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rudiment

noun. a compact drumming pattern that constructs longer percussive music pieces.

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WOULD YOU BELIEVE ME IF I said that Bay and I used to be friends?

Before the sudden freeze of freshman year, we used to find each other at parties and keep each other company because of the mutual band connection. I remember one such party, probably in October, where I'd gone out onto the back patio and seen Bay sitting on a wicker chair. The pounding bass of the music shook the wood beneath my feet, I smiled, and took the empty chair next to her.

"Bay. Are you okay?"

Her cheeks were flushed red, and she held a red solo cup. At that point the party punch was laden with so many spirits; it wouldn't have been out of place in an organic chemistry lab.

"Hi, Callum," she'd smiled—see? Our dynamic was warm at one point—"I'm great. Better than great. A girl has given me her number."

Turns out she was bisexual, and I was bisexual, and since graduating from my New-England, ridiculously repressive private school, I hadn't met many people who were as blunt and expressive about their identity as Bay is. Was. I think she was one of the first five people I ever came out to, excluding my family and Quentin.

"Thank you for telling me," she said. "I hope I remember in the morning."

I laid my head back against the chair and gazed at the stars as we started analyzing each other's sexuality, what was the same and what was different, passing questions between each other.

"When did you know?"

"What's your type?"

"What's your ratio?"

"Is it a coincidence that your type and your ratio are the most heteronormative expression of bisexuality?" (That was what Bay asked me when I said I would fuck a guy but not date him, and that 80% of the time my attraction leans towards women.)

I caught her watching me in her periphery, and she clarified, "I just recently read a study about how queer attraction is still heteronormatively-conditioned. Like how gay men really like straight-presenting gay men. And like the butch-femme dichotomy. Why does someone always have to be the straight man?"

"That's true, I guess," I said, laughing in surprise. "I mean, my school was really conservative. I definitely have to think about it."

She swerved to talking about the classes we were taking that semester, perhaps sensing that she'd overstepped some social boundary.

Soon after that, she hated me, and we never talked about 'deep' things again.

But I learned more in that exchange that I learned that whole semester. Bay is a rarity: someone who likes to catch her friends out with a conversational trip line. Someone who takes an emotional, vulnerable moment and shines a clinical light on it. Someone who inspects others like psychological specimens. Someone who sees the fabric of society and has to resist the urge to tear it up.

But, as I said, no-one else sees her this way but me. To Quentin, for example, she is just a funny, smart gal with a dark sense of humor. I think that flattens Bay and the way she sees the world, but hey.

I could spend years studying and never understand her.

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I am late again to Halston Student Orchestra practice.

My professor's office hours ran later than expected, and this time I didn't give apologies in advance. But neither Keller nor Bay, surprisingly, say anything when I slink into the band room, depositing my rucksack and skateboard by the back wall. I know which piece we're in the midst of playing because Shane is on the bass drum, her scrawny pale arms stretched wide around the barrel, and that combination of person-to-instrument only happens for Selections from 'How to Train Your Dragon'.

Nate is by Bay's side at the timpani, peering intently while Bay rifles through her music folder.

"I swore I put my folder in my bag," he mutters, scratching anxiously behind his ear, "but I must have left it out when I was swapping textbooks in and out this morning."

"It's okay," Bay consoles him. Bay has extra copies of all the sheet music. She fills the front of her folder with her own music and the back with the miscellaneous percussion parts, in case something goes awry during performances or even rehearsals, like now. "Which part are you on?"

"I think it was Misc. 2? It had the suspended cymbal part."

"Misc. 2," she nods, deftly slipping her fingers into a clear sleeve of her folder. She pulls out two sheets of paper and hands it to Nate. "Here you go. I'd like it back at the end of practice, though."

Nate thanks Bay profusely, even though we're all used to her being the stockpile for the percussion section. She's reliable like that.

Damn it.

Maybe this election is not so in-the-bag. Outwardly, I'm proceeding as usual, taking my place at the snare drum, slapping my music folder onto the stand, swivelling down the page holders. Inside, I conduct a thorough comparison of all our strengths and weaknesses.

I have more rapport with band. I invest in my relationships.

Bay is more consistent; she knows the repertoire inside and out.

