have the Bloughton drawl. Nor do I, as you might have noticed. Even though I’ve been here fifteen years this semester. Ted’s Army never dies—the troops might change, but the war never ends. What brings you to Bloughton? What do your folks do?”
They were questions best avoided. I busied myself with using a pinkie to dislodge peppermint from a molar. He slapped his hands against the gray slacks pleated across slender thighs. “I’ve got a loaner horn. Come on, let’s see what you can do.”
Belly buzzing with syrup, I moved to an empty chair before a lowered music stand. Ted put a trumpet in my hands and sat slightly behind me.
“Play me a C scale,” he said. I raised the instrument. The mouthpiece looked like home and I brought it to my mouth. I blew, feeling the tightness of my lips lock into the C. Once I heard the note, I held it—within was the sight of Boris emptying his spit valve in the next chair over, the smell of my old bedroom where I’d practiced, the sound of my mother in the next room humming an echo to my every note. This was her instrument. Even dead, she could still save me. The note kept on, strong, for fifteen or twenty seconds. Finally it lost consistency and fractured. I opened my eyes and sat there panting.
“Well, we’ve established that you can play the hell out of C,” Ted said.
I gave him the scale he wanted, ascending C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and racing back down. I burned through another few scales and then dodged around as Ted looked me over. “I hope you don’t have braces,” he said. “You’re smashing your lips to the metal like you’re trying to french it.” He set a piece of paper before me, barred and dotted. I played through it the best I could, my fingertips sensing the instrument’s need for valve oil, the minute dents that pocked its shell. “Posture,” said Ted. “Your diaphragm has a purpose, you know.” Vibration anesthetized my lips, but even the bad notes sounded good; I played faster. “Medium pressure, medium pressure,” Ted said. “What’s with the chipmunk cheeks? Keep those things flat.” As fast as I wanted to play, as hard as I wanted to keep up the illusion, the song was fragmenting and my fingers were turning to butter. The dots on the page ran from me like bugs. “Firm your corners, Joey. Did I just see you breathe through your nose?”
I shook my head and started over at the first line: C, C, G, B-flat, C. My fingers—thief’s fingers, now—missed some of them entirely. I circled back: C, C, G, B-flat, C—I could hold on to nothing. The cracks in the illusion were huge now: this man next to me was a stranger, my mother was dead, Boris was gone, Chicago had been wiped off the map. C, C, G, B-flat, C—
And this time I hit all of them. A moment later I realized that Ted’s fingers were delicately moving atop my own, guiding them up and down with nearly imperceptible pressure. “I don’t know what you’re used to, but Ted’s Army is very small,” he said. His fingers continued imploring. “But we can use you. You missed camp, of course, but I bet you catch on quick. Individual practice is once or twice a week, depending. We meet as a group on Fridays, then for three hours every other day after school. Next week we have our first football game, though if you need to sit that one out, so be it.” At some point his thin fingers had retracted just enough so that only the weight of their shadows transferred their magic. I sounded good.
I stopped and looked at him, lips stunned, throat raw, and lungs aching. Hope, the most painful feeling of all, flickered somewhere even deeper.
12.
DURING THE BREAK BEFORE my final class I nearly ran into Woody and some of his gang. I veered quickly, hoping he didn’t see me. Too late. “Crotch!” one of them hollered.
I kept moving. The clatter of lockers buried much of the guttural laughter. “Where’s the fire, Crotch?” called someone else. I stopped at my locker to dump off some of Ted’s paperwork. They swept toward me, a male chorus: “Crooooootch!” A hand swatted my locker door shut; it barely missed my nose. I focused on my shoes and made them move, right, left, one foot after another. A girl’s voice, now,