One

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          He approached the green front door of his home. Before he slid the key into the lock, he tested the door to see if it was unlocked. It was. Which was weird since his parents always kept the front door locked. He entered slowly. The door swung inwards easily. The alarm wasn’t set. It was supposed to be when no one was home. They weren’t supposed to be home.

          “Mom? Dad?” It was almost like he couldn’t hear himself speak. But he felt his jaw moving. “Anyone home?”

          He dropped his backpack off his shoulder and took three slow steps forward. Then a big dark figure dropped from somewhere above and landed right in front of him. He couldn’t make out what it was. He tried to move but couldn’t. It was as if he had been paralyzed, as if some weird petrification spell cast on him. He could only watch as a long part of the figure, possibly a limb, raised up and backwards. He saw a flash of silver.

 

          He woke in a cold sweat. Cursing silently he shoved back the blankets and rolled over to look at his alarm clock on his nightstand. It read 6:07. He cursed again, hating his uncanny ability to always wake up five to ten minutes before his alarm was set to go off. The weird part was that he’d tested it and found that when he didn’t set the alarm, he would always oversleep. He rolled back over and closed his eyes thinking about what had just happened.

          He had died in the nightmare. He knew that. He also knew that something was wrong. He knew the nightmare well. He’d had the same one several times when he was younger. Around three times a month from the ages of five to ten. Nothing had caused it, no horror movies, bad experiences, or other provoking factors had occurred before he started having the nightmare. Every time the same thing happened. He came home, entered, was confronted by an unknown large dark figure, and died without being able to move. But it had been seven years since he’d last had it. Why now?

          “Come in today! Now open at …” He rolled over. Thirty seconds of thought had apparently equalled out to seven minutes. It seemed to be the radio station’s schedule that every day he woke up to commercials. He slid the switch to turn off the alarm. One hour later, he was dropped off at Arramone High School by his dad. It was a standard cold winter morning, around forty degrees out. He could clearly see his breath and there had been condensation on the car this morning. As he walked up the small slope towards the T Building, which contained his locker, he couldn’t help but glance left at the fenced off and highly blocked off Performing Arts Building. There was only one room which was not blocked off, the music room. It had been the newest addition to the Performing Arts Building in times BA. There was a section of wire fence inside the room barring access from inside the music room to the rest of the building. When tried by reaching fingers through the fence, the double doors which separated the room from the rest of the building were always found to be locked. From what the teachers had told him, the building “contained moderately to high levels of toxins, radiation, and biological threats.” He never believed it. In fact, as he glanced to the left at the building, he could’ve sworn he saw some shadows shifting in the windows. He stopped, looked back, and everything was still. He must’ve imagined it. He went to his locker, traded books and binders for other books and binders and headed back outside.

          He went over to his group of friends. Helina Seventra looked over and smiled at him. Her knee brace was on. She’d gone in for an MRI on it a few days ago. She was heavy-set, with shoulder length, curly, thick hair. Next to her sat her friend, a sophomore and formerly his friend, Marie Altrod, her nearly waist length dark brown hair getting in her way as she ate her breakfast; a banana and a small thermos of cheerios. He’d thought she was his closest friend up until the beginning of this year, when she’d decided to give him a very cold shoulder. Helina was talking to her other close friend, Skylar James. She was a junior. Skylar laughed. From his angle he could see the through the sides of rimless glasses. In the morning light they were clear. But he knew later on, the progressive lenses would tint in the bright light of the sun. Her curlyish wavy blond hair reached the middle of her back. Everything about her was small, her arms, her stature, even her chest. But she was cuter that way. It fit her. There was an interesting friendship between them, they called it a siblingship. She, being an only child was like his little sister. He, her older brother. It still slightly pained him to see either Skylar, Marie, or his other friend Kyrstan Petradale, after last year’s major argument between them; they had gone their own ways and never been close again. And since they’d been his group of closest friend, it hurt to see the remnants of the argument.

          “So what’s up?” he asked.

          “My hives are gone!” Skylar said.

          “What were they from? Another one of your hundred allergies?” he asked.

          “Yeah.”

          “You better marry someone in perfect health because if you don’t, your kids are going to be pretty screwed up, based on all the health problems you’ve inherited.”

          “Anyway, we were just talking about the Homecoming game tonight,” replied Helina, fighting back a smirk.

          “Our most important field show. This is going to be fun,” he said.

          “Mark, this show may be fun for you, but the flag team is definitely not ready for tonight,” Skylar said.

          “I was being sarcastic. We’ve been working like hell for this, but we’re nervous too. I’m pretty sure Jonathan almost puked yesterday when we started discussing how the crowd was going to be silent and all eyes on us during our part in the halftime.”

          Skylar did have some truth in what she had said though, he thought. He was captain of the drill team. She was second in command for the auxiliary team, having taken over as second captain after Kyrstan Petradale’s grades got her demoted to third in command and got her sent to the alternative high school down and across the street. Skylar was only just behind the captain, Hallia Sabrinete. He thought about her now. She had fair skin, long slightly wavy brown hair which reached just past the middle of her back, and beautiful hazel eyes. She was pretty in every way, dangerous when angry, and was the nicest girl he knew.

          “Well, the band’s pretty much ready,” Helina said smiling.

          He and Skylar glared at her. The bell rang. “Well, here’s to senior year,” he said before they parted to go to class, thinking of Kyrstan, Helina, Hallia, himself and all the other seniors in the marching band.

