Sim, Keong: ... better, 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 being himself."

" No worries," Eric said as he put an arm across my shoulders and pretended to punch me in the arm. He nodded towards Sean and Hector. "I had to tell those 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 hunch shoulders and tapped my shoulder right next to Eric's hand. "Bass drummers 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 pinky 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. Dreibach strolled through it with his conducting baton in hand. "Hello musicians," Mr. Dreibach 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. Dreibach 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. Dreibach 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. Dreibach 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 going 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. Dreibach said. World of Amazement was the best amusement park in the state. The biggest rollercoaster, 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 troops, 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. Dreibach said, waving his hand 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 "awe."