“Kensington Worth, yes. Glad you found the room!” he says, his glasses falling right into place on his nose.
“People call her Kenny,” Willow interjects for me. She’s assertive, oddly so. I like her a little more, and I’m starting to hope she’ll be my friend. I could use a dash of assertive.
“Actually, it’s Kensi,” I correct.
“Ohhhh, yeah. Sorry, Kensi,” Willow says, her face embarrassed at her slip.
“Well, all-righty then. Kensi it is,” Mr. Brody says, popping the full other half of his donut in his mouth as he ushers us back into the main room. “So, Kensi…what’s your instrument?”
I’m puzzled by his question. This should have been settled. I play the piano. My dad made sure everyone in this entire school system knew I played the piano. And he made sure everyone knew they were to accommodate my need to play, whenever he demanded.
“Piano?” It comes out unsure.
“Right, right. I know that. I mean for band, for marching. You can’t really march with a piano.” I heard him, but inside I was hoping maybe there was a way I could rewind—reverse myself right back outside the door, back home, back through my boxes, and back to the city.
Marching.
What the hell was I going to do?
“I…I don’t know. I don’t really play anything else. And I don’t…march,” I say, looking around the room as the hundred or so students begin to file into chairs based on the instruments they play. Yeah…there are no piano groups here.
“No problem. We’ll make you a pit player,” he says, shrugging his head to the left for me to follow him.
“Pit…player?” I ask, but I start to understand the closer we get to the percussion instruments. “Here’s a pair of mallets. You’ll find your way around the xylophone in no time. You sight read?”
“I do, but…” I start to protest, suddenly aware that he’s walking away and mallets are now in my hands.
The xylophone is essentially a piano. The keys are all the same, only you strike them with sticks. I used to love playing on them at my father’s office when I was young. But I haven’t played one in years.
“Hey, I’m Jess,” says one of the guys standing near me. I shake his hand and repeat his name in my head over and over again. Jess, Jess, Jess. Willow, Willow, Willow. I know two people here now.
“Hi, I’m Kensi. I guess I’m playing xylophone,” I say through a nervous smile.
“Yeah, looks like it,” he says, bending over and pulling a harness for a snare drum over his head. “Welcome to the drum line.”
“You about ready, babe?” Willow says over my shoulder, causing me to turn and pinch my brow, wondering how I got moved to babe so quickly. My question is answered when she brushes by me and pulls Jess’s face toward hers and kisses him quickly.
“Sure. Let’s get this pep-rally shit over with,” Jess says, spinning one of his drumsticks over his head, his eyebrows raised, feigning enthusiasm.
“Pep…rally?” I say, just as Mr. Brody drops a flipbook of music on top of the xylophone. My xylophone now, so it would seem.
“Yep, first day of school always starts in the gym. Pep rally. It’s our thing,” Willow says, pressing a whistle between her lips and blowing hard. “Let’s go, peeps. Meet you in the gym in six minutes!”
“She’s the drum major. She likes the power trip. Normally she’s a flute player. Flutes suck! I get it. And her uniform is pretty hot, so…ya know,” Jess says, winking at me. He’s a typical drummer—shaved head, double piercings in his ears, chain dangling from his back pocket.
Everyone is packing up, lugging their instruments out the door, and I feel like my chest is caving in on me, as if my rib bones are actually cracking into pieces and stabbing my heart and other internal organs. I glance quickly at the booklet of music in front of me. Fight song, national anthem, a bunch of top-forty tunes. Yeah, it’s all pretty simple stuff. If I can sight-read Beethoven, I should be able to read this.
“Jess!” I catch him before he steps through the door. “How…how do I get this to the gym?”
He grins at me, then slides his sunglasses on. “You push it,” he laughs, then lets the door close behind him.
Fucking drummers.
Right. Push it. Okay, I can do this. I tuck the music book under the first layer of keys and then shove the mallets into my back pocket. I slide the wheels back and forth a few times to make sure they’re not locked, take a deep breath, and push what is so very much not a piano to the doorway.