25 or 6 to 4 {EDITING}

Friday Nights

{video shown above is Charge}

Andrea clapped her hands as she sang the few measures of Incantation. "One...two...one, two, three, four."

I ducked down as Jessica twisted to the left. She started early again, I thought.

It had been a two weeks since the last sectionals, and we really needed to practice suicides one more time before the game today. I think it had been 45 minutes since we first started. Granted, we did take a break to practice the other visual of the song, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that I think we were all a little worried about suicides.

"You're still going too slow," Dylan said. Jessica and I were the only ones doing suicides. Everyone else was standing around us, watching. Dylan clapped his hands. "This is the tempo," he said. "Down, up, left, up, down, up, right, up..."

"Yes, but if I go faster, I'm going to hit Jessica in the face," I complained.

"Then hit her!" Dylan said.

Andrea counted us off again. This time, I focused on trying to go faster. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get myself to keep going. I was too scared of hitting her.

I honestly had no idea what to fix. I have this boundary with other people that I'm just physically scared of hurting them, so hitting Jessica really wasn't an option. Besides, as I have said before, if I hit Jessica, I'm going to hit myself. I really wished I could watch myself do suicides so I could see if I was curving or anything. Other times, I just didn't turn far enough with the trombone. This usually occurred when I had been doing suicides for a long time and started to get dizzy or my back started to hurt.

By the time it was 3:30, I felt really frustrated with myself. I was tired, really dizzy, and my back hurt. Not a very good combination. While the rest of the section left to get food before the game, I just put my trombone on a chair, dropped to the floor, and fell asleep until the game.

Personally, I wouldn't really say that I fell asleep. I was just so into my own head that I blocked off everything that was going on around me, and I sort of drifted in and out of reality a few times there. Most of the ideas floating through my head was me complaining about myself again. I hadn't even realized it until much later, but whenever I was sleeping in the band room, it was because I was depressed.

At some point during this period of time, apparently the drums wanted to practice. I really didn't care, I can't sleep when the room is silent. Either way, one of the band kids was trying to tell them to let me sleep. That was shocking. No on ever cared if they were bugging me or not.

Later, I was jolted back into reality when I heard Andrea walk in the door and make a sound when she saw me. I didn't react to it and just buried myself back in my thoughts.

Eventually, I did have to get up, as I heard someone say that we were getting in to our uniforms. My legs had apparently fallen asleep, so I was walking around for about ten minutes trying to get the blood flowing back into them. Andrea was laughing at me the whole time.

Once I had changed into my shorts, I walked down to the dungeon to retrieve my uniform. The coat felt just as heavy as it had last parade. I felt myself starting to sweat just thinking about how hot the game was going to be in that thing.

I can't say that I was at all excited. I am not a big fan of football. That was one thing that lead me closer to want to quit. I was not ready to sit at a football game for a few hours just to play at halftime.

I was so wrong. After that first game, I would give anything to play at the football games.

.

"Band parade rest!" David commanded. Aaron beat the snare twice and the band fell silent.