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. playing a measure twice as fast as originally written.
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DO I SEEM LIKE A camping girl?
No? That's what I thought also.
Callum insisted on keeping our first date a secret—he needed over a week to 'plan' and 'gather supplies' which troubled me. My only instruction was to meet him at his house, after I ate dinner on Friday, dressed comfortably and warmly. So I walked over, and he drove us through the main road of Halston, onto the highway on-ramp traveling inland, and finally onto successively wilder roads in the forest.
Callum drives with the sunset on his cheek, rays of sun squeezing through his matted hair, around his angular jawline, like a crown of light. The air conditioner warms the car and I choose an acoustic indie folk album to background the ride. He's oblivious while driving—periodically taking my hand and kissing the back of it—to my awe, my gratitude. How did this happen? How did I end up with him?
He let me choose the music, and we bounced conversation on the journey, but when the roads turned from butter-smooth into potholed asphalt to gravel roads and then to trodden dirt paths fringed by trees, I said, "Either we're camping or this whole year has been your grand plan to dispose of me once and for all. No-one's ever going to find my body."
"How did you know?"
"Kill me, please," I responded.
"Come on, baby," Callum cajoled, "it'll be fun. I promise."
For a second I thought Callum didn't know me at all, but when we arrived at the campsite (a network of clearings in the woods, one information kiosk—displaying the walking trails and descriptions of native flora and fauna—with a water tap on the side of the building and one long drop toilet down an uncomfortably spongy path) Callum told me, "You have two great loves, Bay. Music and ingesting substances."
Popping open the trunk, Callum brought out the picnic basket, which contained bags of Doritos, a packet of sugar-coated gummy worms (which I later discovered were edibles), a bottle of champagne, and a ziploc bag fulled to rotundness with weed. My mouth dropped open, and my eyes ignited with a hunger on the last item.
"I have never loved you more," I whispered. Callum tipped his head back and laughed, setting the basket down to start unpacking the other contents of the trunk.
Now, I'm sitting on the lip of the trunk, watching Callum try to set up the tent by himself. "Let me help," I sigh, when the tent pole pops out of its sleeve before Callum can arch the fabric and hammer the pegs into the ground.
