Kate’s hands.
“One, a two a skidlydidlydo!”
Fingers flying,
barely touching the pearls of the valves.
Strong forward steps, hard backward steps.
Letter B.
Letters C and D.
The slight drag before letter E,
that we worked so hard to fix.
Percussion here, horns down.
Check the diagonals
and your ranks and files.
Kathleen’s solo.
Sam switching positions with Kate.
Letter M, that we sang in running blocks.
My favorite, N through P,
the parts I loved so much.
Long, quick, hard backward steps to page 56
and slow half-time to 62.
Page 78, my absolute favorite,
Ben, Kennedy, Brendan,
Arcing around the 30 yard line in front of me.
Under Pressure.

We leave the field.
We listen to Mr. Melrose’s speech.
We cry. A whole bunch.
Taz, who cried tears that started my own.
Hammer, who I sobbed with.
It was time for the full retreat.
I march to the cadence.
We stand still.
They give Lutheran Vanguard
the Best Drum Major award.
Then they give out the places.
“In second place, the…”
In the long pause
(or, at least, that’s how it felt)
I thought how we could have done better,
because they were going to say our name.
“Shadow Armada!”
Ryan Hammer broke down.
The stadium was cheering,
not because they were cheering for Shadow,
but because they were cheering for us.
“And in first place, The Sound of Sun Prairie!”
Deafening cheers.
We waited until the other bands left.
We broke out of the perfect ranks and files.
We arced around Mr. Kading,
and played Sanctuary.
Trevor Wells and the rest of the color guard bawled their eyes out,
and the rest of us had tears streaming down our faces,
but we were playing, we couldn’t wipe them away.
Then came the encore performance.
“ONE, TWO, THREE!
LOVE THAT SOUND!”
The Lutheran Vanguard.
The loudest shouters, the ones that made me sob again,
even though I wasn’t supposed to show any emotion.
And we took off our shakos.
To show we are only human.
We are human,
our feelings are human,
they are human.
Humanity is why we were there, crying our eyes out.
Anthony, the loudest I could here:
“A one, a two, a SKIDLYDIDLYDO!”
We were glorious.
We won.
But that’s not what mattered.
What mattered, was that we had pride.
That the performances that we had just done,
were the ones we will always look back on
and shed tears of sadness and joy.
We were The Chase,
we were Largo,
and we were Under Pressure.
Under pressure,
pressure.
Thank you, Sound.