There was , of course, a positive side to staying up all night: Crispy got all of her schoolwork done. The abd thing was that she was ridiculously tired during her classes. She found herself doing anything to pass the time, anything to stay awake.
One night she was determined to teach herself Korean. The school didn't teach Korean... She managed to find a computer program that would recite phrases for her then evaluate how well she repeated them. It was actually quite entertaining.
Her laptop began to beep loudly. "Oh no..." she sighed. She hadn't charged it enough and she had left the cords in her dorm. It powered down and the humming sound that had filled the room disappeared.
Crispy searched the darkened room. Though the computer was off, she could still hear something... likr someone... snoring... She followed the sound to a practice room that the drumline usually used. As usual, the drumline had left it quite a mess. Inside of a bass drum, curled up asleep, was Brandon. She nudged him awake.
"What are you doing here?" Brandon blinked for a moment.
"Calculus..." he said, gesturingbat an empty sheet of paper, textbook, and calculator. Crispy was strangely transfixed by the calculator.
"Where did you get that?"
"Above a ceiling tile. Just there, actually." He gestured to a spot some three feet to the left of them.
Crispy sighed. Brandon had discovered the second of the french horn secrets. There were three total. Was it possible that he knew them all? She doubted it.
"What are you doing here, though?" she repeated.
"I told you, calculus."
"But why here?" Brandon shrugged away the question. "I told you I would do this. I don't need your help."
"What about safety in numbers, eh?"
"No."
Brandon shrugged again and left saying, "Fine then. I'll just leave you to be all heroic and self sacrificing by yourself." Once he had left, Crispy immediately regretted her decision. It was so quiet in the band room...