My face is burning. The blood rushes up underneath my cheeks, reddening my face slowly like an old heat lamp warming up.

I don’t blush. Not when I give speeches, not when I say something awkward, not when I fail at bodily functions. I’m rarely embarrassed, and when I am, my face stays it’s color.

My face reddens on two occasions: when I’m concentrating hard on my trombone playing or when I’m crying. Right now it’s the latter.

I look down at my red shirt, look at the dark splatters where two tears have already fallen. The rest come leaking out of me as my face burns.

Why am I crying? There’s no reason to be crying. My legs are hot, the fan is too quiet, my braces are cutting my lower lip, I’m running on 4 hours of sleep, my hip is bruised, they played “Out Of My League” twice in a row on the radio, and this kid I like in this book is about to die of cancer. But that’s nothing to cry about. Those are just complaints.

Why am I unreasonably sad sometimes? Why do these tears come from nowhere? In the most random places? Physics class, the bathroom, dentist appointments. At the most random times? Right when I wake up, at 2:23 PM, late at night.

Crying is such a mystery.

An hour later I turn the light off. I recite my prayers to a God I’m not sure I believe in. I can still feel the dried, stiff tear tracks running down my cheeks.