Chương 21: Coming Home

"Are you going to homecoming?" Olivia stopped in the middle of a melodic scale and lowered her flute.

"Homecoming?"

"Of course, silly!" Emma, who had apparently decided to target Olivia with her constant chattering, giggled.

"The dance is only a couple weeks away, you know!" She stared at the girl. Already? This fast? It shouldn't have been too unexpected. The event always accompanied the football team's first home game after traveling to face other schools—hence the name. Still, having something as major as this happen only four weeks into the school year felt far too soon. Especially for Olivia. … I'm really, really not looking forward to opening that can of worms yet. Her gaze drifted toward the saxophones despite herself.

But the curly haired boy was a junior. He wasn't in this class. Emma gasped, her hands darting to her cheeks with sudden realization.

"Oh. My. Gosh! We should all go together! Think about it—the freshman flutes do homecoming!" She didn't even have a chance to respond before Emma was already rounding upon the others.

"Luna? Chrissy? Madison? You don't have any plans, right? You should join us! It'll be awesome!" Olivia raised her eyebrows in amusement. Bold. I never even answered that I was going. There was also the very real possibility that the others did have plans, possibly even dates. Though honestly, if any of the freshmen girls had managed to snag a date after only two weeks of school, Olivia would have been shocked. Shocked and perhaps more than a bit concerned.

The enormity of Emma's presumption became abundantly clear as one of the flutes scratched her neck.

"Actually… I've already got a group I'm going with." The girl named Madison shrugged.

"Sorry." Huh. Kind of ironic that the one who goes on to become section leader isn't a part of this whole debacle. Emma remained completely unperturbed despite the setback. She whirled on the other three.

"Still! We can make a group with the four of us! Oh my gosh, we should go dress shopping! And do our hair beforehand, and…" The girl continued to spin an increasingly elaborate web of plans without waiting for input from the others. She still had yet to confirm whether or not they wanted to go along with the idea. Normally, Olivia might have objected. She'd gone straight from finding out about homecoming to having the day rather thoroughly planned out for her. But this was exactly what had happened last time.

Emma had swept them all up and dragged them along by sheer force of personality for both dress shopping and homecoming itself. It was the only reason Olivia had gone in the first place. On one hand, the prospect of this remaining the same was a reassurance. At least some things were progressing as expected. On the other hand, it meant that she really would have to confront the same series of events that she knew were barreling toward her. Olivia shifted her attention to the other two flutes being targeted by Emma.

The ever-agreeable Chrissy was nodding excitedly at the prospect, while Luna said nothing. The considerably quieter girl simply hid behind her long bangs meekly. Emma took the silence as implied assent and grinned.

"Perfect! I'm so excited! There's plenty of places to go dress shopping at the mall. It'll be so much fun!'

"When do you want to do all of this?" Olivia asked. Emma tapped her chin.

"Ummm…"

"How about Saturday, after practice?" Chrissy chimed in.

"Does that work?' When no one voiced an objection, Emma clapped.

"Saturday it is, then! I'm so excited!" The sound of Ms. V clapping cut through the chatter and music.

"All right! Let's begin, shall we?" Class began without further delay. They continued practicing the first movement of the show, skipping over the murderously difficult chunk at the start for the moment in favor of learning the music's general shape. The movement was titled "Spring" in keeping with the overall theme of the show, and featured arrangements of a few spring-themed pieces to match. Olivia recognized most of those references, having listened to the source material. Their renditions…

Well, they left a lot to be desired. But most of the hard work there would be done with their individual sections for now. As usual, Olivia found herself quite enjoying the process. They'd taken the tempo down significantly for the sake of the freshman class. That meant that she had no trouble keeping up. It also freed up her attention to get the details right, turning the simple string of correct notes into actual music. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road.

If you see it on Amazon, please report it. She spat out a series of aggressively sharp stings before dropping to a mere whisper. The whisper grew and grew over the course of a long sustain until she and the rest of the band filled the room with a wall of sound. They cut off as they reached the end of the section, though the end of the note was more of a jagged edge than a singular clean line. Ick. I think I went a bit sharp there at the end. Need to keep that under control better.

It wasn't like anyone would call her out for it. The constant warbling disagreement between the rest of the flutes made it clear that tuning was an area they'd all need to work on. But she wanted to hold herself to a higher standard. They continued repeating the same section over and over, working to hone the rough blob of sound into something more refined and musical. Olivia felt herself improving with each rep, though the same couldn't be said for everyone. Every time Ms.

