Friends, Fugues, and Fortune Cookies

by Michelle Schusterman

  “Hi, Holly!” Mrs. Grady said. “Congratulations—looks like those fortune cookies really did the trick!”

  “Yup!” I agreed. “Thanks again for helping us make them.”

  Megan beamed up at me, her teeth coated with Oreos, and I giggled. Then I pointed to the program Steve was holding.

  “Those came out pretty great, right?” I asked him. “Owen drew that.”

  Steve smiled. “I know he did. He’s a talented kid. And this is”—he glanced at the crazy, UFO-driving Santas again—“very, very weird. Good weird,” he added quickly, and Mrs. Grady laughed.

  “I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for the band T-shirts,” she said.

  “Me too,” I agreed. “They’re going to rock.” Glancing up, I saw Owen and Trevor piling chips into their napkins at the snack bar. “I’ll be right back—I’m going to get a drink.”

  I waved to Megan, who waved back, her cheeks bulging with more Oreos. Grabbing a cup, I headed to the punch bowl.

  “Hey, Holly,” said Trevor.

  “Hi,” I replied, trying not to sound too taken aback that he was talking to me.

  “That was pretty cool,” Trevor said, filling his napkin with chips. He glanced at me. “Dante’s costume, I mean.”

  I smiled at him. “Glad you liked it.”

  Trevor shrugged.

  “He’s still wearing it.” Owen pointed, and I saw Mr. Dante over by the main office, taking pictures with some of the beginner-band members. He was still striking different karate poses and waving the samurai sword around. As we watched, he started a duel with a drumstick-wielding percussionist.

  “Any T-shirt ideas yet?” I asked Owen, who was piling handfuls of crackers into a napkin.

  “Some,” he said, nodding. “I’ll show you.”

  “Steve liked the programs,” I informed him.

  “Yeah, I know,” Owen said. “I showed him one after we got them printed. He said they were good.” He paused, making a face. “Then he asked me when baseball tryouts were.”

  I groaned, and Trevor snorted.

  “Dude, you’re not actually trying out for that, are you?”

  While they talked, I glanced around the foyer again. Natasha and Aaron were in the same spot I’d left them, talking and laughing. Not too far from them, Julia and Seth were holding hands. I smiled to myself as I reached for a handful of chips. Even from here, I could tell that Seth was blushing a little bit.

  “Anyway, are you guys still coming over Thursday?” Owen asked. “I bet we can hit level fifteen.”

  “Sure,” said Trevor immediately. I grinned at Owen before popping a chip into my mouth.

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Acknowledgments

  As always, enormous thanks to my editor and fellow band geek, Jordan Hamessley, for being one of those rare folks I can talk shop with about both writing and music. And a huge thank you to editor in chief Sarah Fabiny for her constant support.

  Thank you to superagent Sarah Davies for being the best advocate an author could ever ask for, and for being consistently reliable and supportive in an industry with wild ups and downs.

  Thank you to art director extraordinaire Giuseppe Castellano and designer extraordinaire Mallory Grigg for continuing to blow my mind with the amount of work and love they put into this series. And thank you to Genevieve Kote for the incredible illustrations that bring Holly and her band-geeky world to life.

  Thank you to Amanda Hannah, Kate Hart, Kirsten Hubbard, and Kaitlin Ward, for . . . reasons. Many, many infinite reasons.

  Thank you to my parents, John and Mary, and my sister, Heather, for the never-ending support and enthusiasm. Oh, and the gumbo—thanks for the gumbo.

  Thank you to Josh, for pulling me back into the music world when I start to drift, and for all the days spent dream-planning at the diner. And thank you to Adi, for making sure I tear myself away from the laptop at least a few times a day.

  And thank you to all the friends I’ve made because of band, whether it was school, rock, jazz, reggae, calypso, or anything else. Hope we get to play together again.

  Coming Soon!

  Turn the page for a sneak peek!

  Chapter One

  The second half of seventh grade should come with some sort of warning: Congratulations! You’re exactly halfway through middle school, so everything’s about to get twice as hard.

  Apparently all my teachers came back from winter break last month thinking we were high-schoolers or something. My English teacher, Mr. Franks, announced that we’d be writing two essays a week—two!—plus a big research paper due later this semester. In science, Mrs. Driscoll had given us a crazy schedule for our science fair projects, and our labs were getting ridiculous—as if any day now she’d be asking us to find a cure for the common cold. And the way Mr. Hernandez kept drilling us on verb conjugations, I was pretty sure he was expecting us to be fluent in Spanish by the end of the year.

  But that was nothing compared to band.

  My music folder was stuffed: a thick packet full of new scales and exercises. “Labyrinthine Dances”—this ridiculously hard piece that we’d been rehearsing since the beginning of the year for a contest that wasn’t even until April. Three more songs we’d be performing on our band trip to New Orleans a month from now. My music for the all-region concert this weekend, which sent a flurry of excited-but-nervous butterflies flitting around my stomach every time I looked at it. And “Pastorale for Horn,” my solo for Solo and Ensemble Competition, which I’d perform in front of a judge for a rating and (hopefully) a medal.

