Chapter 4

It was eight in the morning. The overhead lights in the gym were still dim, slowly flickering to life. Sara Clark yawned a big yawn, not bothering to cover her mouth. Her blonde hair was dark, still damp. She knew she had better get used to waking up this early soon.

Mary Blake, the new colorguard instructor, had given her a fat binder with a few notes in it. She and Mr. Williams were both in some kind of meeting, something to do with school extracurriculars. Don't worry, she had said. The girls know what to do already.

"Hey Sara," said a couple of girls. It was Tiffany Caldwell and Ashley Burns, both juniors, carrying their equipment into the gym.

"How you guys doin?" said Sara, this time hiding her yawn behind the hand that wasn't holding the fat binder.

"Good." Tiffany.

"Sleepy." Ashley.

"Yeah, me too." Sara.

More girls were walking in. Most of them were not much more than five feet tall. They all had identical bags, made out of a blue-jean leg sewn shut at the cuff, with a shoulder strap near the top. A gift from one of the guard moms. Each girl had four or five different flags, and some had a fiberglass rifle or saber as well.

All in work-out clothes. Lots of heavily taped fingers and toes. A few knee braces. There was a sophomore Sara recognized from last year, Stacy something, who had a black eye. Colorguard was hard work, and dangerous.

"Hey girls," said Sara in a louder voice.

Most of them smiled and answered back.

Then Aisha was walking over. So cool and confident, her black black skin always seemed to underline her as someone special. All sixteen girls had their names embroidered on their equipment bags, but Aisha Neybet had also sewn on a magic eight-ball patch. Her mythical solo eight with a rifle.

"Hey you," Aisha said to Sara, smiling her striking white smile. She had a little bit of her parent's accent, a subtle but broad British tilt to each word--so subtle that most people didn't even notice.

"Hey you," answered Sara in kind.

"Sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you yesterday," said the guard captain.

Sara shrugged. "It's no biggie. I saw you talking to Mary after practice."

"Yeah," said Aisha. "You know how that stuff goes."

"I'm sure I will," said Sara in a kind of sour voice. "I remember how much time John spent talking to Mr. Williams after practices last year." She managed to say her ex-boyfriend's name without grimacing. "But I mean, you guys have been going all summer. I've just barely gotten started yet."

The black girl shrugged. "Same thing every year."

"Yep, just new faces," the blonde girl agreed.

Most of the guard girls were putting down their bags and taking off their shoes, if they had any shoes. They practiced barefoot, performed barefoot. It wasn't unusual to see them barefoot all the time, until school started.

"You want to call our stretches?" said Aisha, unshouldering her own bag and walking toward the painted basketball sideline.

"Okay, sure," Sara called after her.

"It's easy." Head turned back as she set her bag down. Already barefoot. "You remember from yesterday?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Most of the girls were already sitting on the polished wood floor, right out in the middle by the large green H. There was the sound of squeaking feet, and the softer swish of fabric. The overhead lights were brighter now, almost warmed up. Aisha and the last few other girls picked out spots and sat facing Sara.

"Morning, girls," said Sara, louder than before. There were only sixteen of them, but they were spread out, and the gym had an echo. Her voice sounded deeper than she was accustomed to hearing.

They answered back, "Good morning," or "Hi Sara." So many high-pitched little voices.

"I'll be with you all morning," she said. The fat binder was still in her hand. She set it down on the open bleachers a few steps behind her. "Mary gave me a list of stuff to do, but it seems like the same kind of stuff you've been doing. You guys already know." She paused for a breath. "Okay, so we'll get started stretching. Legs together, lean forward, slowly. Breath..."

In near unison, sixteen bodies followed her instructions. Sara was thrilled. It was such a simple thing, and they all knew the routine much better than she did. But it was the first time she had given any kind of order and had it followed. She smiled, walking slowly along the rows, the way she had seen Mary do. "Breath..." she said.

She didn't keep count. It might have been twenty or thirty seconds. Then she spoke again. "Slowly, sit up." They all sat up.

"Legs apart, arms up," she said. "Fingers together. And reach forward. Slowly. Breath..." It never failed to impress her how flexible they all were.

They were usually quiet during warm ups, but not as a rule. One of the girls called out, "Hey Sara, wanna do these stretches with us?" It was Ashley, hair all hanging in her face as she leaned forward.

"Yeah, come on, Sara," said Leigh Cutler, another junior. "It's loads of fun." Some of the other girls laughed.

"No way," said Sara, still smiling. "Somebody might actually still mistake me for a virgin." More of the girls laughed.

"People still mistake me for a virgin," said Heather Metz, the flag captain.

Leigh made a snort-laugh. "Heather, nobody could possibly mistake you for a virgin."

Everyone was laughing, Sara included. "Slowly, up," she directed. They all sat up. "Left leg in, slowly, reach forward. Breath..."

It was getting close to lunchtime. The sun was hot these days, at the end of July. Everyone had on baseball caps and sunglasses. There weren't any benches or bleachers, just an old vine-covered chain-link backstop. So most of the neighborhood kids who weren't playing sat under shade trees and pulled up fistfuls of clover. Winter Tree Park always had plenty of clover.

Sixteen year old Janelle Wolf curled her fingers through the backstop, watching. Sometimes she played along with the boys. Today she just watched. Her best friend Amanda was a few paces back, talking on her cell. Amanda Easter had a cute little pink flip-phone, brand new this summer. Janelle wished she had a cell herself.

