My mouth still felt weird without braces, though, and it got really sore toward the end of my scale. I exhaled after I played the last note, my fingers shaking. Ms. Kaiser frowned and wrote something on the pad she kept on her music stand. My body stayed tense, waiting for her to announce the random scale she wanted me to play.
“Play the C scale, please,” she said, peering at me with her big circular glasses.
I gulped so loudly I was sure Matty could hear it all the way in the back row. The C scale was, technically, the easiest scale when played in the privacy of your own home. It started off all right, but then when I forgot to play a B natural (which was a very rude fingering where you essentially gave your clarinet the middle finger), it all went downhill.
I soldiered on, but my mouth was already so tired I could hear the pitch of the clarinet go wonky, and then I missed an-other note. Matty must have thought a loud Canada goose was honking, and not a freshman clarinetist. That was truly the only way to explain the noises emitting from my instrument.
To top it off, I accidentally started going back down the scale when I was supposed to go up a second octave, that’s how much I was panicking. When I reached the last note, the muscles around my mouth just about gave out. I needed to go to church/mosque more often. My prayers had no juice.
I opened my eyes, unaware I’d even closed them. My thoughts seemed to catch up to my body just in time for me to notice that I was covered in an inch of sweat. I watched Yessenia whisper something to the flutist next to her, who giggled and looked right at me. Please tell me Matty went to the bathroom for my audition. I couldn’t bear to look around and check.
The room was silent. I wanted to die. But it wasn’t until Ruth squeezed my hand that I knew I’d really messed up. Ms. Kaiser grimaced as she took notes on my audition. I didn’t know what felt worse: wallowing in heartbreak in the privacy of my own Netflix queue, or knowing with absolute certainty that I’d blown it in front of a whole classroom of people. Who was I kidding? This was way worse.
Ruth got third chair, which was pretty good for a freshman. I quietly hyperventilated and waited for Ms. Kaiser to give me my seat assignment, but it never came.
“Miss Mohammadi,” she said finally, “please see me after class.”
A low “ooooh” noise rippled through the band room, the noise specifically reserved for bad kids, and I wanted to evaporate into my chair. Ruth looked at me apologetically as she moved to the front row while the clarinet section reshuffled. I just stayed in my spot, trying to make myself invisible as Ms. Kaiser moved on to the French horns. I had never felt so devastated in front of so many people.
It was only my first day of high school, but I was pretty sure I failed it.
■ ■ ■ MS. KAISER’S OFFICE 2:45 P.M.
The bell rang, and I could hear all the band students head to the main building where our lockers were. I should have been one of them. Instead, I sat in Ms. Kaiser’s office, awaiting my doom.
Her office was full of so many different knickknacks it was hard to know where to look. Sheet music, photos of students, vintage instruments—she had her whole life crammed into shelves and even hanging from the ceiling. There was so much stuff in there that when Ms. Kaiser sat behind her desk, the pattern on her shirt practically blended in with the instruments behind her. I jumped when she turned to look at me.
“Miss Mohammadi,” she started, staring evenly at me from across her huge wooden desk. “Do you know what a bassoon is?”
I blinked back at her. “A bassoon? Like . . . a . . . bassoon?” I repeated stupidly. Where was this going? Ruth, Fabián, and I were supposed to walk home from school together today. I hoped they were waiting for me.
Ms. Kaiser nodded, her mouth twitching. She had the type of face that looked like it was made from marble, she was so tough to read. “It’s a type of musical instrument. Similar to an oboe, but bigger.”
I nodded. “Cool?”
She shook her black hair out of her ponytail and ran her hands through it. Suddenly, she seemed very tired.
“Look, we have too many clarinets. You had braces, right? And I’m guessing you wear a retainer at night?”
My eyes widened. How did she know?
“Your embouchure. I can tell by the way you got tired halfway through playing.”
Oh.
“Yeah,” I replied. Had I done something wrong? Besides be terrible?
“We need a bassoon player,” Ms. Kaiser said flatly. “Would you be interested in learning? If not, you can still play clarinet, but you’d have to be last chair.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was only my first day, but I was already being asked to give up an instrument I’d been playing for three years.
“The bassoon is a double reed. Your mouth won’t get as tired. And it’s a lot less competitive,” she explained, as if that would make me feel better. “It could be a good fit.”
“Can I think about it?” I asked.
Ms. Kaiser nodded.
I headed for the door. “How do you spell it?”
“Excuse me?” Ms. Kaiser replied.
“Bassoon. How do you spell it?”
She told me, and I left.
■ ■ ■ THE WALK HOME 3:00 P.M.
Emergency Hot Cheeto meeting. Obviously, I couldn’t partake because none of the women in the movies I watched ate junk food. Fabián shoved a bunch into his mouth at once to “get enough heat,” as he liked to say. Ruth sucked the neon-orangey-purple Cheeto crumbs off her thumb as we took the creek path home.
“I don’t understand,” Ruth said,
