My nerves overwhelm my senses as I sit rigid on a bus. It was a nice charter bus with cushioned seats, TV screens, and large windows. The bus was warm, almost too warm for me to be wearing my letter jacket. I look out the window and see large billboards pass by, advertising for Shen Yun, and various radio stations.

The bus pulls off the highway, and begins a short trek towards a campus building. The burnt orange street signs blur past me despite the slow speed of the bus. I see the music building of the university come into view, and I can feel the panic slowly rising. The bus parks and other students begin to file out in an orderly fashion. I scramble to my feet and follow the crowds, self conscious about everything I'm doing. I approach the building in a daze, unaware of the multiple conversations going on around me.

When I enter the building, the other students immediately disperse. I look for fellow band students from Creek, but I see none. I go to examine a piece of paper on the wall, and see one of my band directors, Mr. Drake, standing there. He smiles down at me, and raises his hand. Nervously, I raise mine and gently returned the high five.

"Are you ready?" A weak smile graces my features while I mutter a quiet sure. "You'll do fine. You're on the sixth floor. We're here early, so you can either warm up in the orchestra room, or in a practice room." Nodding my head, I awkwardly walked away. More people pushed past me as they all seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going. I tightened my grip on my pink and green polka-dot bag, and tried to push my way through the crowds. Lost amongst the people, I managed to find two other band students from Creek talking with Ms. Holstein, the other band director that came with us. I began to walk over to them, until I realized that what they were doing was probably different from what I would be doing, considering we play different instruments and Holstein had to go to judge the clarinets.

I approach the elevator, already familiar with the location from yesterday's practice here, and press the button. As I'm waiting, I see the other piccolo player from our region come over. I smile politely with her, secretly relieved that I found someone that might know where they're going. However, the odds were not in my favor and the girl began talking with one of her friends, and walked off to help find another room.

Alone again, I walked on the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor. Slowly, I made my way to the top floor, and nervously left the tiny elevator once the doors slid open. Echoes from other people practicing rang throughout the open hallways, but there was no one here. I walked around aimlessly, trying to locate my room. When I found it, the door was locked. Panic erupted in my system again as I realized that I had no idea where to go, or what to do.

I walked back down the hallway, and past the elevators. I saw a girl with brown hair and a man who must've been either her dad or band director. I smiled nervously at them, and continued to walk on. I came across several practice rooms. I effortlessly tugged at the door to a couple rooms, only to find that they were locked.

Confused, and in full panic mode I continued my aimless walk. I now found myself walking around in circles. I would walk down to the audition room, turn around and walk in a large circle with empty practice rooms surrounding me. I desperately hoped for a place to go and hide in for the next hour while I waited for the auditions to actually start. However my silent wishes were not to be granted.

The same two people I saw walked past me again. This time, I heard the man not so silently mutter "punk" while looking in my general direction. Alarmed, I glanced over at the two, only to see him smile at me yet again. The girl laughed loudly, before quickly muffling her laughter with her hand. Both sent me quick smiles and a small hello as I passed them for the second time within 10 minutes. Panic erupted throughout me, as I was now self conscious that they thought I was a bad child. I returned the simple gesture, and continued my trek to nowhere in particular while trying to think of a place where I could go and hide in shame. Knowing the door to the audition room was probably locked; I turned around and walked in the direction the two strangers went.

As I approached the corner, I noticed that they were standing against the wall, looking over the balcony and onto the fifth floor hallway. I froze in my tracks. Silently, I began panicking, afraid that if they saw me aimlessly wander past them for a third time they would stop me. I knew that the girl probably saw me walk around the corner due to the openness of the sixth floor, and I didn’t want them to think that I’m up to no good. I finally sucked up some courage and walked past the hallway, not even glancing at them.

Once I safely passed the two, I released a breath that I didn’t realize I was holding. I continued my mindless walking until I arrived back at the elevator. I knew I should stay on the sixth floor, but after my encounter with the two strangers, I was not looking forwards to wandering the halls. I looked around the elevators, and noticed a sign for the restrooms. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to escape the area, I rushed towards my new found safe zone.

I entered the restroom, and rushed into a stall. I breathed out a sigh of relief, and stared at the tan walls. My mind was racing a mile a minute. I couldn’t form any coherent thoughts, and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes as I stared blankly off into space. The vibration of my phone brought me back down to earth as I quickly fished for the small device. Pulling it out from my pocket, I saw it was nothing important. Just my phone telling me that I received an email from the University of Denver. Not interested, I put my phone back into my bag, and continued to wallow in my thoughts.

Eventually, I heard someone walk into the restroom. I immediately tensed up, although I have no idea why, and waited a few moments before hurrying out of the room. Walking back into the familiar hallways, I could hear more instruments practicing. I easily picked out flutes practicing the region music, and went back to aimlessly wandering about. I walked halfway to the audition room before turning back, and headed for the many practice rooms I had found earlier. This time, several doors to the rooms were opened, and I quickly slipped into the closest one I could find, which happened to be in the corner.

