“So?” Ryan asked. “What’s your poison?”
I stared at him, trying to figure out what the hell he meant.
“He means what do you play?” David added, barely masking his amusement.
“Oh. Um. Piano?” I said, but it sounded more like a question for some reason.
“Nice.” Ryan nodded then pointed to the old brown upright. “Well, that’s Big Bertha. She’s old and large and always in the way—but she’s in tune.”
“Big Bertha?” I scratched my head, looking at David.
“We have a name for everything around here,” David said.
Before I could laugh, a loud clap resonated around the auditorium. Everyone stopped and looked to the silhouette at the entrance. “I hear we have a new student today.”
“Right here, sir,” Ryan said, and I was pretty sure I just shrunk about two inches.
“Excellent.” His booming voice reached my ears with the presumption that he was a big, tall man, but as he stalked toward us, he became amusingly short and round. I tightened my lips, trapping the laughter, when I caught sight of his blonde ponytail, gathered at the nape of his neck, tugging heavily on the few straining hairs clasping for dear life around the edges of his bald spot. Stylish. But, short as he was, he was also still a centimetre taller than me; just tall enough to be threatening as he towered over me, burrowing into my soul with an accusing glare. “Miss Thompson, I presume?”
Self-amusement turned to fear and dried my throat. I looked at Bertha, considering hiding behind her. “Yes, sir.”
“And what will you be playing for us today, Miss Thompson?”
“Uh. Playing?”
“We expect a performance from all our students on the first day.” He grinned, cupping his hands as he looked around the class. And at that point, the second head I’d earlier assumed he’d have, showed itself.
Everyone in the class waited for me to respond, or maybe to run away crying. Clearly, this was the reason for David's smirk in the library. I felt like saying, “FYI, David, you being here with me does not make this spotlight on my awkwardness okay. Not even a little bit!” But I bit my tongue instead, my eyes narrowing when David tipped his head in a slight nod. It was so obvious. He knew this was coming. He knew Mr Grant was going to do this. Why didn't he warn me? Then I could have made some lame excuse to run back home for the day.
Mr Grant stood back from his lean toward me, offering the piano stool. “If you please, Miss Thompson. Or do you require sheet music?”
Groaning, I shuffled out of the straps of my backpack and went to dump it on the ground.
“I’ll take this for you.” David grabbed it and placed it by his feet.
“Uh, thanks,” I said, then walked over to Bertha. The weight of two options dragged me to slump a little heavier on the stool; burst into tears and run away, or play a song?
“If you can only play Chopsticks, Miss Thompson, that will be fine,” Mr Grant said, and I just wanted to pull his ponytail. Jerk. But there was no way I’d let this know-it-all music professor make me cry in front of all these kids. I was sure he’d reduced many a student to tears in the past and it was time somebody taught him a lesson. If there was one thing I hated in this world more than anything, it was people using their talents or skills or, worse, knowledge, to make other people feel small. And that’s exactly what Mr Grant was doing to me. And it worked.
Everyone watched. I hesitated only a breath more, then lifted the cover and touched the very tip of one finger to the high C, too afraid to press down.
“Ara?” David rested his elbows on the top of the piano and smiled at me. I did not smile back. “You’ll be okay. Just play.”
My lip quivered a little, tears burning in my eyes. That little bit of control I had over my life was just about to slip away.
Mr Grant, standing uncomfortably close, watched me reposition my stool so I could reach the foot pedals, then held out a stack of papers. “Your sheet music.”
“I’ll be fine without that, thank you, Mr Grant,” I stated calmly and politely. Really, I wanted to take them from his puny little hands and clonk him over the head. Instead, I traced the columns of black and white for a second, drawing a tight breath through my teeth. I didn’t know the weight of the keys or the force it would take to draw a sound from them. This piano was unfamiliar and old, and after two months without so much as hearing a piano, I wasn’t sure I could even play anymore. This could end badly.
“Today, Miss Thompson,” said the intolerant imp.
David gave me a reassuring nod, leaning a little closer to watch my fingers as they found their way home.
Okay, you can do this, Ara-Rose. Just breathe. I looked around the room and grinned. “Has any one here heard of the band Muse?”
Under the cheers of the class, David nodded and sat back against the table behind him, while everyone else pulled their chairs into a neat circle around me. Even Alana moved from her desolation in the corner and stood beside Ryan, with her violin still in hand.
“Go get ‘em, Ara.” Ryan waved an encouraging fist.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
The world disappeared for a second then. I inhaled and felt the cool of the keys under my fingertips—heavy and solid. Breathe.
The first notes of the song filled the air, and a familiar flood of excitement rushed through my heart, then flowed down my hands. The keys were heavier than the ones back home, but it only took two chords to get used to it. “This is called United States of Eurasia, followed by Collateral Damage,” I said.
A few people laughed loudly and cheered.
As I panned over the notes, feeling the long-forgotten muscles in my hands stretch; I cleared my throat and sung the words. David looked down, keeping a smile hidden behind his eyes as he nodded in time with the music.
On the second verse, a violin came in out of nowhere; I looked over my shoulder and smiled at Alana, who had her eyes closed. But her accompaniment gave me a new kind of confidence, and my voice flowed, unwavering, into the echo of the auditorium. It just felt so damn good to release the air from my lungs this way again, as if this was my first breath in two months.
Everyone else in the room became a part of the performance then—keeping the beat with their hands and feet as I played. It was like a journey; a story with a beginning, middle, and end. And right where I’d have done so, if it were me, the violin cut out, leaving an eerie stillness as I drew the song to an end; the high notes sorrowful, laden with a distant kind of pain that reminded me of home—of my best friend.