The Conductor

Chapter Six- Miranda

I stood alone, a crowd of music stands and piles of standard school chairs on the edges of the room. The main music stand stood in front of me. In case you were wondering, yes, I was in the Band Room.

I was waiting for Mr. Jones to come in so I could talk to him, but instead of wasting time I was putting my Saxophone on the handy dandy cart I used to carry it around on. It was extremely heavy and hard to carry, so I used a cart, like one of those carts you find when people are moving in a new house or something.

While I was putting the bungee cord around the huge wooden chest that contained my horn I suddenly heard footsteps entering the room, and wasn't very surprised to find Mr. Jones walking in the door way.

"Hey, Mr. Jones!" I greeted him.

"Hi, Miranda." he replied.

"So, what was the brand of mouthpiece you exchanged with me the other day?"

"Uh, let me see."

Mr. Jones started to push around the many different objects on his, of course, unorganized, cluttered desk until he finally found what he was looking for, a black, faded, Tenor Saxophone mouthpiece with a guard and ligature on top of it. He pulled the guard and the ligature off and turned the mouthpiece to face him.

"Belmont, it looks like." he replied after a few seconds of close examination.

"Alright, I will look for a Belmont mouthpiece this weekend. My mom said she probably won't be able to buy one until she gets paid again, which isn't until next week, probably."

"Okay. Whatever works is fine."

"But I appreciate you letting me borrow yours. It make it, like, 50,000,000,000 times easier to play it."

Mr. Jones nodded in response. I stood in the south half of the room in awkward silence for a few seconds.

"Was there anything due in Concert Band for next week?" I asked.

"I can't recall anything at the moment, you'll have to check the pass off sheet."

"Okay. That probably won't do much because that sheet confuses me a bit, but not enough to get me totally lost."

"Well, I guess that's good. That's as much as I can do to help you as students to keep on track. How's it going on your Clarinet?"

"Eh, I guess it's okay. I'm still having a lot of issues with playing over the break, but I'm working on it at least." I replied.

"Good. It takes a lot of practice. Sometimes I wonder if you practice a bit too much?"

"You of all people?!?"

Mr. Jones nodded.

"Well, my parents say that I practice too much, but I say I don't practice enough."

Mr. Jones laughed in response. I smiled. It was true. I loved to play my instruments, and a lot.

Suddenly, out of what felt like nowhere, there was a very loud, mysterious sound, that sounded like splitting wood.

"What was that?!" I said, turning to Mr. Jones. His face was as pale as flour. He looked terrified.

"Mr. Jones?" I asked. "Are you alright?"

He stared at the floor, his mouth gaping open. After a few moments, he turned to face me and slowly shut his mouth. He swallowed hard as he said, "I'm sorry, but I'm leaving now and I can't leave you unattended, so I have to have you leave as well."

"Alright." I reluctantly, but instantaneously and willingly agreed.

Mr. Jones threw his coat on, picked up his keys and bag and I followed him out the door.

"What about Jason?" I asked. Jason was Mr. Jones' son, and he was on the wrestling team, which met after school on a day to day basis.

"I'll come to pick him up later." said Mr. Jones, walking swiftly down the cafeteria hallway and out into the commons.

In a flash, he was gone, which meant I had to go to play rehearsal now. I was in the school production of Annie Get Your Gun. I wasn't anything interesting, just in the ensemble.

I silently, swiftly towed my Saxophone into the cafeteria, set my things down amongst the infinitive pile of backpacks, and joined Megan on the steps of the stage, leaving me to think about what could have possibly caused Mr. Jones to panic and leave at the sound of splitting wood.