Boys in the Back Row Read online

  This is an Arthur A. Levine book

  Published by Levine Querido

  www.levinequerido.com • [email protected]

  Levine Querido is distributed by Chronicle Books LLC

  Copyright © 2020 by Mike Jung ∙ All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953557

  Hardcover ISBN 978-1-64614-011-4

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-64614-012-1

  Published October 2020

  FOR CHRIS ELIOPOULOS, MY FRIEND ONCE UPON A TIME, AND THANKFULLY, WONDERFULLY, MY FRIEND ONCE MORE.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Acknowledgments

  Some Notes on This Book’s Production

  At the start of every school year Mom and Dad try to get me all pumped up by saying things like “it’s a whole new year” or “this is the year when everything changes,” which always makes me think, uh, no, that was two years ago, but then sixth grade came lurching in like a one-legged zombie, and what do you know, everything actually did change.

  Sixth grade would be the year I stopped being “the boy flute player” and became … okay, I didn’t stop being the boy flute player in air quotes, at least inside the band, but I did switch to playing bass drum for marching band season. Yes, that’s me, Matthew Park, the first boy flute player in the history of Hilltop Summit K–8 School—not a good thing—and the newest bass drum player in the Hilltop Summit K–8 School Marching Band. Matt, to my friends. Friend, I should say, since I only have one for real.

  I’d been walking into the band practice room as either “the boy flute player” or “the boy piccolo player” (flute for orchestra, piccolo for marching band) for two years, so it felt very weird to walk into the music wing on the first day of school without an instrument under my arm. It only got weirder to go right past the piccolo players and on to the drum section.

  Unlike the piccolo section, the drum section was all guys, which felt a little like entering hostile territory. At least I’d get to sit with my best friend, Eric, though. Wherever he was. Where was he? And why was Sean McKenna looking at me like that? Sean was a snare drummer; why was he playing bass drum? Why was Hector Morales doing that with his hand? Oh right, he had his hand up for a high five.

  “Don’t leave me hanging,” Hector said, grinning so widely that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the top half of his head just slid right off the bottom half. I grinned back and smacked his open palm with mine, and looked over the drum line.

  “Dude! This is so awesome!” Hector said. “Bass drummers rock!”

  “Totally,” I said. Well, almost totally. Sean McKenna constantly bragged about his band, his drum kit at home, the concerts his dad took him to, and his girlfriend at another school. Sean did not rock. Hector was okay, though. We liked some of the same movies and stuff, and he didn’t talk about himself all the time.

  The snare drummers were in the same row at the back of the room as the bass drummers, and were also bunched together like the bass drummers, so it was bass drums, snare drums, and then all the way in the far corner was the tom-tom drummer, Rich Eisen. Rich was a gigantic hulk of an eighth-grader who I actually talked to sometimes, which was a nice change of pace from life with all the other gigantic eighth grade hulks.

  Sitting in the middle of the whole drum line, with Rich and the rest of the snare drummers to his right and an empty seat to his left, was Eric Costa, snare drummer, shortest guy in the sixth-grade, third-shortest sixth-grade guy at Hilltop Summit K–8 School, and my best friend. Switching from piccolo to bass drum had been his idea, and the whole point of switching was to be in the same section as Eric. That included sitting next to each other on the drum line, but Mr. Radcliffe, history teacher unextraordinaire, made everyone stay late while he finished telling a story about working on an archaeology dig in Copperopolis, wherever that is, so I got to band too late to claim a seat next to Eric. Except it didn’t matter, because Eric had saved a seat for me like best friends are supposed to do.

  “Thanks for saving me a seat!” I said as I sat down between Eric and Sean, who was staring up at the ceiling. Sean tilted his head a little, gave me kind of a nod as if I was thanking him, then turned his eyes back to the ceiling. “Mr. Radcliffe was … you know, being himself.”

  “No worries,” Eric said as he put an arm across my shoulders and pretended to punch me in the arm. He nodded toward Sean and Hector. “I had to tell these slackers to move over, but they know who’s boss.”

  Sean snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  “Dude, you’re boss, but you’re not the boss,” Hector said cheerfully.

  “You’re the only person I know who uses ‘boss’ like that,” Eric said.

  “That’s because I’m boss too,” Hector said. I jumped when he reached over Sean’s hunched shoulders and tapped my shoulder, right next to Eric’s hand.

  “Bass drummer selfie!” Hector said, holding a phone up at arm’s length and leaning into Sean. He grinned at Eric. “Not you, bro, sorry!”

  Eric laughed and lifted his arm up and away from me.

  “Dude, get off me,” Sean said, jostling Hector with an elbow. He didn’t lean out of the way of the picture, though.

  “What, no selfie stick?” I said as I smiled, Sean held up a hand with his index finger and pinkie pointing up, and Hector took the pic.

  “I wish.”

  “I’m just kidding.”

  “I’m not!”

  I turned back to Eric.

  “Dude,” he said. “This is the best.”

  “It’s better than the best!”

  “Well, no. Nothing’s better than the best—that’s why they call it ‘the best.’”

