OOC: This post contains reference to a real-world Christian radio personality named Janet Parshall. Her program "Janet Parshall's America" was, when I lived in Maryland, carried by radio station WAVA in the Washington, DC area.
The last period before Trig ended. A piece of music suddenly came to Alipang's mind: one of the two music themes alternately used to open Janet Parshall's Christian talk-radio program. Not the shallow, peppy one, but the solemn, wistful, noble-sounding one with an unusual blend of piano with trumpets and horns. Alipang had only heard this melody a few times; but it had struck him that if he were a movie character about to go to a gloriously heroic death, he would want that melody to be heard on the soundtrack. The tune came to him now, because he was going to a modest little death: the death of his very, very first (and overdue) boyhood crush.
The humiliation began to fall away from him like shattered chains. He knew that no matter how much scornful contempt awaited him in the luxurious dark eyes of Kim Tisdale, he had in fact done NOTHING to deserve her contempt. Not one blessed thing. This knowledge put a firmness in his stride as he went to meet his fate.