Marching season is out, but the competition is only heating up.
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Section leader applications for the next marching band season at Halston University are officially open, and percussionist Bay Rodriguez wants the role.
Bay's only competition is Ca...
noun. an emphasis followed by a sudden decrease in loudness.
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SOMETHING HAS CHANGED IN CALLUM ever since we came back from Pittsburgh.
Usually, I would describe Callum and his drumming as something innate. He's trained his skill since childhood and can just let the spirit of the music take over his body, whereas to play well I have to concentrate harder not less. I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with him, obviously, performing and then sightseeing and then corralling our percussionists through the check-out, pack-up and bus-boarding processes on our way back to Massachusetts. Monday we didn't see each other, and today we had drill rehearsals in the stadium, as usual.
But throughout all these encounters, Callum didn't have his usual carefree fervor or energy. I don't think he was upset—he was just wholly absent, no spark behind his eyes, his thoughts gone somewhere deep inside of himself. I would ask, but if he trusted me with it, he probably would have brought it up already.
In advance of Thanksgiving break (for which Callum is going home like the dutiful son he is, and I am staying on campus like the daughter of no-one I am) we see each other one more time. I ate dinner with Renata, then went over to his house to have sex, watch a movie, and fall asleep in the middle of it.
I wake up in the dead of night to find Callum at the other end of his bed, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. In the darkness, I can only tell he's awake by the faint reflection off the curve of his eyes.
"What are you thinking?"
He hesitates, I wait.
"I get sad when I slow down," he says, at length, uncertainly. In my sleep-addled mind, the connection takes a while to form, but then I recall the conversation we had about baggage. How everyone has some, despite their privileges.
He's telling me his?
I'm stunned. I didn't think I would ever be a person he would open up to.
I shift closer, slinging an arm over his torso. "What do you mean by that?"
He sighs. "I haven't made peace with mortality. I don't know how to be idle and alone. I have so many friends and pastimes because if I didn't, I would probably self-destruct. I love living so much that when I think about getting old, settling down, and dying that I make myself sad. It's probably vain. It's probably my inner child speaking. But there's my baggage."
"Thanks for telling me," I whisper.
"It's a first-world problem," he responds.
Irritation flares up; not at Callum, at that sentence. It's one of my most hated. "Whose problems are you supposed to have, if not your own?" I reason. Not every sad person can be the neglected child of a neglected child—or should be—and I don't understand why people would want to win the trauma Olympics. When Callum remains silent, I tell him, "Sometimes you need to wrap yourself in sadness."
