It’s not him . Those words repeatedly bounce around in my head throughout the bus ride to all-region band tryouts. We pass through the woeful city of Austin into more pleasant scenery consisting of many hills and carefully planned landscaping as we reach the south side, but I am too preoccupied to pay it much attention. Anja is in the seat next to me, but for once she is not feeling very talkative, and simply plays games on her phone. This gives me plenty of time to process the recent events.

My curiosity about the note sender and their identity has grown manyfold. It’s not him? What do you mean it’s not him? How do you know? Who are you? Why are you giving these notes to me specifically? It is so strange that I speculate endlessly as to what the greater mystery behind this is.

A thought that crosses my mind is that this is someone who knows about our adventures in the Metaverse. It explains, at least in part, why I specifically am being targeted with these notes. Of course, it would create the question of why Anja, Nova and Zoe are not getting any notes like these. Perhaps the note writer sees me as the leader, or as the most responsible. Of the group, I am probably the least likely to spread the information, and perhaps the writer wants to keep it confined to a few people for now.

This, however, raises more questions than it answers. How does this person know about the Metaverse? Did one of us let something slip in public? I can not think of anyone outside our group who should know about it other than Lucy, and there’s no way it can be her. Should I even be trusting this person? Well, I can’t find any sort of self-interested reason for doing this, so perhaps I should. It’s not like there’s any chance that the note writer is Coach Everheart himself trying to clear his own name.

But that raises the next question. What makes the note writer so confident he is not the culprit? How can they possibly know more than the police? It easy to write off the police as being incompetent and corrupt, but they have access to resources that a private citizen does not. Furthermore, they seemed to already know something like this would happen, judging by the first note. The pedophile is not who you think . This note, in hindsight, makes even less sense. Before the arrest, there was nobody who I thought the culprit was anyway.

Unless… Coach Everheart’s profile matches the one described by the blog post quite well. Perhaps the note writer thinks the blog itself is a cover up for something? Maybe the blogger is intentionally framing him. Of course, I have no idea why anyone would want to do this. A severe personal grudge? Or was he just a convenient target to pin someone else’s crime on? Could there still be someone out there preparing to make a move on one of my fellow students?

It is on this very discouraging note that my train of thought comes to a halt as we arrive at the site of the tryouts. They are being done at Westlake High School, which has a historically successful band program.

After everyone gets off the bus, I see Mr. Castro talking to the bus driver as all the other students head into the school cafeteria, and I decide to take the opportunity to ask him something.

“Excuse me, sir,” I ask as the bus departs and he turns back towards the school.

“Ashley! How are you feeling? Feel ready for the audition?” he asks me cheerily.

“I absolutely am ready,” I tell him confidently.

“Great! I have high hopes for you, you know. You’ve really put in the work. I think you’re going to excel today.”

“Thank you, sir,” I respond, giving a courteous nod. “Anyway, I have recently been getting odd notes in my band locker. I wanted to ask if you would happen to have seen who was slipping them in.”

“No, I haven’t,” he said, suddenly concerned. “What notes are you getting? Are they threatening or harassment?”

“No, nothing like that. Just odd. Nothing to be concerned about, though,” I assure him. “It would have to be another student in band putting them in, right?”

“Most likely, yes,” he reasons. “I don’t normally allow non-band students into the band hall. If I saw anyone I didn’t know, I would’ve asked them to leave.”

“Hmm, okay. I just thought I’d check,” I say. “I’m going to go start warming up.”

“Slow and steady, Ashley!” he advises.

“Of course,” I agree. I make my way into the cafeteria. I find where Anja is sitting. Just like she was on the bus, she is on her phone, looking uncharacteristically gloomy.

“Is the situation weighing on you as well?” I ask her, as I sit down next to her and begin constructing my instrument.

“Yeah…” she sighs a deep, sad sigh. “Ashley… do you really think it might not be over yet? Everyone in the school seems to just be going along with it.”

“I do think that. And I have a good reason to, which I think it is time to disclose to you soon.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You found something out?”

“Well, sort of,” I say. “Let’s wait until after tryouts are over to talk about it, I need to be in a good head space for the audition.”

She nods. “Alright. I just have… really bad vibes from all of this.”

I frown. “Vibes?”

“Yeah. Something just feels wrong about it. I hate how people see this like a big joke… even if he really was the culprit, he was still threatening to do something really serious.”

“Well, it could be that they are also scared by the situation, and making jokes is their way to cope,” I suggest.

“Maybe… but I don’t think that’s it. It’s too derisive.” She shakes her head glumly. “I almost got caught by this… person. It’s not a joke to me.”

“It’s not to me either,” I assure her. “I swear to you, we will get to the bottom of this. The true culprit will not walk free on my watch.”

We make eye contact and have a moment of deep understanding. Then, she leans forward and unexpectedly hugs me. I return it.

