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andante

adverb. a moderately slow tempo; walking pace.

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THURSDAY LUNCHTIME, I TAKE A detour to the Music Department on my way to the Mathematics building.

On the notice board outside the band room, in neat rows of white, either Mr. Scott or Keller has stapled plastic sleeves full of sheet music. I rise onto my tiptoes, one hand rifling around a clear file for the percussion section leader audition music.

My eyes flit over the sheet music, the two vertical bars of the percussion clefs, then the barrage of notes that we'll have to master by audition and interview week. So many flams. I hate it. It's called Amoretto.

In the percussion folder there's the option to audition either on the tenor or snare parts. For a moment I consider removing all the copies of the snare sheet music, just to delay Callum's practice by a day or so, and then the papers get plucked clean out of my hand.

I turn around with a withering smile. Ash blond locks, angular jawline, strong, straight nose and full lips that somehow make the hallway feel a touch darker, more smoky and illicit. He looks even more cherubic than usual today.

"Thanks for reserving me a copy," he says cheerfully.

"Vierra." That's what I get for even considering pettiness. A summons of the Devil. "May the best drummer win."

His warm brown eyes narrow arrogantly. "Not the best drummer."

"What?"

"Well, it's not about the best drummer, is it?" he says, one hand keeping his skateboard balanced vertically on its edge. "You can be a musical prodigy but being section leader is about leadership. Teamwork. A social role. Being supportive, confident, available."

Wow. Not at all patronizing. 

Of course I know this already. Section leaders at Halston University are a precious part of the band culture. Choosing them is an investment into the rapport, discipline and dynamic of next year's marching band. It will make or break sections, which will make or break the band.

I know what Callum thinks of me. He thinks I'm a shrew, a social puppeteer, heartless—the whole anti-love, anti-people misconception. For the record: this is intentional, on my part.

"I can perform the emotional labor required by the job," I say, and as soon as Callum hears this he cracks a wry smile, as if my verbiage proves his point. I'm not relatable enough to be section leader. I have a Math lecture to get to. I fish out another copy of the Amoretto snare part and brush past him, the bare skin of my shoulder ghosting past his tanned forearm. He's warm like a candle, and I feel burned.

He drawls, voice fading as I turn the corner, "Good luck for the audition."

"I don't need luck," I call, not looking behind me.

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My roommate in the halls of residence is Renata.

Renata is a Chemistry major, and I'm a Math and Philosophy double-major. We met in our freshman year, shuffled into the same room, and we became best friends by drunkenly psychoanalyzing our past traumas together. Every year since, we've requested each other as roommates. We are two self-aware screw-ups and if there is a person with whom I'd ever trust my love, it's her.

When I unlock our door and step inside after classes finish, she's lying supine on her bed, a serum paper mask plastered across her face. Her headphones are screwed into her ears, and I already know she's either listening to a true crime podcast or the recording of a Chemistry lecture she missed.

Her appearance is deceiving right now, but she's next-level impressive. Renata is a championing member of Halston University's Women in Science Association. Between herself and her committee of badass women, they're intent on dismantling the patriarchy one molecule at a time. (Unfortunately, it's as slow as it sounds.)

Renata removes one earphone and asks, "When dinner?" to the ceiling. (She abandons articles and conjuctions ironically. When there's a live music gig: we go? Over direct messages: how weekend?)

I hang my Science Faculty tote bag on the handle of my closet, and grab my drumsticks from my desk.

People can immediately tell which half of the room belongs to whom. The way I relate to space, money, people is different from Renata, from Callum, from most people. I live ready to leave at a moment's notice, and I never let myself form deep attachments to objects or people. How little I'd grown up with, and how little I let myself keep now.

My room reflects this. I have a desk pushed up against the front edge of my bed, littered with books, my tech, my skincare and random stationary. If someone opened the closet, they'd see a few staple items that I wear and wash every week. My room would be called minimalist if I was rich—but because I'm not, it's minimal in the other way.

Lacking. Bare.