  As if all that wasn’t enough, now Mr. Dante was handing out even more.

  “‘Triptych,’” he said, reaching across the saxes to hand me a sheet of music. “Brass trio—this one will be Holly, Aaron, and Liam. Next up, let’s see . . . ‘Canon in A,’ woodwind quartet: Julia, Sophie, David, and Luis.”

  While Mr. Dante continued handing out parts, I stared at my music. The butterflies started swing dancing.

  “Triptych” made all those other songs look like “Three Blind Mice.”

  “Wicked,” Gabby said next to me, and I glanced at her music. It looked just as hard as mine, but Gabby could totally handle it. She was amazing.

  I mean, I was good, too. I was actually first chair French horn in the advanced band. But still . . .

  “When exactly is Solo and Ensemble again?” I asked her, even though I knew the answer.

  “Last weekend of February,” Gabby replied. “Right before the band trip.”

  “Less than a month,” I said, drumming my fingers on the bell of my horn. “We have less than a month.”

  On my other side, Natasha Prynne was staring at her own music, her eyes wide. “This is crazy.”

  “I know,” I agreed. Honestly, I was kind of relieved that she was worried, too. Up until all-region auditions last November, Natasha had been first chair in our section. Then I’d made the top all-region band, while Natasha was in the second band. And even though I practiced a lot, part of me still thought it was some sort of fluke. I was a really good horn player, but Natasha was pretty fantastic, too.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and the smell of cologne made my stomach flip for an entirely different reason.

  “Hey, Holly, do you think we could practice this before school?” Aaron Cook asked, and I saw he was holding the trumpet part to “Triptych.” “I had baseball tryouts yesterday, and it looks like practice is going to be pretty much every day after school for the next month or so.”

  “Sure!” I said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. “How about Wednesdays and Fridays?”

  “Works for me,” Aaron replied. “I’ll check with Liam.” He smiled at Natasha. “So who’s in your ensemble?”

  Natasha half-turned in her chair to face him. “Um, Gabe, Victoria, and . . . I thi
nk Max.” Her voice was a little higher than normal.

  “Cool!”

  Before Aaron could say anything else, Mr. Dante stepped back up onto the podium. I glanced at Natasha; her cheeks were pink. I hoped mine weren’t.

  Last semester, I’d had a pretty big crush on Aaron, and Natasha knew it. And now she was kind of dating him. Which was totally fine with me—I’d actually helped set them up, because I knew they liked one another. But being in an ensemble with my friend’s almost-boyfriend who I used to like (and was sort of still getting over) . . . yeah, that could be a little bit way awkward.

  Maybe that was another part of making it halfway through middle school. Congratulations! All your friendships are about to get twice as complicated.

  Lunch was now total proof of that. It used to be pretty simple—me, Julia, and Natasha at our regular table. But now, lunch involved boys.

  Specifically, Seth Anderson. He was Julia’s boyfriend. Not almost-boyfriend, like Natasha and Aaron. Boyfriend boyfriend. So he ate lunch with us. Which was totally cool, don’t get me wrong—I liked Seth a lot. He played cello in the school orchestra, he was really into photography, and when he found out about my obsession with horror movies, he let me borrow his book of Edgar Allan Poe stories (which was amazing and had some pretty wicked illustrations, too).

  Still, lunch was different once he started eating with us. Because Julia was different.

  “That test in Spanish yesterday was really hard,” Natasha said as we left the cubby room. I nodded in agreement.

  “Mr. Hernandez is losing it, I swear.” I held the band-hall door open for her and Julia, and we headed to the cafeteria together. “I didn’t recognize half of those vocabulary words.”

  “That’s what Seth said,” Julia chimed in. “He has Mr. Hernandez seventh period.”

  “Hey, I forgot to tell you!” Natasha said suddenly, nudging me. “We ordered Lotus Garden last night for dinner, and Chad delivered it! My dad gave him a five-dollar tip, and I said that would cover half a load of laundry. He looked pretty mad.”

  Julia and I laughed. Not only was my brother pretty much the messiest human being on the planet, he refused to learn how to operate a washing machine. At ten bucks a load, I was making decent money keeping his clothes clean—although sometimes I wondered if it was worth it. I mean, doing his laundry meant dealing with underwear. Which was why I wore rubber gloves.

  “I might up my price,” I told them. “Last weekend he played football for, like, six straight hours. Oh my God, that load of clothes—I almost passed out from the smell, I swear.”

  “Still, the extra money must be nice,” Julia said. “Seth’s been doing yard work for his neighbors, but I bet you make more doing your brother’s laundry. Oh, did I tell you guys I met Seth’s sister over the break? She’s a music major! She plays piano, but she’s a singer, too, and . . .”

  Julia kept talking, and Natasha and I shared an amused look. Amused, and maybe a little exasperated, too. Lately it seemed like it was pretty much impossible to talk about anything without Julia bringing up Seth.