Feeling somewhat safe in the abandoned practice room, I set my bag down and pulled out my piccolo. The feeling of the tiny instrument in my hands barely calmed my nerves as I began a shaky warm up. Not wanting to play too much, I ended up sitting in the corner of the practice room and listening to the people around me. I could hear clarinets, horns, bassoons, and finally a flute. The flute soared over all the noise of instruments, as they played their high notes up in the screech register. Whoever the flute player was, was good, and at that moment, I was glad I was a piccolo player. Although, there were probably other piccolo players here that were just as good as this person and my nerves were once again running haywire.

Deciding that I had hid enough for the day, I left the practice room and once again found myself walking towards the audition room. A new sound soon filled the noisy air as I heard piccolo players belt out their glorious high notes. A feeling of dread fell over me as I listened to these gifted players. I knew I was good, but these people were excellent. There was no possible way that I was going to be able to get my super b’s and c’s out, and that would be the end of me.

Approaching the audition room for the 50th time that day, I saw a room monitor sitting in a small chair outside the room, and other piccolo players waiting for the auditions to start. Relief swarmed through my entire being, and I gratefully set down my bag, signed in, received my letter for the audition, and sat down against the wall. I hastily wrote the letter “D” on my sheet music, so I wouldn’t forget the letter that was assigned to me in my panicked state. I sent a friendly smile towards the other students, and sat down in silence, just wishing I had enough sense to pack my headphones. Eventually, the girl sitting to my left began talking to me. We exchanged a few words, and then fell silent once again.

Waiting for the all clear to enter the room was torture. I watched as the judges appeared from out of nowhere. Seeing Mr. Drake enter the room as one of the judges only raised the panic that was occurring inside my brain, if that’s even possible. As he walked past, he offered me another high five. Not wanting to seem rude, I lightly raised my hand, and gave him a small nervous smile.

I watched Mr. Drake, as well as the other judges, disappear into the room and waited for the room monitor to allow us to enter. The wait was agonizingly long. The seconds felt like hours, while the minutes felt like months. Finally, the monitor allowed us into the room. He instructed us to sit in letter order. We were given the cuts for the first etude, and the audition started off with a two minute warm up.

If I wasn’t nervous before, I was certainly nervous now. I was surrounded by six other amazingly talented piccolo players, who seemed to have no problem belching out those high notes. The noise in the room was almost too much for me to bear, and I fought the urge to sprint out of the room and back to the safety of the bathroom stall. The warm up stopped with the monitor calling out “Letter A” and the head judge, who just so happened to be Mr. Drake, repeating it. As each person played, I tried my best to tune out everyone. I was tempted to take out a piece of paper and begin coloring, or even write down my thoughts, but I was distracted when I was called up to the ready chair.

The rest of the audition went the same. I would panic in the ready chair, play (rather horribly if I do say so myself), and relax in my chair; only for the entire process to repeat two more times. After the first round, I felt like I had a pretty good chance at making state. Of course I made a few mistakes, but who didn’t? Once we finished the second round, well… Let’s just say I survived… barely. I knew that after that shaky performance that my chances at state were just thrown out the window, if I even stood a chance. The third round, I redeemed myself. As my grandma would say, I “beat ‘em up”. However, that didn’t make me want to linger in the room once we were released.

I gathered up my stuff and speed walked as fast as my legs could carry me back to the elevator. I went back to the ground level, and looked around in hopes of finding someone from Creek waiting to start their audition, or even be done. But I was alone, and standing awkwardly in the middle of the large hallway. Despite the auditions being over I immediately began to panic. Even though there was no true reason for me to be panicking, I was. I searched for a good place to wait in hopes that when other Creek people finished, they would be able to find me, or I would see them. I saw a brick wall that was in the main area where people would enter from and decided to go sit there. Releasing a sigh, I walked over to a vacant spot by a brick wall, and sat down. I pulled out a book, and began reading.

Roughly an hour later, I was still alone amongst a sea of strangers. I had moved from my spot in the open to a more secluded area behind a small brick column and was leaning against wooden lockers. I decided to go see if the results were posted, and gathered up all of my things. I shoved my way through the masses that were crowding the sacred wall of results until I got to an area where I could actually see the papers. It took a few minutes of searching, but I finally saw the results for the piccolo players.

Needless to say, I was rather shocked at the results. I was right where I didn’t advance to state. In fact, I wasn’t even close. Only one of us would’ve advanced, and there was no way I beat all of the players in the room. However, I didn’t get last chair like I was expecting. I made second to last, which isn’t bad considering that this was an audition for state. Proud that I beat someone, I returned to my secluded corner and continued to read. But this time, a small smile rested on my face, and all my anxieties and nerves were nonexistent.