Blank walls with dents that have been spackled but not painted over, whereas Renata has concert and movie posters, pictures of her family, a Halston U banner she picked up last orientation week, a string of fairy lights girding her ceiling. By way of decoration, my empty suitcase and full laundry hamper sit under the bed. A potted monstera plant that Renata generously puts on my side of the room sits on the windowsill. I'm glad for her small touches, and for the room's tiny size, because it makes it feel less empty.

"I'm going to practice until six," I tell her. I remove my phone and black music folder from the tote bag, opening the door ten seconds after I entered. "I'll come get you for dinner when I'm done, okay?"

"Okay," Renata says. "Have fun!"

I'm so grateful for her. I didn't realize how exhausting it was to shove your soul into a neat little package until, suddenly, you had someone who you could completely unwind around.

This residence hall has a music rooms on the basement floor, and they're available to book. I'm a regular here because, aside from the drums in the band room and drum storage, I don't have any instruments of my own to use. Each time I consider moving into an apartment for more personal space, I think about losing access to the drum kit. Sure, although the Music Department lets us borrow practice pads—slabs of rubber glued to a portable wooden frame, a poor but passable imitation of the properties of a real drum—there's nothing like having a kit in the place you live.

I consider myself a musical underdog. I never had a formal music education, and I never joined any ensembles in high school. When I think of how I learned to drum, I think of walking through a desert, slurping round little water droplets from the center of cactus flowers. Any knowledge, any music room availability, any chances—I took. I clawed my way to where I am now.

With only two weeks until the selection leader auditions and interviews, I need to squeeze in all the practice that I can get. In the basement, I sit down on the low rickety stool and feel around for the latch the side of the snare drum, flicking the metal beads up against the bottom.

Amoretto is a real monster of a piece. It starts with a rimshot, then threads the usual rudiments—paradiddles, flams, doubles—into an unending barrage of semiquavers. Recommended BPM is 120, which I set on my phone's metronome app. The player travels from drum center to drum edge, and ripples their sticks. But the end is a controlled thunderstorm, one we can't rush nor lag behind.

There are features to test us, test our control and eye for detail; lots of dynamic markings; one bar has a triplet semiquaver pattern where our right hand hits the first two semiquavers in a double stroke, and then our left hand needs to pass over the other arm to strike the rim of the player next to us, the next beat the the rim of the player on our other side.

This is Maude Keller's annual tactic—the audition piece is going to show up at band camp, and feature in one of our shows. Having all the candidates learn it will ensure that the whole band leadership knows the piece inside and out when the rest and the rookies join in next academic year.

After my practice ends, stomach complaining for food, I take the lift back up to Renata's and my room. Drumming takes all the anxiety out of me and channels it into furious sound. It makes me feel so competent, so in control, so safe.

She's peeled off her serum mask and refashioned her hair into a ponytail. Her dark skin is glowing like a pearl. A hopeful smile stretches across her shiny lips. "We eat?"

I nod, my wrists rubbery and my nervous energy depleted. "We eat."

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At dinner, Renata convinces me to come to the next WISA bar quiz and I inform her about the race for section leader. I know to anyone else in any other corner of the university (hell, even the band) this is not a big deal.

To me, it is.

"I'm glad it's the band directors choosing the section leaders," I remark, "and not the band by something as idiotic as democracy."

"Why?" Renata asks, thin eyebrows upturned. The dining hall is filling up, but we managed to snag one of the booth seats in the corner of the cafeteria.

I swallow my mouthful of salad before saying, "Voting for your friends just turns the competition into a popularity contest, and I know Callum would win any popularity contest."

I hate Callum but I don't wish him any illness or harm. We've settled into an intense but familiar rivalry over the years, with clearly defined boundaries. Not schoolwork. Not our social lives, which overlaps immensely because of band. At this point, all my friends are also his friends. (The logical inverses and converses are not true, because he's so damn sociable.)

Just drumming and insults.

Here's why I hate Callum: I resent Callum for taking the easy way to success. He coasts on his privilege and always chooses comfort over reality. And infuriatingly, I resent him as much as I respect him. Here he is now, twenty-one, one of the most exceptional drummers I've ever met. He understands tempo and restraint perfectly, has musical intuition like I've never known. I have the musical theory, but he has the sight-reading. I have the discipline, but he has the improvisation. I had to work so hard, so fast for what I have, and still if I got told to wing something, I would choke.

