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magazine I’d allowed myself to bring.
    “Don’t worry, Liza,” Huck says, placing his warm hand on the small of my back. “They’re just trying to get in your head.”
    “I know,” I reply, and I wish I could tell him it wasn’t working, but the truth is, I’m nervous. I’m nervous we’re not as good as I think we are and that the Athenas are better. I’m nervous that we won’t get the money and about what will happen if we don’t. Of course, he doesn’t know that. “I just…I really want to win. I
need
to win.”
    Huck puts a hand on my shoulder and pivots me around to face him. “Is this about band camp again?” he says, suppressing a small sigh.
    It’s not just band camp. It’s Senior Speeches, where the outgoing seniors get up and talk about the band and memories and how much everything meant to them. They remind us of all the traditions we’re supposed to carry on, where they come from and what they mean. Senior Speeches are fun and hilarious, if not a mild threat to the underclassmen not to screw everything up in the coming year. Every year, the seniors who’ve just graduated drive up for the last day of band camp, which usually happens a week or two before they all leave for college. On the steps of the library at Cherokee State College, the tiny liberal arts campus in the woods that hosts camp every year, the outgoing drum major gives the final speech. Last summer, Sam Jacobs, a short, curly-haired clarinet player and certified genius who was off to Swarthmore in the fall, gave his entire speech while staring directly into my eyes.
    “Liza Sanders, youngest drum major in the history of the Style Marchers, I leave my legacy in your hands. My legacy, and the legacy of all the drum majors before me! We kept this band marching. We kept the music going. We kept the crowd cheering. We kept the spirit of the Holland High Style Marchers alive. This legacy is yours to carry, and yours alone.”
    He was probably a little drunk when he said it (okay, a lot drunk; rumor had it that the seniors passed around two handles of Jack before they gave their speeches), but something about those words resonated with me.
    They’re more than my bandmates, they’re my
friends.
The band has always been my home, a safe haven where I escaped Demi and the rat race of popularity happening in the cafeteria and in the halls. Every morning before first bell, between classes, and after school, the band room is where I can go and talk about who had the best Dr. Frank-N-Furter costume at last week’s
Rocky Horror
sing-along, or debate who has the best female superheroes, Marvel or DC. Our weekends are spent at bonfires out at Hillary’s family farm or singing along to the
Grease
sound track, the only songs on the ancient jukebox in Ben Tucker’s parents’ living room. And every year, Molly throws a Halloween party in her backyard, where you won’t find a single person dressed as a slutty nurse, slutty mouse, or slutty
anything,
except for the year Huck decided to dress as just “slutty” (let’s just say Nicole’s red bandage dress was working very hard that night). I have three years of memories with these people, and I’m supposed to have one more.
    So when I overheard Mr. Curtis talking about cutting the band, it felt like he was talking about cutting off my arm. And Sam’s words sang through my brain like a chorus.
Keep the band marching, keep the music going…the spirit of the Holland High Style Marchers.
I can’t imagine making it through senior year without the band.
    I
won’t
imagine it.
    The rest of them are counting on me. And they don’t even realize it.
    “Liza? Earth to Liza?” Huck snaps his fingers in front of my face, and I have to blink a few times to get my focus back. “You know Sam had had like, six shots of Jack and a pot brownie that night, right? You have to let go of the legacy speech. It’s going to drive you insane. The speeches are just overblown stand-up routines. Yours is going