Free Major Crush by Jennifer Echols Page A

been pretty consistent. He put his hand there and his leg there and leaned me back until my head almost touched the grass.
    The trick was to hold the position for a few seconds, face to face, without cracking each other up. With his hands on me, his dark eyes close to mine, and my heart pounding, it was hard for me not to break into an embarrassed giggle fit. But I managed.
    This time was different. He put his hand there and his leg there, leaned me back, and held me there while the crowd screamed. Our lips almost brushed.
    He blinked twice, and I felt myself falling. He’d lost his balance. He was about to faint. We were going to fall together on the fifty-yard line in front of the entire population of Llama Town.
    Then he pulled me up and set me on my feet like nothing had happened.
    It took me until halfway through the opening song to recover from the scare. But after that, the show went great. The band sounded awesome. The drums didn’t trip themselves up. Drew and I watched each other carefully.
    A t the end of the show we got a standing ovation. We were the most exciting thing these people had seen since the tractor pull at the county fair.
    Our last job was to turn the band to the right and march them off the field. Because some of them wouldn’t be able to hear the command over the crowd noise, we’d told them before the show that they would turn to the right.
    During the show we took turns. One of us directed the band from the podium while the other directed down on the field. I was on the field now, and Drew was on the podium. He shouted, “Band! Left face!”
    Half the band turned to the left because Drew told them to. Half the band turned to the right because they knew they were supposed to.
    If he called, “Band, about face,” the ones facing left would turn right, but the ones facing right would turn left. I hesitated a split second as I processed this, knowing Drew was thinking the same thing.
    Drew swayed a little on the podium.
    A s casually as possible in knee-high boots and a miniskirt, I ran from my place on the field into the mass of the band. Walking slowly between the lines, I touched each person on the sleeve, saying, “You stay put. You turn around. You stay put. You turn around.”
    This would take forever. Finally I got wise and called, “Toward the llamas! Everyone turn toward the llamas!”
    It worked. The drum cadence started, and the few people who hadn’t figured it out yet turned around and followed everyone else out of the stadium. I emerged from the crowd and brought up the rear with Drew.
    I didn’t say anything to him while we were in the stadium, because we were supposed to be at attention. But as soon as we passed through the fence around the field, I turned to him, angry all over again for the times he’d made me feel like a second-class drum major. “I’m not saying I’ll never make a mistake. But I know my left from my right. You’re going to get us both fired.”
    I had some more choice words for him, but by then, Mr. Rush had pushed through the crowd to us. “Morrow,” he began. I can’t repeat everything he said next. I actually didn’t hear all of it over the noise of the Llama Town band playing on the field. But it went something like,
    “Cussword cussword cussword marching band cussword cussword cussword Pizza Hut cussword cussword cussword Clayton Porridge cuss cuss cuss!”
    He blustered away soon enough, and I was about to take another turn at Drew. But his dazed look stopped me. I asked him, “A re you okay?”
    “I think I’m coming down with something.”
    I pulled off my uniform glove, then reached up and pressed my bare hand to his forehead. This was weird. Other than the dip, I’d never touched him on purpose before.
    A nd then I fought the instinct to jerk my hand away in alarm. He was hotter than a human should be.
    Temperature. He was hot in temperature. Hot had nothing to do with his dark eyes clouded by fever, or the black curls plastered to