Thinking hard about this, I missed my baton twice more during practice, and I caught Mrs. Baxter shaking her head at me from the stands. Finally, after practice was over, I waited until everyone had filed out of the stadium with their instruments and I had the whole field to myself. I called Carter, hoping he would actually answer. He might not have turned his ringer back on after school. He might see my name and ignore the call, thinking I was asking him out on a date. He might—
“Hey, Gemma,” he said quickly.
After a little pause of surprise, I said, “Hey!”
“I know you’re calling because Addison told you,” he said. “We shouldn’t have done it when I hadn’t talked to you first. But Max told me this morning that y’all were making out at the same time Addison and I were, so I don’t see the problem. I mean, I know you and Max aren’t together now, but . . .”
I gathered from this non-apology that he had gone over to Addison’s house and sucked face with her last night, right after my birthday movie complete with I LOVE YOU bear. And no, Addison hadn’t told me. She had let me think I was the evil one. She had told Mrs. Baxter I was the mean one. I hated her so much at that moment that I could hardly see the goalpost at the far end of the football field.
But I was on a mission, and I fought through that anger to remember why I’d called Carter. I cleared my throat. “I’m surprised you and Max are speaking to each other after the scrimmage yesterday. His version of the story was different from yours.”
Now Carter paused for a moment before saying slowly, “He’s not exactly speaking to me. He yelled at me across chemistry class and got sent out in the hall. He’s pretty upset about how things ended with you.”
“But you still care about his mojo, right?” I asked. “You act like you don’t care about him, but you care how he kicks for your team.”
I took his silence for a reluctant yes.
“Addison is trying to mess with his mojo,” I said. “She’s sending flowers to his house. I need you to intercept them. It would be pretty normal for you to hang out at his house before a game, right? Or warn his parents about the flowers. Whatever it takes to keep Max from seeing them.”
Carter was quiet so long that I thought he was going to say no. I took a breath to tell him what being best friends with someone meant. Like I knew.
He spoke before I could. “Why would Addison do that?” he asked. “Does she still like him?”
I didn’t think Addison had the hots for Max. Not since he’d started making good jokes. I said carefully, “Addison is dramatic.”
“Yeah, she is.” Carter laughed. “I love that about her.”
I was glad someone did. “So, will you intercept the flowers? I know you think Max is silly to be superstitious. But you’re not going to change that about him by tonight’s game.”
“Yeah, I’ll do it,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know. And Gemma? I’m sorry about the popcorn.”
This made so little sense to me that I almost said, And I am sorry about the pumpernickel, and the backhoe.
“At the movie last night,” he reminded me. “I knew you wouldn’t want popcorn because you’re careful about what you eat. I bought it to make you mad. I was so into Addison, and I felt like you had messed everything up by liking me. I was trying to make you stop.”
He had done a great job. “That’s okay, Carter. I’m just glad that you and Addison are together now.” I said this with no irony in my voice.
“I hope you and Max can work things out,” Carter said. “I’ll tell him you called to warn me about this.”
“No!” I insisted. “That’s definitely never happened on his game day before. I don’t want to mess with his mojo.”
“Then he won’t know you did something nice for him,” Carter argued.
I winced. Carter was right. Max really hated me right now, and letting him know that I’d tried to protect him might help heal that wound.
But it wasn’t worth it. I told Carter, “His mojo is more important.”
After we hung up, I pocketed my phone and picked up my batons. I performed an illusion, a one-turn, a two-turn, and a figure eight, every trick that had caused me to drop a baton during practice. I performed them over and over until I was absolutely certain I had regained my confidence.
Finally I jogged up the steps, out of the empty stadium, into the empty parking lot. I walked to my pretty car, gleaming red in the bright sunshine. “Grrrrrr,” I growled as I started the engine, remembering the delight in Max’s eyes when he had driven it.
I knew he was angry at me. I understood why. But we’d had too much fun together in the past few weeks, and we’d made each other feel too good last night, for either of us to walk away now. We’d never even been on a date! At least, not with each other.
Max had told me he loved me. I hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him back.
As I thought about making up with him, shivers raced down my arms. I turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to the hot wind and the smells of late summer flowers and traffic. Maybe Carter would tell Max about what I’d done to save his mojo—after the game. That would help Max forgive me. And Carter had said Max had yelled at him in chemistry. At least I knew Max still felt strongly about me. That was step one.
I’d talked myself into an optimistic mood by the time I parked my car in the garage. Skipping into the kitchen, I was about to dump my book bag and take my batons outside to practice a little more when I heard my mother’s footsteps coming down the stairs. Something must be wrong. She never emerged from her office just because I came home.
She was wearing her business suit, heels, expensive perfume, and a frown. “Tell me your side of the story quickly, Gemma, and I’ll do what I can for you.” She grabbed her purse from a hook by the door.
“What do you mean?” I breathed.
She put her hands on her hips. “Mrs. Baxter didn’t tell you? She wants to kick you off the majorette line. Something about keeping your nose clean?”
I swallowed. “That bitch.”
“Gemma!” my mom exclaimed.
“Not Mrs. Baxter,” I grumbled.
