Howard shuffles slowly along the sidewalk bordering the lake. The water is green and algae clings to the bank. He readjusts his tuba, setting it on the padded strap of his backpack so it doesn’t bruise his shoulder. It is a mile walk back home from his high school. He is too young to drive.
“Hey Howie!” shouts a voice. “Howie! Whatcha got there Howie?” Three older boys appear from the bushes on the opposite side of the lake. “Does Howie have a tubie?”
“’Tuba’,” corrects Howard quietly.
“What was that?” The three boys step in front of Howard and cross their arms. “Speak up Howie, we can’t hear you underneath your tubie.”
“It’s a Tuba,” says Howard, a little louder.
“Oh I see,” says the boy, looking back at his friends. “And does you tuba float?”
“W-what?” stammers Howard. The boy in front reaches for Howard's tuba. Weighed down by his book-filled backpack, there is nothing he can do. Handling the instrument like it was infected, the boy tosses it into the lake.
“You better hope it floats!” shouts the boy as he and his friends disappear behind the bushes. Howard watches his tuba bob on the surface of the grimy water.
“Oh Howard, not again. Where is it this time?”
“In a lake.”
“A lake? How did it end up there?”
“I, uh, dropped it.”
“Howard, don’t lie to me. Was it those boys again?”
“No, mom.”
“Because I’ll go and talk to their mothers! I’ll have them straightened out!”
“That wouldn’t do anything, mom. And it wasn’t even them.”
“I suppose they didn’t get it stuck in the tree last time, either?”
“I’ll take care of it, mom.”
“Well, come on then. Let’s go get it. Grab the pool sweep and some rope and we’ll tie it to the car and scoop it out.”
Later on, Howard sits in his room, cleaning his tuba with a washcloth. It smells bad and has algae clogging the inside. It takes him two hours to clean it, but the smell will be there for days.
Three boys walk home from school along the sidewalk bordering a lake. They threaten to push each other into the filthy, reeking water. The other two laugh as one nearly trips and falls in.
“Hey, you guys wanna get Howard again today?”
“Oh, yeah, let’s do it!”
“Here’s the place we hid last time, come on!”
The three boys slither over to the same bush they had jumped out from just the day before.
“Oh, man, two days in a row! We better get some kind of nerd-scaring medal!”
A great, deep sound suddenly reverberates deafeningly inside their ear drums. They yell and scream and jump and try to run but collide and trip over one another. Stumbling and covering their ears from the low roar, they plunge down into the lake, breaking the fresh mucus-like layer of slime that had accumulated over night.
Howard steps out from the bushes, sets his tuba down, and puts his backpack on his shoulders, being careful to set the instrument on the padded strap once he picks it up again.
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