TEXT MESSAGING: ANDREA

- Hey Andrea, guess what?! I heard the replacement teacher for Caswell finally showed up.

- Really? About time. Miss Brooks has been teaching for what, a week, now? She’s nice and all, but she sucks at teaching. She’d be better off as one of those street musicians, you know, one of those people who sit out on street corners and play their instrument for coins.

- I think she’s okay. She’s just shy.

- Duh, Syd! Shy people should NOT be allowed to teach. Every time Miss Brooks gets up in front of us she looks like she’s gonna start to blubber. Especially when Mark does his Mike Myers impression and all the boys laugh. He’s not even funny. Mark, I mean, not Mike Myers. OMG I loved Austin Powers 3.

- I thought it was dumb. Preparation H?

- What? I thought it was funny

- Sure…anyway, I also heard that the sub is a lot different than Mr. Caswell.

- How?

- He’s a lot more strict, or at least that’s what Tia Puentes told me, and…

Before I could finish reading the rest of Sydney’s text message, Mrs. Ulrich the Physics Bitch had snatched the cell rudely, right from my hand.

“Communicating in class again, Miss Bailey?” She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms at me. “Do you remember my warning the last time I caught you using your cell phone?”

I looked at her as if I hadn’t done anything wrong, which I hadn’t, really. I mean, can I help it that my best friend has study hall this period? And also can I help it that Sydney is so smart that she always finishes her homework early in study hall so she’s bored with nothing to do except text message me?

Mrs. Bitch put my cell phone with its gorgeous new hot pink cover in her desk. “You’ll get this back at the end of class, Miss Bailey. If I catch you text messaging in class again, your cell phone will be confiscated. Now help your partner with the lab assignment.”

“Tough luck, Andrea.” Julie Clark said quietly. She sat behind me. That girl usually annoyed the hell out of me, but I turned around. Matt Byrne, the new kid from California was her lab partner, since she was the only one in our physics class without a partner.

“Yeah, she’s a bitch.” I said to Julie, but I was smiling at Matt.

God, that kid was hot. He had the really classy, sophisticated pretty-boy look, with short, normal colored blonde hair. Not gold, not pale, not platinum, not dyed, just normal blonde in your good, clean crew cut, with a few lighter streaks that you could tell were completely natural, not gotten by peroxide or anything dumb that boys here are always trying to do. The school uniform also looks totally gorgeous on him. The boys’ uniform, which consists of khaki-colored slacks and a blue collared shirt with an optional maroon vest and striped tie in the winter, makes most guys at Edison High look like computer geeks. But when Matt wears his, he looks like he could be a model for some British boarding school, you know, the kind with lots of gorgeous British guys who look like Prince William.

In addition to being good-looking, Matt is also incredibly talented. When Bruce Soper was absent from marching band last rehearsal, Matt had played the trumpet solo and it’d been absolutely perfect, flawless. At least ten times better than Bruce’s best try so far.

So, he’s talented, and good-looking. In other words, Matt Byrne makes for perfect boyfriend material.

Matt laughed, enhancing the slight dimple in his right cheek. I had to watch myself; I didn’t want to start drooling right in front of everyone.

“What right does she have to confiscate someone’s cell phone anyway?” My lab partner, Darcy Chapman, had turned around, too. I shot her a dirty look. I knew she was only turning around to talk because she wanted to get closer to Matt.

“Did you have any tough physics teachers at your old school, Matt?” Crystal Barker jumped in. She sat at the table next to Matt and Julie’s.

“Um…yeah. I guess there are tough teachers everywhere.” Matt said with a shrug.

Pretty soon, Crystal’s lab partner joined in our conversation, too, and there was a circle of girls surrounding him.

I hated it.

I hated that all the girls were crowding around and trying to get their grubby hands on my guy. Hello?! Couldn’t those girls get a clue? What do I have to do? Draw a line around him to mark him as my territory?

“The new guy’s really hot, isn’t he?” Darcy said in this irritatingly dreamy way as we walked out of class.

“Yeah.”

“Gonna go after him, Andy?”

I smiled yes at her. “Are you?”

“Duh.” Darcy rolled her eyes.

We stopped walking in front of the band room. “May the best girl win.” Darcy shook my hand, and she left, while I went and got my flag from the color guard equipment closet.

It was easy, I already had the advantage of being in marching band with Matt, Darcy only played clarinet in symphonic band.

As usual, I was the last person of the guard to arrive. Sydney had already started making the color guard do warm-up drop spins when I got there. I quickly fell in, trying hard not to look at Sydney’s evil eye.

“Look!” Casey Esposito stopped her spinning completely and pointed.

I couldn’t help it. I broke attention and looked, just like everyone else in the guard. There was a man, our new director, apparently. He was young, and he scrambled up the director’s ladder like Mr. Caswell had never done before. He clapped. The claps were loud, they were the kind that rang out across the huge field, and also the kind that, if I tried to emulate, would result in stinging hands for the rest of the day.

“HELLO!” He had an impressive set of lungs, too. “My name is Sebastian Davis; I am the replacement for your former band director! I’ve taken a look at Mr. Caswell’s curriculum and directions that he’s left for me. Turns out we have very different ways of doing things. So, I’m going to see myself as a new teacher, as opposed to a sub. This means that we’re going to be doing things my way.”

At this, some people looked at each other. I personally didn’t care. It wasn’t like marching band could get much worse.

Mr. Davis continued on, “Some things around here are going to be re-vamped.”

And re-vamped was right. First, he made us run through the whole show two times, all the while he scribbled away on his clipboard. Then, he dismissed us, even though we still had thirty minutes of rehearsal to go.

The next day in Symphonic Band, he made every single one of us come in and play scales and sight read a piece for him. None of us knew what it was for, since he didn’t explain, but it was pretty scary, cause everyone could pretty much tell that if they didn’t perform up to standards they might be dropping lower in their seats (the last chairs were the ones scared out of their minds, since they were in most danger of being kicked out of symphonic band). I was nervous, because playing solo scares the hell out of me. I think everyone was freaked out, unless you count Tyler, who’s the best high school trumpet player in the entire state. He was strutting around, telling me and Sydney that he was glad some of the chairs were going to be re-arranged. (He didn’t like the current trumpet second chair.)

The day after the auditions, Mr. Davis posted a new list of seating arrangements for the three performance bands.

She's pretty as a daisy
But look out man she's crazy
She'll really do you in
If you let her get under your skin
Poison Ivy, poison Ivy
Late at night while you're sleeping
Poison Ivy comes a-creeping around
You're gonna need an ocean
Of calamine lotion
You've been scratching like a hound
The minute she starts to mess around
Smokey Joe’s Café – Poison Ivy