My mom glanced at her watch. “Sit down at the table. I’ll heat up some cobbler right quick, and we’ll talk about it.”
I stamped my foot like a ten-year-old girl. “I don’t want cobbler!” I screamed at her. “I want you!”
And I burst into tears.
15
To my mom’s credit, she didn’t lose it. One of us had to hold it together. She guided me into the library, pushing me gently from behind as I stumbled along, blinded by tears. We sank onto the leather sofa, and I cried into her lap.
After a few minutes, when I was mostly cried out, I told her the whole story of Max and Carter and Addison and me. It sounded stupid to my own ears, like a list of Poor Teen Decisions from tenth-grade health class. What had set this chain of events in motion was the sight of Max at camp, long black hair in his eyes, body hard and lean, kicking goal after goal through the uprights. And Max wasn’t here, so I couldn’t expect any of this to ring true to my mom.
But she had met Max, and maybe that was why the story seemed to make some sense to her. When I finished with a gargantuan sniffle, she said, “This is my fault. We don’t have to eat cobbler together, or even eat dinner together every night, but we should be talking every day. I should know who you’re going out with.” She put her hands up, stopping herself. “I did know who you were going out with. I should know which one you like.”
She used one finger to pull a purple strand of hair out of my eyes. “We will start over. We will be closer, starting now. Okay?”
I nodded. I wished I could have told her how relieved I felt when she said this, but I was all talked out.
She sat back and grimaced at me. “I never have approved of the way Addison treats you. I’m surprised you’re still friends with that girl.”
I wiped my wet eyes. “What are you talking about? You made me be friends with her.”
“I certainly did not!” my mom exclaimed.
“You made me take baton lessons with her when we were ten!” I cried.
Her brow furrowed, thinking. “Did I?”
“Yes! You told me poor Addison didn’t want to take baton by herself.”
She sighed and leaned back against the sofa. “Your father had just left, Gemma, and you were moping around the house. He wasn’t taking you to football games anymore, or on hikes and bike rides, and you had stopped playing outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. I’d loved baton when I was young. I thought it would be something fun for you to do to get some exercise, and Addison was doing it too, and her parents were divorcing. You’d have a friend who was going through some of the same things you were going through. I don’t remember how I put it to you, but maybe I did say ‘poor Addison,’ just to convince you to try it. You seemed so unhappy, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t do anything to make it better.”
She looked down at her lap. I thought she would start crying. I sniffled again and prepared to dry up so I could comfort her instead of the other way around.
But she was only checking her watch again. She reached out and framed my face with her hands—just as Max’s mom had held him the night before. “You relax for a while, eat a good supper, and put on your majorette outfit, pretty girl. I will speak to Mrs. Baxter and take care of this for you.”
“I don’t see how,” I wailed. “Majorettes have to keep their noses clean, and I knew that going into this. It’s a rule.”
“It’s a sexist rule,” she snapped. “You don’t see anybody at Max’s high school trying to kick him off the football team for kissing you, do you? That would be ridiculous, right?”
“Right,” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt.
“Mrs. Baxter will not kick you off the squad for this, Gemma, I promise.” She patted my knee. “You’ve worked too hard, and I will stand up for you. If I have to, I’ll threaten a lawsuit.”
“That won’t help,” I moped. “A lawsuit would take months. Years.”
“The lawsuit might, but the threat is instant.” My mom grinned. “I’ll drive to the front of the school and park in the principal’s space in my Aston Martin.”
We both giggled as she stood and crossed the library. But when she turned in the doorway, her face was serious again. “And in case that doesn’t work, I will have a long talk with Addison’s mother.”
The game was held at Max’s school this year, so we were the away band. That meant the majorettes’ only performance before halftime was marching into the stadium to the drum cadence—which still involved a lot of kicks and horizontal spins. It was easy to drop your baton if you weren’t paying attention. Nobody had a drop but Addison. She dropped hers twice. When we got to the stands, she cried and made a big dramatic deal out of it like her life was ruined.
I couldn’t worry about her. I was too busy watching the game. I wanted my team to win, but I also wanted Max to win. There had been no nail-biters yet. He hadn’t been called on to make a kick for points—no field goal for him, but no extra point for one of Carter’s touchdowns, either. Max had only performed a few flawless kickoffs and punts. Even among the identical football uniforms and helmets, he was easy to pick out with his casted arm. If it hadn’t been for that, I still would have recognized him by the way he walked.
And in between plays, I was trying to talk Delilah out of fainting.
“You were fine during tryouts,” I reminded her. “That decided whether you would be a majorette or not, so that was a lot more stressful than a game.”
“That was in front of twelve hundred people,” she wailed. “This is in front of five thousand. Plus, at tryouts, I watched you in the stands the whole time. You kept me calm.”
“Watch your parents,” I suggested.
“They are judging me,” she whispered.
I looked over my shoulder, craning my neck toward the stands behind the fifty yard line. “Watch my mom.” I pointed her out. I drew my hand back in surprise at the sequins covering my arm and catching the light, then laughed at myself and pointed again. “My mom is there next to the aisle, six rows down, in pink. She will not judge you. She will support you. Doesn’t she look sweet?”
