Free Major Crush by Jennifer Echols

expose them to the freshmen and, uh …
    Despite myself, I glanced at Drew. He was still staring at me, all right. A nd not at my face, either. Then his eyes slowly traveled up to meet mine.
    I turned away to zip up my knee-high boots. Finally I leaned back in the seat and crossed my ankles on an ice chest in the aisle, as if I were cool. Which, I assure you, I was not. “Well?” I asked.
    “Well,” he said. A nd he pulled off his sweaty T-shirt.
    My mouth dropped open. A s he rummaged in his bag, I tried to find a good time to repeat snippily, “I just wanted to see what you got.” But my brain wasn’t working.
    I’d expected him to be thin, with a farmer’s tan ending just above his elbows. Instead, he had the strong, tanned body of a farm boy used to baling hay, or swinging scythes, or whatever it was farm boys did in modern times, with his shirt off.
    Suddenly the seat was too small for the two of us. The entire bus was too small for Drew with his shirt off. In the seat across the aisle from us, Juliet pressed both hands to her mouth, and even A riel gaped. Then a high, feminine “ooooooh, aaaaaah” broke out.
    Drew looked around the bus confusedly, like, Who, me? He went back to his uniform bag, pulled on a clean T-shirt and his jacket, and continued to rummage. “Have you seen my shoes?”
    “Don’t tell me you lost them again.”
    He stopped. I could tell he was reviewing packing his bag. He was wondering whether he’d lost his mind.
    “Just wear your Vans again,” I said. “They’re black all over, and they look like band shoes from a distance. I don’t think Mr. Rush noticed you were wearing them last Friday.”

    “My dad noticed. My dad will kill me.”
    “Surely your dad isn’t coming to the game. Even my sickeningly supportive parents didn’t come. It’s too far”
    He stared down at his Vans. This was really tearing him up. I wondered if he could hear his dad in his head, using the I-word.
    He shook his head like he was shaking his dad out of his hair with the sweat. “You ready?” he asked. I nodded and stood up. He followed close behind me down the aisle with his hand on my back, like we were a couple. He even pointed threateningly at a few boys who whistled when they saw me.
    Mr. Rush was laughing up at Ms. Martineaux, who stood in the doorway of the senior bus. When we walked over, she disappeared back inside the bus, and Mr. Rush turned to us. A nd turned to me. A nd raised his eyebrows.
    “Is this uniform okay?” I asked.
    “Tell her, Morrow.”
    Drew told me, “You look hot.”
    “What?” Mr. Rush whacked Drew on the chest. “That’s not what I was going to say!”
    Drew colored. “Then why couldn’t you tell her yourself?”
    “Uh-uh,” said Mr. Rush. “No way. You’re not pinning this on me. You got yourself into this one. A nd you already have girlfriends.” He walked away cackling.

    I should have known something was wrong with Drew when he didn’t pay attention to the football game. He usually was one of those people who actually watched the game. I relied on him to signal me when our team had scored and we needed to play the fight song. Football couldn’t hold my interest. I waved to my friends on the cheerleading squad or watched the llamas try to paw through the barbed wire fence at the edge of the end zone.
    A bove us in the stands the band yelled, “Drum major! We need a drum major!”
    Our team had made a touchdown. Drew started like he’d been asleep, and we jumped up to direct the fight song.
    The first time this happened, Mr. Rush didn’t seem to notice because he was busy talking to Ms. Martineaux. The second time, he gave Drew and me the stare.
    I did know something was wrong with Drew at the beginning of the halftime show, but by then I couldn’t do anything about it.
    We’d never done the dip for our salute at a game before, but we’d done it plenty of times in the past week in front of the band. Since we’d stopped falling down, we’d