Then there's the fact he, the most popular and adored person in the entire marching band, plays people as well as he plays music. I envy his talent, the social talent, the type that can't be trained or practiced into perfection. Maybe I needed to Google one of these days to find out: how to put stars in people's eyes. Because that's what Callum does, without even trying.

Renata nods like she knows. (She does. She's met Callum; all my friends are his friends for a reason.)

"So thank God it's not a vote," I chuckle, only half-joking. If it was, section leader would just be the crowning feather in his cap of accolades. The first and last freshman in the previous five years to make the drumline; section leader in his senior year; part of a legacy, a family of Halston musicians that left something to the future generation.

Once Toby Minhas graduated, Callum started hosting all the band parties at his house. He's on texting terms with both Mr. Scott and Maude Keller. He can make strangers obsess over him. He has inside jokes with every single musician, which I saw when yesterday he reunited with the rest of the drumline from last marching season, all of them sitting together like a gaggle of frat boys.

The memories I have of him, unfortunately, keep growing and growing, and yesterday I added this to the collection: as I strode away from the Music Department, I heard the rest of the band leadership expression-of-interest meeting attendees spill out into the dusky afternoon. Callum's voice was unmistakable among them as he called everyone to a party, face tipped to the sky and hands cupped around his mouth.

Basically Tony Minhas (What do we do at Halston U?) but blond and wealthy. I could almost picture him on the football green running next year's drumline auditions, my imagination and my recollection perfectly superimposed on each other.

So I know. I know Callum Vierra was born for this, probably sucking on a pair of silver drumsticks in the cradle.

But I want it more.

I've wanted it ever since that first day in freshman year. I'm in love with the entire affair: the band, the sweat, the passion that radiates from every artist with their instrument in hand. Whether that's a baton, wrought brass, or wooden drumstick.

I feel like my life didn't really start until I came to college and joined the band.

I think of Lien, Lord and Saviour, who is like the older sister I never had.

This band is the family I never had.

In freshman year, I went to the first party of my life at Toby Minhas' house. I walked in, the smell bowled me over—sweat, perfume, alcohol, all acidic—and the red solo cups, the thudding music, the smell, did something to me more visceral than any boy had ever done. I'd seen parties in teen movies, and read about them in web novels, but I had never been to a party of my own. I was never in one place long enough to form lasting friendships, to be anything except the quiet new girl, to conscionably join any ensembles knowing I might leave just as quickly.

So when Lien put a red solo cup into my hand said, "Don't worry. Its percentage is lower than Toby's IQ," which made Toby swear at her, which made their entire circle of drummers laugh, I nearly cried from joy.

You ever have those moments that feel like something worth making a movie about, cinematic soundtrack and mood lighting and all? You just know it's a memory in the making. You want to pull out your phone and capture it all on camera, but it's impossible to document joy, blurry and bubbling, and preemptive nostalgia like that.

Lien taking me under her wing was one of them. She made me realize I wasn't being wrenched away from Halston anytime soon. I was here for the next four years. I had time. I could grow tall and spread roots.

I told Lien about my life before college: "I didn't grow up with a lot, so when I realized being part of the band is all paid for, fuck. I was so happy. Money doesn't matter." They had equipment I could borrow and uniforms supplied. Transport and competition fees, I didn't have to think about these things. All I had to pay was hard work.

"It's good, right? Only thing that matters is the music, Bay," Lien said. "Wait till they set us up in a hotel for the away game. It's not gonna be swanky, but it'll be free."

I know how to be a good leader. This is not about beating Callum. He takes up way less of my headspace than his massive ego thinks. What Lien did for me I'll do for my team. Open arms, patience, always being there to help.

Welcome to the band family, this will be your home.

God knows it is mine.

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a / n:

early update this week! the update schedule is roughly weekly, but i have so many chapters pre-written that i'll probably be very random and very generous, especially around holidays or other special events.

do we have any band kids or musicians here? what do you play?

vote, comment & follow if you're enjoying the story!

see you next time,

aimee x