Looks could be deceiving, though. My mom might act sweet to most people, but she’d made her point at the school. Mrs. Baxter had given me a bigger hug for luck than any other majorette before we marched into the stadium. She was very careful not to look askance at my purple-striped curls artfully arranged around my tiara.
And my mom had made her point to Addison’s mom too. Right before the game, Addison had called me to apologize.
There was a commotion around us as the head majorette, Susan, stood and made her way down the row to the aisle. The band officers from Max’s high school had walked over to our side of the stadium for the traditional second-quarter visit. I peered at their drum major in his green and gold military uniform. We wore red and blue, but otherwise, the bands looked a lot alike. I wondered whether Max was friends with their majorette squad, and whether he had made any of these girls mad.
“Gemma!”
Susan was motioning to me. Squeezing Delilah’s knee to comfort her, I slid past her and clopped down the aisle in my knee-high boots to the band officers. The East band’s head majorette and another majorette were grinning at me.
“It’s Gemma, all right,” the head majorette said, looking at my hair. “It’s so great to finally meet you in person! I’m LaShondra, and this is Val.”
“Boy, have we heard a lot about you!” Val exclaimed.
“From Max,” LaShondra added.
“Really?” I asked, trying not to seem too eager. “Carter told me he and Max had an altercation in chemistry.”
“They did,” Val said knowingly, like it had been something to see.
“Carter told me Max got sent out in the hall,” I said.
LaShondra waved one glittering arm dismissively. “Yeah, but Max talks in class a lot. He pretty much lives out in the hall.”
“We’ve been hearing about you for longer than that,” Val said.
LaShondra said, “First day of school, he corners me and says, ‘LaShondra! I met this girl! She goes to West, she has purple streaks in her hair, she’s really funny, she twirls batons like they are part of her, and I have never seen a girl so hot.’”
Val cackled. “You sound just like him!”
It was a good imitation of Max—so good it almost made me tear up, thinking about him. “He may have felt that way before, but we had a pretty big argument last night.”
Val shook her head. “He still feels that way. He picked me up to bring me to the game, and he told me to tell you hi.”
I put a hand over the warmth in my chest. “Awww! That is so sweet!”
“You’re going to get back with him, right?” LaShondra asked.
I nodded. “I hope. I didn’t want to talk to him on game day and mess with his mojo.”
I thought I might have to explain what I meant by Max’s mojo. But they both said, “Ohhhh,” nodding, and stepped back a pace.
“He’s very superstitious about kicking,” LaShondra said.
Our drum major blew a couple of blasts on his whistle, which meant that the band had to file out of the stands and line up in the end zone for the halftime show. The majorettes from East waved to me as they walked away, and LaShondra mouthed, Good luck. I made my way back to my seat to retrieve my batons. The butterflies that had been living in my stomach all day were growing into a small species of bird.
In contrast, Delilah seemed okay. It wasn’t until we were in place in the end zone and the scoreboard showed one minute to halftime that she started hyperventilating. We were supposed to be standing at attention, which for majorettes meant both batons on our hips and our grins cemented to our faces. But I couldn’t ignore the quick, labored breathing behind me. I turned around to look at her. “Think about something else, Delilah.”
?
??How can I, when this is staring at me?” With a small movement of her baton, she gestured to the packed, screaming stadium.
I tried to talk her down. In the back of the band, the drum major caught my eye. He shook his head at me and motioned for me to face forward. But I couldn’t abandon Delilah, and Mrs. Baxter was no help. She’d climbed up into the press box to watch the show.
Robert was standing with his trumpet right next to Delilah. He could talk to her without turning his head. “Robert!” I whispered. “Tell Delilah some jokes until we go on the field.”
He looked at Delilah, whose sequined bosom rose and fell rapidly, then at me. “Jokes about what?”
“Anything but fainting.” I turned around, put my hands on my hips, and grinned my majorette grin.
Behind me I heard Robert say quietly, “A priest, a rabbi, and a majorette walk into a bar.” I lost his voice in the crowd noise after that, but periodically I could hear Delilah giggling, which was a good sign. It meant she was still breathing.
The drum cadence began. We marched onto the field—that is, the band marched, and the majorettes high-stepped. Glancing at Delilah on one side of me, Addison on the other, and the rest of the majorettes lined up perfectly beyond her, I thought we looked pretty cool.
The halftime show was a blur of adrenaline, song after song and toss after toss. I only knew that I performed every routine exactly right. I felt high—almost like I’d been kissing Max.
It was only after we’d marched off the field that I heard the other majorettes whispering. Delilah had managed not to faint, but Addison had dropped her baton four times. And Addison wasn’t playing drama queen this time. She was unnaturally quiet.
We stood on the sidelines to watch the home band’s show and clapped for them. When third quarter started, we filed back into the stands to sit down, and the game got interesting. Carter threw for a touchdown, and Max kicked the extra point. Our team scored a touchdown, but our kicker couldn’t put the ball through the uprights for seven. In the fourth quarter, Max kicked a long, beautiful field goal. Our team made yet another touchdown with yet another missed extra point. I bet our coach was really wishing he had Max for a kicker just then.