by Mike Grosso
“Oh” is all I think to say.
Pete walks to a corner of his living room and digs through a huge box of junk—mostly pieces of broken percussion instruments. He pulls out what I recognize to be a practice pad—a very small and very flat sort-of drum that tries, not always very well, to be a substitute for a real drum.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks. When I nod, he says, “Every practice session at home should begin with this. Single and double stroke rolls.”
I take the practice pad and hold it in my hands. I stare into the flat rubber sort-of drum head and run my fingers along the circular metal edge on the side. “Does it have to be every time I practice?”
“Yes. I told you this would be hard work. The boring stuff is often the most important. If you want to get to the cool stuff, you have to stomach through the boring stuff so you can see how it all connects.”
“Will I get to play the whole kit next time?”
Pete scratches his chin and shrugs. “We’ll see.”
My mom is still out when I come back from my lesson. Brian is in the living room watching a cartoon loudly enough to be heard on the moon. He used to have a babysitter, but that ended the day my dad lost his job. Now Brian walks home with a family friend and waits inside the house with the doors locked while my mom prays the house is still standing when she gets home.
When he sees me entering, he says, “Aw, man! Now the house will smell like farts.”
“That’s because you keep breathing on everything,” I say.
I’m about to head upstairs when he says, “Dr. Pullman called!”
I freeze in my tracks. “Did he leave a message?”
“Yeah. He sounds mean. Isn’t he the principal at your school? Are you home late because he kept you in detention?”
I ignore his questions. “Did you listen to it?”
Brian runs out of the living room and stops in front of me. He nods, a demonic smile forming on his face. “He wants to talk to Mom and Dad. You’re in trouble again, aren’t you?”
Chills run through my body. “If you say anything to them, I will wholeheartedly kill you.”
He makes a gesture of zipping his lip closed and runs back into the living room to finish his ear-shattering cartoon.
I hurry to the phone, lift the receiver, and dial the four-digit code to access voice mail. It takes a little exploring to find, but before long, I hear Dr. Pullman saying,
Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Morris. This is Dr. Pullman from Kennedy Middle School calling again. I’m following up on a voice mail I left last week about an incident with Samantha. I understand you must be busy, but I’d like the chance to speak with you as soon as it is convenient.
I hear an undertone of anger in Dr. Pullman’s voice. He’s not going to let this go. He’ll keep trying to reach them. And all I want to do is leave the message for my parents, let them know about the incident, and get the excuses and punishments over with.
But even though every part of my brain tells me not to, I press the 9 key and hear the words “Your message has been deleted” for the second time, and it feels even worse than the first.
I wake up Tuesday morning, the day after my first drum lesson, with single and double stroke rolls sprinting through my head. I want nothing but time to practice. School, however, has other plans for me. I end up placing a notebook in my lap under my desk at the beginning of each period so nobody can see. Then I slide my hands on top of it and practice slapping out double stroke rolls with my palms. They haven’t gotten any easier since that first lesson.
Right right left left right right left left.
I keep messing it up, over and over again, and halfway through math, I swear I’ll never improve.
“Sam,” Mr. Warner says, “it’s hard to follow along when you don’t have your slate out like everyone else.”
I get my dry-erase board and marker out and halfheartedly try to solve the equations on the board. But my left hand keeps returning to the notebook in my lap and quietly tapping left left, left left, left left, creating half of the double stroke roll.
“Will you stop it, Sam!” Danny Lenix says.
I make a nasty face at him before stopping, but ten seconds later, my hand goes back to the notebook and starts playing again. It’s like an automatic reaction.
I get a loud “Shhh!” from the girl next to me, and I stop again. Even Scott gives me this silent, scared look, like he’s hoping I’ll stop but is afraid I won’t.
I glance across the room and see Kristen holding up her dry-erase board while Mr. Warner is looking in the other direction. There’s a message on it in bold capital letters: TOO MUCH SUGAR?
I check to make sure Mr. Warner isn’t looking my way and write NO. I HAVE RABIES. When I hold it up for Kristen to see, she clamps her hands over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
Danny sees us and says, “Jeez, you’re annoying.”
“Is there a problem, Danny?” Mr. Warner says.
I expect the bomb to drop right there, that Danny will rat out both me and Kristen. He must be intimidated by Mr. Warner’s angry glare, because he doesn’t say anything, and the class goes back to normal.
It’s not until the end of math that we start working independently on an extension of the lesson. I’m halfway through reading the directions when Mr. Warner calls me up to speak with him. I slide my notebook back into my desk and walk up to him. He lays a math test we took a couple of days ago in front of me and says, “I was curious what you thought of this.”
I look at the test and the big, angry red D at the top. I’m not that surprised. I had expected a C and hoped for a B. Getting a D is pretty bad, though, even for me.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Did you try your hardest?”
“Yes,” I say, but the word no is repeating over and over in my head.
“Then what do you think happened?”
“Maybe I was distracted.”
“By what? Something in class? Something at home?”
