Biggest Flirts by Jennifer Echols Page A

disease that caused its beak to disintegrate. When the drum line had been bored in the stands at a lackluster football game last fall and feeling snarky, we’d taken to calling it the Pelican’t.
    This was our first time seeing Sawyer the New Pelican in action, and his hold on everyone’s attention had very little to do with the bird’s blinding whiteness. He performed an exaggerated version of the cheerleaders’ chants and dances while standing right behind Kaye, and he wasn’t dissuaded when Kaye frequently spun around and slapped him. His outfit was padded. Eventually he wandered over to bother the majorettes until Ms. Nakamoto called, “Mr. De Luca, remove yourself from the band, and keep your wings to yourself.”
    The band and the cheerleaders burst into laughter. Sawyer folded his wings and stomped his huge bird-feet back toward the cheerleaders in a huff. Chuckling, I said, “He’s going to be good.”
    “Or dead,” Will grumbled. “How does he wear that getup in this heat?” I could see why Will was concerned. Even in his shorts and tee, with his hair as short as Izzy could have cut it without shaving it, sweat dripped down his temple, and his cheeks gleamed with it.
    “I told him not to put on the costume in practice during the heat of the day,” I said. “He says he wants to get used to it so he doesn’t pass out during a game.”
    “So you’re seeing him again?” Will asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”
    His question shocked me. He hadn’t mentioned Sawyer, or sounded particularly jealous, since Monday.
    No, I wasn’t seeing Sawyer. That is, I’d never been seeing him in the way Will meant. And something about bantering with Will during practice had made me feel almost like I was seeing him , and going out with Sawyer would be cheating.
    Of course, if that was true, Will was cheating on me every night with Angelica. And Will had no business thinking I should keep him updated on whether I was seeing Sawyer or not.
    Logically I knew this. But Will and I were operating on a different plane from everybody around us, it seemed to me. He was in a relationship. He thought I was in a relationship. We shouldn’t have feelings for each other, but we did, and they were more important than anything else—at least when we were together.
    “Um,” I said as he tapped one stick lightly on the rim of his drum, nervous for my answer. Part of me wanted to tell him I was seeing Sawyer, just to give him a taste of what I’d felt like when he’d lain on the beach with his hand on Angelica.
    The school bell rang through a speaker on the outside of the school, loud enough for us to hear across the parking lot and down in this hole. It was the signal for the end of the period and the beginning of announcements. The rest of the school sat in classrooms and listened to the principal go over test schedules, game schedules, and threats of no more artificial sweetener for anyone if students kept sprinkling Equal on the floor of the lunchroom and yelling “blizzard!” Though the announcements had never struck me as earth shattering, the principal thought they were so important that she typed them up and e-mailed them every afternoon to DeMarcus so he could read them to the band and cheerleaders (and insane school mascot) using Ms. Nakamoto’s microphone. I explained this to Will, and we dumped our drums and harnesses onto the grass.
    DeMarcus’s reserved monotone was great for being the guy in charge of the band, but not so good for reading announcements. Bo-ring. In fact, though we were supposed to be paying attention, I thought we were veering toward dangerous territory where Will would ask me again whether I was seeing Sawyer. I preferred to let the question hang there, unanswered. That way, I wasn’t telling a lie, but Will had to wonder about Sawyer and me.
    So, to spice up the announcements a bit, I started translating them into Spanish in an even worse monotone than DeMarcus’s. After an initial