My Section Leader's Secrets

Chapter Eleven

"TEN MINUTES 'TILL REVEILLE AND STRETCHES!! TEN MINUTES!"

I wake up with a start to the band mom yelling down the hallway.

"Ugh." Fern groans shoving a pillow over her face. "That's it, I'm done. Let's go home."

I laugh as I slide off my spot on the top bunk. "Oh you don't mean that! Come on it'll be fun!" I ignore the daggers Fern is shooting at me with her eyes and bend down to wake up Catie.

"Catie we have to wake up, come on." I say nudging her.

"Oh yeah, time to go to hell!" Fern yells throwing her arms up and shoving her shoes on.

"Would you shut up?" I laugh and sit down to put my own shoes on. "Catie, get up!"

"UUUUUGGGGHHHHHH" Catie groans sliding off the bed and onto the floor.

"Okay, we probably only have a few minutes now. I'm going to go down with Leah. Don't take too long!" I put my sweater on and start out the door.

We're about halfway down the stairs when I hear reveille. It must have slipped my mind that Jackson was going to be the one playing because when we got outside and I saw him playing, I stopped altogether.

"You okay?" Leah asks.

"Yeah I'm good, let's go." I say shaking my head and walking forward.

"He's pretty cute isn't he?" Leah says with a smirk looking over her shoulder.

It takes all of my composure not to glare at her. Right when I'm about to answer, Jackson walks buy us and goes to sit down and I get distracted. Funny, I wasn't tired at all anymore!

"Why the hell are we out here?" Fern grumbles bringing me out of my thoughts.

"We are going to stretch, hence the term 'morning stretches.'" I tell her.

"Why before breakfast though?" She complains.

"Because they want us to be miserable." Catie chimes in pouting.

I shake my head as Stacey starts talking. "Okay, follow along with me and as soon as we get through this, we can all go and eat!"

We spend ten minutes going through movements that make me feel like I was five, until we were finally allowed to go wait for breakfast.

"This is going to be a long day." I remark as we sit down to start eating. "Can I have your grapes?" I ask anyone who's listening.

"Yeah sure." Catie hands me the grapes on her plate. We eat in a tired silence and finally make our way back upstairs to get ready and go to the field again.

"So... we're supposed to remember what we learned yesterday?" Fern asks while putting her instrument together.

"Um yeah." I laugh.

"Well shit."

"Once you get down there, it will be pretty easy to remember I think, because we went over it so many freaking times yesterday." I say. "Hey have you seen my pencils?"

"You literally have seven in your pocket right now." Catie says without even looking at me.

"Well yeah but I had at least ten!"

"Yes, and then you gave me one, and one to Fern."

"Which still leaves one more!" I point out.

"Oh just forget about it already! We're going to be late." Fern yells over us.

"Okay, okay!"

We walk back down the stairs and go out to the picnic tables, because we're way too lazy to stand up and wait. I look over to see Jackson laying like he usually is. I have an idea.

"Watch this." I tell Catie and Fern as I walk over and kneel next to Jackson. He looks so cute and peaceful with his eyes closed.

"Hey." I say nudging him. I laugh at the freaked out look he gets before realizing it's me. "Staring contest, ready go!" I immediately get serious staring at him.

He looks at me with amusement, but it's not quite a smile, so he hasn't lost yet. "You're not going to win." I inform him.

He shrugs and closes his eyes again. I stare at him until Stacey blows the whistle calling us into attention. "Red and white block." She orders with no smile, of course.

We all get into the block and turn right to march down to the field. When we get down there, Mr. Smith is already waiting for us. We waste no time getting into the first set of the first song and running what we already know, which isn't a whole lot.

We reset again and I glance over at Fern who is pretending to stab herself with her mouthpiece.

Everyone says how fun marching band is, but going over the same thing over and over and over again is so boring! Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we got back in our block to march back up for lunch.

"At least we get to rest after lunch for a couple of hours." Catie says as we head back to the dorms.

"Yeah. BOB, butt's on bunks." I laugh.

"I'll get on BOB." Fern shrugs wiggling her eyebrows.

We all laugh and sit down on the green picnic table.

"We have to cleanup this time, so we're going to be last." Jackson tells us as we sit down.

I walk over to him and yell "STARING CONTEST READY GO."

We stand looking at each other for a couple minutes until I start laughing because Kyle is making funny faces behind Jackson.

"That's cheating!" I say.

"Better luck next time!" Jackson shrugs at me.

"Okay Kyle. Ready go!" I say walking over to him.

He rolls his eyes at me, but stares, all the same. He starts moving his eyes back and forth and I follow him which causes us to both to start laughing.

"I win!" I laugh.

"No, we both laughed!"

"Oh whatever."

"Come on, it's time to go in!" Fern says dragging me away.

Still laughing, I grab as many grapes as I can and sit down.

"See you guys are having fun!" I say as I look at my two best friends smiling.

"Just hurry up and eat so I can go get on BOB!" Fern says.

We shovel food into our mouths, grab a Gatorade and go upstairs. We have an hour that we have to sit on our beds and then another hour to do whatever we want and then we have sectionals.

It's impossible to fall asleep because of everyone talking, even though we have to be very quiet or else we'll get in trouble.

"Fern would you stop squeaking your bed?" Leah says, insanely annoyed.

Fern moves back and forth on purpose making the bed squeak louder than it was five seconds ago and smiles at Leah. Leah rolls her eyes and turns to face the wall.

We spend a record of ten minutes completely silent except for the flappy bird sounds coming from Gertrude's phone. Finally BOB time is over and we have an hour of free time. I pick up my phone to call my mom.

"Hi sweetie, how's it going?"

"It's good, we have free time right now. Everyone's working really hard, but it's super fun."

"Good! How are the girls?" she asks.

"Oh, they're good! Fern is on BOB right now so..." I laugh into the phone.

"Tell her to be careful!"

"I will. So our show is super cool beca-" I got cut off.

"Sounds good, I have to go, Olivia needs something. Love you!"

"Love you t-" *click*

Glad nothing's changed.