I always hated Homecoming. Well, the marching band part was okay because we debuted part of our State contest field show. The rest of it was just another part of the world to which I didn't belong. I was in no danger of being nominated to the Homecoming court. I wasn't on the dance committee (thank God). As a senior, I finally had immunity from selling fundraising hot dogs at the concessions stand. And never, ever, in my three previous years of high school, had a boy asked me to the Homecoming dance. This year was no exception. Dateless again.

I glowered down at the football field as Craig, team captain and Homecoming King, escorted Homecoming Queen Trae to their place in the homecoming tableaux. Next were Kaiden and Carly, the senior attendants, and the junior, sophomore, and freshman attendants all streaming in behind them to the canned sound of "Que Sera, Sera" blaring over the tinny football field speakers. Yes, the Doris Day version. Our Homecoming tradition got petrified sometime in the late 50s and still hadn't unfrozen.

As soon as the Homecoming court was in place, the "pep" section of the band jumped to its collective feet and started in on a slightly peppier mambo version of "Que Sera." Banging Latin beats on my drums at least gave me a little relief for the pent up feelings hiding behind my pleased smile.

The night air was cool and dry, my wool band uniform was itchy, and my hair was even itchier still. Kim had moused and gelled the heck out of it earlier to make it stay in a french braid down the back of my head. It was even odds whether the hairdo would survive my Cavalier-style band hat, but even I had to admit that the combination looked pretty cool, especially with the hat set at a rakish angle. The whole drumline adjusted their hats to match mine when they saw me. I was feeling almost fashionable, a tiny sliver of pleasure in the nightmare that was Homecoming.

Kim wiggled in-between me and Bryce, the tri-tom player, as soon as the band stopped playing and the game resumed.

"You're sure you're not mad? It's not too late to poison his Red Bull," Kim yelled in my ear.

"I don't know why you thought he was going to ask me anyway," I yelled back as the second-string quarterback fumbled a catch and the opposing team got the ball again.

It was something down, blah blah blah football thing that I didn't understand even after Kaiden wasted half of one tutoring session trying to explain it to me. He was determined to make me love football, even after my professed apathy had progressed into curse words and fake snoring on my part.

Carly and Trae scampered out onto the sidelines, back in their cheerleading outfits after yet another a quick change. Sam adjusted Trae's skirt with a quick yank, ever the handmaid to the other two more popular girls. I thought it was the third time they had changed back and forth from their Homecoming gowns to their cheer gear since the parade. To be honest, I'd lost count.

They had planned their clothes changing strategy one day during a tutoring session, crowding around the little desk and making Statistics impossible. It was a struggle to be Homecoming Court and a cheerleader at the same time. But they were up for it, they assured me with solemnity, as though this shit was actually important.

Meanwhile, Kaiden sat silent with a vacuous smile on his traitorous face. Then the grilling started in. And what was I wearing to the dance? Who was I going with? Surely I could make Kim change her mind about the lake thing? Ugh. If this was being part of their squad, I wanted nothing to do with it.

"Mator! Look lively!" Gabby shouted down the bleachers as the drumline staggered to their feet. I joined them half a beat behind, groaning to myself at how stiff sitting on the cold metal had made my legs under the weight of the drums. Gabby glared and flipped me off. As newly elected section leader. she'd gotten so uptight!

Kim got out of the way and we started in on a drum cadence solo that the cheerleaders had invented a dance to that was just this side of obscene. Coach Marks (Female Coach Marks) had okay'd the twerking as long as they weren't "lewd" about it. I knew better than to wonder aloud when twerking wasn't lewd.

And then there was Kaiden, escorting his homecoming dance date up the bleachers. Sally Allen. First seat clarinet. As much of a nobody as I was. Maybe even more of a nobody, since she didn't even play a cool instrument. He handed her into her place in the clarinet section as though he were escorting her to a table at a fancy restaurant and then continued to his spot among the trombones without looking my way.

Sally's clarinet friends glanced up at me and tittered behind their hands. I tried to keep the smile on my face and banged the beat out a little harder. One mallet flew out of my hand. I grabbed another from my emergency stash racked up on the side of the drums and kept playing, while out of the corner of my eye I could see Kim scrambling for the mallet. She racked it for me with an unreadable look and then got the heck out of the band section before she went deaf.

All the pairing and repairing and Homecoming court politics had led to the most surprising outcome of all. Carly was neither Homecoming queen with Craig, nor was she his date, since the Homecoming King was required by official school policy to escort the Homecoming Queen all evening. Everyone had expected Kaiden to dump me and take Carly, so all the other popularish boys paired up with other girls, unaware of their missing their once in a lifetime opportunity to take Carly Harris to Homecoming.

