I Heart Band

by Michelle Schusterman

  Quick survey time. Frantically, I tried to pick out who was left without a partner and spotted Trevor Wells from band. But I’d barely taken a step forward when he pulled up a stool at a workstation with another boy. Before I could really start to freak out, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I spun around.

  “Owen!”

  “Hey, Holly,” Owen said cheerfully. “Do you need a partner?”

  “Yes, please.” Relieved, I followed him to the last open workstation. Owen and I sat next to each other in beginner French horn class last year. He was really nice (although kind of a dork. But, you know. A nice dork).

  I plopped down on the stool and glanced across the room. “Hey, why aren’t you and Trevor partners?” They were best friends, at least in sixth grade.

  Owen shrugged. “We had a fight at lunch, sort of.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Not a real fight.” He flipped over his handout and started doodling on the back, light blond hair hanging in his eyes. “We were playing Warlock, and I used a vorpal blade on his Black Knight.”

  I stared at him until he looked up. “Owen, I literally have no idea what you just said.”

  He grinned. “It’s a card game, and Trevor’s a sore loser. He’ll forget about it by tomorrow.”

  “Ah. Gotcha.” I smiled, watching him sketch what looked like a dinosaur on his paper. Probably a dragon, knowing Owen. Yup, now he was adding wings. When Mrs. Driscoll started talking, he flipped it back over and listened.

  I tried to listen, too, and failed. So Trevor was over there being a baby about losing some game, but tomorrow he and Owen would be best friends again. Not the same case for me. Tomorrow, right at this moment, Julia would still be sitting in math class with Natasha. They’d still be sharing secrets that I was apparently not in on, about boys and kisses and who knew what else. The day after that, too, and the rest of the week, and the rest of the year.

  I wondered how long it would be before Natasha replaced me completely.

  “Holly?”

  “Huh?”

  Owen was holding a packet of papers out to me, blinking. I realized Mrs. Driscoll was circling the room, handing packets to each workstation.

  “Sorry, I just . . . I spaced out.” So not like me. I took the packet, embarrassed. “Okay, so . . . so what are we supposed to do?”

  “Label the parts of the microscope first.” Owen pulled the microscope over so it was sitting between the two of us, then started scribbling on the first page of his own packet. I looked down at mine and saw a drawing of a microscope with a bunch of blank lines.

  Trying to look casual, I glanced over my shoulder at the chalkboard. Eyepiece, condenser, arm, filter holder, illuminator . . . Apparently while I’d been half asleep, Mrs. Driscoll had gone over this. Not good.

  I fidgeted on my stool. I couldn’t just look at Owen’s paper—I did have some pride. But I seriously had no idea what to do.

  Think. I stared at the microscope. Okay, eyepiece. That looks like an eyepiece. Check. I wrote it on the diagram, then glanced at the board.

  Condenser, condenser, condenser, condenser . . .

  “Ready for the second page?” Owen was flipping his packet open. Ugh, this was so humiliating.

  “No,” I admitted. “Sorry, Owen. I wasn’t . . . I don’t know any of these. I’ve sort of had a bad day.”

  “Oh.” Owen nodded in understanding. “I thought you looked kind of out of it after lunch. Here, I’ll show you.” He tapped the top of the microscope with his pencil. “That’s the eyepiece.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I got that much.”

  He went through the rest of the diagram, then we moved on to the second page—putting steps for preparing a slide in order. Guess who had no clue what any of the steps were? This girl.

  Owen was really nice about it, but I was annoyed with myself. Barely halfway through the first day of seventh grade and I was totally lost in a class and on the verge of losing my best friend.

  I had to get it together, and fast.

  Chapter Five

  “He can’t be serious with this.”

  Gabby’s breath smelled like Red Hots, even though I was pretty sure she’d left the box in her cubby. She was leaning over, sheet music in her hands, staring at the pages on my music stand. “I mean, really. This is way too hard.”

  I wanted to say something confident, but in my head I agreed with her. “Labyrinthine Dances” was the craziest piece of music I’d ever seen. The tempo was insanely fast. The time signature changed three times, and the key signature started out okay but then switched to one with a few more flats than I was comfortable with. The first page was only kind of scary, but the second page was really ridiculous.

  I glanced at Gabby’s music, which was positively black with notes. “It’s not that bad,” I said bracingly. Gabby gave me a Look.

  “Really? So if this was going to be the chair test next week instead of the fight song, you’d be okay with that?”

  I shrugged, trying to look indifferent, and Gabby rolled her eyes. She was right, of course—I’d been nervous enough ever since Mr. Dante announced our first chair test was coming up. If the test was over this music, I’d die.

  I took a peek around the room to see what everyone else’s reactions were. Julia caught my eye and made a face, and I giggled. The clarinets and flutes were all wearing expressions of varying degrees of disbelief.

  To my left, Brooke leaned closer. “What do you think?” she asked quietly. I bit my lip.

  “Um . . . yeah, it looks pretty hard,” I admitted, and Gabby snickered. To my relief, Brooke nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah, we didn’t play anything this difficult last year,” she said.