“All of the above.”
Mr. Warner nods, like he’s carefully considering his next words. “When a lot of things are bothering me, I focus on something I enjoy. What do you enjoy, Sam?”
An easy question. I wish every question in math was this simple. “Well, I started drum lessons, and I want to work really hard at them.”
“That’s great! Are you enjoying them?”
I look at Mr. Warner and see real joy in his face. He’s not just humoring me. He likes the idea of me playing drums. Everyone else thinks it’s weird, but not Mr. Warner, who has never been on my side until now.
“I am,” I say. “It’s just really hard.”
“Harder than math?” he asks.
I shrug. “In some ways, I guess.”
“But you’re working as hard as you can at drums, while you’re not working as hard as you can in my class.”
Aha, I think. That’s where he’s going with this. I should have known.
“It’s nothing personal,” I say. “Drums are really important to me.”
“They should be.” He puts my math test back in a pile of papers on his desk. “Let me ask you a question. What would you do if you had to play drums for your least favorite band?”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means exactly what I said.”
I think about it for a second. It’s not a bad question, exactly. Just weird. But it does get me thinking. “I’d join another band.”
“And if that’s not an option?”
“Why isn’t it an option?”
“Because another band wants to see how well you play before they let you join. They want to hire someone who’s well-rounded. Someone who dedicates to a task when asked, knows more than the other twenty drummers in line to audition, and can play many different styles of music instead of just one.”
“And I have to play with my least favorite band to prove that I know a lot?”
He nods.
“Then I’d rock my least favorite band senseless, and then tell them to get lost, and join the better band.”
“Would you do your best for the crappy band?”
The word crappy throws me off. It’s weird to hear a teacher say it. It’s not really a bad word, but it kind of sounds like one, depending on where you say it and who you’re talking to. It definitely sounds like a bad word coming out of Mr. Warner’s mouth.
“Yeah, I’d do my best,” I say.
“So if I ask you to do the same thing for math, then that would be a reasonable request, correct?”
As much as I hate to admit it, he has definitely backed me into a corner. “Yeah, that would be reasonable.”
“All right, then. From this point on, you are free to get whatever grade you wish in math. The only thing I ask is that you try your best to rock math class senseless.”
I shrug. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Warner, but I don’t think anyone can rock out in math.”
“Then you need to go home and do a web search on math rock.” Mr. Warner stands up. “The bell is about to ring. Enjoy the rest of your day, Sam.”
Band has been awkward ever since Scott told me I was the worst percussionist in the band. Zeke still talks to both of us, but Scott and I only look at each other when Zeke is asking us both a question. I’m mad at Scott, and how am I supposed to talk to him when his comment sits like an elephant between us? It’s not like Scott’s apologizing, anyway.
Ms. Rinalli tells the band to prep the next song. Scott and I play dual snare drums, so we’re forced to stand next to each other, an uncomfortable silence between us. We both pound through the song, our eyes glued to the sheet music. I catch Scott looking my way a few times, but his rhythm gets sloppy with each distraction, and he returns his attention to his sheet.
When the song is over, he looks at me and says, “You’re holding the sticks differently.”
I look down at my hands and then at his. He’s gripping his sticks in the second knuckle. Pete would hate that. “I started private lessons,” I say.
“Cool. It sounds better when you play that way.”
I’m about to thank him when the bell rings, signaling the end of band and the school day. I put my sticks away and grab my bag. My hands fiddle through the front pocket of my bag and dig out a pen. I uncap it and write Keep working on grip on my left palm.
The students are filing out the door when I hear the tail end of a conversation behind me.
“. . . plays on her notebook all day, and she’s not even good.”
I recognize Danny’s voice right away, but I don’t turn around. Keep walking, Sam. He doesn’t matter.
“This whole band stinks,” Danny says. “I can’t believe I’ve been stuck in here all year. I know more than anybody in here.”
“Yeah, I guess,” the boy next to him says. Another sax player.
“I’m easily the best brass player here. Not that that’s saying much.”
Something about his last comment sets me off. I can take him making fun of me—I’ve listened to that all year. Ripping on the entire band, however, is not cool. Not Ms. Rinalli’s band. Not my band. Even if we are just a middle school band.
“You’re not a brass player,” I say.
Danny scoffs. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re not a brass player.”
“The drummer with no rhythm thinks she suddenly knows everything. What do you know about it, garbage-can girl?”
I reach for the pen I used to write the note on my palm. I so badly want to fling it at his forehead. My fingers clench around it, but I take a few deep breaths and calm myself. No more getting in trouble. Not for Danny. But that doesn’t mean I can’t put him in his place another way.
“More than you, apparently,” I say, this time turning around and looking him in the eye.
“Saxophones are made of brass, loser!” he shouts. The volume of his voice causes the hallway to go quiet. Danny’s forming a smile and an accompanying laugh meant to hurt my feelings. “That makes saxophones a brass instrument.”