  That was probably why we only spent half our lunch period together lately. I mean, it wasn’t just because of Julia. Aaron had lunch then, too, and Natasha usually went and sat with him after she finished eating. She’d been worried about leaving me at first—and honestly, it might have bothered me if I’d been stuck as a third wheel with Julia and Seth. But I had someone else I could sit with, too.

  “See you in seventh?” I asked Julia, standing and crumpling my lunch bag. Natasha was on her feet, too, brushing the crumbs off her skirt.

  Julia nodded. “Tell Owen I said hi.”

  I glanced at her, because she sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “What?”

  “What?” Julia asked innocently. “Nothing!”

  “She thinks you like Owen,” Seth told me. Julia smacked his arm, and Natasha giggled.

  I rolled my eyes. Right before winter break, I’d asked my friend Owen Reynolds to the spring dance. For whatever reason, Julia and Natasha both found that funny. No matter how many times I told them it wasn’t a date date.

  “I do like Owen.” I smiled at Seth. “That’s why we’re friends.”

  Julia gave me an innocent look. “For now.”

  Natasha walked to the trash cans with me, still grinning. “She’s just giving you a hard time.”

  “I know.” I tossed my bag into the garbage. “Kind of weird that she talked about me and Owen with Seth, though.”

  “Well,” Natasha pointed out, “she can’t talk to Seth about Seth.”

  I snickered. “True.” And honestly, I was kind of flattered. Julia had spent so much time lately talking about her boyfriend, I’d been wondering if she was even interested in the rest of us anymore.

  Natasha headed off to Aaron’s table. Most of his friends were in eighth grade, like him. I didn’t really know any of them, but Natasha said they were pretty nice. She didn’t talk about them much. Actually, she didn’t even talk about Aaron much, and not just in comparison to Julia.

  I plunked down next to Owen, who was shuffling a stack of Warlock game cards. “I’m in!”

  “Good timing,” Owen said, smiling. He handed me half of his stack. Across the table, Trevor Wells sighed.

  “You know the reason you keep losing is because you split your cards with her,” he informed Owen. “Last week she got your draught of death card.”

  Owen shrugged, brushing the blond hair out of his eyes. “So?”

  “So, you would’ve won if you’d had it.”

  “Come on, Trevor.” I flipped through my stack and glanced at the goblin-chief card he’d tossed in the center of the table. “It’s not about winning and losing, it’s about having fun. And freezing your goblin chief with my ice sword is really, really fun.”

  I placed my card on top of Trevor’s with a flourish, and everyone laughed. Everyone except Trevor, of course. He was always a really sore loser.

  “Everyone” was Owen, Max Foster (who played trombone in advanced band, like Trevor), and Brent McEwan and Erin Peale from fifth-period science. And today there was a new guy who I vaguely recognized from my history class last year. Keith or Kyle or something like that.

  Ten minutes later, Max was pretty much destroying all of us, which was nothing new. (Although Owen and I really would have had a better chance if we’d each had a full deck of cards.) And I’d managed to snag one of Trevor’s undead-warrior cards, along with the goblin chief. When Max scored his shield cloak, Trevor threw his cards down in frustration and started arguing with him.

  “Guess that’s the end of that game.” I handed Owen back his cards.

  “The bell’s about to ring, anyway,” he said, wrapping a rubber band around the deck and tucking them into his backpack. Out of habit, I glanced over at Aaron’s table. They were all laughing at something—all except for Natasha. She was smiling, though. I squinted, trying to read her expression. It might have been my imagination, but sometimes I thought Natasha looked a little uncomfortable sitting with Aaron’s friends.

  “You okay?” Owen asked.

  “What?” I glanced at him, startled, and realized he’d seen me staring. And since Owen knew I liked—used to like—Aaron, that’s probably who he thought I was staring at. “No! I mean, yeah. I’m okay.” My face felt a little warm, so I ducked down to pick up my backpack. “Do you have our proposal for Mrs. Driscoll?”

  “Yup.”

  “What are you guys doing for the science fair?” Erin asked, and Owen immediately launched into a detailed description of our project. I was pretty excited about it, too, actually—I mean, it was about aliens on Mars, how could that not be cool? Right now I was too distracted to think about it, though. The science fair wasn’t until May, but that weekend I had all-region band, where I’d be performing with a bunch of kids from other middle schools. And we’
d only have two rehearsals to learn the music. Then there was the contest on the band trip to worry about, plus my solo for Solo and Ensemble. Oh, and now I was supposed to learn this crazy hard music for a trio with my former crush who was now kinda dating one of my best friends.

  My other classes might have gotten more intense, but band was officially insane.

  About the Author

  Michelle Schusterman is a former band director and forever band geek, starting back in the sixth grade when she first picked up a pair of drumsticks. Now she writes books, screenplays, and music in New York City, where she lives with her husband (and bandmate) and their chocolate Lab (who is more of a vocalist).