I have to wait in the cafeteria for quite a while before they call French horns to come and audition. In that time, trombones had started well before us, meaning that I lost Anja’s company for most of that time. By the time we are walking to our audition room, I feel unsettled. Mostly due to the lingering worries about the predator, although I try my best to repress them to focus on playing well.

The audition, as usual, is taking place in a random classroom in the school. The usual chairs and desks are aligned as they usually would be for class, except for five chairs that are pulled to the front next to a series of large dividers, behind which the judges will sit. I find a seat near the back of the room and try not to make eye contact with anyone.

Despite my best efforts, I am approached by a short, curvy and dark-skinned girl in my grade.

“Hey Ashley. I hoped I’d see you again here this year,” she tells me.

I give her a bewildered look. It's a girl I've seen during previous region tryouts named "Laura." I have no idea why she is suddenly talking in this casual tone like we’re friends.

“I feel pretty good about my chances today. I really want to make Area,” she confesses to me. “I’m sure I’ll see you there, too. I bet us two will be the only two freshmen at state!”

“Maybe,” I say.

“I want to make my boyfriend proud… oh yeah, I have a boyfriend now,” she explains. She looks at me and pauses for a moment, presumably to see if I react, and when I don’t, she pulls out her cell phone and pulls up a picture of the two of them together. Her boyfriend is a shy looking boy with messed up brown hair. In the picture, Laura has one arm around his neck, and is making the peace sign with the other, while the boy is simply flashing an uncertain smile.

“Cool,” I say, not sure what reaction she wants from me.

“It’s so great that I have him cheering for me,” she says glowingly. “Anyways… I’m gonna go sit down, good luck Ashley!” She smiles at me as she walks away.

Well, that was quite bizarre. I do have somewhat of a storied history with her, but not one that you would expect from that exchange.

My seventh-grade year, I showed up to my first all-region band tryouts. Of course, those tryouts were much different, as it was only seventh and eighth grade there, so everyone was fairly new. In contrast, high school tryouts contain four grade levels, which mean freshmen like me have to compete with far more experienced juniors and seniors. That said, for my first audition I did exceptionally well. I placed first among all horn players in the region, even beating out the eighth graders who had done it before. But I wasn’t the only seventh grader who managed this feat- Laura had made second.

After the audition, I heard much muttering among students that I was some sort of prodigy, for how well I had done as only a seventh grader. I had just moved to Texas back then, so nobody knew me. They saw me as this mysterious dark horse girl. I was quite fond of the attention I got for my performance. But what made me happier than anything else that day was seeing Laura’s reaction. I watched her draw her finger up the page, finding her name at #2. She looked shocked, but not because of how well she did, but because someone had managed to beat her. She found my name, and she turned her head towards me, and gave me a look of the deepest jealousy. I felt such a high right in that moment that I never forgot.

I’m not sure what had made her think she needed to be #1. A perfectionist mindset, or perhaps severe pressure from family. But I know many other kids that day would’ve loved to be in her place- #2 in the whole room. And yet, she only turned her eyes one place- towards me, the single other who beat her.

The next year, we both returned to all-region band tryouts. This time, I wasn’t an unknown dark horse. I was a legend. Everyone anticipated the return of the red-haired girl who got first as a seventh grader. And as expected, I got first once again. And as expected, Laura got second once again. After the audition, I sought her out, excited to see her devastated once again by my dominance. But this time, the meeting went a bit differently. Laura looked defeated, for sure. But she didn’t look at me with jealousy. She had a rare twinkle in her eye as she beheld me, and she looked at me with awe and deep respect. She shook my hand, awkwardly telling me that I had played great.

This year, things feel a lot different. I find I don’t really care now how anyone else will react to my performance. I’m not sure what changed, to be honest. I guess it’s how stupid the whole thing was. Nobody really cares anymore how I played in all-region tryouts in middle school. It was an idol that consumed me for so long. I honestly think that experience poisoned how I view this activity. What should be an exercise in creative expression and artistry is just turned into another relentless teenage rat race. That’s the mindset of people like Diana, who only try to further their status. I should be above that. I should be better. I have more in common with Mason than I’d like to admit, I suppose.

Mason… his words echo suddenly echo through my head. “ You really need to learn that whatever stuff you’re going through in your life, it’s not an excuse to be completely unlikeable .” I feel annoyed, which is what usually happens when I think of him. But this time, it’s because I think he’s got a point. I’ve seen the other side of the high school social hierarchy. It suddenly feels wrong that I don’t spend more time trying to sympathize with others in that position. For as I suffered, as Zoe suffered, as Anja and Nova suffered, there are bound to be many more that I don’t even know about.

Ashley is taking forever in her auditions. It’s starting to get dark, and I’ve already eaten my “dinner” (a hot dog and some sour punch straws that were being sold at the stand.) I eventually get bored and start wandering around outside the school. Nobody else is out here, I guess this was a pretty novel idea I had!