  “What about ‘the bestest’?”

  Eric did a super-exaggerated, obviously fake eye roll, and I laughed, just because it was the first day of school and being in the drum section with Eric was already the best. Or the bestest.

  The door to the music office opened, and the band director, Mr. Drabek, strolled through it with his conducting baton in hand.

  “Hello, musicians!” Mr. Drabek said as everyone but me was still secretly looking at their phones. You can’t secretly look at a phone you don’t have. “Get ready to make some noise!”

  There were a few cheers—real cheers, not sarcastic ones. Band geeks tend to like that rah-rah, hooray-for-us stuff. Drabek nodded.

  “Listen up! Horns and bass drums have a lot of new players, so we have a lot of work ahead of us, but before we get started, I have some big news.”

  Big news on the very first day of school? INTERESTING. Everyone instantly shut up.

  Mr. Drabek clasped his hands behind his back, grinned, and rocked back on his heels, clearly having fun by dragging things out.

  “SO WHAT IS IT?” Hector said, drawing a bunch of laughs.

  “Oh sorry, I was just enjoying the quiet,” Mr. Drabek said cheerfully. “I’m not so used to that. The big news is that in the fall I sent in an application for a certain music festival that takes place in May, and to make a long story short, we’re goin
g to perform in the World of Amazement Spring Festival for the first time!”

  The room erupted in cheers.

  “We’re going to World of Amazement? Like, on a field trip?” Hector yelled.

  “Yes, we are, and hey, no yelling,” Mr. Drabek said.

  World of Amazement was the best amusement park in the state—the biggest roller coaster, the best video games, the most swimming pools, and the coolest gift shops. It was huge, practically a small city of its own, and every year it did a super-fancy spring music festival with tons of decorations, gigantic light displays, and performances by choirs, dance troupes, cheerleaders, and all kinds of bands from all kinds of schools. Everyone started babbling about whatever time it was they’d gone there (Mom and Dad took Eric and me in fifth grade; it was so awesome) or about how their families were totally planning on going but now they didn’t have to.

  “Okay, settle down, settle down,” Mr. Drabek said, waving his hands over his head. “This will affect our schedule for the whole year, because the festival’s in May, and we definitely want to be at our best when we get there. So, we’re going to have our normal fall marching band season, then have a shortened spring orchestra season so we can get some extra marching rehearsal in before traveling.”

  There was an “aww” or two, and a few scattered boos, but most people were obviously fine with that. I mean, seriously, World of Amazement! I’d skip all of spring orchestra for that, and I really like orchestra.

  “It’s really exciting and it’s going to be a lot of fun, but it’s also going to be a lot of work, because we can’t wait until the spring to lay our foundation—we need to start doing that now. We’re going to rehearse like we’ve never rehearsed before. Buckle up!”

  I held out a hand, palm up, and Eric smacked it with his hand, palm down. The Blue Beetle emergency signal ring on his finger caught the light, and Sean turned his head and looked at it for a second.

  I picked up my mallets, craned my neck over my drum to look at Mr. Drabek, and had a super-fast moment of panic. What the heck was I doing? I was a woodwind player, not a drummer! I got it under control pretty fast, though. I knew how to play real music, with pitch and dynamics and everything; the bass drum didn’t even need to be tuned. Piece of cake, right?

  I also didn’t know how to play flute or piccolo at first, of course, but I got pretty good at both. Playing them was Dad’s idea. When he said, “You should start playing a musical instrument—what do you think about the flute?” during the summer before fourth grade, I said, “Okay, sure,” not knowing anything about band, band instruments, who played which band instruments, and the dangers of picking the wrong instrument—I only knew Dad used to play the flute too. He still had his old flute stuffed into a closet. Why not be like Dad and be a flute player? What’s the worst that could happen?

  I had no idea, and it’s not like Dad would have said anything about playing a “girl’s instrument” unless he’d had a brain transplant. I still remembered the summer after second grade (before we moved) when we were at the beach with our cousins. Uncle David said I should stop playing with my cousin Rebecca’s beach toys because “boys don’t play with pink toys,” and Dad kind of got into it with him. Dad called Uncle David a knuckle-dragger, and Uncle David called Dad a girlyman. It might have been funny if it hadn’t been for the super-intense way they stared at each other, even though they both pretended to be joking.

  Uncle David hasn’t visited us in a while.

  Mom also didn’t believe in “boy instruments” or “girl instruments,” whether I was the only boy flute and piccolo player in school or not. Every single bully at school disagreed with them, though, and they didn’t tell Mom and Dad about it. They told me, sometimes with their big smelly mouths, and sometimes with their big smelly fists. At least my tolerance for pain has gone up, haha.

  I liked the flute, though, even with all the extra harassment it got me. I liked its silvery look, and the cushiony sound the pads made when I pressed the keys down. I liked the extra raised part on the mouthpiece that your lip rested on, and the one key that needed to be played with your thumb. I liked the piccolo too—it was small enough to easily carry around with one hand, and the whole instrument case fit into my backpack with room to spare.

