The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [68]
At dawn, the band unpacked the instruments. When Noah maneuvered the taxi around the floats toward the Mary’s Thanksgiving Day Parade loading zone, students in other bands cheered. I am not going to let Redsen down, Noah thought. I want this to be the best day of my life. Two police officers jokingly asked Noah for his license and registration.
Finally, the parade began. As Noah drove through the streets in the middle of the band, he smiled and waved at people lining the sidewalks. Someone threw a ball of confetti at Noah, who swatted it to bystanders’ applause. A band parent walking behind the taxi warned him to keep his eyes on the road. For more than an hour, Noah drove on. He heard a parent ask another where Jiang was marching. Noah turned to answer, “With percussion.”
“NOAH!” several parents shouted. His taxi bumped a flutist, who stumbled. Noah heard what to him sounded like a sickening crunch as the parade spectators gasped. The flutist righted herself and kept marching, but Noah felt nauseous. I just ruined the entire Macy’s Parade, he thought.
“Can you look at the damage?” Noah croaked to the band manager who walked beside the taxi.
“No, Noah. Just keep moving on.”
Noah kept driving. Finally they reached the “Quiet Zone,” adjacent to the telecast area. Noah inspected the taxi, saw no obvious damage that would show on TV, and exhaled in relief. He heard the tapping of the drums, pulled into position, tipped his cap to 45 million television viewers, and sped off, grinning widely. Noah dropped off the performer at her designated spot. He drove to the front of the band alongside the Honor Guards and looped around them.
As he proudly watched his band, he almost forgot to drive into his final position. He raced into the center of the formation to squeeze into the same rapidly narrowing space that had caused him to crash in practice. He could feel the foam of the taxi brush against a saxophonist’s uniformed leg. Noah ignored the friction and drove toward the gap, where trumpeters and saxophonists were marching toward each other. Hundreds of days of counting down, months of afterschool and weekend practices, rehearsals at band camp, run-throughs at football games, run-ins with athletes . . . all came down to this flash of time, in which Noah zipped into his spot just before the marchers met and colorful streamers exploded around him in a revelry that echoed the exhilaration in his heart.
BLUE, HAWAII | THE GAMER
At the top of the street not far behind his home, Blue longboarded in the moonlight, which was bright at two in the morning. Back and forth, he carved across the pavement. He preferred longboarding to skateboarding. While skateboarding was raw and harsh, longboarding had more of a graceful flow, an emphasis on balance and poise. Back and forth, back and forth. He was getting better at skating, and he was teaching himself a new artistic freestyle. It was like a dance, or an ice-skating routine, a sinuous glide that combined drifting, bombing, pumping, and technicals. It was beautiful. The steep hill was about a mile long, but Blue could make one run last an entire hour. Besides a touch of bravery, carving down this hill took little thought. He could empty his mind of matter, letting the repetitious sound of the board calm him. He had been longboarding regularly since he was nine.
This semester, he visited the hill late at night when he felt depressed, which was about twice a month. Nothing seemed to be going right. Blue had few people he could talk to about his feelings. He was still friends with Ty, Stewart, and Jackson, but he questioned the strength of their friendship, especially because they still participated in Arwing.
After school, Blue had gone to the teacher’s lounge to microwave a snack.