25 or 6 to 4 {EDITING}

"Love" at (Twenty)First Sight

I put my book on my chair and approached my eighth grade band director, Mrs. Morse, who had just beckoned me to her desk. She smiled and told me to sit down.

"Okay," she began, "this isn't working out."

Now you notice? I think to myself.

"Most of the students that come in here with an instrument for the first time that have trouble with it won't quit until they get it right. This doesn't seem to be the case with you," she continues. "I don't think you're very fond of the saxophone as you claim to be."

I sighed with relief. Finally someone sees it. I had been playing the saxophone for about four months, and I could never get a sound other than a high-pitch squeak. I had been trying to get the courage to say that I didn't want to play it, but my mom had already spent hundreds of dollars on the last four instruments I've been playing, and I don't want to break it to her that I was quitting another instrument. Again.

I waited for Ms. Morse to tell me to try pit - I had known for a long time that I was never going to be able to play an instrument. Instead, she looked at me for a long moment until finally, she said, "I'm going to put you on the trombone."

I stopped for a second. "Wait, what?" I asked, dumbfounded.

She smiled. "I'll have one of the band members from the high school come in tomorrow. He can go over a scale with you, see if you like it."

"Okay," I said. "Great."

Under the surface, a part of me was screaming.

The trombone? Really? She had to be joking. She couldn't be talking about that one brass instrument with no keys or valves that could only be played by expanding or extracting the structure of the instrument. She couldn't be talking about the thing that I had seen people almost killing each with by whipping it from side to side while the people next to them ducked over. Not the trombone, the instrument that requires a lot of skill to know what note you were playing.

I was going to have a lot of fun tomorrow.

Okay, before we move on, I should probably tell you a little bit about myself. My full name is Kaylee Ann Juniper, and for the past year or so I've been jumping from instrument to instrument trying to find the one I can play. I was in poor schools for the past few years, and they kept saying they had no money to pay for a music program at the school. So, despite my childhood dream to join band, I had to hold back and wait for a time when the school would finally be willing to let the preforming arts department have a share of the sports program's budget to finally get my hands on an instrument. Lucky for me, I didn't have to, since my parents moved us to another town when I was just starting eighth grade. However, I soon found out that eleven years without ever touching a musical instrument had taken its toll - I had no musical talent playing an instrument whatsoever. I had often feared that I would never get the chance to be on the stage playing with the other musically talented players.

The next day during my last period, I was met by a guy about as tall as I was (for once) who carried two trombone cases in his hands. "Hey," he said. "Are you Kaylee?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Hey, I'm Caiden. I think Mrs. Blue asked me to come show you the trombone?"

"That's what I've been told."

"Great, so let's get started, then." I followed him to the locker room.

The locker room is always littered with a few chairs and stands, so it was no trouble finding a seat. Caiden put the two cases on the floor and began to put on of the trombones together. "So, you're thinking about the trombone, huh?" he asked as he tested the slide.