Prologue
It's funny sometimes how life works. It lets a person experience the most joy one could ever have, and in an instant it can cause that same person great agony. My life, in its short 17 years, has been through Hell and back twice, and it is about to change into God knows what.
So I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Alexis, but everyone calls me Allie. I've been going to Salle High School but that is about to change. My parents just divorced, and my mother and I moved away from my father. I will now be going to Belle Ridge High School. I am rather scared to go because I moved at the beginning of the summer so I did not get a chance to meet any one. The only people I know in this new town called Westing are my aunt, uncle, and three cousins. For the duration of the summer I spent most of my time helping my mother situate our new house and practicing my tuba. Yes, you heard it, my tuba.
I am what you call a "band geek". I picked up the trumpet when students began playing in band in the fourth grade. I excelled at the trumpet, always outplaying my peers and impressing my director. Then in middle school, sixth grade to be exact, my new band director asked the class for a volunteer to play the tuba. For some reason, I was compelled to raise my hand and willingly volunteer to play this rather masculine instrument. After a few individual lessons with my director and hours of practicing at home, I became as proficient on the tuba as I was on the trumpet before the switch. Grant it that sixth grade tuba music consists of omp-pahs and many rests, I was better than I was expecting to be. My director suggested private lessons to my parents, so they enrolled me in private tuba lessons at the local music store.
After a couple years with my lessons and excelling at them, my parents rewarded my hard work at the Christmas of my ninth grade year with a professional grade rotary valve tuba. For a year or so I had longingly looked at these tubas, wishing I could own one and further my abilities, because for most of my tuba playing career, I had been using school-owned tubas that were of poor condition. My high school band director, my private instructor, and my band friends at school all gawked over its intricate workings and overall brilliance. My new tuba allowed me to make giant leaps of progress in my playing, and by the end of my junior year, I had auditioned and made All-State band twice, a feat for any musician.
As a rising senior in a new high school and town, I have many challenges facing me. I have to work with a new instructor, make new friends, look for a college, and play in a marching band, something that I never did before because it was voluntary, and it never interested me. At Belle Ridge High, however, in order to be in concert band, all band students must participate in the marching band. Now, you're probably thinking, "Wow, she has to find a college and audition for their music program, and she's worried about a high school marching band?" Well, people fear the unknown, and I have no knowledge of marching band. So as band camp is to begin tomorrow, I am unsure as to what is going to happen. Wish me luck, because I am going to need it.