Welcome to NHS
By Swifty Li, as told to Keza: Queen of Procrastination
AN: On the way to Vermont for family Christmas right now - oh boy, a four and a half hour drive! Perfect time to fire off a few chapters for your reading pleasure. (Or torture, depending how you look at it.)
One the subject of the plot… I spent a fair amount of time this morning trying to think up a suitable plot for this story. The conclusion I came to? No plot. This story will just meander along the school year, ending when the school year ends, with it's fair share of (mis) adventures and conflicts along the way. Nothing big.
So, despite lacking anything in the plot area, I hope you continue to enjoy NHS. But, of course, if you have a good plot suggestion, please tell me in a review/e-mail or something! -bows-
This Chapter Sponsored By: Elton John's Greatest Hits 1971-2002 - the first CD. I picked them up at circuit city this morning, and they rock! -attempts to dance along and gets tangled in the seatbelt- Ark.
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The rest of the day passed uneventfully, really, until a hastily thrown together band practice after school. Concert band, that is. There's a whole slew of band kids in our school, and the usual comments were heard as we tromped through the halls to the gym.
"If you don't shut up, Mush, I'm going to shove this stick up you arse!" From her percussionist highness herself, Mondie.
"Touche!" Babble, probably fencing with her flute again. This time it looked like Lute was her competitor. Once Echo and Ruin attempted fencing with their bass clarinets, but that's a story for a different time. Lyr, who had been composing a piece for the school, was trying to explain music theory to Riot, who had completely zoned out and was admiring Shortie's pants. And as usual, Magic was storming along next to me, ranting half in English and half in Spanish about something I still couldn't understand. I just nodded in the right places and pretended I was interested. Magic wasn't even in band - she had just come along because the rumor was that the new kid was coming to watch our practice.
"I hope he's hot," she said randomly, completely cutting off her former sentence - which had been something about her mother, I think. "Or a least good in bed," she added after a beat.
"Funny, I would have thought it would be the other way around for you," Shad remarked from her other side.
"Har, har, har," she said, rolling her eyes, then added "pero yo tambien" after thinking about it for a second.
A quite confused group of kids stood at the entrance to the gym, staring dumbly inside. All of the chairs and stands had already been set up for us, yet no conductor was in sight.
"What the fuck?" ever so intelligent Ruin was the first to speak.
"Thank me later," an unfamiliar voice said. Some boy - I can only assume he was the new kid - stood up from where he had been sitting in the saxophone section and smirked, then winked at her. I looked behind me, expecting some sharp retort from our favorite psycho, but instead she just stood there with a strange smile on her face. Very unnerved, I turned back around and almost took Magic out with my trombone case.
"Dammit Swifty!" she complained, then promptly smacked me upside the head. Luckily we were saved from a potentially awkward silence when Mr. Pulitzer, our conductor, entered.
"What is this idle standing!" he bellowed. "Get to work! Put together those… those…"
"Instruments, sir?" the new kid supplied.
"Yes! Instruments. Thank you, uh, boy."
"Yes sir," Mush mimicked. "Sir? Who calls anyone 'sir' these days?"
"I think it's nice that there are still respectful boys left in the world," Mondie answered airily.
"Oh, yeah, me too!" Mush agreed quickly. "Uh, ma'm."
"Swifty, I think I need an excuse for being here," Magic said, eyeing Pulitzer suspiciously.
"You're thinking about joining band?" Pie-eater suggested. He tested out the slide on his trombone, added some grease, then said "saxophone."
"What?"
"You can say you're going to play saxophone."
"What's a sa- never mind, ok, I will." She walked off to sit in the bleachers. A few moments later new kid ended his conversation with Pulitzer and joined her - for lack of anywhere else to sit, but we won't tell Magic that.
Pulitzer cleared his throat noisily in an attempt to get us all quiet. As disgusting as it was, it worked.
"Shut up! Shut up!"
"Mr. Pulitzer, sir, we aren't saying any-"
"BE QUIET! Now, this fine, strapping, young man over there will be joining our band for tomorrow's practice, so don't forget to set up an extra chair in the, uh," he waved his hand in the direction of the saxophone section. "In there.
