“Why do you call him James?”
“For the same reason he calls me Sophie. Because I know he hates it.” I shrug.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” She gets weirdly excited. “You have special nicknames for each other. Most couples do!”
I shudder at the implication of me, James, and couple in the same sentence.
“And use the same concept for everyone being so weirded out if you and Jimbo start acting nice toward each other. Maybe it will be like our own personal band reality show! They’ll be so intrigued that the rest of the guys will be forgotten!”
“And so, it still boils down to me versus James.” I go back to thumping my head on the table.
She places her hand on my back and rubs in a soothing motion. “It was always going to come to this, Soph. Finish this. Take your power back.”
Chapter Nine
“Fine.” Jared, the tuba section leader, crosses his arms over his chest. “If you’re going to take this away from us, then you’ve gotta give us something to replace it.”
Suddenly on the same page now that we’re faced with a small army of angry band seniors, the drum majors all exchange nervous glances.
Of course, it’s James who speaks up first, “Okay, what are your suggestions?”
“Since we’re all voting for one of you to be head drum major anyway this season, then we want a good show.” Kim’s voice is way more excited than it was this afternoon when she found James and me in a compromising position in the music file room. “Instead of the annual rookie hazing on the last night of band camp, we want a drum major competition of our design. The directors get no say in this.”
Oh, God. This could either be the best idea in the history of off-the-cuff ideas, or it could result in my swift defeat.
“There can be nothing that would even be perceived as offensive,” Nate emphasizes. “Nothing sexual, nothing physically dangerous or emotionally triggering. You can design whatever competition you want, but if a single freshman texts mommy and daddy that they felt uncomfortable by what they saw, then it could mean lights out for the entire program. The directors are not messing around this year. They don’t want to lose their jobs.”
There’s a bit of grumbling, but they get it. In the past several years, hazing incidents at different colleges have made headlines. And lately, it hasn’t been just the athletic teams. An entire marching band was suspended halfway through the season last year for hazing behavior that still hasn’t been made public. So, obviously, everyone has assumed the worst. A few years before that, the director and half the staff of a top-tier football school were fired after hazing of a sexual nature that had resulted in siblings being coerced into performing lewd acts on each other.
It rocked the band world. Anytime people talked publicly about it, there was a sense of disbelief that a bunch of band geeks could even come up with such sick games. Everyone assumes we don’t have sex at all. We’re just a bunch of slightly older dorks still taping the bridges of our glasses, wearing pocket protectors, and emptying our spit valves onto the turf.
Which led to sort of an unintended side effect. Ramped-up efforts to prove band nerds are cool within our own tribe. We don’t fit in everywhere, but we fit in with each other. And we like to party. Hard.
Except me. I don’t do that anymore, and I’m glad I didn’t join ITK. I don’t even attend their weekend parties. It’s not just that I don’t want Jimbo’s antics ruining my Saturday nights., It’s that I don’t really want to participate in wet T-shirt contests, or Suck Me/Eat Me parties, or drink bandie juice, or any of it. Also, I’m pretty sure I’d suck at beer pong, and there’s no way I’m giving James another thing to beat me at.
Everyone else is thinking about how this new strict anti-hazing policy is going to affect the band off the field too.
“Have meetings been scheduled for all band organizations to go over the new policies?” Jake asks.
All the presidents of said organizations are at this meeting, so they nod. Grimly.
“If anyone smuggled alcohol to camp, dump it out and dispose of the evidence tonight.” I volunteered to announce this last point to the others’ glee. They figured everyone would hate me the most for this, but the way I see it, I’m giving them a heads-up, so they don’t get in trouble. They should thank me. “Starting tomorrow, there will be random searches of any property that is being used for official State band camp. That includes dorm rooms, personal bags contained in those rooms, and the bathrooms. And we won’t be conducting the searches. The staff will. Your off-campus apartments are considered private residences though, so don’t worry about your personal bars there.”
No one breathes a sigh of relief at my last ad-lib. No one shares their appreciation for being given plenty of warning. Instead, this last item on our checklist of business ignites a firestorm.
“Are you fucking serious?”
“That’s it. I’m quitting.”
“I didn’t stick with band until senior year just to be treated like a fucking child!”
Jimbo shoots me an evil smile.
I mouth, I hate you, because … reflex.
He winks at me. The bastard winks. At. Me.
But he still wants to be head drum major, so he spreads his arms wide like he’s about to part the Red Sea and bellows, “Calm down. Calm down. Technically, everything we’ve said tonight is already in the band member handbook. None of this is new information. They’re just going to start enforcing it instead of turning a blind eye.”
“You’re going to pay for this.” Jared points at our outnumbered group of five sitting in a row at the front of the room. Like we’re already lined up for the firing squad.
Jimbo rolls his eyes, obviously not feeling threatened. “Hey, it wasn’t our decision. The directors are just making us the messengers. Be grateful you’re getting advance warning instead of getting kicked out of band before you even play a single halftime show.”
Hey! That was my shtick!
“Why are you the messengers?” Kim glances suspiciously between us. As much as she’s been wearing that expression lately, her face is going to get stuck that way. “If this is so important to them, why aren’t the directors addressing the whole band themselves?”
Jimbo opens his mouth, but I barrel right over him. Sadly, only figuratively. “Because they want our support, and they’re trusting us to get it for them with the upperclassmen. We’re the leadership of the band. If we’re going to change the culture for the incoming freshmen who have no idea what State Band was like in previous years, then it has to come from us.”
“Well, I still think it sucks.” Shannon crosses her arms over her chest and pouts. “The camp rookie-initiation ritual wasn’t dangerous or sexual or anything bad. It was the kind of team building you can’t get from stupid icebreaker games. The freshmen bonded with each other as a class, and they also bonded with their student leaders who helped them through the experience.”
“Except our sophomore year when one of the rookies tripped in the dark, broke their nose, and started a domino effect of falling bodies down the line,” Nate reminds everyone. “It almost got canceled last year, too. This was always going to happen. Eventually.”