V called them to focus on one aspect of the music, it felt as though the kids forgot about the others they'd just worked on. It was a real one step forward, two steps back kind of situation. They continued on like that until the bell signalled the day's conclusion. Class transitioned smoothly into afterschool practice, where coach Bryan once again brought them outside for marching. They arranged themselves in a familiar grid formation across the grass and began a warmup of slow marching in place.

Olivia brought each foot up one after the other, doing her best to separate the movement of her legs from anything that her upper body was doing. A mental picture of what she wanted filled her mind. The example Bryan set made the man look like an absolute statue from the waist up. And while it was impossible to see herself without a mirror, the very slight movements she perceived let her know that she wasn't quite hitting the mark yet. Up, up, up—lift up out of those hips.

Think less statue, more floating above my own legs…

"Ready… halt!" The drum majors called out in time with the metronome. The whole band planted their feet in unison, remaining still in the aftermath of the exercise. Well, mostly. Olivia saw more than a few wiggles and shifts as some of the less disciplined kids adjusted.

"Relax. Eyes here." The kids dropped their arms and turned to face their coach. The sharp slaps of his sandals echoed across the field as he walked toward the center of the formation, his passage followed by at least seventy pairs of eyes. He pulled off his reflective sunglasses to take in the group.

"I'm seeing a lot of people swaying side to side as we switch feet. The goal is to keep your weight centered the whole time. The better you can do that, the easier it'll be to keep the habit between steps when marching." Coach Brian kept walking as he spoke before coming to a halt near Olivia. He turned and looked directly at her.

"Let's have a demonstration. Olivia?" Me? She blinked with surprise, unsure whether she heard the guy correctly. But it was hard to contest when he was still staring directly at her. He'd called on other band members before to demonstrate various techniques and exercises, of course. But never a freshman. And certainly not her. So why?

"I'll count you off. Set!" There was barely time to protest before she stiffened to attention. Coach Brian began clapping out a steady rhythm that carried nearly as well as the metronome.

"Five… six…" She filled in the last four beats with a series of duts before restarting the exercise. Just as before, she focused on making her technique as perfect as possible. One might have expected her to feel nervous or uncomfortable as every eye fell on her, and that would have certainly have been true before. But now? Olivia had stood in front of entire lecture halls packed with college students and lectured to them for an hour straight. A brief moment of demonstration like this was nothing next to that.

Especially since she did feel relatively confident in her skills here, despite the ample room for improvement. Coach Brian began to narrate as she marched in place.

"Watch how her head stays in the same place. She's drawing herself up as her foot rises, then maintaining that height as it lowers. Not sinking down, not letting her weight shift from side to side." It is? I swear that I can still feel myself swaying a little bit. Maybe the marching coach was simply giving her more credit than she was due. Then again, the guy had never been one to accept "good enough." So maybe she really was doing that well?

"Ready… halt." She finished and placed her feet carefully on the grass. Coach Brian motioned for her to relax and nodded.

"Thank you." A scattering of claps rose from the band, a formality whenever someone performed an example like this. She didn't have enough of an ego to think that it was because of her outstanding performance. But the fact that Coach Brian had picked her at all served as affirmation enough. And though his expression never changed, Olivia thought that she could read a note of approval there. He raised his voice.

"Run it again. Focus on lifting up and out of your hips this time." Just like that, the coach headed for the sideline and everyone shifted to face forward again. A few appraising gazes lingered on Olivia for a bit longer, though. The first belonged to one of the trumpets she recognized. He was a senior, a tall boy who was at the top of their entire band when it came to marching. His brow furrowed with the slightest of frowns as he evaluated her.

Whether it was because he'd found her display impressive or wanting, she couldn't tell. But that boy wasn't the one that caught her attention. It was the other one that she couldn't help but stare at. The curly haired tenor saxophone near the edge of the formation. She stared at him despite herself. It was the first time he'd really noticed her. At least, she was fairly certain of that. It wasn't surprising, given that he was a junior and she was just a freshman. Even a single year age gap mattered a whole lot now.

But she'd been paying more attention than she'd like to admit, sneaking glances over at him and his section whenever she wasn't otherwise occupied during practice. As their eyes met, he smiled. A confident smile, charismatic and more than a little bit cocky. His gaze didn't waver in the slightest, shockingly green irises sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.

"Set!" She turned away quickly and snapped to attention. A queasy feeling roiled in her gut. Yeah. I'm really not looking forward to this.