Trae had invaded our lunch table the week before and bullied Toby into asking her, only to have Carly slap Toby's face in response and then burst into a crying jag. In retaliation, Toby, Harv, and Gabby decided to go as a threesome and start some nasty rumors about Gabby's "harem". They were all pathetically sure that Kaiden was taking me to Homecoming. I knew better. Don't ask me how. I just did.

Later, after third-quarter, all the instruments except the drums and one lone trumpet were packed away and everyone who wasn't in the drum section shuffled out to sit with their homecoming dates. Toby and Harv came to sit in the bleacher row behind Gabby, wearing creepily identical suits, down to the boutonnieres and ties.

After the rumor of Kaiden asking Sally Allen to the Homecoming dance was confirmed, they offered to fold me into their scheme, reasoning that the rental place would have a suit small enough for me. I declined on the grounds that Ann Simmons wouldn't like it, which was true. But the real reason was I thought my reputation was strange enough without adding "possible lesbian" to the mix. No offense to the actual lesbians, but I was pretty CIS-Het.

Kaiden temporarily deserted Sally and clumped up the bleachers to talk to me, ignoring the matching suits and scowls of Toby and Harv. He stopped one row below.

"Hey, Mator."

"Hey, Preston."

"I like your hat."

"Thanks. How's Sally?" I asked, forcing my stiff face up into an approximation of a smile. Gabby gave me a covert thumbs up under the cover of her field drum, so I guess I was doing okay.

"Sally's fine. She's good. Hey, come down and say hi to her, okay? She doesn't have a lot of friends and she's a really nice girl," Kaiden said, turning his pleading, puppy dog face up me.

Sally looked up at the sound of her name, her face white and drawn. Her friends closed ranks around her, glaring up at me and Kaiden as if we'd just started making out in front of the whole school or something.

"Don't be stupid," I spat out at him with more anger than I intended.

He took a step back, clumping hard down a row of bleachers. "What?" His puppy-dog pleading shifted to bewilderment.

"I can't go anywhere until the game is over. I am literally tied to these quad toms until your friends finish losing," I half- screamed as the opposing team made yet another goal and their side of the stadium exploded into happy noise.

"Okay, okay. I get it," he said, face crumbling. "I thought..."

"Did you not hear anything she said?" Toby said as he maneuvered his way down from his perch behind Gabby. "Haven't you been in band forever just like Kel? You know how this works. You want Kel to meet your date, you bring her scrawny ass up here!" Toby thumped Kaiden once in the middle of the chest and then retreated to his spot beside Harv.

"Okay, I'm sorry! I was dumb." Kaiden rubbed his chest and rolled his eyes up at Toby above us.

"Go away! We have to play now!" I yelled at him.

I tried to make a shooing motion with my mallets while Gabby pointed at him with a drumstick like a witch casting a spell. Not being a total idiot, Kaiden retreated.

As we played some random noise to encourage our team to maybe not lose with a completely embarrassing point spread, I spied on Kaiden and Sally below. He was talking and gesturing and pointing up at me, and she was shaking her head. One of her friends grabbed her and carefully blotted her eyes with a tissue, then looked daggers up at me. I stuck out my tongue in response. None of this was MY fault, after all.

As I packed my quads in their case in the band room, Mary Beth came bustling in to wait, tapping her foot. She was already dolled up in her Homecoming gown, a tasteful, modest goldenrod yellow fluffy thing that still managed to look sexy on her petite figure. As soon as the last latch on my drum case was snapped, she grabbed my upper arm and marched me out the side door. The Simmons' van was pulled up right alongside.

"Mom wanted to make sure that you didn't try to sneak off to that party at the lake," Mary Beth said with a pitying smile as she wrenched open the sliding side door. She let out an injured gasp.

"Hurry up and get in, Kelsey. I'm idling in a fire lane!"

"Mom, I tore a nail!" Mary Beth wailed.

"Really, Mary Beth. Always pack extra press-ons!"

Ann rummaged in her purse, risking the fire lane parking ticket for a few more moments for this important crisis. After letting out an excited crow of discovery, she tossed a pack of french-tip press on nails to me. I handed them out to Mary Beth, who departed for the girl's locker room without a word.

After Ann drove me home, I took a long shower to get the glitter gel out of my hair and went to bed before midnight. Did I mention how much I hate Homecoming?

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