Last Practice

“This is sounding way better than it started!” Valerie said excitedly.

“Yea it does. we only have 2 more days to practice though. Then it’s show time. I definitely think we can win at the rate we are going.” I say while emptying my spit valves. “Do you mind if I hear you play your part by yourself? I wanna get my timing right here.”

Without saying a word, Valerie played her part, almost perfectly. “Ok. I think I got it. Let's run it again one more time today. Then I’ll treat you to some dinner tonight. What would you like?”

“Oh, lunch would be awesome! But you don’t have to pay for me. As to where, let's go to The Endless Breadstick, I hear they almost treat you like family there.”

As we finish playing, Valerie and I look at each other with such excitement. The shock from playing as well as we did filled us both. Valerie jumped up with her arms open, expecting a hug, not knowing what to do, I panic and give her a high five. Embarrassed, I go to put my trumpet away.

“Alright, let's go get some dinner.” As we start walking to The Endless Breadstick I finally get the nerve to ask Valerie a question that’s been on my mind for a while, “So why did you pick me as your duet partner?”

“Well that’s an easy answer. I admire the work you put into your music. Anything you try you put all your effort in. That's really amazing. I’m just really lucky that you agreed to be my partner.” Valerie replied.

The feelings of self doubt seemed to disappear from me. I couldn’t explain it to anybody. It felt unbelievable that a girl like Valerie admired anything about a guy like me. I didn’t say another word until we arrived at the restaurant. When we start to go inside, I open the door for Valerie. I plan to even surprise her more by being a top notch gentleman. As we went to take our seats I had already forgotten to pull her seat out for her.

Valerie decided to start up the conversation “Man, I love this place. The food here is always great. I hope you don’t mind it.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Pasta is actually one of my favorite foods. I used to come here a lot as a kid.”

Once we are settled our waiter walks up to take our order for drinks, “So how can I start off the lovely couple’s order?”

I panic while trying to explain how we weren’t a couple as Valerie just laughs and orders her drink. “I’ll have sparkling water please. What will you have, Honey?”

Feeling weird I ordered my drink. “I’ll have a rootbeer please.”

While waiting for our drinks Valerie starts asking about the competition. “What will we do if I freeze up and get disqualified? I’d hate for all that work you did to become useless.”

“You don’t gotta worry about that either. I have a plan for that tomorrow. Just wait and see.”

Once our drinks come, we decide to also place our orders for food. We have small talk while we wait for our food to come. I finally think about a way I can give payback against Valerie for that little “Honey” comment earlier. “I am super happy you wanted to go on this date with me. It’s been really great so far.”

Instead of the reaction I was expecting Valerie to give, she responds “Yea no problem. It's about time you asked.”

“Touche” I say realizing that I couldn’t embarrass Valerie.

“What? Oh, yea, you’re never gonna get me to blush that easily. C’mon now.”

As we laugh, we continue talking about what to expect from the talent show.

“Well to be honest, most of the people who are entering are going to be doing the basic stuff. There’s gonna be a bunch of people singing popular songs, dancing, and even magic tricks. But Year after Year, the people who play and make their own music tend to win. I really have a good feeling.”

“Do you know of anybody who is gonna give us a run for our money?”

“Well there’s one person who normally wins it every year. Jacey.”

“Who’s Jacey?”

“She’s that girl who threatened me to get you to play or else.”

“Well if she’s gonna be competing, why would she want me to join?”

“The thing about her is, she loves competition. Actually she has tried all last year to get me to enter the talent show. I just never really cared about showing off, I play music because I love it.”

“I bet she was happy to hear that you were entering this year huh.”

“Actually, I haven’t told her I was entering. She only asked me if I was able to get you to join, and I told her yes. I also told her I was helping you out and she was happy with that and stopped asking questions.”

“It doesn’t sound like you guys are that good of friends.”

“We really aren’t. We used to be best friends coming into high school, but I don’t know what happened, she just stopped talking to me. So I stopped talking to her.”

I ignored the fact that I used to have a crush on her. I didn’t want to get into that stuff again. I pushed those feelings so far down that I almost forgot I had them. It should stay like that.

Our food came out right after we finished talking. I grab my fork and get ready to bite into my pasta before Valerie stops me.

“What are you doing? We have to take pictures and post them on Pinchat. Almost ruined my picture. You’re lucky this wasn’t a date, it would’ve ended right there.” she says smiling.

“I’m not really the type of person who takes pictures of their food. I actually never understood that.” I say confused as to why she yelled at me for eating food.

“Well, when you’re with a girl, always wait for her to make the first decision. Sometimes she will take a picture, other times she’ll start eating. Never ruin a girl’s chance at a photo though.”

“Thanks for the advice, I will never forget that.” I say, while I hope I have a chance to take Valerie on a real date.

The waiter is back to give us our check, and he asks how many checks there would be.

“One” I say before Valerie could even speak.

As Valerie glares at me, I hand the waiter the money for the meals.

“Ready to leave? I can walk you home if you’d like.” I look at Valerie hoping she will agree.

“No, it's okay. I don’t live too far from here. I’ll see you tomorrow for our final practice.”

We head our separate ways. Eventually I reach my house and begin texting everybody I can. The texts read ‘I am trying to surprise Valerie with an audience tomorrow. I want to help her stage fright, and was wondering if you or your clubs can come listen right before 4 pm.’ Hoping that this works, I finish tonight's homework and head to bed.