 

          “Ready for that calc test?” he asked Karinse Hanson as he walked into the Physics/Honors Chemistry classroom. His first and second periods, Computer Animated Design and Senior English were over with. His third was Physics; a class only available to seniors. After a grueling Spanish IV fourth period, his fifth, the highest math class on campus, was Calculus 2B. Karinse smiled at him. She was cute, always smiling, brown hair that ended right below her shoulder blades.

          “Totally! I can’t wait for it!” she exclaimed.

          And she was an optimist…

          He turned to look one seat back and one seat to Karinse’s right.

          “So are you ready for the big show tonight?” he asked Katalyna Starknight. She had dyed her hair again; from a dark red to blonde, with pink highlights. Today she wore a white midriff sweater with a black star on it. It brought out her dark blue eyes quite well.

          “I know my part on the quads, but I’m still tired from last night. I only got 4 hours of sleep.” They’d gone to Tran Jimokani to participate in one of the big parades yesterday, the Atlas Bowl Parade. It was comprised of the top two football teams facing off against each other. It was a lot like what they’d learned the Super Bowl had been BA. However, it was later in the year than the Super Bowl had been; it was on October 17 now and there was also a soccer match before the football portion began. They’d won the post-parade competition, which occurred during the Atlas Bowl. They were now considered the top band in the nation.

          “Better than me. I only got 2 hours.” And I didn’t sleep very well for those two hours either, he thought. “And you’re going to do amazing anyway.” It was true. She normally just played the trumpet, but her boyfriend last year -- who had also been the drum major -- had taught her percussion. So when the band had been short on percussionists this year, Katalyna had stepped up to the plate and rocked it.

          “Why’d you only get two hours? The after-party in the music room was done by 10 last night.”

          “A couple other drillers and I cleaned up the place before we left. After all, the party was our doing.” It was true, sort of. The bands had earned the exact same score at the competition, the opposing auxiliary team had scored one point higher than Arramone’s. But the opposing drill team had gotten a 55 out of 80, while the Arramone’s drill team had gotten a perfect score.

          “Yeah, well, we cleaned up before we left so you had to have been out of there by 11. What really kept you there?”

          “I took me awhile to get home. I had to be extra cautious.” The second sentence was true, he even brought a knife with him on nights like last night, when he had to walk home really late. But the first part was a lie. He’d gotten home within an hour as usual. What had taken him three hours, until he left at 2 in the morning, was working out plans and routines for the half time today. But it was a secret known only by the drill team.

          “Okaaay,” Katalyna replied accusingly.

 

          Entering the music room, he quickly surveyed the room. It was always a familiar feeling, like a home. The majority of the center of the room was taken up by several black chairs in layers of semi circles like an orchestra. He was entering through the only accessible entrance and exit, on the western side of the room. The door was on the southern end of the wall. To his left as he entered was an upright piano, a rack for basses, the revolving bow holder column, a rack for cellos, and, in the corner of the room, a full drum set with four large timpani drums underneath black covers behind it. As his gaze moved now along the northern wall, he saw the door into the closet, where all the band, flag, and drill team uniforms were stored. There was also a vault in there for the drill team. As he traced eastward, he saw the lone snare drum which sat beside the concert bass drum, the tam-tam, the brass classic chimes, the marimba, the door to Mr. Cramond’s office, the quad drums on a stand, and the xylophone. The east wall was taken up by large cabinets, two of which were open to show the thin shelves for music and music folders. To the right of that were smaller cabinets over a counter and sink. Past the end of the counter was the double door entry to the instrument storage room. He made a quick cover of the south wall in his peripheral and saw the speakers attached around seven feet up on the far and near side of another bank of cabinets, which protected a large smartboard in the center. On the far side, there was about 8 feet of blank wall, with a small table which had a computer and the wifi box on it.

          He quickly ate his lunch, and went to play the piano. He’d never learned to play it, but was good at just hitting keys that together created harmonies. Some of the pianists he knew had used the term “improvising.” He felt at peace on it. It relaxed him, in a way his guitar never did. He rocked at that, but even as the thought of the concert that his club -- which he’d founded -- was going to be hosting soon, he felt stressed. This was his meditation, his calm before the storm. He felt a pair of eyes on him and turned around. It was Crystal Aminda, the drum major.

          “You have a plan for tonight?” she inquired.

          “Always. You know me. Actually, I think you’ll like tonight. We have an all new set up, even for when we’re heading down to the field. You’ll like it a lot. On the way down to the field, you and assistant drum major Ligafte just worry about the band. We’ll handle timing and entry. Half-time is still as planned. But I do need to talk to Hallia.”

          “I think she said she was going to be here soon…”

          “Awesome, in the meantime I see three of the high sergeants here, have you seen Paul?”

          Just as he said this, the door opened. Paul walked in and stopped under Mark’s gaze.

          “What?” Paul asked.

          Mark narrowed his eyes. “You’re late. Get the other high sergeants and let’s talk.”

          They all congregated and sat down. “Alright, tonight’s going to be a little different,” Mark started. “You all know that we tend to be divided into sections by rank, which relies on grade level. First years, second years, juniors are lieutenants, seniors are sergeants. The only reason you’re higher up than the others is because you’re special and have proven to be better than the rest. Section leaders of the drill team, if you will. But tonight we will be united, as one, not divided…”