“Saxophones have a little something called a reed,” I say, “and that reed is made of wood. That makes them woodwinds, but I guess you wouldn’t know that, considering you’re ‘easily the best brass player here.’”
His smile disappears. He looks at his fellow sax player, who says, “Dude, she’s kind of right.”
Danny’s face turns a few shades of red before he says, “Whatever. Have fun practicing on your garbage can tonight!” He storms down the hall. For once, he doesn’t look back to make a mocking face.
Scott makes his way through the scattering students and taps me on the shoulder. “That was amazing!”
I smile back at him because that’s what friends are supposed to do. I’m angry at him, but he’s still my friend. It’s funny, though. I don’t feel amazing about getting the best of Danny for once. I just feel bad for him.
I’ve been so focused on practicing for my second lesson with Pete that I almost forgot how I was planning to pay for them. But Saturday, the best day of the week, comes along, and my mom takes Brian to a Little League game and my dad goes to work, leaving me home alone with the lawn mower.
Kristen calls, asking me to hang out with her and a couple other girls, but I tell her I’m busy. I don’t really want to hang out with people I don’t know, anyway—not when there’s so much work to be done.
The lawn mower is already full of gas, so I start my day fast. I mow lawns like a ninja. Time is against me, every second counts, and every lawn is a strategy waiting to be put into action. Should I cut it in this order? Can I save a minute or two cutting it this way? Perhaps I should mow the large backyard first, when my stamina is highest.
It feels good at first, but by the third house, I’m exhausted. One lawn is tough. A bunch of lawns is brutal. The sun becomes my mortal enemy, and I begin to hate it. I mock its placement in the sky and the way it casts heat down over the protective shadows of the trees. I start to hate noon and look forward to the later afternoon hours, when the sun will no longer beat down on me from the center of the sky. My baseball cap protects my face at first, but eventually it just makes my head hot, causing sweat to pour out the sides and onto my brow.
By the end of the third lawn, I am offered a glass of lemonade by the old woman who is only paying me three dollars. I tell her thank you and gulp down the entire glass in seconds.
“There really is no rush,” she says. “I was going to suggest you take a break while you enjoyed it.”
“No time,” I say, gasping for breath. “I’ve got a full schedule.”
She gives me a worried look as I move on to my next customer. By the time their lawn is done, I have given a new name to the sun. From this day forward, it will forever be known as the Orb of Death.
I imagine the Orb of Death laughing at me, an evil grin screaming down as I tire out with each trimmed row of grass. I invent a rhythm in my head and give it a melody—something about how I hope a bunch of asteroids take a big chomp out of its side. Yes, I know the Orb of Death is much larger than any asteroid will ever be, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying to imagine.
It takes a while, but I finally get to the last lawn. It’s both the best and worst of the entire day. When I’m halfway through it, a woman from next door calls me over to the edge of the gate between the houses and asks if I’d like to mow her lawn as well.
And because I am either stupid or a glutton for punishment, I say yes.
I come home and leap into the shower. It’s the best one I’ve ever had—I feel like I’m washing away a week’s worth of body odor.
I get dressed in a comfy pair of shorts and a shirt. Then I collapse on my bed. The longer it is before I have to move, the better.
My skeletal system feels like it’s falling apart, but I couldn’t be happier. I feel in control. I am making a decision—a choice I can’t possibly see myself regretting. For
now, that’s enough to make me feel good, even if my head hurts and aches and pains are throbbing through my arms and legs.
I lie on the couch until Brian and my mom get home. Brian runs down to the basement to do who knows what, and my mom sees me on the couch and says, “You look exhausted. What have you been doing all day?”
“Nothing.” My arms tickle as the lies leave my mouth. “I hung out with Kristen.”
“I haven’t seen her around recently. I’m glad to hear you’re still friends.”
Mom leaves the room and goes about her late-afternoon routines. By the time Dad gets home from work, it’s clear that no one has a clue what I’ve been up to. I breathe a sigh of relief, thankful that my routine is going to work.
Monday comes, along with a new rush of excitement. I hurry home from school the same as last week. I grab fifteen bucks out of a rolled-up sock in my top drawer, get my sticks, and run as fast as I can to Pete’s.
He’s waiting for me in his living room when I arrive. He looks at his watch and says, “Three thirty-two. I said don’t be late.”
“It’s only two minutes,” I say.
“This week it’s only two minutes. Next week it will be three minutes, and four minutes the week after that. I said don’t be late, and I meant it. Do I make myself clear?”
I nod, apologize, and pull the fifteen dollars out of my pocket. He takes it from me, holds it between his fingers, and says, “You paid to be here today. Every minute counts.”
We head down into the basement and begin our second lesson just like the first. Snare, and more snare.
We start out with a single stroke roll. Right left right left right left right left. He corrects me on the same things—keep the stick in the first knuckle, relax, only move your wrists.
He tells me to stop playing. Then he stands up, walks over to me, and points at three dents in the snare drum—three out of what looks like hundreds.