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...
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SHANE HAD A PLAN TO get Bay to return to the Halston Student Orchestra.
She was going to assemble all of Bay's favorite parts on all her favorite instruments and make a grand plea, but I told her it wouldn't work. Bay's not going to be a percussionist in HSO, or center snare in the drumline, or play kit in the pep band, or tour to any local high schools, or show up to any of the winter season sport games, or attend the drum clinics, or perform in the Spring Recital.
Nada, nothing.
She's out—and she fucking left me to deal with the aftermath. One morning in January she just up and left all the Facebook groups and group chats, without a goodbye or an explanation. Guinness World Records would have lauded Bay for the speed at which she ejected herself from all our lives.
Then I had to deliver that bullshit excuse about her wanting to hustle hard for a postgraduate scholarship, promise that she would come watch our shows and recitals, and explain that her emotionless departure was because she really hates goodbyes. I didn't want anyone thinking ill of her, or having their feelings hurt.
Every percussionist was shell-shocked—Bay was always the most dedicated player—some were even disheartened, but I think Shane and I were the only ones to get heated, the ones who wanted to fight. (I mean, I wanted to fight when I first found out, but Bay killed that.)
"She's gone," I said to Shane, probably a touch too sternly, but I needed her to stop prodding me for more information about why Bay didn't come back this semester. It hurt too much. "I don't know why. You can ask her yourself."
I do know why. Because of me. Because I made the deadly mistake of asking an attachment-phobe to go on a date, and now I've been cold-shouldered like all her other ex-trysts. Each time I tried to get through to her, she went on the defensive. And maybe that was all my fault. Maybe it was warranted, given our history, and how I'd treated her. Maybe that wall around her heart that I wanted to scale was built by my own hands.
There are only four HSO percussionists this semester: me, Shane, Maria from drumline and a Music major (specializing in classical piano) who insists on taking all the tuned percussion parts. Band (all of them, any of them) feels different without Bay. Colder, hollower, less enjoyable. There's a her-shaped hole in every rehearsal, when Shane leaves an opening for a quick-witted barb and no-one takes it and my imagination inserts what Bay would have said, when someone loses sheet music or snaps a pencil lead and there's no quick replacement, when Keller instinctively looks around for Bay before starting the warm-ups, only to remember that there's only one percussion section leader this semester.
