Chapter 1
Curtis
Luke Chesser looks miserable and embarrassed as he grinds the toe of his athletic shoe into the superheated concrete not eight feet from me, his clarinet gripped tightly in his right hand. He slaps the instrument against his calf a few times, then glances my way. With my eyes shielded behind dark sunglasses, I feel no compulsion to look away.
It’s been a hard couple of weeks for him, but I don’t know if what I feel right now is more sympathy or irritation. He’s a mess, distracted, directionally challenged. Some days I think it would be easier for Mr. Gorman to change the band’s program than to change Luke. He’s been persistently dense since day one of marching camp. In fact, he’s the reason all two hundred of us are standing here again under the blazing August sun, waiting. He screwed up, and the domino effect took care of the rest.
I squint up at the viewing stand, where Mr. Gorman is conferring with the assistant band director. One day that will be me up there with a microphone clipped to my ear.
It’s been almost a year since I loaded up my truck, said goodbye to Dad and Corrine, and headed west on 290 to Austin. I’d spent the entire summer dreaming about walking down Sixth Street on a Friday or a Saturday night with a beer in my hand, staying out all night if I wanted to, flirting with college guys, maybe taking one back to my dorm room or spending a night in his, having sex for the first time, experiencing the freedom that comes with distance.
As it turned out, that freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
By the end of spring semester, I couldn’t wait to get back.
It wasn’t Austin; it was me. Too many guys eager to share their bed for a night. Too much alcohol. Too many pieces of me chipped away and left scattered here and there, everyone taking what they wanted until I could feel myself fracturing under the weight of all that freedom.
A clatter catches my attention, and I look over to see Robert Westfall retrieve his flag from the ground. He’s a bari sax player, a freshman when I was drum major. Nice guy, but honestly, I never gave him much thought until I saw him rehearsing with the color guard last week. I hadn’t seen that coming. Apparently it’s no big secret. I have to say, I admire him for that. Maybe if I’d been more open in high school, I wouldn’t have been so boys-gone-wild at UT.
Luke Chesser, though . . . I had him pegged from day one. I can’t say why exactly. Just a feeling.
Over the portable PA system, Mr. Gorman calls the band back to set. I lift my sunglasses and wipe the sweat from my brow, then assume a wide stance and fold my arms. The freshmen squirm a little, but snap to attention when I clear my throat.
“Luke,” I say in a voice just loud enough to carry across the clarinets. “It’s right, left, right, left.” One of the girls giggles as the drum majors count off the beat.
“Toes up, toes up,” I bark as I shadow the moving section. Anna Newman misses a turn, then scrambles to catch up. “Laura, watch your carriage. Better.” I scramble back a few yards so I can get a better overall view of the ripple, then slip in and out of the lines, counting the beats aloud as I go. I duck under the twirling flags of the guard. The program is still new to them, so I anticipate movements, giving a heads-up when I can. I keep my eye on Luke, but he manages to fumble through without any major mistakes this time.
The opener ends with a one, two, three, drop. The kids stand frozen, faces parallel to the concrete.
“Much better,” Mr. Gorman says. “All right. Find some shade, take a five-minute water break, and we’ll do it again.”
I collect my thermos from the curb behind the viewing stand and take a long drink as Adeeb Rangan makes his way across the parking lot to me. His white teeth flash in his impossibly dark face, and I’m amused to see he’s wearing a Texas Aggie T-shirt again today.
“What’s this?” I ask when he hands me a folded piece of paper.
“The new section T-shirt design.”
“Yeah?” Section T-shirts are an annual tradition. My freshman year it was Reed my lips. Sophomore year: Clarinets kick brass. Junior year: Shhh . . . the clarinets are playing. And senior year: Fear the clarinets.
Clarinets just aren’t that funny.
Now saxophones, that’s a funny instrument.