"Quite eloquent of you, sir!" Shad spoke up from the back, started to clap, then gathered his wits and promptly shut up. Pulitzer's glare is one of the only things that will make him be quiet. Sometimes, he'd actually stop talking long enough to get a few notes out on his trumpet. He was actually pretty good, but nothing compared to Jake, whom he sat next to. Yeah, Jake. He claimed that it wasn't his real name, it was a nickname and the letters stood for something or other - we don't press about it. Anyway, Jake is some sort of strange trumpet prodigy. I mean it - this kid is amazing. He's pretty quiet, doesn't talk much… but when he does, it's always about trumpets. Like I said, strange.
Pulitzer gave us all one last glare before he spent a good five minutes hunched over his podium, squinting through his thick glasses at the music laid out before him. Man is blind as a bat. He also can't conduct worth beans. That just shows you how much our school system values band.
"Somerset Overture!" he announced finally.
"Sorry I'm late!" Chamelion squeaked, running in and somehow managing to squeeze a chair between Pie and me. She had only started playing trombone earlier this year. Can you guess why? Pie started to protest, but I silenced him with a shake of my head. We didn't want her getting upset and losing her temper. Plus, if we said anything that was even borderline offensive, she'd report back to big brother Specs… who would promptly storm over and kick our asses. He and Dutchy make a frightening tag team.
"Hey Pie. Hey Swifters!"
Swifters?
"Hey Chamelion. Somerset."
"Thanks."
"SILENCE BACK THERE!" Pulitzer shook his conducting wand at us accusingly.
Gulp.
We were lucky we had some good percussionists, because that's the only way anyone can keep count, no matter what song we're playing. Pulitzer does some strange interpretive-style dance with his wand, Mondie interprets it with her sticks, the rest of the percussion section follows her lead, we listen and play the best we can. And with this messed up style of counting, it doesn't always sound too good. Except for the pieces with big trumpet parts. Those always sound good. Damn that Jake….
Twelve measures of resting. Ain't trombone parts grand?
"1 , 2, 3, 2 ,2, 3, 3, 2... Wait, what happened to the second beat in that measure?" I hissed to Chamelion, since my dear friend Pie "counting as steady as a rock" eater wasn't within earshot.
"Which measure?" she asked back, losing count herself and becoming as thoroughly confused as I. It's ok. That's a normal occurance in this band.
"Uhmm, the fourth one - no, no, sorry, the second?"
"Second? Wait, we're in 4/4 time, right?"
"I thought it was ¾!"
"Nevermind, it says cut time right there."
"Cut time?"
"Yeah! Which means we should be playing right n-" the rest of her sentence was cut off by a hastily positioned mouthpiece. I followed suit.
Apparently Pulitzer didn't like what he was hearing, because after a few more measures, he cut us all off, stepped down from his podium, and broke his wand over his knee. (It took a few tries, but still had the desired effect.)
"What… is… this…." he tried to find the right word, shaking with fury.
"Crap, sir?" new boy spoke up from the bleachers.
"WHAT IS THIS CRAP?!" Pulitzer roared. I saw Lute up front wipe some spit from her cheek and snickered. But even my small noise caught Pulitzer's attention. He walked slowly to the trombone section and leveled one jagged piece of his former wand menacingly at me.
"Would you like to tell us what it is, Mr. Li?"
"Er…." my gaze flicked to our music. "Somerset Overture?" Pulitzer's eye started to twitch. "Uh, Sir?" I added hopefully.
"No! It's crap!" he told me, poking my shoulder with the wand half. "Tell me, Mr. Li," now he turned away from me and was pacing around thoughtfully. "Do you know what I was doing when I was your age?" I didn't answer. "I was in a war!" Oh, right, of course.
"So did you win?"
He turned back around and shrugged neutrally. "Oh, I don't remember. I was only in the marching band part. Now, let's try that again."
"Mush, I'm not sure if you've noticed that there's ENOUGH SNARES FOR US ALL!" a glance back showed me that Mush was trying to share Mondie's drum. Again. Ah, band romance…
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