Chapter 7

"Zach's decision to switch instruments caught me off guard, to say the least," Maddie said. "But once the initial shock wore off, I knew that unless he did a lot of practicing in the next few weeks that he'd be a sitting duck after the concert. I offered Zach lessons, although in reality I kind of told him that he'd be getting lessons and didn't give him a choice. Either way, he agreed that he needed them and we started the next day.

We practiced every day during lunch which was right after the period we had band. This lasted for about a week, at which point we had winter break. Once break started, I would go over to his house twice a week and give him lessons in his basement until we got back to school. As the weeks progressed, it seemed that Zach was definitely a percussionist at heart. He progressed quickly, and he was pretty good at any of the instruments he tried to play. Mallets weren't especially difficult for him to pick up because, unlike the other dopes in the back of the room with us, he knew how to read music thanks to his saxophone background.

But snare, God yes, snare was his passion. You could see it in his eyes, and the way he played, that he absolutely loved the thing. Steven seemed to act the same way, but the warmth and love wasn't there. That was the big difference between the two of them – one simply played the drum while the other was one with the drum."

"Is the rest of this going to be all deep and emotional?" Jared asked, sounding like an annoying 5 year-old to Maddie's ears.

"Pretty soon, Zach was way better than I was at snare," she continued, ignoring Jared. "All I could do at that point was recommend a few method books that would help him build some chops and refine his technique. Amazingly, he progressed even further using those books by himself, and he was lead snare by sophomore year. But that's another story.

By the time he and I stopped snare lessons, it was January, and we had our band concert in a few days. We decided to take a break so we could practice our concert pieces since neither of us had really looked at them in about a month. The concert went fine, with Steven showing off and playing snare way too loudly, as usual. I played my dinky little bell part, and everyone else did their mediocre parts perfectly. It was a flawless concert, which made Mr. Adams extremely happy.

Then the dreaded day finally arrived. Band started, and Steven didn't initially notice me and Zach talking in the back while Mr. Adams was giving out music. Steven went up to get the parts - one of the few things he actually did - and then he saw Zach sitting with me.

'Isn't he on saxophone?' he said coldly to one of the percussionists, not looking at either of us. Everyone gave a confused look to Steven and he sighed, finally addressing me. 'Well, isn't he?'

'Zach's switching to percussion.' I explained nonchalantly, remaining in my seat. 'Mr. Adams gave him permission.' Steven's ears turned bright pink in anger but otherwise, he said nothing. Instead he shuffled through the parts, trying to look busy. 'You'll be playing bells.' he said to me, handing me the part. I looked it over, and nearly gagged when I saw that there were a grand total of five measures of bells in a nearly 100 measure piece.

'Can I play timpani?' I asked as sweetly as possible, trying to get off of the crappy part.

'No.' Steven said, intent on punishing me for bringing in an outsider. 'Aaron will play them.'

'I want to do something else.' he whined. 'I'd rather play bells.' I raised my eyebrows, smirking.

'You'll play timpani.' he ordered, shoving the part in poor Aaron's face. He glared at me, viewing me as the source of rebellion. 'And you'll play bells. Got it?' Zach clenched his fists defensively, but said nothing.

'Let me remind you that as co-section leader I can override your decisions if there's a majority vote in my favor.' I pointed out. 'And I believe it's three against one in this case.' Steven glared even more, but grabbed the part out of Aaron's hands and gave it to me.

'Fine.' he said, walking off to prevent further embarrassment and to hand out the rest of the parts. A few minutes later, I noticed everyone with sad looks on their faces.

'What's wrong?' I asked one of them.

'Steven's on snare again.' They complained simultaneously. 'We want a turn for once.'

'You guys suck at snare.' Steven spat. 'I'm only on it because I want our section to be the best.'"

"He said that bullshit even back then?" Jared laughed.

"Some people never change." Maddie replied, shrugging. "I suggested that if he was so sure, then we should have try-outs for snare to see who deserved it. Everyone other than Steven agreed. Half the percussionists tried sight reading the part, but failed miserably. They would go on snare, play a few notes, and then turn bright pink when they realized they couldn't read anything else on the page. The other half of the percussionists were too afraid to try to stand up to Steven. Finally it was Zach's turn, and I threw out a generic wish to whatever diety that happened to be listening that Zach would do alright… part of it was for his sake, but mostly it was because I wanted to see Steven be beaten.

Zach fumbled through the first few notes, but then pulled through the rest of the piece and played it great. Steven frowned, his face paling when he realized that for the first time in his life, there was some competition. He went up to play, took a few minutes to look at the notes, and gave up, mumbling about how it was a stupid part that he didn't want anyway. We all knew it was because he didn't want to be publicly humiliated.

A month passed, and Zach remained on the snare piece. Steven was on snare the other pieces, due to a little bit of bribery on his part. I somehow got stuck on triangle, ('As co-section leader I can override your decisions with a majority vote.' he'd tell me) and Zach was on tambourine, if he was lucky. Either way though, we passed the class, so we were happy anyway.

In February, the dreaded day eventually came."

"And what day would that be?" Jared asked.

