mr.Rush repeated slowly. "And all the flutes and clarinets are girls, and all the trombones are boys. Gotta love a small town steeped in traditions. Who needs this diversity crap?" It bothered me, too, or I wouldn't have tried out for drum major. But it made me mad that Mr.Rush would come here from the outside and attack my hometown.

"Where did you grow up?" I asked.

"Big Pine."

"Oh, like that's any better. Big Pine is just as small and just as backward as this place. Plus, the paper mills make it smell like last week's Filet-O-Fish."

Actually my town was too isolated to have a McDonald's, and Big Pine had one, which weakend my argument. I had very limited personal experience with the Filet-O-Fish.

"I'm really liking this lip," he said. I knew i'd better back off.

"Which one of you got the most voters?" he asked.

"Mr.O'Toole wouldn't tell us."

Allison had a theory, though. she thought I won, and Mr.O'Toole just didn't want me to be drum major by myself. I mean, he didn't even want to let a girl try out. My dad had to threaten to call the school board.

Oliver had been a terrific drum major last year. He'd won all these awards. But Allison's theory was that the band thought he was stuck-up. Before, when he was just a sophomore trombone, he cut up with the other trombones. They would let out a low. "ooooooh.aaaaaah" whenever Mr.O'Toole or the previous drum major, one of Oliver's older brothers, said anything, profound. Oliver was happy-go-lucky. Everyone loved him. Especially girls. But as soon as he got drum major last year, he buttoned up. He hardly even laughed any more. Allison thought the band had gotten tired of it and voted him out. There was no way of knowing, when Mr.O'Toole wouldn't tell us who really won. I went on, "Mr.O'Toole said that since we were both drum majors, it didn't matter who got more votes. He didn't want to generate bad blood between us." I smiled. "It worked.

Mr.Rush rubbed his temple like he had a headache. "When's the last time you had a conversation with Oken?"

"A conversation?"

"Yeah, you know. You talk, he talks, you communicate."

"We had an argument just now because he sicced his girlfriend on me in the bathroom, Is that progress?"

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple harder. "How about before that?"

"Communicate. Probably. . ." I had to think about this. "Never."

"Then how have you functioned at all? Even on your sad, limited level?"

I shrugged. "Mr.O'Toole would tell me where to go on the field, and then he would tell Oliver where to go."

"I'm going to tell you both where to go," Mr.Rush muttered. "You see me in my office before band practice when we come back to school on tuesday. And I want you to spend the long weekend contemplating how the two of you reek."

"I know." I whispered.

"If you performed that way at a contest, you'd get embarrasing low marks. So would the band. because the two of you have them so confused. And the drums! Though I'm not sure the drums are your fault. I suspect they reek on their own merit."

He stood, looking down at me with a diabolical grin. "I'm glad we've had this chat. To be fair, I'd give Oken the same treatment, but it looks like someone's beat me to it." I nodded. "His father and his two older brothers used to be drum majors."

"What, A legacy? The Okens clan has drum major tied up like the Mafia?"

"It feels that way."

"I should have kept m job in Birmingham at Pizza Hut," Mr.Rush grumbled as he stomped away.

I had to agree with this. Despite myself, I looked up one more time at Oliver high in the stands. He and his father sat side by side in the same position, leaning forward, elbows on knees. The only dfference was that Oliver hung his head. Now Mr.Oken pointed to Oliver's Vans. I imagined Mr.Oken lecturing Oliver in a Tony Soprano voice. "I'm counting on you to uphold the family name. I want you to off the broad. Capisce?"

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that was chapter two xD

anyways hoped you liked it,i'll be done with chapter three soon enough

anyways review review review