Work Text:
Some days, existence is reduced to how well she can count. On those days, she doesn’t hear music—all she pays attention to is the beat the drumline gives the rest of the field and the numbers that they have to start and stop at.
Other days, she is not so ragged. The younger marchers look at her for guidance, with the utmost trust in their band director’s decision, because she would not be where she is if she was not unquestionably competent.
(On those days, she bites back the urge to tell them that for all the competence in the world, none of it really matters to anyone else around her. Some days, she wonders what all of the sleepless nights and all of the days running herself into the ground were for. She loved what she does—she still loves it, with all her heart—but is something so thankless really worth that? She doesn’t know, and it’s scary to think that something as pure as love can only get her so far.
On those days, the other two drum majors lay down in a circle with her, on the still-warm concrete of a parking lot at ten o’clock after dark. Their heads gently bump and their hair tangles together until they are a single indistinct unit, murmuring in the language of camaraderie to each other. They all understand these moments, as nice—and undeniably necessary—as they are.)
But most days, there is some joy that forms like a diamond under the pressure on her shoulders, the responsibility that comes with being placed in charge of almost two hundred people. The teenage angst lifts from her shoulders (the terrifying knowledge of being just a child in charge of far too many other children), and she can laugh with the people around her despite the burn in her arms becoming the constant companion that follows her around. She can teach the tuba section rhythms despite not playing tuba. She can teach the clarinets to listen to each other without having touched a clarinet in years. She can lean back with the drumline even though percussion never was—and never will be—her main instrument. She can handle anything the front ensemble requests of her with grace and experience. She can play her own instruments with a practiced ease that awes others, and she finally understands what it means to have the ability to be an inspiration to those under her care.
(For all the competence in the world, she doesn’t always feel competent, but she is a musician to the very core of her being. She is still very young to be in charge of so many that are even younger, and that is a terrifying truth. But, more importantly, she is a musician in charge of other musicians, and she’s pretty sure that she has all the competence in the world to do that.)