Talent? An even match, in different ways. I've been playing the drums since I was five. I've gone through at least one pair of drumsticks for each year that passed. (Four pairs when I was thirteen because I went through a clumsy phase.) As soon as my parents became aware of the blessed existence of electronic drum kits, they bought one so I could plug my headphones in and they wouldn't have to listen to my ceaseless practice. I didn't bring it to Halston for several reasons, including the power bill, instead taking my older analog drum kit with me.

Late nights, early mornings, finger-tapping in all my high school classes. YouTube videos, summer drum clinics, and high school marching band. My technique is a brick wall made of individual days, individual hours, cemented together with this undying passion for music. I'm the only person at Halston University to say they made the drumline snare section when they were just a freshman. The competitor pool comprises hundreds of musicians with years of ensemble experience and college marching titles under their belts. No-one had done it in five years, and no-one's done it since me.

But Bay is a late start, a quick study, an underdog. She started behind me in freshman year and by now she's, in theory and practice, all caught up. I want to call her a phenom, a natural prodigy, but that undermines the hard work she's done. When she didn't make field battery, she went into pit percussion. I constantly make the mistake of favoring snare drum and kit over everything. It's comfortable, it's what I've known longest.

Bay's time in pit percussion made her learn the percussion section inside and out. She picked up itinerant lessons for everything from piano to all the different miscellaneous instruments. There isn't a single instrument in this section she doesn't know the exact specifications and technique for. Even something as unassuming as the claves—literally two cylindrical rods of wood about five inches long—Bay has taught Shane with a depth and patience I never possessed. How holding it in different ways muffles or clarifies the sound; curving her palm to make a resonant chamber; the physics of acoustics.

To me, they're just sticks. Hit them.

Bay joined the drumline in sophomore year, and since then we've competed at every available opportunity: game days, drill practices, and the long commutes to competitions.

So, yes, in a way, maybe Quentin was right.

This election is about measuring up to Bay.

After rehearsal, I approach her like a hiker foolishly approaching a bear. I pull up tomorrow's schedule on my phone. I slide it across the timpani, already covered with their blue casings, for Bay to see. "My audition is twelve-thirty."

She screws her lips into a frown. "One p.m."

"So we're right after each other."

To the outside observer, Bay and I probably look like we would smile at the other's funeral, but she just wants the exact same things I want—to be the best drummer—and obviously, there can only be one of those in the percussion section. After this election, we'll know.

"Are you going to practice any more before tomorrow?" I ask her.

"Tonight," she answers, picking up her tote bag from the padded bench against the wall. "I'll use the music rooms in my hall."

I clear my throat. "Well, good luck."

"Now I have to say it back."

"You don't have to do anything."

"If I don't say it back," she sighs, world-weary, "I forfeit the moral high ground."

"You lose the moral high ground by doing things just to get the moral high ground."

"Only if you're a deontologist," she reasons, carefully pulling a strand of hair from underneath the strap of her bag. "I'm a consequentialist."

"I'm pretending to know what that means."

When Nate and Lien breeze past the bench, Lien chuckles, "It means saying good things has moral worth even if you mean none of it."

"Exactly." Bay grins, reaching out to squeeze Lien's hand as they head for the door. Then she turns to me, such a pleasant expression on her alluring face I almost think it's genuine. "Good luck, Callum. I hope we both get what we deserve."

Not a loaded statement at all.

I meet her saccharine smile and smother the urge to wipe it off her mouth.

The horrible thing about Bay Rodriguez is that by even attempting to get under her skin, she gets under yours. She's inert, untouchable, she infuriates me. Band is supposed to be a family, a fun time, not a battlefield.

At the end of the week, one of us will be named the victor.

And I nearly don't care who it is, just so the fighting can end, once and for all.

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Amoretto only takes five minutes to play.

On Thursday, the usual ring of chairs has been pushed wider and further from the front of the room. The conductor's podium has been removed and replaced with three desks in an unbroken line, behind which sits my audience: Keller, Mr. Scott, and the director of the color guard. Briefly the prospect of applying for the position of drum major came up, but they do all the marching and no actually drumming—Bay and I are agreed: in that case, what's the fucking point?

She and I are alike in all the ways that don't matter.

In the center of the ring of chairs, a snare drum. I take my place and curl my fingers around my drumsticks, the dry and polished wood familiar and comforting. I've practiced for hours. I know the music. I know this band room. I know my audience.

