I Heart Band Read Free Page B

play so you can prepare. After each test, you’ll sit according to chair order.”
    He looked around. “The reason the tests will be frequent is because I want those who put in the extra effort and improve to be rewarded. Each time we have a test, the chair order in your section can potentially change. You might start out sixth chair and be first chair by the end of this semester. It all depends on you.”
    Interesting. Maybe the new guy wasn’t going to be so bad.
    â€œAnd one more important rule before we warm up.” Mr. Dante paused a moment. “It’s called no pass, no play. If you fail one of your classes, you won’t be eligible to participate in band activities—concerts, football games, contests—until your next progress report or report card is out. We’re performing at the football game the Friday after your first six weeks’ report card, so make sure you keep up in your classes. Your first progress report is in three weeks, which brings me to the fun part.” He smiled again.
    â€œOn the last Friday of this month, we’ll be having a band party. I’ll have more information for you in a few weeks, but for now just remember—you
must
be passing on your progress report to attend.”
    There were a few murmurs about that, some excited, some nervous. Julia and I grinned at each other. A band party! I went through my closet in my head, the whole no-pass-no-play thing forgotten. I’d never had a problem with my grades.
    Mr. Dante started talking about the warm-ups in our folders, but I was daydreaming about the party and Aaron Cook. I wondered if there’d be dancing. Probably not, but the party in my head definitely involved dancing.
    I focused when we started to play, though. Maybe I hadn’t spent two weeks at Lake Lindon, but I
did
practice all summer, almost every day. (I even made a rehearsal schedule kind of like the one in the Lake Lindon brochure and taped it above my desk. Geeky? For sure. Totally worth it, though.)
    As Mr. Dante had us play one at a time to tune, it was easy to tell who hadn’t opened their case since May by all the squeaks, wobbly tones, and nervous coughs. Gabby sounded a lot better than the eighth-grader next to her.
    I sounded good. Really good.
    Brooke sounded okay. So did Owen. I fidgeted in my chair as Natasha lifted her horn.
    Ugh. She sounded good, too.
    I tapped my fingers softly on the bell of my horn again, waiting as everyone else tuned. Aaron Cook sounded amazing, of course. I remembered at the spring concert last year, he’d had a big solo in one of the songs. And Mrs. Wendell had given him the “Outstanding Seventh-Grade Musician” award. He’d probably been first chair, I realized.
    I glanced at Brooke. My chances of being first chair were actually really good. First-chair French horn in the advanced band, as a seventh-grader! Thinking about it made me kind of giddy.
    A few chairs down, Natasha coughed lightly. She was looking in her folder, already checking out the music Mr. Dante had given us. I grabbed my own folder and started flipping through the sheets. My eyes widened—tons of notes on the first page, the tempo on the next one was crazy fast, the third was in a time signature I’d never seen before . . .
    Whoa. As much as I practiced this summer, maybe it wasn’t enough.

Chapter Four

    J ulia and I had lunch right after band. So did Natasha. Apparently, I was doomed to getting zero quality time with my best friend.
    We grabbed a table in the corner of the cafeteria and I started pulling stuff out of my bag. (I’d made my lunch the night before—turkey sandwich on wheat bread, cut diagonally; plastic bag with apple slices to avoid the inevitable peel-in-the-teeth scenario that comes with eating it whole; bag of plain potato chips, the least breath-offensive flavor; stick of gum for afterward, just in case. I’d fired Mom from lunch-making duty