Playing for Keeps

The pub is crowded and dimly lit. Probably a good thing. That way no one will realize just how young they all are.

But this is Europe,Thad Archer thinks as he stares into the glass of dark soda sitting on the bar in front of him. It tastes more like rum than Coke, even though he told Mark not to get him anything alcoholic. He isn’t old enough to drink. None of them are, not even Mark.

Of course, what’s legal in the States isn’t the same as what’s legal across the pond. Thad heard that one today and it still makes him grin to remember it. Across the pond. As if the flight from New York to Munich hadn’t taken all blessed day.

Still, Thad can’t be sure Mark isn’t lying when he says the legal drinking age in England is eighteen. No one asked for ID when they entered the pub or even asked Mark how old he was when he ordered drinks all around. With his prep school haircut and hairless baby face, Mark gets carded all the time back home.

But this is Europe,Thad reminds himself, taking a tentative sip from his glass.

Home, yeah. That sounds good right about now.

As he sets down the drink, he looks at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Upbeat techno music thunders around him, so loud he can’t make out the song itself, just the driving rhythm pounding through him like furious waves, over and over until he reels from the lights, the sounds, the people. The place is packed, but despite the crowd, Thad has no trouble picking out their group. College kids from the States stand out pretty much anywhere they go in Europe, particularly when they’ve never been anywhere outside their own country before. No matter how much they try to blend in, they fail miserably. In Munich, Rome, Paris—it’s been the same at every stop. They’re too clean-cut, too all American, too Abercrombie and Fitch, too something.New T-shirts, Levi jeans, and geeky dance moves give them away.

Even here—no, especially here, in this pub, or bar, or dance club, whatever the Brits call it.

Somehow, Thad doesn’t think his parents had this place in mind when they agreed to help pay for him to go to Europe for two weeks with Richmond State’s marching band ensemble.

* * * *

Until tonight, the band director had managed to keep them on a strict schedule. A week ago, they flew into Munich, armed with an itinerary designed to keep them busy. There’s free time allotted for them to visit the cities on their own, but since most of the band members have never traveled internationally, most of the kids don’t deviate from the course. There seems to be a different museum to visit each day, and concerts in the evenings. The first time Thad read the schedule, the word concertsent a thrill through him. He’s eighteen, yes, but has never been to a rock concert. Still hasn’t—turns out the shows they’ve seen are all orchestras playing classical music. After the third one, he opted to stay back at the hotel instead.

There are thirty people in their entourage, all told—ten chaperones, six riflemen, the rest members of the marching band. Thad plays clarinet, and even though he’s only a freshman at the college, he holds second chair. In high school he played saxophone, and in the small town where he grew up, he’d been a damn good player. But Richmond State is a large school in a large city, and the first day he arrived for band class, his heart fell at the row of saxophonists tuning up. There weren’t too many clarinets, so he switched—it’s similar enough to sax, in his opinion. Maybe not as sexy, but hey, second chair, right?

As if he’d ever be able to use his status in the band to land a date.

Correct that—as if he’d ever be able to actually land a date.

He isn’t unattractive. At least, he doesn’t think he is. In the mirror, he sees a young, shy guy staring back, and if he doesn’t look too closely, he can pretend his dark eyes aren’t scared shitless. This time last year, he looked forward to college as a chance to get away from the nosy, closeted community he’d grown up in where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Where he’d hidden all his life, pretending to be what was expected of him, pretending to be what his parents wanted.

A good student, check. A member of the church choir, check. Active in the school band and sports, check.

Straight. Check, check, check.

He’d had girlfriends back home, but never anything serious. Girls who were friends, he likes to say, but in the quiet of his mind where no one will hear him and ask what he means by it. He had friends who were boys, too. Boy friends, but they were always two distinct words. In such a small town, he never dared to try and weave them into one.