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He did get up, very slowly. I glanced down the sideline and felt terrible for Harper with her camera around her neck and her hands slapped to her mouth in horror.
I had my own scare a few minutes later. I’d never paid much attention to the local cops who patrolled the sidelines, keeping spectators off the field, but Sawyer had noticed they were Sterns and Sorrow. He followed them around for a few minutes. He imitated Sorrow’s walk. He tapped Sterns’s shoulder and jumped to the other side when Sterns turned around. I was afraid the whole stadium was about to find out how the police frisked a pelican.
He was saved by halftime. He loped over to wait with me and the rest of the homecoming court for our cue. Finally the announcer called our names one by one, the crowd cheered, and we walked slowly onto the field while the band endlessly played the alma mater.
Sawyer never missed an opportunity to incorporate a staid institution into his act. I’d thought the weirdest thing that would happen during my reign as homecoming queen would be that I was escorted onto the field by a six-foot-tall bird. I was wrong. Sawyer stole my glittery sash that said KAYE GORDON HOMECOMING QUEEN and put it on over his own head, upside down. He stole my roses and stored them in his beak. They didn’t quite fit. The stems hung out. He tried to steal my tiara. I slapped him. The tiara fell off anyway when he dipped me and pretended to kiss me.
The crowd roared louder than it had when Brody threw a touchdown. This town loved Sawyer.
And, I was realizing, so did I.
* * *
Along with the other cheerleaders, I showered in the girls’ locker room, changed into my cute outfit, and hurried across the parking lot to the dance. The night was clear and perfect, with real stars behind the imitation ones blinking in the palm trees. The air was nippy for the first time since March.
It had gotten around school that my mother wouldn’t let me date Sawyer. Several girls in the locker room had told me what a shame it was that Sawyer and I had been elected homecoming king and queen together but couldn’t be each other’s date for homecoming. Ellen told me she thought it was romantic. I supposed it was, in a Romeo and Juliet sort of way, if you liked your romantic nights to suck.
Strangely, I wasn’t a trembling, teary basket case as I walked with the other cheerleaders toward the oasis of light and movement in the corner of the parking lot nearest the stadium. My pulse hummed. I’d delegated most of the work of running the dance to adults, but as Aidan was fond of reminding me, ultimately the responsibility of making it successful rested with me. It was a burden I wouldn’t shake until the event was over. And two hours of cheering and dancing almost nonstop had left me a shell of myself, running on air.
That’s when I spied Sawyer in his regular clothes, standing at the entrance to the cordoned-off area of asphalt that served as the dance floor, waiting for me. Any blood that had been left in my brain seemed to leave it, and I actually felt dizzy as he closed the space between us.
“We can’t talk long with my parents around,” I whispered. As I said this, I glimpsed Dad trying to coax my mother into some kind of 1980s dance, even though the music blasting over the speakers was dubstep.
“We’re going to have a slow dance together at homecoming,” Sawyer promised me. “Keep your eyes peeled for an opportunity.”
The dance was already going full blast—and amazingly, almost everyone was dancing at the dance. There were a few outliers like Aidan, who stubbornly stood at the periphery, looking on, making snide comments to Angelica, and anchoring her there in his misery. But the majority of students, even the boys, were getting down. Probably this had to do with the fact that Will and Chelsea were in the middle of a dance-off rematch, and they were a positive influence.
Sawyer passed very close to me while I was in the middle of the Wobble with the rest of the cheerleaders. In fact, he smacked right into me, just like he always did on the football field, except this time there was no padding between us.
“I beg your pardon!” he shouted, catching me and holding me to keep me from falling over, which wasn’t really necessary. While I was still in his arms, he whispered, “Are you looking for our chance?”
“I haven’t seen an opening yet.” My parents had been watching me closely. Didn’t they ever pee?
“Tenacious boogers, aren’t they?” Sawyer commented.
“Yes, my parents are tenacious boogers,” I called as he let me go and disappeared back into the crowd. At least we could laugh about them while they made our lives miserable.
The next time I saw him, Will was trying to teach him to do the Dougie.
“I can’t do it,” Sawyer said.
With a glance at the edge of the crowd, I saw that my parents were talking to Ms. Chen. They would see us if they turned, but surely they didn’t expect me to pretend Sawyer wasn’t here at all. I said, “You do it in the pelican suit all the time.”
“It’s completely different in the suit,” Sawyer said. “For you to do this without the suit”—he held his hands up slightly—“you’d have to do this in the suit.” He held both hands straight up in the air. “Everything has to be exaggerated.”
“That sounds a lot harder than I thought,” Will said.
“It’s exhausting.” Sawyer looked exhausted, smiling with sleepy eyes. I wondered if he was skimming along his last wave of adrenaline, like me.
He turned to me. “Are they still watching?”
“Yes. Maybe later.” I moved on before my parents got suspicious.
