That One Special Day

What a long day at school we had. It was three days away from midterms and we had been studying like crazy. Once the weekend was over, our crazy week of testing had begun.

Which, in itself, explains my actions of not checking the instruments during band. I'm a percussionist, you see, and usually all of our different instruments are out. Whether we have the suspended cymbal, the snare drums, or the mallet instruments, we're always set.

"Toccata for band," my teacher cried from the front of the room. "Measure one hundred!"

So we all took our respected places, which is when I realized that my instrument for this song, the suspended cymbal, was not there. The two Mikes stared at me as I frantically searched through the cabinets and around our little percussion area before settling myself between them.

Now, I'm a tall girl. I'm five foot seven, but next to the two Mikes I seemed short, almost vulnerable. The tallest Mike was around five nine or five ten, and the other was probably five eight. Both of them started whispering to me to go get the cymbal, it wouldn't matter if I missed a minute, she wouldn't get mad. But as I looked at the clock, I realized that we were twenty minutes into the period, and if I left, I could face serious punishment.

So what did I do? I stood there quietly, the shortest among the three of us, and tried to go unnoticed. For about ten more minutes, it worked. But then my band teacher started staring at me, as though she noticed that I wasn't doing anything. She qued the band to play, but still stared at me and I realized I was supposed to be playing. Slowly she stopped the band and said, "Okay, start again."

The shorter of the two Mikes tapped me on the shoulder. "Listen, just tell me when it's your part and I'll hold out my cymbal for you and you can play on that. I know its a handheld and not a regular one but it's as good as I can do."

"It's my part," I whispered as she started the band and he held his arm out with the cymbal dangling from his hand and I played my part through and through. What was the sweetest part was that during the song, he would MISS his part to help me with mine.

At the end of rehearsal, I just smiled at him. "Thanks for saving me."

He nodded silently as most boys do and walked away. I slowly sat down for a minute and began to think about it. To him, it might have been just a job, to help another kid. The unspoken rule of highschool is that even if you don't like someone, you should help them if they are about to get in trouble. He might have done it for the percussion section, most of us were incredibly close. But what might have been such a small thing to him was a big thing to me.

It had been one year exactly since Mike found out that I liked him. At the eighth grade dance, I sat at my table sipping juice when my friend came up to me, face red, and told me, "That guy you like is a jerk."

"Why?" I asked her.

She blushed an even brighter shade of red. "Well, I...I told him you liked him and wanted to dance with him."

I ran out of the dance that night and didn't come back. It got progressivly worse, such as when my friend called him at my birthday party and gave the phone to me. I didn't know who was at the other end so I just said hello.

He hung up.

When I found out that we would be in band together, I was extremely nervous. One of my New Years resolutions was actually to make up with him. In a way, today, by saving me from getting yelled at, he made my day and maybe, now we'll get along.