Drawstrings

Not All Heroes Wear Spandex

I swear I didn't mean for it to turn out like this. I was just a kid with a drawstring hoodie and a dream.

And that dream was to impress a girl.

Rachel McKenna Hall, to be exact. While everyone else at Sunday High School was being the classic immature teenager, Rachel seemed to be warped in time. She was always on a hectic schedule, she wore freshly dry-cleaned suits, she had a red bowl cut. She was like an adult.

And I was just Cody Mitchell-Matthews, the only male flute player in band. The kid with the two dads, more noteworthy. The guy constantly hiding in a rose-colored hoodie.

"You're insane," my best friend Isaac would say, while vigorously shaking my shoulders, and while I tried not to stare at the clarinet reed in between his lips.

"She acts like she's forty-nine with three kids. You really think she's into dating high schoolers?"

All through this, I'd be thinking clarinet reed, clarinet reed, clarinet reed.

It wasn't until the day that he took that reed out of his mouth that I listened.