You've got this.

I play the audition piece perfectly, an imaginary metronome ticking in my head. After I strike the snare drum for the final time, the three adults bow their heads to their papers and scribble down some notes. I imagine it says stuff like callum is a 10/10 in looks, skill and personality, or just pretending to write; we have our section leader!!!

Great stuff.

"Okay, thank you, Callum," Keller says. She points to the chair at the end of the row of desks. "Come sit down. We've reached the interview part, which will just be a few question about your motivations and plans for next year."

I tuck my drumsticks into my breast pocket and sit down. They ask me the standard interview questions. Why do I want to be section leader? What is my leadership style? What do I like most about the marching band? I don't even feel nervous; I never feel nervous with other people. All I have to do is tell the truth and whatever comes out has always been well-received.

Once the interview has included, I shake hands with all three faculty and leave the band room. A strong gust picks up outside the Music Department, a piercing whistle squeezing through the slits of the windows. My phone rings. Mom, right on time.

"Hello, darling. Is your audition over? How did it go?"

I love my mother. Short of getting MOM tattooed on my bicep inside a love heart, during the school year I have to make do with visiting home as often as I can and calling Mom at least once a week. Also, drunkenly bragging about my family. I do that, apparently.

"I think I did well."

"Of course you did." Her joy pulses through the other end of the line. "I have complete faith in you. When will you know?"

Bay and I aren't the only percussionists vying for section leader, but I think we're the most serious contenders. "After everyone has their audition. Next week, maybe?"

"Text me when you find out," Mom says. "You should come home this weekend. Christian misses you. He misses you as soon as you walk out the door, though."

My heart pinches. "I miss him, too. But finals season is coming up."

"I know, I know. Studies come first. I just thought—"

"—well, Vierra? How did it go?"

I crane my neck, spotting Bay stepping through one of the stone arches of the Music Department galleries.

She's wearing denim shorts and a brown singlet with an unfamiliar woman's pixelated face across the front, screen printed in white, a black cardigan over her shoulders. Her skin dissolves into gold when she passes a beam of sunlight, before halting a few steps away. Seeing that I'm on the phone, her brows pinch into an almost-apologetic furrow. Then the signature iciness returns.

Mom paused, voice curious. "Who is that?"

I turn away from Bay, shrugging. "Just the next drummer coming to audition."

"Do I know them?"

I'm very close with my family. I share my school timetable with my mother, I tell her about things like applying for internships and vying for percussion section leader. She knows Quentin and Quentin knows her. Sometimes when I come back from Carsonville she will send me with containers of leftovers to share with my flatmates. Basically, I try not keep compartments on the dearest aspects of my life. Bay is different. She is a maelstrom. To be earnest about things, to love other people is not the mortal weakness Bay thinks it is. I don't think I could ever handle hearing her talk about Mom like she seems so sweet and she loves you so much in her usual sardonic tones.

Worse, I hate to imagine what she'd say about Christian.

I wonder what her relationship with her family is like. Though we're connected on social media, she never posts much about her personal life. The one post on her Instagram is a montage of photographs from last marching season. On Facebook, when it's her birthday, I see friends but never anyone with the same surname wishing her a happy birthday. Nor has she ever mentioned, in the three years we've known each other, her siblings and parents in conversation. Then again, if she were to open up to anyone, I would be last on the list.

When I switch directions, leaning my left shoulder on the cool stone pillar, Bay has taken a seat on the wooden bench by the door. Her music folder is split on her knees. The band room is just inside, though my interview finished early. Technically, there are five minutes before Bay should enter. She should just knock.

My forefinger drags slowly around the inside of the silver chain hanging from my neck. "No, you don't know her."

"Ah," Mom chuckles. "She's the competition."

I watch Bay reading her sheet music, the elegant slope of her shoulders, her intense, focused expression, her knee bouncing rapidly. The competition. "You have no idea."

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a / n :

do you prefer single, dual, or multiple pov when reading?

confession; this is the first story i've written in dual pov - i've done full-length novels in both male and female pov, and always found that my writing style changes in each case. i feel like my language is more blunt and bare when writing men, and more self-critical when writing women. hence why writing Bay, who actually doesn't care if people hate her, is incredibly freeing.

i'm excited to share the next chapter!

aimee x