"Come on, Big K, bring me home!" called a voice from out at second. It was Ben Bruce, taking a big lead-off.

The pitcher turned around and threw to second, and Ben dived back in the dirt.

"Come on, Kaleb!" shouted Janelle from behind the backstop. She clapped her hands. Some of the other kids watching did too. "You've got him! He's got nothin!"

Kaleb Underwood, waggling the bat over his shoulder, already had one strike. He had swung at something down in the dirt. The next pitch came, and he watched it sail over the plate, heard it smack into the catcher's glove.

"Strike two!" called their pint-sized umpire, the ten year old Georgie with her little pigtails.

"That was low!" argued Kaleb, turning around.

"It was above your knees, that's a strike in my book," Georgie shot back in her almost-southern drawl.

Janelle grinned. That little girl was so cute. And she was probably a bigger baseball nut than any of the boys playing. "Looked like a strike to me," Janelle said to Kaleb.

"Supposed to be on my side," Kaleb grumbled, facing back toward the pitcher.

She just laughed.

"You got him, K!" Ben shouted from second again, as he paced off his lead. "You got him, now bring me home!"

The next pitch came in, and Kaleb held up again. Georgie called, "Outside!"

"No way, that was the same pitch!" It was the pitcher this time, an older boy whose name Janelle didn't know.

"You missed!" shouted little Georgie, very matter-of-fact. "Wide and outside!"

Kaleb swung at the next pitch--he really swung, taking a huge stride and letting the bat fly--and with a deep crack, the ball sailed out into the outfield. He started running, and Ben took off around third. Everyone was cheering.

"Holy shit!" said Amanda, snapping her phone shut and watching the ball.

"Yeah!" Ben said, stepping on home plate. He looked out at second, where Kaleb had taken his place. "Did you see that hit?!" He looked over at the girls.

"We saw it," Janelle smiled. "He hit it a lot farther than you did."

"That thing went a mile!" Amanda chimed in helpfully.

"Aw, he just got lucky is all," Ben said with his feathers ruffled a little. He high fived a few of his teammates. "Hey does anybody know what's the score?" The guys just shrugged.

"Is anyone keeping score?" asked Janelle.

"Gryffindor just took the lead," said little Georgie immediately, using the team names she had insisted on herself. "It's five to four in the bottom of the sixth, one on and two out. Ravenclaw has eight hits and no errors, and Gryffindor has ten hits and one error." She kept going, but most people weren't listening.

"She's such a cutie," whispered Amanda to Janelle.

"I know," Janelle whispered back.

"Little loud-mouth if you ask me," said Ben, without bothering to whisper. Then he grunted as Janelle elbowed him in the ribs.

"Be nice," she said.

"Hey," Amanda cut in. "Anyway, my mom just got back and she's got some hamburgers and stuff. Wanna eat at my place?"

Ben threw his dirty arm around her, grinning. "You're kidding, right? Wild horses couldn't keep me away."

Janelle rolled her eyes and answered her best friend directly. "Yeah, sounds good."

"Cool," said Amanda. "I'll tell her we're coming." She flipped her pink phone open again, and hit redial.

"Kaleb!" Ben shouted to second base--Amanda ducked out from under his arm, the phone to one ear and her finger in the other. "We're gonna have burgers at Mandy's place!" He got a kick in the back of his knee when he shortened her name.

"Awesome!" yelled Kaleb while he took his lead-off.

Everyone started clapping for the next batter and waiting for the next pitch. Janelle felt Ben put his arm around her shoulders, and she nudged him away. He was all covered in grass stains and dirt. No need for her to get dirty if she wasn't even playing.

She took off her hat for a moment and wiped sweat from her forehead. It sure was a hot day. And they were all going to be out in this heat every day for marching band practice, until the season changed. None of the four were section leaders, so they didn't have to show up until Tuesday. But then after that, it would be work, work, work. The freedom of summer was about to end.

Patrick Cameron was going to be a sophomore. But this was his first year in marching band. Last year he hadn't tried out. The auditions for the pit percussion weren't as strict as those for the battery or the colorguard, since they didn't necessarily need a specific number of people. But he still had the feeling he had made it by a nail clipping.

He couldn't do the four-mallet drills at all, and even the regular two-mallet parts were tough. Maria Johns kept throwing all these new patterns at them that he just couldn't keep straight. And true to her word, she actually had made him do some push ups. It didn't help. He kept missing notes.

Probably, they would stick him on a suspended cymbal part, or some other dumb thing. He really wanted to play one of those marching snares! Those things were bad ass! Maybe next year, if he could survive this year.

"--still needs to sound good when we get to keys like D-flat and G-flat," Maria was saying. "Just because there's more black notes isn't an excuse to start making mistakes."

Patrick wished she would called them top notes or something, not black notes. The keys on a xylophone were all the same color.

"Tomorrow's the last day before all the horns start showing up, and we're gonna have to start learning the show music," she said. I want at least one solid run through these drills before all that starts happening. Got it?" She was waving a very chewed up old yarn mallet around at all of them, and they were all nodding back.

Carol, the other sophomore, was not having any trouble. Even the two freshmen girls, Monica and Janice, seemed like they were okay. The juniors and seniors had all spent the last two years with Maria as pit captain, and they could probably do the drills in their sleep. Patrick's face went a little red, imagining that everyone else knew that he was the only one screwing up.