"Valentines day." Maddie said, saying it as though it left a sour taste in her mouth. "Up until 8th grade, I hated the day. I hated having to be nice to people I disliked and giving them cheap cards with lollipops that I got at CVS the night before; I hated the frilliness and the mooshy-gooshy crap and the sudden spike in public displays of affection that lasted around a week.

At least, I hated that day until Zach asked me to go to the dance with him. The year before a different boy had asked and I turned him down – it was not my idea of fun. Like, who would want to dress up all nice and fancy only to sweat like a pig in a crowded gym with bad music and even worse dancing? No. ."

"Pigs don't actually sweat, did you know that?" Jared asked. Maddie glared at him.

"You're just full of useful information, aren't you?" she said sarcastically. "Anyway, he asked me to go with him and it was different… I found myself actually wanting to go which surprised me. Of course Zach asked at the last minute so I had to scramble to find a dress, but when I found one it was absolutely perfect." She noticed Jared was getting bored so she skipped ahead to the important part of the story.

"The dance in and of itself was alright, I guess. Or it was until Steven decided to get back at me for what I had done to get Zach to beat him. During one of the slow dances, Steven and a couple of his douche-y friends came up to me and Zach. Without warning, they suddenly threw buckets of bright blue paint all over us. I stood there, shocked, trying so hard not to cry while Steven high-fived his friends and ran out. Zach chased after them, and I looked around to see that a couple of my 'supporters' in the percussion section had also gotten paint on them… Steven was trying to humilate us all at once. And he succeeded.

From then on out, the five of us who had been pranked were referred to as smurfs. Part of it was because of the paint, and the other part was because I was so freaking tiny at that point – I was barely four and a half feet tall."

"You make it sound as though you've grown since then." Jared said.

"Shut up! I'm now 5'1" thank you very much." Maddie said, sticking her tongue out at him. "But yeah. Steven and his crew never got in trouble for the prank because administration said they couldn't really tie it back to him, which was complete crap. But Steven wasn't done yet. Oh no. He got everyone in the school that wasn't a friend of mine to whisper 'smurf' to me in the hallways and during class. There were kids who I didn't even know who were saying it to me – it was terrible. And as stupid as it sounds, I let it all get to me. The same thing happened to Zach, but he was able to shrug it off and not care. But when they did it to me, I could feel a little bit of my sanity being chipped away every time they said it.

Because of the torment, band was no longer my safe haven. I quit band in the beginning of march and started drinking because I was bored after school and didn't have anything better to do. It very quickly became a problem which Zach knew existed but I didn't want to admit having. At this point we were going out and he threatened to break up with me if I didn't sober up; he didn't actually want to, but he was just trying to help me. I didn't believe him, and he held out on his end of the deal.

At this point I was done with absolutely everything. Nobody at school liked me, my best friend and boyfriend had now deserted me, and my parents were never home. Alcohol wasn't enough of an escape, so I decided to take it a step further. One night, when I knew Mom was taking the late-night shift at the hospital, I did my usual drinking and this time took a handful of her meds to go with it.

Luckily it turned out that Mom wasn't needed for the shift so she returned home within an hour of her leaving. When she found me passed out in the bathroom with the meds and alcohol, she quickly put two and two together and called 911. I was in the hospital for a while, and then had to go to a mental institution for my suicide attempt for a month.

When I got home I struggled to catch up on my work in order to move on to high school in time. The kids at school were significantly more cordial toward me which helped a lot. Unfortunately I heard gossip that while I was at the hospital Zach had developed some problems of his own… apparently he had dated no less than seven girls in the month and a half since he had broken up with me. I was upset and would have drunk more, but alas, Mom had declared us a sober household and got rid of all the alcohol. Dad was less than pleased by this.

Despite the womanizing rumors I had heard about Zach, we attempted to repair our friendship, which is fine now. I didn't rejoin band until high school though because I didn't want to have to deal with Steven ever again. Unfortunately I run into him from time to time like we did at the Starbucks, but otherwise things haven't been bad since middle school. In hindsight it all seems kind of stupid."

Jared was quiet. "You know, this is the longest time I've heard you be quiet." Maddie commented. Jared nodded silently, feeling guilty for laughing at all the times Steven talked about the paint incident at the dance. Steven had never mentioned any of the aftermath of it.

The rest of the walk back to the school was pretty quiet until Jared spoke up, "You know, it isn't really that stupid."

"Eh," Madde shrugged.

"Also, I just realized that you never really explained why Steven dislikes snare," he commented.

"It's because he was embarassed as hell and doesn't want to go back down that road again." Maddie explained. "Just like the word smurf brings up bad memories for me, playing the snare brings back bad memories for him."

"I think he's just being a wuss about it," Jared said, jumping over the fence. He didn't get to see Maddie's beaming, grateful smile on the other side.


Seems like Maddie easily loses her temper when she has had her daily dose of caffeine. I'm starting to agree with Jared - I like the caffeine-low Maddie better XD

Sorry that the chapter was so long. I felt I had to make up for freaking some of you out by saying I was taking a nice long break.

~The Sound of Drums