The end of the show is a brass company front, a moment of dramatic rest and immediate forte as the woodwinds trill lamely in the background and the drumline goes absolute HAM in the middle. It’s not in their parts—they change it every time—Reese heard Ferd Groggin tell Emily when we were waiting on the reset. But Dr. Hightower is on the warpath, and today no one’s making it out unscathed. 

He’d started by chewing out the piccolos for a wrong note that we’re sure he couldn’t actually hear. Then the mellophones did something stupid with the upbeat and also got reamed out—“That’s your job!” he’d boomed into the old white megaphone, causing a few giggles down the clarinet line. (Everyone knows French horns almost only ever play upbeats in concert band, and it’s three days til contest. They should know better.) The sousaphones got out of step (big surprise), then the saxophones (ditto). The color guard dropped their flags and were next to be made a target. But that was all just low-hanging fruit. 

Dr. Hightower barks at the trombones for being slightly out of tune, grouses at the pit for not rolling the suspended cymbal with enough vigor, shouts at the trumpets for playing their part just a tad too loud. “BWAAAAH BWAAAAH BWAAAAH,” he mocks, earning giggles from the band. Even poor Qiara and Preston get yelled at for being just slightly out of sync—and we’re pretty sure that’s just because Qiara’s arms are longer and it makes her directing patterns look a tiny bit different. 

“Start over” after “start over” after “start over,” we trudge back to the beginning of the set. Haley hisses at the sophomores who are scuffing their toes into the dirt. Anything—any small thing—could be the next spark for Dr. Hightower’s wrath. Someone on the drumline’s phone starts ringing but nobody moves a muscle. Hightower yells anyway. It’s past 4:30, getting on til 5. We think, surely he’s done. Surely he’ll let us go. Our parents are circling the band room, parking impatiently along the street beside the stadium. A phone is ringing again—it’s one of the cymbals, one of the freshmen; we know by the way he twitches in the rest. 

But nothing can stop Hightower. “KILL IT,” he roars. “BACK TO THE BEGINNING!”

Margaret Emma Brandl's novella Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies) was published by Bridge Eight Press in 2021. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and video essays have appeared in magazines such as Gulf Coast, Yalobusha Review, River Teeth, and Moon City Review. She teaches creative writing and other English courses at Austin College in Sherman, TX.