Midland High School Marching Band

Chapter 2

Joe’s mom saw the confidence in the way he walked in the door, and she knew he had a good day just based on that. Unfortunately, she disliked when Joe had good days to the point where his body language reflected it. She always had to ruin it. 

“What are you so happy about? Shouldn’t you be exhausted from band camp or something?” she remarked. “I don’t see why you’re so happy. And where did you get covered in shaving cream? You’re always making such a mess. This is why I hate how inconsiderate you are.”

“Okay. First of all, I have no control over the seniors bringing in shaving cream and silly string. You have no reason to blame me for that and call me ‘inconsiderate’.” He put air quotes around “inconsiderate” because he felt it was obnoxious that he was being called that over something so stupid. “And second, I’m not letting you ruin my mood. You may not have had a good day, but I had an amazing day, and not even you can ruin it, so I suggest you stop trying because it’s not going to work.” 

Joe realized that he had to tell his friends from outside of band about what just happened. They would be so happy for him. Well, everyone except Mark. Mark had a huge crush on Kierstan, and there was no question that he would be jealous that the two of them were dating. Joey didn’t much care, though, because, as Billy Joel says, “I don’t care what you say anymore. This is myyy life!” Other than the reaction from Mark claiming that Joe had betrayed him, the reaction from the group was positive and supportive. Jacob even messaged Joe and told him to pay no attention to Mark because, even if there were a few people who had negative comments about the couple, it didn’t matter because Joe and Kierstan deserved each other. They had for a year now. It took them long enough to finally own up to their feelings, and Jacob knew neither of them would regret it. 

Joe and Kierstan would text for the rest of the night. They played 20 Questions, but it turned into "Let's ask each other a bunch of questions until we get bored." It may have been weird, but they were enjoying themselves without hurting anyone. Not to mention, they were learning a ton about each other in the process. Nothing super personal yet. Just things like favorite colors, hobbies, books, movies, tv shows, and other goofy things like that. Before they knew it, it was already 1:30 in the morning. Joe realized that he hadn't eaten dinner, so he told Kierstan he would be right back and went into the kitchen to grab some food. To his surprise, nothing sounded good, so he just took the sausage and pepperoni Celeste pizza out of the freezer, put some extra cheese on it, and heated it up in the microwave and then threw it in the toaster oven to make it a little bit extra crispy. 

After he had eaten something, he and Kierstan went back to talking for a little while until Kierstan fell asleep at around 2:30 in the morning. They both had gone to bed happy and feeling more amazing than ever. Joe couldn't stop smiling, even in his sleep, apparently, as he woke up and his cheeks hurt from how much he was smiling. This was a feeling Joe Martin could get used to. He had never been sore from smiling so much. He never knew of it existing as a real thing. He couldn't wait to see where time took them. 
The next morning held more of the same fun from the night before. Joe was constantly smiling and laughing as, instead of playing 20 Questions, or Just Questions, as they called it, they were spamming memes. Particularly band memes, but some of them were sports memes. Joe had always been an avid baseball and hockey fan. Along with rooting for the teams from the Dallas/Arlington area, he was a huge New England sports fan, so Kierstan would send some Red Sox and Bruins related memes and posts. His favorite was a Mets one, though, because they were so bad, and the meme accounts would tear them apart. Another thing they spammed was animal posts because both of them loved animals.

The commonality was the hedgehog. The two of them loved hedgehogs. One thing Joe didn’t know about Kierstan was that she was kind of an animal nerd. He thought that was really cool.