  I felt better, briefly. Then, on the other side of Owen, I heard Natasha whispering, “I don’t know what everyone’s freaking out about. We played a piece at least this hard at Lake Lindon.”

  Ugh.

  It was Thursday, and over the last four days I’d done everything in my power to like Natasha. But the girl was just stuck-up, plain and simple. She talked about herself constantly. How easy band was. How easy all her classes were. How the debate-team coach apparently worshipped the ground she walked on already. She was good at this. She was good at that.

  So. Irritating.

  I really didn’t get why Julia couldn’t see it.

  “All right.” Mr. Dante clapped his hands once, and the mumbling stopped. “Let’s talk about this piece a little. Looks pretty challenging, right?”

  “It looks impossible,” said Gabby, and a few of us laughed. Mr. Dante smiled.

  “The good news is, we aren’t going to be performing this anytime soon,” he said. Well, duh, I thought. “It’s one of the pieces I’d like us to do for contest at the end of this year.”

  Every spring there was a big contest for middle school bands all over the state. The shelf on the far right side of the band hall was crammed with lots of trophies the Millican advanced band had won from the event. I started tapping my fingers on the bell of my horn, listening.

  “We’ve had almost a week together, and many of you all have already improved a lot. Especially,” Mr. Dante added, “those of you who hadn’t touched your instruments since last year. I know you might have your doubts, but I believe that by the end of the year, we can perform this successfully. We just need to practice. And that starts”—he leaned over and flipped on the metronome—“right now.”

  Boop . . . boop . . . boop . . . boop . . .

  “Let’s try the first eight measures.”

  Doubtfully, I raised my horn. This tempo was slow. Like, insanely slow. Mr. Dante counted us off, I drew in a deep breath, and we played.

  Four measures in and I was ready to fall out of my chair. I thought playing fast was hard—playing slow was killing me. Behind me, I heard a few
of the tuba players give up mid-note to suck in a breath. I struggled not to rush and accidentally played an A-flat instead of an A.

  It took us an hour to play the eight measures. Okay, it felt like an hour. Imagine strapping heavy bricks to your feet and trying to walk through knee-deep mud. That’s what playing this song was like. Hard, tedious, and pointless.

  Mr. Dante flipped the metronome off. “I’d like everyone to have a look at the first sixteen measures by Monday,” he said. “We’ll be working on this one regularly, each time just a little bit faster. By spring, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

  I gave Gabby a sidelong glance. She looked back, eyes wide. “He can’t—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted her. “I think he’s serious.”

  The first day of science had been maybe a little intimidating. But by Friday, it was more like terrifying.

  I had no idea what was going on.

  I mean none. I wasn’t, like, a perfect student or anything, but my grades had always been pretty good. But now I felt like science could actually be my first C.

  Or worse. My stomach tensed at the thought as I tried to decipher this week’s lab assignment. The band party was in three weeks, right after our first progress reports came out. And if I actually managed to fail science, I wouldn’t be going.

  Resolutely, I sat up straight on my stool and set down the packet Mrs. Driscoll had given us at the start of class. Owen was already setting up the microscope. Next to it was a plate with a small piece of onion skin and a few toothpicks.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, first we’ll do the onion.”

  Nodding, I took the little glass slide and placed the piece of onion on it.

  “Hang on.” Owen pushed a small dropper toward me. “We have to put water on the slide first.”

  “Oh.” Dang it. I picked up the onion piece and squeezed a little drop of water on the slide. “There. Um . . . oh, now we put it here, right?” I started to transfer the slide over to the microscope.

  “Wait!” Grabbing another bottle, Owen took the slide and dropped more liquid on top of the onion. “Iodine,” he explained. “See, it’s in step four.”

  I looked down at my packet. Yup, step four—iodine. I grimaced.

  It had been like this all week. Mrs. Driscoll would say a bunch of stuff I didn’t really understand, I’d try to read my textbook but it was like Greek or something, and then we’d head to our workstations for a lab and I’d be totally lost. We got a daily grade for lab assignments, and as much as I hated to admit it, I’d have failed them all if it wasn’t for Owen.

  “Are you okay?” He looked kind of worried.

  “Yeah. Stellar.” I blew a strand of brown hair out of my eyes. “Sorry I’m such a sucky lab partner.”

  Owen blinked. “You’re not!”

  “Liar.” I grinned at him. Honestly, I was really grateful Owen hadn’t ditched me. On Tuesday, just like he said, he and Trevor had been friends again. Trevor had even asked me before class started if we could switch lab partners. (No wonder—his partner, Brent McEwan, picked his nose like there was money up there or something. Not someone I’d want to share a microscope with.)

  Luckily, Owen refused to switch before I could even answer Trevor. “Maybe now he won’t be such a baby about losing,” Owen had said, laughing when Trevor stormed off back to his workstation.

  I watched him put the onion slide into place, and we took turns examining it. I drew what I saw—blobs with dots in them—on my packet. Then we used the toothpicks to scrape the insides of our cheeks, smeared that on a slide (ew), and examined it. Oh, hey, more blobs and dots. I drew them, then read the next question.

  What did the onion cell contain that the cheek cell did not?

