“Halloween.”
“Better get cracking, then.”
“You think I have a chance?”
She levels her gaze on mine. “Did your mom okay it?”
“Not yet.”
She squeezes my shoulder. “Well, I hope she does.” She nods to the sheet music in front of me. “Now, practice this piece.”
I dip my chin and start playing it, wishing that every beat of the day were accompanied by a melody—a soundtrack to life. Music would spill from the sky, curl from the grass, and seep out of the asphalt.
Ten would hate it.
I falter and hit a wrong note.
Why didhehave to creep into my mind? Of all people…
Right before my hour’s up, Lynn asks me to perform my song again, so I do, and she studies the way my fingers move over the keys and spread to reach chords. She’s memorizing it. After I’m done, she scoots next to me on the bench and gives it a go. Lynn’s amazing like that—she can flawlessly play back anything she sees or hears.
“Okay, so now listen and think of the story you want to tell,” she says.
I sit up straighter. As my melody spirals through the room, an image begins to form in my mind, faint and shiny at the edges. Smears of yellow and deep red bloom. And then a slash of lime green and thick dabs of steel black. Melodies always appear to me in Technicolor.
“Anything?” she asks.
“A girl running. Gazing at the sun.”
“And?”
“Stepping out of shadows or pushing them away?”
“Good…”
She tucks a lock of traffic-cone-orange hair behind her ear. When I met her four years ago, her hair was yellow—and I don’t mean blonde, I mean corn-on-the-cob yellow. The following year, it was pink, then blue, which earned her the nickname of Skittles.
Long after my song comes to an end, the notes keep swirling in the air like dust motes. Silver and gold. Shiny. Cheerful. Hopeful.
“You should make your mother listen to it,” she says.
I tense up. What if Mom asks me why I wrote it? I’m not ready to have my dreams ground up like food waste in our InSinkErator.
“Ask her what the music makes her feel. It might help you with the lyrics.” Lynn checks the wall clock mounted over the shelves that sag from the weight of binders filled with sheet music and dusty rows of CDs. “You better go before Steffi marches up here to claim you.”
I smile, because Steffi’s done that quite often. Lynn and I get lost in music and forget how much time has passed. Thus, the clock. There was no clock my first year. Steffi nailed it to the wall after my repeated tardiness.
“See you next Friday.” I grab my bag and denim jacket from the chaise and dash down to the basement.
Transforming the cluttered gray space into a dance studio was my mother’s wedding present to Lynn and Steffi. She lined the walls with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, hung heavy beige drapes to conceal electrical wiring and pipes, screwed a barre into the mirror, and coveredthe cement floor with hardwood planks. But it’s the lighting that really makes the place spectacular, the mix of large, color-changing stage lights and tiny spotlights scattered like faraway constellations.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me,” Steffi says, her torso folded over one stretched-out leg.
“Never.”
“Did Skittles wear you out?” She unhooks her foot from the barre.
“She tried. Only you ever succeed.”