  I also liked playing the same instrument Dad had played. We didn’t really have anything else like that.

  I took the flute to school on the first day of fourth grade at Hilltop Summit K–8 School, ready to join the orchestra at Mom’s suggestion. My flute wasn’t super fancy or anything, but it was brand-new, and I’d polished it until it practically glowed in the dark. I walked into the band room, looked for the flute section, and found myself sitting in the middle of a giant mob of girls. I was the only boy in the whole section. Some kids actually took pictures of me with their phones.

  The music room was kind of like a theater—the floor had three different tiers, highest in the back (where all the storage closets were) and lowest in the front (where the whiteboard and the biggest empty space was). The flute section (and during marching band season, the piccolo section) was right in the front. Some of the flute players looked at me like I’d just stepped out of a flying saucer, but they also seemed friendly, and a bunch of them smiled or made little waving motions with one hand.

  There were at least a dozen flute players, and that was only the fourth- and fifth-grade band! How many flute players were there in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades? A thousand? Two thousand?

  “Uh … hi,” I said.

  “Hi!” a girl I was standing next to said. She was older than me, probably in fifth grade, and was one of a handful of Asian kids in the room. “Are you new?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m Matt.”

  “Skye Oh,” she said, sticking out her hand. Very businesslike. We shook.

  “So, wow, you play the flute!” Skye said.

  “Well, I’m just starting,” I said. “Why do you say ‘wow’?”

  “We’ve never had a boy who plays flute before.”

  Hmm. That was new information.

  “How long is never?”

  “Well, my sister’s in sixth grade—she’s over there in the saxophone section—and my brother—over there in the clarinet section—is in fifth grade. I’ve seen all their performances, and the flute section has always been all girls. That’s so cool that you play anyway!”

  “Thanks, I guess.” I rubbed the back of my head and looked around the room. The flute section wasn’t just all girls, it was almost all white girls. There were a few nonwhite faces scattered throughout the rest of the room—Skye, her sister, an Asian boy who looked like Skye and was the only oboe player in the room, and a brown kid in the drum section—but mostly the band was super, super white. The whole school was like that, so at least the band was being consistent.

  Gah. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be happier without my parents always pointing out stuff like that, because I can’t not see it anymore. I guess it’s better to know, but that doesn’t make it happier to know.

  “You should sit down,” Skye said, tilting her head behind me. I turned to see a door with a glass window in it, and “MUSIC OFFICE” in green letters on the glass. A teacher with a mustache and a green sweater appeared in the window and opened the door. I scanned for an empty seat with the other flute players, but there weren’t any, which was funny since in any other classroom the empty seats would ALL be in the front. I panicked a little and bolted for the back of the room, ending up in a seat next to a short white kid who was silently drumming a pair of sticks against his leg. He smiled at me and pointed at my chest with one drumstick.

  “I like your shirt,” he said.

  I looked down at my chest, which was covered by an illustration of Beethoven Yoo, Bella Underwood, Petra and Hex Ursu (they’re twins), and Kofi Bedichek, aka the Rocket Cats. A lot of people make fun of my Rocket Cats shirt, not knowing how awesome and superheroic the Cats really are, so it was cool to get some positive attention for it.
/>   “Thanks,” I said. “Do you—”

  “Good morning, musicians!” Mr. Drabek said, standing in the front of the room. “Get ready to make some noise!”

  “—read comics?” I said, switching into a whisper and turning to face Mr. Drabek.

  “Not really,” the drummer kid whispered back, sitting up really straight and putting a very I’m-paying-attention expression on his face.

  “Okay, let’s get reorganized—flutes here, clarinets here,” Drabek said, pointing first at the place where most of the flute players already were, then at the area next to them. “Saxophones there, horns there, percussion in the back …”

  “You play flute, huh?” Drummer Kid said.

  “Yeah. I guess I’ll be playing piccolo in marching band.”

  “Cool.”

  “I didn’t know the flute section would be all girls …”

  Drummer Kid shrugged.

  “So what?”

  I smiled. Yeah, so what?

  “I like most of the flute players,” he said. “The trumpet section, on the other hand … You know what, you should probably go find a seat.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Hey, I’m Matt.”

  Drummer Kid stuck out his hand. “I’m Eric.”

  “Dude, only girls play the flute!” the kid on the other side of Eric said. He still had his phone in his hand, and he took a picture of my shirt and grinned to himself as he stuck the phone into the pocket of his jeans.

  “Does everyone in this school have their own phone?” I said, pressing my hand down on my pocket with no phone in it.

  “Shut up, Sean,” Eric said, making a shooing motion over his shoulder.

  “There’s no way you’d ever catch me playing a girl’s instrument,” Sean said. He twirled a drumstick in his fingers, rock star style, but then dropped it with a clatter.

  “Hey, do you want to read some comic books?” I said to Eric, deciding to ignore Sean.

  “Yeah, sounds like fun.”

  “Cool.”

  “Comic books are okay,” Sean said to the back of my head. “If you’re into that kind of thing.”