2 5

fall in

imperative. commanding the ensemble to take their formations.

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BAY WORKED EVERY DAY OF fall break, not to mention studied every day of midterms week. So after nearly two weeks without her, I have started to feel restless, fidgety. It feels like missing her, but it's not emotional. Our sex is just great stress relief. My body is in withdrawal, is all.

Bay sits me on the edge of the bed, kneeling on the floor, working my cock deep into her mouth. When I twine her hair around my palm, she blinks headily at me, tongue swirling around the tip. I take that as an encouraging sign, so I tighten my hold, and she gives an appreciative moan that rockets straight down the length of me and into my gut. Then we climb under the covers, she climbs on top of me, and rocks her hips against mine, her soft, repeated cries of pleasure smothered into my shoulder. Her orgasm catalyzes mine, and I dig deep, deeper into her until she pants, "Callum," over and over.

My name has never sounded so good.

Early November is the perfect temperature for sex, all warm breath and body heat with minimal sweat. After, we sprawl out, Bay supine on the mattress, my chin resting on her sternum. When I look at her, it's so unthinking that it feels merely like my eyes' oldest habit.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Her fingers coil and uncoil in my hair, lazy and relaxed.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm a puzzle to solve," she remarks. "Just ask whatever it is. I'm not easily offended."

I already know things about Bay that her regular flings could never, a fact that fills me with cockiness, and still I want to know more. But between sex and soft pillow talk and thinly-veiled insults and keeping the entire rest of the world out of it, our situation is unstable enough. I don't want to say the wrong thing and make us go nuclear again—though in that case, maybe I'd accept the blame for once.

"How did you end up in foster care?"

She purses her lips and frowns at me. Staying silent, I lower my lips to the skin between her breasts and lay a soft kiss there. "You don't have to answer."

"Stop coddling me. I'm not sensitive about it," she replies. "My mom had recurring drug problems—ironic, I know, that I use them now. I entered the custody of the state while she was supposed to get better, but she died from a drug overdose. All her relatives were in the Philippines, but I was a US citizen, so I just stayed in the system. There was no-one who could take me in."

"Oh, my God."

"No, it's— I was so young," Bay tells me, "I remember very little of her."

"But not nothing?"

She has hazy memories of her mother, before they were separated. Her mother would braid her hair tightly, get annoyed if there were stray strands left out, but always patiently undo the whole thing and try again. Bay recalls being given a pair of plastic pink high heels for children, each one made from a transparent glittery rubber strap stretched across a plastic wedge, and clacking around the kitchen in them.

"And the kitchen was tiled with these mint green and black squares, with dirty grout," she says, eyes staring unfocused up at the ceiling. "See, I don't remember my early childhood being bad. I really don't. But the brain blocks out bad things, so I'll never know. I have police reports about events that supposedly went down, being left around sketchy people and drug paraphernalia."

Bay's hands go still in my hair. At length, she admits, "I hesitate to tell people about Mom because they tend to judge her as a bad person. I did, too, when I was younger, like nine to thirteen. I was so bitter towards my mother—why couldn't she just be responsible and not trip into her own preventable death? But when I was a teenager, I learned exactly how shit a human being could be made to feel, and I forgave her. I put myself in her shoes—no family, working for absolute peanuts, unsteady English skills in a country that hated immigrants, just the sheer pressure and loneliness she would have endured. It's my greatest achievement, learning to give my neglectful mother some grace. She tried her best. I feel like she can rest now because I turned out okay."

"That's beautiful," I murmur without thinking. Bay tilts her chin down and quirks her eyebrow at me. "No, sorry, I just meant— like, it's a really merciful thing to do, and it's all inside and no-one would ever know if you didn't tell them. So thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome," she says softly. "Anything else you're wondering?"

"What happened after your mother was gone? What was it like growing up the way you did?"

Bay tells me the story of how she first learned to drum, how she dreamed of rock stardom, how she actually loves the kit, but never has enough time to advance as much as she'd like. Tuned, marching, misc., kit—percussion is a diverse instrument family, and most of the time people have to choose between being jacks of all or masters of one.

She tells me about the Irvings, a large but loving family who fostered her for six months when she was twelve. They'd had foster kids in and out of the household for several years before, and Bay could tell. "They didn't treat me like glass or coin. I was a person there."

Marlon Irving was their college-aged son at the time, and in his absence from the family home, he would encourage Bay to use his drum kit. He taught her her first rock beats in one afternoon, gave her all his old music books, bought her a new pair of drumsticks, and showed her all his favorite online learning resources.

"But I had to leave, of course, before I got anywhere near intermediate," she recounts. "It really broke my heart."

