We are a slumped, unmoving figure, breathing sticky summer air, and gluing ourself to our seat on the sidewalk. The air echoes with a rip of Velcro as we stand, our sweat not wishing us to part, and just as the air held us together, it holds the sound, as a lifesaving flotation device. We laugh. This sound, it bounces on the asphalt: bounces, sticks, bounces, sticks, bounces, a few decibels peeling into the air each time so that eventually, it has dissipated.

As we struggle to our feet, we use our instruments as aides: a tenor saxophone held out horizontally, as the circus performers’ balance pole; a baritone held out to one side as we put our weight on the other; a trombone swung wildly as we try to find our equilibrium.

We laugh again, imagining what we must look like. Our laughter is warm: a deep bellow setting the tone for everyone else to join in, until even the highest pitch resonates, emulating wind chimes as our group breezes across our black desert, our parking lot. The heat threatens to melt our shoe soles into the asphalt.

If it did, we would confuse everyone with the chameleon act our shoes would put on, until they yielded to our ankles, shiny with sunscreen. The paramedics sent to free us from our rubber prisons would be absolutely dumbfounded. We would end up with stubs!

We move fast enough, though, hopping to the grass as soon as possible. It is rough, but cool to the hot rubber soles of our shoes.

It’s nice.

We are a stressed teenager. In a few hours, we will be forced to attack our Everest, our mounting pile of homework. And we must practice our music. And we must exercise. And we must let our friends and family know, despite it all, we are still alive.

We need not sleep, though. That is not a priority.

So for now, in these moments where we pant and chug water and cool our feet on ugly grass by the side of a school parking lot, our makeshift football field, we relax. We savor the moment. God knows we do not have all that many of them.

We lie on our back, sigh, and admire the blue above us; we get lost in it before we are blinded by the sun. We do not panic about when we will finally focus on learning that second or third language, or when we will come up with that next scientific breakthrough and/or mathematical proof for second period tomorrow. We breathe, and we realize that this is enough for now. Everything else will be completed in good time.

Balance.

It’s nice.

We stand up again at the bark of a ten-year-old speaker, a voice crackling from it, demanding our action with vague threats. We laugh again, in our strange, layered way. We jump into our spots, and we keep our feet together, our legs straight, our stomach in, our chest out, our chin up, and our eyes sparkling with pride. Our instruments move to their playing position.

We breathe.

A curious bystander hears our spectacular, our single, our perfectly tuned, our perfectly timed, note.

Harmony.

It’s nice.