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Push and One

It’s my first time holding a flag.

I sit cross-legged in outgrown leggings, excitedly watching the drum corps video on the band room television. The dancers’ silks fly in the air like water, and everyone holds their breath when they toss, then cheer when they catch.

I want to be like them, so badly. I want to be the person on that screen, whipping through flourishes of color and air and metal.

I know it will take time and work, but I’m so enthralled already. Push and one starts to grow in my head.

Today at the color guard workshop, in the faintly dingy and cluttered band room, we practice spinning the flag for the first time. It’s easy, they said. Push and one, down, up, down, up, and stop. It comes naturally, they said.

“You’re going too far ahead,” a veteran member calls out, and she lightly walks over to adjust my grip. I feel inexplicably embarrassed as I watch silks flying like tangible magic.

We sit down for a second, and I learn that there’s a gash in the ceiling of the impossibly tall band room. It sits there proudly, courtesy of a decade-old class and a color guard sabre.

I laugh. It sounds like a little kid, even though I’m 15 already.

Band camp is hot here. I think it’s over a hundred degrees today, but I haven’t checked my phone in over an hour.

We are supposed to learn a toss today, but I’m thinking about my summer homework. I have Charles Dickens to finish, and I have highlighters waiting for my first AP summer assignment. School is there, on my mind and pressing on my sunburned face.

But I try to listen to the instructor, who’s now tapping out the counts for us.

“Counts are your life now,” she had said while we stretched our legs to Hamilton.

Orchestra taught me that. This will be easy.

When the counts arrive in my head, I fumble with the release and reel back to watch the pole clatter to the ground for the umpteenth time.

I am about to cry, but a tall senior with sparkling eyes consoles me, voice gentle and praising, like a friend. She didn’t seem like one when I first saw her, but I’m glad she’s there.

While she shows me again, I watch the other members spin some more, talking about friends and drama and bruises. I don’t know what a double is, or a 45, or a quad on rifle is, but I hear the push and one happily.

I want to learn, so when I release this time-- push and one-- I catch the pole without bruising my fingers again. I thank her, and she tells me her name is Cathrine-- pronounced like Katrina.

My mom asks me how color guard is going.

The bruises from flags still ache, but they make me feel alive, and I tell her so as I organize my glittering bright show makeup into an old red bag.

She purses her lips. “Be careful,” she says.

I brush off the words as I rehearse my counts with a push and one.

I cry in the band room during warmup.

Just a few especially nice color guard teammates are there for a sobbing me in October while everyone else stretches with perfect splits and perfect flexibility and perfect poise. They laugh and talk of homecoming dates, whereas I had awkwardly asked a trombonist friend to go out of insecurity. They talk about marching band and how it’s a family.

I’m not even close to my teammates. I wish I was.

I hear push and one when I finish drying my eyes and throw away my tissues into the trash.

When championships come, I am elated to perform with the push and one, but the final score says otherwise.

Amador, 6th place. Our teammates vow to erase the season from our memory.

Color guard workshops are popping by again. I bail and claim it’s my homework. We have AP exams soon-- those are more important than me dropping tosses in front of veteran members. No use.

My outgrown leggings shift uncomfortably when I hear the push and one leaking from the band room, and my skin is picked raw with doubt.

I grow desperate, so I try spinning rifle too.

The push and one, two keeps falling to the ground.

“You’re trying too quickly,” another veteran member says, voice gentle. “Be careful.”

The summer gives me time.

I read books and focus on orchestra and laugh till I get dizzy. I study for the SAT with my prep books and take tests whenever I can.

Color guard has begun to loosen its grip-- it no longer hangs from my mind, but softly taps the recesses of my head every so often: when I watch my friends audition for drum corps, or when I watch that same video from almost a year ago.

I can’t come to band camp this year, but as I take yet another SAT practice test, the push and one hums in my mind. I count the seconds from the timer in color guard time: that mantra of push and one, the time of the drums and the fluttering silk flags.

It feels better, like the slip of a glove or the coolness of the metal poles.

6, 7, 8

School starts again. Classes weigh on my mind with all their stress and toil, but I start walking towards the color guard room more.

The problems still smolder red hot in myself, but I let them aside as they jostle through my mind. Let them pass by, I say.

I pick up the flag, and that image of one-year-old-colorguard me beats through me like the people in my team and the harshness of the sun and all the strife I needed.

I push and one and go, and my life is, for the moment, cradled in the silks I spin. I regret not seeing them earlier, so I look towards the new color guard captain, the tall brunette I take under my wing, the bright eyes that so mirrored mine in the previous fall. I see something, but I’m not sure what it is.

All around me, dusty silks are reviving in the nighttime August sun.