Keep the Beat - Kata Cuic Page 0,2

begins, and just because the university provides us with food and shelter for that week doesn’t mean they’re going to hand over the keys to the kingdom by giving us the sort of palatial housing the football team gets.

Jimbo told us all about how his older brother had an amazing time at preseason football camps.

I stare at the pattern on the wall, willing it to gift me with a bright idea. Any idea at all really.

Jimbo has spent the past three years making my life a living hell. And I haven’t backed down from a fight yet in all that time. How can I? Some girls might be traumatized by a guy taking their virginity at a regional high school band competition and then disappearing off the face of the planet, only to show up again at their chosen college, but not me. Nope.

Nor was I disappointed when he pretended like he’d never seen me before, let alone slept with me.

He thought he had the right of way here since his brother was a football star for State. He thought everyone would automatically love him because of his last name. He thought he’d break my heart and put me in my place by flirting with other girls right under my nose and becoming a playboy, just like his brother. He thought by also choosing a poli-sci major sophomore year that I’d be so sick of him invading my life that I’d transfer to another school.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Here I am. Staying strong.

It’s easy to ignore him in our shared classes. That’s all lecture; there’s no time for socializing. Mostly. Band has over three hundred members. The trumpet section alone accounts for seventy-five bodies. No need to be fake friends with him here either. I had a legitimate reason for not joining ITK even though I was invited to rush freshman year. I really don’t have time. Band takes up so much of the fall semester, and there was no way I was going to let competing with Jimbo on another level tank my grades. Actually, not joining was my way of beating him. If anyone isn’t going to graduate magna cum laude, it’s him—thanks to drinking away his weekends and sleeping with every girl who’s all too willing to give it up to him.

I joined the nationally recognized band sorority instead because that at least looks good on law school applications.

But this? A vote?

There’s just no way I can beat him at this.

It’s not bad enough that there’s never been a female drum major in the history of State’s marching band. It’s not bad enough that I’m the only female drum major in a group of five as it is. The other guys I don’t really worry about in a popularity contest. They’re stereotypically awkward marching band geeks like me. It would be an even playing field.

But Jimbo is in an entirely separate league. I’m not even sure why he joined marching band to begin with. Why doesn’t he play football like his older brother? He’s got the build for it. Muscles for days on that one.

Muscles that are going to win him the popular vote.

Damn muscles.

I have a nice rack, I’ll admit, but do I really want to stoop so low as to use that to my advantage?

Would it even work?

I’ve attended band camps under the sweltering sun in nothing but a sports bra and running shorts before. That was honestly about staying cool, not trying to give the entire drumline boners. The guys are shirtless, and the gals are in sports bras. That’s just the way we roll when trying not to pass out from heatstroke.

By the time the door swings open hard enough to bounce off the wall, I still don’t have any sure wins in my pocket. When I bolt upright in bed to see Shannon glaring at me with hatred in her eyes and breathing like a raging bull, my emotional pendulum swings to worry.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’re holding a drum majors’ meeting right now. Jimbo insisted.”

“What?” I leap off the bed like my shorts are on fire and search aimlessly for my shoes. “Did I miss the text? Oh my God! They’re never going to name me head drum major now!”

Shannon stomps into the room, latches on to my shoulders, and stops just short of slapping some sense into me. “No, you’re not hearing what I’m telling you. Jimbo called a secret meeting and left you out of it.”

Every previously dancing nerve ending in my body