“You must try harder,” she says, perennially blunt. “Listen to the masters play. Close your eyes and let the music fill you. Let yourselffeelit.”
She says that like I haven’t tried a hundred times, a thousand. But I paste a smile on my face and nod anyway. “I know. I know—I’ll try.”
“Read a book first. Or watch a film. Something that will give you an emotion that you can play. The composer has written the bones of the piece for you, but the performer decides the muscle and fascia and skin. The notes mean nothing if you do not give them life.”
It’s a lecture I’ve heard too many times before. I wonder sometimes if Celia thinks I don’t take her advice seriously. But if listening to her was enough to make a difference, I’d be an emotional virtuoso by now. Instead I’m still me, plodding from note to note perfectly but soullessly.
She listens to me play the Beethoven sonata again and again. Or, at least, she listens to the beginning. I never make it past a page or two before Celia slaps a hand atop the piano and demands I start again.
“You have this in you, Jamie, Iknowyou do. What happened to the freshman boy I taught? You used to play like you wrote the music yourself. Whatever you were doing then, I need you to do it now.”
But freshman year, Adam was still alive. I had no idea, then, how good I had it. Even when I tried to draw from loss or sadness or pain, the sources of that pain were…Well. At the time, I’m sure I thought they were important. Now, they just seem naïve and immature. A little boy’s idea of hurt.
This pain, though? It burns too hot. I know Celia would tell me to draw from it—let my grief carry me into the music. But using that fire…it would burn me up along with it.
And using Adam’s suicide to further my own career feels cheap.
By the end of the lesson, I’m exhausted, my hands are cramping, and all I want to do is meet Shrishti at the gym and punch things.
But of course, it’s never that easy.
Marigold Gensler is waiting for me outside the practice room, leaning against the wall with a paperback book open in one hand. She folds over the corner of the page—because of course she is the kind to dog-ear her book—and tucks it back into her bag.
“Jamie,” she says, even though I’ve already started walking. “Wait up.”
I am tempted tonot“wait up,” but me and Marigold’s rivalry has always been sustained under the pretense of civility. We’refriendlyrivals, not enemies. Competitors, but not in mortal combat.
Allegedly.
So, I stop long enough for Marigold to catch up; then we start off down the hall together. And if I lengthen my stride just the slightest bit, forcing her to power walk to keep up…that doesn’t make me atotalasshole, right?
“What do you need?” I ask.
“Celia just emailed me,” she says. “Capstone project. It’s a duet. You and me.”
A duet. A freaking duet, and I just spent an hour in that practice room with Celia, and she didn’t think to tell me. She just sat on that information like a goose on the golden egg, probably internally cackling to herself the whole damn time.
There’s only one explanation. Celia planned this because she thinks there’s something I can learn from Marigold—and what better way to teach it than forced proximity?
The sheer condescension gnaws at me like a hungry animal.
“Are you serious?” I manage, after a silence that stretches on maybe a beat too long.
She makes a face—at least she feels the same way I do about all this. “Yeah. So I guess we’ve got a few weeks to make some tolerable music together. Yay for us.”
This has got to be a joke. As much as I’d like to tell myself thatCelia has no idea how much Marigold and I despise each other, the Parker piano program is too small to hide even the faintest animosity. We’re all up in each other’s business, all the time. I know enough details about Zoë Harrison’s breakup with that guy from the drama program last semester to write a book about it, and I’ve never even met the dude.
Or maybe this is a Stockholm thing. Maybe Celia thinks she’s gonnafoster collegialityor something ridiculous like that.
I get her point: We want to represent Parker as best we can. Parker hasn’t had a student make it to Stockholm in ten years. Alumni, sure. But it’s different being twenty-one and representing your school on the world stage. Not saying it counts for more, but…it doesn’tnotcount for more.
Even so, helping Marigold Gensler become a better antagonist for me two months from now seems like a really stupid idea.
“This is bullshit,” I say.
“Yep.”
“We should try to talk her out of it.”