"Have you tried to contact them?"

"No. I know they'd like to hear from me. They liked to hear from all their foster kids. But I would just feel like a guest and not a daughter," she says. "And I have considered it in the years since, whether I love drumming for the sake of drumming, or whether I love drumming because it's my strongest tie to the period of my life when I felt the safest."

I gather her up in my arms, and roll us onto our sides. Bay pretends to hate it, pretends to be fine—but how could anyone be fine? "Alright," she says exasperatedly, tangling her legs in mine. She pulls away to smirk at me. "Your turn. Tell me about your baggage."

"I don't have any."

"Any?"

I smirk. "Well, according to you, I have a charmed perfect life. I have talent and riches. I am beloved by the campus. My family is wonderful, I wanted for nothing. I want for nothing." Present tense.

"It's not about externalities," she says, readjusting her arm pinned between us so that it rests around my neck. Her eyes are coffee, warm and dark and energizing. "It's about those little sadnesses that creep in when nothing is around to distract you. You don't have any?"

I think of Quentin's love troubles and Mom and Dad's world-weariness and Christian's anxieties about starting a new school and Bay's intense overthinking of social dynamics and cannot relate to any of it. I'm an optimist. From her words, I initially don't expect anything to come to me.

But things do.

I think about when my high school friends and I took the yacht trip this summer, lying on the top deck in the middle of the night and ocean, and fearing death. I think about when my maternal grandfather died when I was fifteen, and crawling into Mom and Dad's bed like a toddler. I think about high school bullies, climbing the academic ladder out of self-preservation, and trying my best to seem straight. I think about Christian and how helpless I feel whenever he's hurt.

I think about the little sadnesses that keep me up at night, unable to sleep. Unless I'm with Bay.

It would be wrong to blame her for all the negativity in my life—wrong, but easier. She's like a lighthouse, throwing my submerged hazards into sharp relief. Not the source, but the person illuminating them, and I don't want to feel this way. She's still waiting for an answer, but I can't give it to her.

I don't want to voice that there are things out of my control, things that terrify me, things that can't be solved with unerring optimism and friendliness. I don't even want to acknowledge them. If it means filling my schedule and seasoning my days with new sensation until I have no time to feel this powerless—then I'll do it.

I fake a yawn and shut my eyes. "I don't know. I'm too drained to talk."

Bay chuckles, and doesn't press me. She turns around so that her back is to me, one hand holding my arm around her waist, and this time I love not having to face her because it means the conversation is over. I'm not like Bay. I don't lie. I don't pretend to people's faces. I don't often do the cowardly thing, but now I am.

In freshman year, I didn't want to analyze my bisexuality with her at a party, in all the years since, I've skirted around her philosophical probing, and in my head I made her the aggressor of all conversations. But maybe in freshman year, she just felt something in common with me and asked pertinent, curious questions.

Maybe the real pain I felt was not inflicted by Bay, but by the sensation of having to turn my attention inward, to the endless, ongoing depths of me—like walking down an infinite corridor in the dark. Even though people say introspection is healthy, I hate it. Is this what people talk about when they talk about men repressing their emotions?

Because if so, the big problem is not realizing you're repressed, but to break your own conditioning even when you've realized.

My problem is one of action, not awareness.

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The marching season is over halfway done and everyone can feel it like a cramp that just won't quit.

Marching band is one of those things, when in session, you only ever complain about—then when it's over you'll miss it so much you'll weep.

But right now I'm in the complaining phase.

I hate the laps Keller makes us run, the ambitious sets she chose for our final show, the late practices, which has made me hate the word polishing forever, the extra sectionals Bay and I have to incessantly organize because there's no time that everyone can meet all together, weathering the upperclassmen's pissy attitudes like we aren't just as exhausted. I hate even the damn weather during Massachusetts winters, in which we have to practice no matter what. Rain or shine or snow.

(Mostly rain right now.)

Okay. Vent over. I roll my stiff shoulders in circles, letting the vexation slick off me. "Strap up!"

Just returned from a water break, the rest of the drumline shrugs their marching rigs back on, their shoulders no doubt as sore and back as tense as mine. Bay swipes the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead, coming to stand in her formation beside mine. We're marking time in our usual practice space in the Music Department courtyard, fitting the right marches and slides to the music. It's eight-thirty. We had to start sectionals late because that was the only time all of us would be free from classes, and I hope we can wrap up before ten. Or before this smattering of rain turns into a downpour.

