Under The Lights

Going

"Seven hearts."

I'm playing cards with the trumpets again, and Cara and I are winning.

Cara shoots Jona and his partner, a small freshman trumpet player, a smug look. "Told you we're an unstoppable bridge team."

Jona opens his mouth like he's about to respond, but suddenly his eyes dart above my face. His jaw tenses.

I turn around and look up. "Hi, Evan."

"Hi." He squats down between me and Jona. "Whatcha playing?"

"Bridge."

He raises an eyebrow. "What's that?"

"It's complicated," Cara says cooly, leaning against the seat of a chair. Her cards are in her lap and her long legs are stretched out across the floor between us. "You wouldn't understand."

Evan fixes her with an equally cool look of determination and says, "Try me."

Nothing besides a slight lift of Cara's eyebrows betrays that she's surprised.

She launches right into an explanation of the scoring system. Jonah and I exchange tense glances.

"Do you get it?" Cara asks plainly.

"Yeah. I think so."

I shrug and slide out of the way. "You can play for me, then."

Jona recruits another freshman from his section to take his spot, and joins me on the outside of the circle to spectate, but we soon slip into conversation.

"So," he says. "Away game this week."

"Yeah." I stare blankly at the line of snares hanging on the wall.

"And just two more games in the regular season."

I shake my head. "I'm sick of talking about football. I feel like I've hardly thought about anything else since school started."

He leans back against the legs of the chair behind him. "How do you feel about our new piece for jazz, then? I've heard mixed things."

"I like it. It's outside of what we usually do, you know, not as heavy on the saxophones, but I think the trombones will be happy about that."

"The trumpets, too," he says. "It's a nice change from just playing runs at the ends of phrases. You're glad you joined jazz band, then?"

"Yeah. I wanted to be able to play sax some, since I'm playing bass clarinet in concert band, and I'm not playing in marching band."

Jona shakes his head. "Honestly, people who play lots of different instruments don't get enough appreciation from non-musicians. Especially in high school."

"I don't play lots of different instruments."

"Well, there are a lot of people who do. Like Jackson, the sousaphone in marching band? He played baritone until sophomore year, remember? And he plays trombone in jazz. And I heard he played trumpet in middle school. Or Olivia, the girl who plays bells in concert band. She played a whole bunch of woodwind instruments before trying percussion, apparently." He raises and eyebrow at me and smiles. "And you're on your way to becoming a real trumpet player."