Luna looked down at her sister's report card, shaking her head in disdain. She closed her eyes for a second, hoping that she could wake up and that this was just a terrible dream, but her caramel eyes drifted right back to the 57% right next to the words 'Junior Varsity Band'. She felt remotely embarrassed for Lynn, especially since she was in eighth grade and in JV Band with all of the fifth and sixth graders.
"How are you failing JV Band? How do you fail Band anyways?" Luna sighed, shooting Lynn a look entirely filled with sorrow and displeasure.
Lynn shrugged. "I don't know how to play a tuba! It's gigantic, and it weighs like a million pounds!"
Luna didn't play the tuba either, she only knew the basics, but that wasn't going to stop her from helping her sister learn to play. She looked at the large golden instrument, raising an eyebrow and biting her bottom lip. She could work with this.
"That's bogus, dude. Anyone can play an instrument if they try to." Luna tried to motivate her sister. With a roll of her eyes, Lynn picked up the tuba and demonstrated the extend of her tuba-playing skills, which really just sounded like she was giving a terrible CPR job to the instrument. Quite frankly, Luna wasn't sure that anything she'd just heard qualified as music, but she put on a fake smile and shot her sister an undeserving thumbs-up.
"I think it's broken." Lynn whined, handing the tuba to her sister."Is it too late to transfer into a second PE class?"
Luna wiped the excessive spit off of the mouthpiece of the tuba with the hem of her shirt, turning it and looking into the bell. She reached her arm in, pulling out a pair of socks, which both looked and smelled like they hadn't been washed in years.
"Gnarly." Luna held out the socks toward her sister, and a smile spread across Lynn's face.
"Yes! I was looking for my lucky socks!" she proclaimed, snatching the bundle from her sister's hands and holding it up to her face. "Smells like victory."
"Smells like Lily's diapers." Luna said to herself. "Okay, dude, first thing you want to do is blow into the mouthpiece."
"I am." Lynn complained, and Luna shook her head.
"Not really. You're mostly spitting." Luna replied, and Lynn furrowed her eyebrows, pouting.
"Mean." Lynn mumbled, still clutching the socks.
Luna blew into the mouthpiece, pressing down on one of the valves and playing an E-note. Lynn's mouth fell open in shock.
"It makes noise!" she exclaimed, dropping the socks into a pile of whoopee cushions by Luan and Luna's bedroom door.
Luna made a face. "Lynn, when was the last time you cleaned your mouthpiece?" she asked, pulling the small piece of metal. She was surprised it wasn't rusty by the looks of it.
Lynn looked at her feet. "I didn't know it came out." she admitted, taking the mouthpiece from Luna and wiping it off with her shirt sleeve. "There. All clean."
Lynn half-smiled at her sister hopefully, her big brown eyes filled with childlike optimism. Luna wasn't even going to get into this argument, no matter how important she knew instrument sanitation was. Obviously, Lynn didn't understand, and probably wouldn't ever understand. This was a girl who apparently kept her dirty laundry inside of the bell of her tuba.
Luna sighed, putting the mouthpiece back into its little slot. "This is called a scale." she said, blowing into the tuba again and this time playing a series of notes. Lynn clapped awkwardly afterwards. "See, dude, you're not trying to resuscitate your tuba. To play music, it's sort of like you're kissing it and then using your lung power to make sound come out."
"Gross." Lynn made a face. "I don't want to kiss it."
Luna took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. She was exasperated, but she couldn't very well tell Lynn to get out of her room and just fail Band. Luna looked up at her sister, who had occupied herself by scratching a particularly large mosquito bite on her arm. It wasn't Lynn's fault that she wasn't musically inclined, and it also wasn't Lynn's fault that she needed a music credit to pass eighth grade and go to high school. She was just an innocent, tone-deaf little kid. Luna was just glad Lynn had taken Band and not Choir. She wasn't sure she could stomach her little sister's...unique singing voice.
"Then don't think of it as kissing. Think of it as...blowing a raspberry. But without tongue." Luna tried, and Lynn scrunched up her face, as if trying to process this new information.
"So if I make mouth farts into the weird metal funnel thing on the one end, sounds come out of the big funnel thing and I can play music?" Lynn asked, and Luna shrugged.
"Close enough." Luna said, and Lynn reached out for the instrument.
"Give it. I wanna try again." Lynn instructed, and Luna patted a space on Luan's bed next to her.
"You play the tuba sitting down, honey." Luna told her sister, and Lynn sat down, looking at the instrument.
"So how am I supposed to hold it?" Lynn asked, and Luna adjusted the instrument on her sister's lap.
Maybe Lynn wasn't musically inclined, but at least she was trying to learn, and that's all that was important to Luna.