Biggest Flirts by Jennifer Echols

long sigh. Maybe he sighed with relief that he hadn’t gotten caught. I was afraid he sighed with frustration that I was playing impossible to get.
    Most boys who pursued me stopped trying eventually, frustrated. I would miss Will. I hoped he wouldn’t stop trying for a while.
    Of course . . . he had already, when he asked out Angelica. Funny, even though I could see her from where I was standing, way up near the home bleachers in the majorette version of standing at attention with her toe pointed and two batons crossed on her hip, I’d forgotten all about her when Will stood so close.
    “At ease,” DeMarcus hollered. “At ease” didn’t mean “collapse,” but that’s what happened. The tubas and drums slid their instruments off their shoulders and dumped them on the ground. While Ms. Nakamoto told us through her microphone what we’d be rehearsing for the next hour, Will took off his harness, handed me his hat and shades, then pulled his shirt over his head, just like in every other practice this week.
    Much as I wanted to see this, I told him quietly, “You can’t take your shirt off.”
    “Yes, I can,” he said through the material. “Watch, it’s stretchy.”
    “No, I mean . . .” I said to his naked torso.
    I stopped and just watched him. This was the hottest thing I’d ever seen at school. His paleness had mellowed into a gentle tan that would protect him from the sun, and his strong build gave him the look of a proud lifeguard. He took his hat and shades back from me. The lenses reflected the palm trees behind me.
    “Not during school hours,” I managed. “It’s against the dress code.”
    “Suddenly you care about the rules.” He cracked a lopsided grin at me, twirling his shirt cheekily in one hand.
    “Mr. Matthews,” Ms. Nakamoto called through her microphone. “Put your shirt on. We don’t allow students to break the dress code when school is in session.”
    I started to taunt him but thought better of it. He really might be upset that he’d gotten in trouble, and for something so silly.
    Just as I was thinking this, he roared back at Ms. Nakamoto across the field, “It’s. Three. Thousand. Degrees!”
    “Mr. Ma- tthews ?” Ms. Nakamoto’s tone had changed to the one I’d heard her use only on me, last year, when I overslept and made all four buses half an hour late leaving for a contest in Miami.
    “He’s doing it,” I called to placate her. I held out my hands and snapped my fingers for his hat and shades.
    He gave heaven a sour look for a second, then obediently passed me his cap and sunglasses again while he pulled on his shirt. Then he took his hat and shades back. From the side, I could see he’d closed his eyes behind the lenses as he inhaled a long, calming breath through his nose.
    With Ms. Nakamoto issuing clipped instructions through her microphone, I whispered to Will, “What are you thinking about? Revenge?”
    “Snow.”
    Ms. Nakamoto drilled us for most of practice, so we didn’t get to chat. We played and marched through the opening number probably eleven times. In the pauses between, while Ms. Nakamoto stood way up in the stands with DeMarcus and they pointed at the lopsided loops in the formation (not our problem; drums stood in rows), we watched Sawyer working the field in his pelican costume. It was impossible not to watch him.
    Sawyer and I were good friends. I knew there was a lot more to him than being the screwed-up son of a felon. But I’d been just as astonished as everybody else when he tried out for school mascot last spring—and made it. He’d told me excitedly about the school paying for him to go to mascot camp a few weeks ago. He’d learned a ton, and he was over the moon the day the school handed him the mascot costume they’d ordered. The new pelican wasn’t especially for him, of course. It was just time for a new one. The old pelican had been shedding faux feathers and looked like it had spent time in an inland pond and caught a