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As the school day ends, I meet up with all the people that gave me responses for my request. I tell them all what is going on. After I get done explaining to them what I was trying to accomplish, we all head to our separate clubs.

Walking into the room I give her our plan for today. “Are you ready Valerie? Last practice, but since we are done with figuring everything out, let's polish it. Let us play it a couple times, record it, listen to ourselves and go from there.” I knew that what we had was pretty great, but needed a reason to keep her here.

“Sounds good to me.”

We begin playing and listen to the first recording. It sounding as nice as it did, we had to find anything that we didn’t like the sound of. Not being able to figure anything out that I didn’t like, I came up with the idea of “You know what? Since we’ve come this far, let's listen to the professional recording.”

After an hour of listening to our own recording and the professional recording I get a text from everybody asking if we were ready.

“Awesome, give me a sec Valerie.” I say as I start making room for people to come in to listen and sit.

“What are you doing?” Valerie asks, confused.

Before I could answer, in walks Troy and the baseball team, Nik and the Manga club, and Jacey with the majority of the band members.

“Thanks everyone for making time to come listen. We would like your honest opinions on how it sounds.” I proudly say. Then I look at Valerie and tell her “I found a way to fight your stage fright. I’m going to force you to play in front of an audience.”

“I don’t know about this, but screw it. Let’s play” Valerie says shyly.

Valerie starts us off playing with her intro and the room goes silent. Sensing that she may get nervous, I come in on time, to let her know she has nothing to fear. Eventually the first solo comes up, it is mine, as I play it I make sure to seem calm, even though I am terrified of messing up. Once we finish my solo, it is soon followed up by Valerie’s. She doesn’t mess up. She plays the part more beautifully than the original recording we listened to. Once her solo finishes, we confidently end the piece together.

Expecting applause, the room was silent. Valerie was looking worried about something. Not wanting her stage fright to get worse I say “Dang, we were that bad? Left everyone speechless. Well c’mon we only have a day to fix it. What did you not like?”

Being the friend he is, Nik answered first, “Nothing is wrong. You can believe that. Most of us are just shocked how great that was. I remember that it sounded nothing like this. How did you pull this off Mark? And Valerie, I thought you had stage fright, it didn’t seem like you were bothered at all.”

“Thanks Nik.” I say while looking for more inputs.

“Honestly, if I knew this is how she’d sound, I would’ve never told you to force her into this competition. I actually have some competition this year.” Jacey said. She continues, “I tried for two years to get you to enter, but all it took for her was one time huh? I see you Mark.”

Trying to not blush I move on to see what Troy had to say.

“You know I’m not the most knowledgeable on this type of music, but that sounded like something I’d hear at one of my mom’s parties.”

Knowing that this was going to be the best compliment from Troy, I thank him.

“Thank you everyone again, we couldn’t have gotten this far without y’alls help. So thanks a lot. I owe y’all one.”

Once everyone leaves, I look at Valerie to see how she felt.

“You know Mark. That actually felt good. At first I was nervous, but everything felt natural, and Jacey sounded nervous. I think we are in a really good spot. We will win this thing.” Valerie said, filled with excitement.

Trying to play it off cool I say “I told you, everyone is nervous, but once you start playing something just takes over you. You honestly looked like a professional on your solo.” Making sure we don’t over practice, I tell her “Ok, I guess all we do now is rest and wait for our turn.”

I leave the room first and run to catch up with Nik and Troy. “Ready to go home guys?”

“Hell yea, it's been a long day.”

While we walk away that same kid who gave me issues before hand comes up to me again.

“I told you to stay away from Valerie. You ain’t listening. You know you aren’t good enough.” the kid starts to berate me.

Before Nik or Troy have a chance to defend me I respond to him with “Shut up dude. You don’t intimidate anyone. You say I’m not good enough for Valerie, but here you are attacking her friend because I spend time with her. Get the hell outta here.”

Shocked, the kid looks at me and says “Fine if you wanna be with that whore then go ahead.”

After I heard this, I lost my temper and went to attack the guy. However, before I was able to get my hands on him, Nik and Troy grabbed me and kept repeating he isn’t worth it over and over again. I look at the random guy and tell him “If you ever talk bad about her again, I will put you six feet under. Talk bad about me all you want, but she is off limits. This is your only warning.”

After I said this Nik and Troy let go of me, and as soon as they did the kid ran away.

“Guys like that are just cowards, man. Don’t let them get in your head. If you would’ve fought him, you would have gotten expelled or arrested. You can’t right now. Especially with your duet coming up. Show him that you belong with her by winning it.” Nik tells me.

Troy trying to get in the conversation says “Yea. What Nik said.”

“Thanks guys. I don’t know what happened. I just lost control. That’s never happened to me before. I really can’t explain it.”

Troy being the first to speak up says “It’s probably because you’ve never felt this way about someone before. Our little Mark is growing up.”

They continue laughing it off, while I still am trying to cool off. After that short confrontation happens, we leave campus and head home.

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It’s the night before the Talent Show and I can’t sleep. I try everything but a mix of the nerves of competition and the scuffle early keep my mind racing. Trying to relax myself I decide to text Valerie to see how she was doing but she did not respond. Realizing how she is calm enough to sleep I start watching this week's baseball highlights, and finally get relaxed enough to sleep.