Disclaimer: Don't own marching bands etc.
Summary: 'All she knew was that this was the last time she would be in this room again.' A Drum Major hangs up her uniform for good, only certain that this would be the final time she would ever wear her uniform.
Read and review, thanks for your support :)
The Last Time
TheSilentPen
She looks around the room, taking in the beige walls, the shelves, the stands, and the number of Sousaphones in the room.
She looks down at the bleach white of her uniform, emphasized by the royal blue at the left shoulder. She clenches gloved fists and counts every little dot on the palm of her hand, the grip material to prevent the mace from slipping front her hands.
And at last, she looks to the wall, staring mournfully at the royal blue, white corded, shining metallic of her mace.
This is the last time she'll stand in this room.
This is the last time she'll ever wear this uniform, or these gloves.
Because she's hanging them up on the wall, putting them away for good.
She hasn't told her friends yet. They think that she'll be with them for the longest time. They think that she'll always be there for Marching Band.
She is the Drum Major, after all, of course she'll be in the High School Marching band with everyone else.
Of course they'll always be friends, because a band family can't fall apart. There's only each other to rely on, and there was an unspoken promise by all of them to keep that bond intact.
But not her.
No, she's not taking that promise.
Instead, she's trading in her colors, the skill of her Marching Horn, and the power that she possesses for those of the common colors of everyday people.
Her family can't afford it anymore, not in the harsh reality of the economy.
Will she be forgotten?
Will they all fall apart…?
This she doesn't know.
All she knows is that this is the last time she'll ever be in this room.
And the last time she'll be part of something that makes her feel extremely special and loved.
So the Drum Major takes off her gloves, kneeling down and arranging them accordingly at the foot of the mace, bowing her head and closing her eyes, taking a moment to relive every accomplishment this season.
All the friends she's made.
And she turns on her heel and leaves.
And she never does come back to that room again.
Or see that mace.
And several years later, when she's a Junior in High School, and she's dressed in the ordinary colors of everyday school life, she looks back at the years since she said goodbye.
She's lost her family.
It's fallen apart and now they have nothing.
She's become a section leader in the Wind Ensemble and Symphonic band
She's lost the only person to ever understand her because she isn't in marching band…
And she's become a legend, a person worshipped in the younger band programs and hailed as a band writer, the one who laid down the law of Middle School band in her writings and manners.
Her name is immortalized on every plaque the middle school has to offer.
Yet now she is anything but immortal.
In the band program, they whisper her name, they persuade and tempt.
But she's unmoved.
Because she can't remember a time when she was one of them.
All that's been lost to the sands of time.
And you can't miss what you can't remember.
You can't miss what your mind doesn't want you to miss.
Because the pain of missing it is too much for your heart to bear.
XX