I Heart Band (3 page)

J
ulia and I had lunch right after band. So did Natasha. Apparently, I was doomed to getting zero quality time with my best friend.

We grabbed a table in the corner of the cafeteria and I started pulling stuff out of my bag. (I'd made my lunch the night before—turkey sandwich on wheat bread, cut diagonally; plastic bag with apple slices to avoid the inevitable peel-in-the-teeth scenario that comes with eating it whole; bag of plain potato chips, the least breath-offensive flavor; stick of gum for afterward, just in case. I'd fired Mom from lunch-making duty after the Great Pepperoni Lunchables Catastrophe of last spring.)

“Mr. Dante seems nice,” Julia said, breaking off a chunk of cookie. (She was one of those dessert-first people—so weird.) “Maybe a little strict.”

I swallowed a bite of sandwich. “Yeah, but I like him. I think the whole frequent-chair-test thing freaked some people out, though.”

“I'm going to be dead last in my section.” Julia sighed. “I wish Rory or Claire had made advanced band so I wasn't the only seventh-grader. We had so much fun in clarinet class last year.” She pulled a banana out of her lunch bag. “You guys are lucky to be in the same section.”

Natasha and I smiled at each other uncomfortably. Julia was acting like we were friends already. Because she expected us to be, I realized.

I decided to give it a shot.

“So do you miss your old school?” I asked Natasha, picking at my crust.

She shrugged. “It was okay. I mean, I miss my friends, of course. But they're all on IM, so we still chat a lot. Oh, and we had a
really
good debate team.”

She started talking about some debate contest she won and how she'd been captain of the sixth-grade team. I smiled and nodded, bored out of my mind. How could Julia not hear how full of herself her new friend was?

Stop it
, I told myself. Julia liked Natasha, and she wanted me to like her, too. I needed to at least give her a chance. Even though she talked about herself a
lot
. And had my backpack. And her nails were professionally manicured and matched her shirt. I stared at her hands, blinking.

This girl was cutting her sandwich with a plastic knife and fork.

She could not be serious.

“So I came in early this morning, and they fixed my schedule.” Natasha put down the knife and reached for a bag of M&M's. I had a quick mental image of her daintily cutting each one in half and tried not to laugh.

“Is debate fifth period?” Julia asked.

Natasha shook her head, pulling out her schedule. “No, seventh. I've got math fifth.”

“Me too!” Julia squealed, and I grimaced. She glanced at me. “You and I have seventh together, right? Computer lab?”

“Yup.”

The three of us spread our schedules on the table (the red and purple map stayed in my bag), and I did a quick assessment. Other than band, Julia and I only had computer lab together. She and Natasha had math and history. Natasha and I were in the same Spanish class during sixth.

Something to look forward to. Stellar.

“Look look look,”
Natasha hissed suddenly, grabbing Julia's arm and pointing. We all looked up as Seth Anderson passed our table. Julia's face turned bright pink.

“She likes him,” Natasha told me with a confidential smile.

I raised my eyebrows at Julia. “Really? We had a few classes with him last year, and she never mentioned it.”

Julia rolled her eyes, clearly trying not to smile. “I don't
like
him. He's in our history class, and I told Natasha he kind of looks like Garrett.”

“Who's Garrett?” I was getting annoyed, fast.

Julia and Natasha both sighed, then giggled. I picked up my bag of chips, attempting to arrange my face into an expression that didn't suggest this was the worst lunch period of my life.

“Garrett was this guy at Lake Lindon.” Julia watched me struggle to open the stupid bag. “Another clarinet player. We went to the dance together.”

“She
kissed
him!” Natasha exclaimed, and the bag exploded in my hands. They both leaned back as chips scattered across the table. I stared at Julia.

“What?”

She ducked her head, grinning and sweeping the crumbs into a pile. “I didn't want to tell you on the phone. But yeah. It happened at the dance.” Natasha was doing a little happy dance in her seat. I wanted to puke.

This girl knew about Julia's first kiss before I did.

If there isn't already an actual handbook on best-friendship out there somewhere, there should be. I'd be happy to make it, actually (think of all the potential charts). And I already had a working table of contents in my head. In the chapter called “First Kisses,” section one, paragraph one, would say:

Your best friend is the
first
person you tell. No exceptions.

I tried to smile and nod along as Julia told me all the details (
too late
). Then Natasha was off about some other stupid boy at the stupid dance at stupid Lake Lindon, and I tuned out completely.

Staring across the cafeteria, I spotted a familiar smile. Aaron Cook was sitting with a group of guys a few tables away. I didn't really know the rest of them, but some were wearing football jerseys. One of them said something, and Aaron laughed. His eyes kind of squinted when he laughed. And he had creases on both sides of his mouth, like smile parentheses.

For a second, I felt a lot better. Then he glanced up and saw me, and I stared down at my apple slices, horrified. (Horrified and maybe a little excited. I mean, he
looked at me
! That was a good sign, right?)

Natasha and Julia were standing, crumpling up their bags. Apparently I'd missed the bell ringing.

“So you've got science next, right?” Julia asked. She was looking at me funny. I couldn't blame her—I probably looked pretty strange.

“Yeah.” I tried to turn so that my back was to Aaron when he left the cafeteria. Julia hugged me.

“We need to catch up,” she whispered in my ear. “Seventh period?”

I nodded. “See you then.”

I watched her and Natasha walk off to their math class. Then I strapped on the Beacon of Nerdiness and headed the other way. The halls were swarming again. Weird that I felt so alone.

The science lab smelled funny. There were several rows of desks in the middle of the room, and small workstations with two stools each lined both walls. I slumped into the nearest desk without looking around and put my head on my arms.

I'd passed apoplectic. Now I really just wanted to go to bed.

When the bell rang, Mrs. Driscoll introduced herself and started the whole first-day spiel all teachers were required to do. I probably should've paid closer attention because this one included lab-safety stuff—what to do in case of broken glass, how to use the fountain in the back in case of burns—but my eyelids were drooping.

Can't. Fall. Asleep
. I stared at the huge, brightly colored periodic table of elements on the wall and let my eyes cross so that the colored sections started to move and blur. It kind of looked like
Tetris
.

“Bring your Safety Rules handout and a pencil—everything else can stay at your desk.”

My head snapped up. The whole class was moving, heading to the workstations. I grabbed my handout and pencil and stood up. Everyone was pairing up—Mrs. Driscoll must have told us to pick a lab partner
.
Uh-oh.

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.

“H
e 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.