  Um, they were both a bunch of blobs and dots. And somehow I didn’t think “blob” or “dot” would be an acceptable answer, anyway. My fingers drummed nervously on the table as I waited for Owen to finish.

  Mrs. Driscoll started writing weekend reminders on the board. I squinted to read the last one. Quiz on animal and vegetable cells next Wednesday. My stomach clenched up again.

  I had to study this weekend, or I was going to be in serious trouble.

  Chapter Six

  “Unlike animal cells, plant cells are surrounded by a protective cell wall, which is made up of cellulose. Plant cells also have organelles, such as chloroplast and . . .” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut. “Wait, what’s an organelle?”

  I flipped to the glossary in the back of my textbook and read aloud. “‘Organelle: a specialized part of a cell with a specific function.’ Oh, I totally get it now. Thanks.”

  It was Saturday afternoon, and I was lying on my bed talking to my science book. Clearly, my weekend had been stellar so far.

  Flipping back to the first chapter, I started reading the same paragraph. For the third time. It was still pretty much meaningless.

  The phone rang, and I tossed my book in the air. “I got it!” I hollered, lunging for the phone on my night table. “Hello?”

  “It’s me!”

  At the sound of Julia’s voice, I smiled for what felt like the first time in a month. “Hey! What’s up?”

  “Want to go to the movies? My dad offered to drive.”

  “Yes yes yes yes yes.” I was already on my feet and heading to the closet. “I’m dying to see House of the Wicked, I saw this one scene online and—”

  “Nooo!” Julia wailed, and I grinned. “No horror movies, I’m begging you. Besides, Natasha wants to see Seven Dates.”

  I froze, a pink-striped sleeve clenched in my hand. “What?”

  “I know it’s not your thing,” she went on quickly. “But it looks really cute, and I kind of want to see it, too. You might like it if you give it a shot! Even though there’s no possessed people or creepy girls crawling out of holes in the ground.”

  “Um . . . hang on a sec,” I said, then pressed my hand over the mouthpiece. I stared at the pink shirt, still dangling crookedly off the hanger.

  Natasha was going. I should have known.

  I had a tendency to overthink stuff a little bit. According to Mom, anyway. But I couldn’t help it. And in about three seconds, this was what went through my brain:

  1. Had Natasha called Julia and asked her to see a movie, and then Julia called to see if I wanted to come?

  2. Probably not, because Julia said her dad was going to drive them. So seeing a movie had been Julia’s idea.

  3. But when she called, she already knew what movie Natasha wanted to see. Therefore:

  4. Julia invited Natasha to go before she invited me.

  I swallowed hard, then pressed the phone to my ear.

  “Hey, I’m back. Um . . . my mom says I can’t go. I forgot we, um . . . we’re all supposed to go out to dinner tonight. You know. Family thing.”

  “Oh.” Julia sounded disappointed. I wondered if she knew I was lying. “Yeah, okay. Maybe next weekend.”

  “Sure, yeah. Have fun!”

  “Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  “All right.”

  I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. Okay, like half an hour. I was almost asleep when Chad slammed the door downstairs, jolting me awake. (I knew it was Chad because everyone else in the house knew how to close a door without the whole neighborhood hearing it.)

  I had to do something. I had to do something that was not studying science. Imagining Julia and Natasha hanging out was driving me nuts. Watching some sappy romance movie, to make matters worse.

  “Gee, I wonder what happens,” I said, standing up. “I bet there’s a guy who likes a girl, even though she’s boring as dirt. And she likes him back, even though he’s boring as dirt, too. But there’s some big misunderstanding that keeps them apart.”

 
I kicked my science book, sending it skidding over to my bedroom door. “So one of them probably ends up dating some jerk, even though everyone in the movie knows they’re a jerk. But by the end they figure it out and the guy and girl end up together, just like every single person in the audience knew they would.”

  Talking to myself was not helping me feel better. My gaze fell on my horn case. Chair test this week. Without wasting another second, I pulled out my horn and music and sat at my desk.

  Twenty minutes later, I’d played the part Mr. Dante chose for the horn test ten times in a row perfectly. (It was pretty easy, honestly—I was surprised he hadn’t picked a harder test.) Natasha was going down. Just thinking about getting first chair and seeing the look on her face made me smile. I lifted up my horn and started again, but only got about three measures in before my door flew open.

  “Chad!” I yelled. “You’re supposed to knock.”

  He fell down on his knees and put his hands together like he was praying. “Please, Holly. I’m begging you. I can’t watch a movie when it sounds like there’s a constipated moose in the room next door.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Deal with it. I have to practice.”

  “All day?” he whined.

  “Seriously, Chad, it hasn’t even been half an hour.” Holding my horn over the trash can, I pressed a valve and water dripped onto a few crumpled tissues.

  Chad stared. “What are you doing?”

  “Emptying my spit valve.”

  He made an exaggeratedly grossed-out face. “That’s your spit? Nasty!”

  It was unbelievable that this guy was almost four years older than me.

  “Chad, get out. I have a chair test this week.”

  He started to whine again but got cut off by a hand smacking the back of his head. “Ow!”

  “Leave your sister alone.” Mom pushed past him and stepped into my room. “She needs to practice.”