Eclipse is the motif of the third show. When Keller begins the full-band drill rehearsals with a little synopsis of the new show themes, I get the vibe she is a die-hard astrology gal even at fifty-(sixty?)-something years old. "Eclipses are a symbol of renewal and transformation. They complete old cycles and allow us to break into new, healthier patterns. Given moments of darkness, solitude, and heightened attention, they can unearth what we usually leave buried in the subconscious," she said. "Celebrate the old and anticipate the new. There is always light to come."

I mean... I'm not the only one who thinks that sounds totally bohemian, right?

On a more logistical note, Eclipse will be the hardest in terms of music and marching. Amoretto has finally reappeared in the repertoire. The band leadership memorizing Amoretto months and months ago for our auditions helps a shit ton for running sectionals now. On the field, the band splits into Sun, Moon, and Earth, aligning, orbiting, and dissolving into more geometric grid arrangements, which will look fantastic on a stadium scale. However, at the individual scale, we are all hauling ass like we've never hauled before to get to our next dots. My legs are in constant pain.

All this work will be worth it. This is the show we're going to play twice. Once at the football team's away game in Pittsburgh—the marching band is going to Duquesne University for that weekend, and if we weren't so fatigued from the hours of practice every week, we would be bursting with excitement—then to a fresh audience at the Halston University home game against Merrimack.

After that, my four years will be done. Dozens of us will finish off our marching band legacies in December, going out with a bang. I can keep the spirits high until then.

"We're going to run the whole set again," I paste a smile onto my face. "If someone stuffs up, what are gonna do?" (I've already given the drumline this pep talk.)

"Encourage them," everyone mumbles tiredly, "because we're a team."

Bay shakes her head at me, suppressing an amused smile. She thought it was too childish a pep talk to deliver, but she underestimates my persuasiveness.

"That's right. I love you guys," I respond, counting everyone in with four strikes of my drumsticks.

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I am onstage in the Foxhole, more adrenaline than alcohol rushing through my system—though there are copious amounts of both.

On alternate Fridays they have live music nights, which is pretty much like free karaoke but with instruments. Often small-time acts will play here to gain publicity, but any random student can sign their name on a schedule (with a clause to accept fiscal responsibility for any equipment damage they cause) and take the stage. It's the same wooden platform where the DJ deck usually sits, except the staff takes it into the storeroom and brings out a simple three-piece ensemble: keyboard, drumkit, electric guitar, and microphones aplenty.

I came out with a selection of band friends tonight: Quentin, Alice the drum major, and three from percussion: Shane, Robby and Devin. Seven rounds of drinks later, I convinced Shane and Alice to put their names on the sign-up sheet. Alice (who doesn't play any instruments) has become a singer, and Shane (armed with a thin but reliable keyboard repertoire of 80's hits) is tinkling the ivories, dissonant quavers and punchy chords.

"Here I go again. My, my, how can I resist you?!" Alice slurs, one hand curled around the microphone, the other raising a fist in the air. I ease off the drumkit at the chorus, hitting only the hi-hat in crotchets. "Mamma Mia! Does it show again?!"

The dance floor is packed with students, red-faced and all screaming the lyrics back: "My, my! Just how much I've missed you!"

Shane rouses the keyboard and crowd into frenzy as I bust out into a driving beat, admittedly more complex than it had to be. At the front, Quentin and the two boys are whooping and filming us on their phones, flashes on like a spotlight. When I sink into music, any good song, classics, or even a cringey but fun song, it's the closest I can come to flying.

At my slight elevation, I can over the heads of everyone, to the counter. Behind it, Bay is taking orders and expertly making drinks, running the soda gun without even removing her glittering eyes from the person in front of her. Her lips are moving, forming vowels and shaping laughs that I can't possibly hear. She charms and smirks and flirts, the tip jar growing fuller, and all I want is for her to look my way, give me a glare, narrow her eyes, anything.

Look at me.

But she doesn't, not even when I deliver a thundering finish at the end of the song. I hate that I'm the only person who doesn't get to see her smiles.

The crowd bursts into wild applause, our marching band friends cupping their hands around their mouths and cheering. I smile wanly when Alice whirls around drunkenly and gives me two sloppy thumbs up. I hold up a thumb without real vigor, slipping off the stage and finding the Foxhole waitress manning the sign-up sheet.

"Any spaces for more?" I ask.

I remember what Bay told me: how she clawed her way to being a drummer from willpower and nothing else, her childhood dreams of being a rock star, her undying gratitude to Marlon, her first drum teacher, and how little she gets to play kit in college. That's someone who, despite everything she says, who just wants to play music for the love of it, who would never say no to the chance.

For one night, I want Bay to live out some semblance of her dream.

She flicks her eyes down the schedule, "Just. Lucky last. Callum, was it?"

"No," I shake my head. "I'm signing up for someone else."