I do a few laps around the school, trying to not worry about region results and pedophiles by instead thinking about who I would ship together in an anime I recently watched. (Hint: All of the couples I come up with are male/male or female/female. No straights allowed! Okay, except for this one m/f couple I really like, but I made both of them bisexual, so HA.)

But then, while making another lap, I see Mr. Castro in the distance, talking on his cell phone. I pause… I remember the story Zoe told about how they saw him out in the park. Well, once again, one of us is seeing him in a strangely secluded location when it’s dark out. Quite a weird thing to happen twice, don’t you think?

I sneak around the wall of the building silently. I try to shimmy as close to the wall as possible, like in the Sly Cooper games. Eventually, I get close enough to overhear some of the phone conversation.

“…of them. I really am. They haven’t posted the results yet, but I can tell you that Mason did quite well for a freshman.” There is silence for a while, and then Mr. Castro laughs. “Oh, trust me, I know. I see him a like a son to me now, you know.”

Wait… like a son to him? Mason? I guess that’d explain why they were hugging earlier.

There’s a long stretch of silence. “I would love that more than anything in the world. But I’m still scared of losing my job. These kids need me.” More silence. “We’ll see, I guess. You’re more optimistic than I am. But I hope you’re right.”

Suddenly, I get the strange feeling that I shouldn’t be eavesdropping on this conversation. Damn it, I never get that feeling until it’s too late!

“Yeah, I need to be back. Talk to you later.” Oh shit, he’s coming around the corner! I try to look casual and not like I was just intently spying on him.

“Anja! Whoah, you took me off guard there!” he starts. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just getting some fresh air,” I respond.

“How do you feel about today?” he questions.

I make a “so-so” gesture with my hand. “I’m not getting my hopes up,” I state.

“Well, there’s always next year,” he says encouragingly. “You still have two more years if you want to give it your all.”

“Yeah. I guess so,” I reply.

“You do seem troubled. Is there anything I can help you with?” he asks.

I think for a moment. This could be a good time to put on the old charm and get any information he has about the case. But can I trust him? Ashley seems convinced that it wasn’t him… and to be fair, even in that phone call he didn’t say anything particularly sketchy. I wonder what’s making him worry about being fired, though?

“Well… did you hear about what happened? Shortly before we left?” I ask, testing the waters.

“You mean the arrest?” he asks.

“Yeah. That.”

He turns his head and looks away. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but his body language seems morose.

“I couldn’t believe it, personally,” he states. “I guess you really never know a person.”

There’s an awkward pause. I’m not sure what the right and wrong questions to ask are…

“Did you know him?” I ask tentatively.

“Fairly well. It’s haunting… just the weekend before he had thrown a work party.”

I feel a jolt of excitement, although I’m not sure why. “Were you there?”

“Yes, I was. And I never would’ve suspected a thing. He was perfectly cordial…” he sighs woefully. “Let’s get back to the cafeteria with the others. It’s too dark to be out here now, I don’t know how safe it is here.”

“Understood,” I agree. We both go back to the cafeteria, where I continue to wait for Ashley to finish up… holy hell, what are they doing in there? Having an orgy? A… French horn-gy? Hehehe, I’m so funny.

At last, the affair is over. It is about time to leave, but I take a trip by the bathroom first to thoroughly scrub my hands. While playing, I accidentally got valve oil all over my fingers.

Truthfully, I could have played better. Ultimately the mental stress I’ve been under held me back. I should be able to improve my standing at the second round on Saturday.

And then… Laura walks in. “Hey again, Ashley!” she greets. “How do you think you did?”

“Laura. Don’t take this the wrong way. But why are you talking to me?” I ask her. “We were never friends before.”

She deflates. “Well… that doesn’t mean we can’t become friends, right?”

“No. Although I’m not the easiest person to just make friends with.” I turn the faucet off and start drying my hands. “I’m just curious… what changed with you?”

She turns towards the mirror next to me and sighs. “Well… I don’t think anything changed. Other than just growing up, I guess. I decided… what’s the point of us hating each other?”

“So you hated me. I see,” I comment.

She turns away from the mirror, looking uncomfortable. “Oh, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay,” I console her. “I understand. If our places were swapped that first time, I would’ve hated you. But I agree, it is pointless.”

She turns back towards me, smiling and looking hopeful. “Yeah… I guess I’ll see you on Saturday, then?”

“I expect so,” I agree. I give her a courteous nod, and then depart from the bathroom.

We return to the cafeteria, and soon after our results are posted. I made fifth in the room. As I expected, my lack of peace of mind affected my performance enough to drop my placement. The listing is: Some sophomore, a senior who’s made All-State three times already, a junior who’s made All-state once already, and… Laura. And then me.

I find Laura’s eyes. She’s looking at the paper with a sort of dull shock. I give her a congratulatory smile, and then leave to go rejoin Anja.