I unfold the paper. There are two outlines of a T-shirt—a front and a back view. On the front, a formation of graphic faces with hats and plumes, all heads tilted to the right except one, which is tilted to the left. I’m already laughing when I read the caption: Luke Chesser, you are wrong. On the back: Will someone please tell him what to do?
Those were Mr. Gorman’s exact words last week. I felt bad for Luke that morning, but damn, he ought to know right from left by now.
“Does he know about this?” I ask Adeeb.
“He agreed to it.”
I scan the edges of the parking lot until I spot Luke again.
“He’s worse than the freshmen,” Adeeb adds. I smile. “He’s gonna drive Gorman crazy, you know.”
“Where’d he come from anyway?” I refold the paper and hand it back to him.
“Odessa. But he was only there for the spring semester. He marched with the band at Forest last year.”
Woodland Forest is the rival high school a few miles away. They have a good program. A damn good program. Can’t blame them. They were probably glad to see him go.
“He pees sitting down, you know?”
I look at Adeeb over the top of my sunglasses. “I kind of figured.”
He grins at me, juts an elbow in my ribs, and I know what he’s thinking. Not gonna happen.
“So when you moving up to Huntsville?” he asks.
“Dorms open a week from tomorrow. You’re stuck with me for a few more days.”
Across the parking lot, a clarinet girl (Phoebe Verbosky, I think), pours a load of water from her thermos down Luke’s back. He whips around and scowls at her. Come on, Luke. Lighten up. But he doesn’t retaliate. He leaves that to the clowns Jackson Stewart and Spencer Dunn. They’re going to be sorry at the next water break when those thermoses are empty. H2O foreplay will cost you in this Texas heat.
“Those idiots,” Adeeb says. “I gotta go break that up before they ruin the pads on those clarinets.”
He gives me a light punch on the shoulder. “We’re meeting at Cain’s after practice. Want to come?”
Adeeb looks up and motions me over to the tables they’ve claimed near the counter. About eleven of the twenty-seven clarinets are there—Adeeb, Spencer, Jackson, Luke, Phoebe, a few others. “About time,” Adeeb calls out as I approach. “I was starting to wonder if maybe you thought you were too good for us now, college boy.”
Luke glances over his shoulder. When he sees me, the smile slides right off his face and into his secret sauce.
What did I do?
“Eh, I stayed behind to talk shop with Mr. Gorman.” I pull out a chair next to Adeeb and sit, then nod toward Luke. “What’s wrong with him?” I mouth.
Adeeb shrugs. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “He’s got a burr up his ass. He’s been in a funk all day.”
All day? I think funk is his default.
“He’s kind of a drama queen,” Adeeb adds and smiles. Drama queen? I don’t think so. Antisocial, morose, depressed. Good thing he’s got that all-American boy look about him or he’d be one sad sack. I grab a box of chicken tenders at the counter and settle in to watch the hurricane coverage on the TV affixed to the wall between two banks of windows. Janine is still a ways out in the Gulf, but Galveston is in the cone of probability, so it’s news, and you can’t turn on the TV this week without getting an update.
“So, who you rooming with this year?” Adeeb asks when the station goes to commercial.
“Don’t know.”
“That could be bad.”
I suppose he’s right about that. But I got lucky enough the first time. I roomed with a fellow engineering student. Jared actually wanted to be an engineer. I just wanted to play music and party. But he spent most of his time in the library, so we got along okay until I stumbled into the room early one morning and woke him up. He pushed himself up on one elbow and asked in a disgusted voice, “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to catch some disease?” God, I was pissed.
Abruptly Luke pushes back his chair and gets up.
“Bedtime for Lukey Duke,” Adeeb teases in a voice too low for him to hear.
I grin at him as Luke gathers up his trash then hugs the girls good-bye.
“Call me later,” Spencer says.
“Yeah, sure.” He glances at our end of the table. “See you Monday, Adeeb.” Then he turns his back and walks out.
I’m dumbstruck.