The Mockingbirds (12 page)

I slam the cover over the keys; the notes sound a faint cry as they’re tucked in violently for the night. But that’s not enough for me right now. It’s not enough at all. Nothing is mine anymore. I have nothing separate from
that night
.

I lift the lid again, clench my jaw, and dare the first note—E—to fuck with me. I press it hard with my index finger.

Take that.

But the memories stay silent.

Afraid, are you, piano? Think I can’t handle it? Let’s do it again, then.

I jam harder on the E, pressing with a fury that borders on a hurricane.

Still nothing but the note.

Bring it on. Show me more. Show me all of that night.

I slam my hand on the piano, then I make a fist and smash it into the keys. I do it again and again and again. I can own this piano. I can teach this piano not to mess with me. The notes scream out, but I don’t stop. They’re crying now, begging for mercy, but I’m not through yet.

By the time I’m done, my hand stings, my bones hurt, and I’m actually panting. I step back, take a few calming breaths. My chest rises and falls. Then I look at the piano and I gasp because I swear the middle E is just a hair’s breadth shorter than the keys next to it. I cover my mouth with my hand, astonished, embarrassed, ashamed at what I’ve done. I maimed the piano.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice breaking, my throat burning. I sink down to my knees and I touch the damaged key, barely brushing it. It’s tender and I don’t want to hurt it any more.

I pull on my jacket, noticing there’s now a dull throb starting in the back of my neck. I’m getting another headache. I don’t know if Carter is giving me headaches or if I’m giving them to myself. But I deserve this one for what I did. I won’t take an aspirin. I won’t take a Tylenol. I will let this headache hurt me.

I leave the music hall and Martin’s there, as he said he would be. He shuts his French book, puts his paper away, and stands up. I don’t say anything at first. He doesn’t either. He heard me, he must have heard me. He doesn’t mention it.

“What happened to the freshmen last semester?” I ask as we walk.

“What happened?” he repeats.

“Yes. You heard their case, right?”

“It didn’t go to trial,” he says.

“So what happened?”

“They confessed. They took their punishment.”

“I take it I won’t be seeing these freshmen in the production of
Merry Wives of Windsor
this semester, then.”

“You are correct in that assumption. Not
Merry Wives,
not anything.”

“Good,” I say. “They deserved it.”

But I don’t know if I’m talking about them or Carter or myself right now. Everything inside me is like a mangled mass of cars on the highway, and I’m waiting for the paramedics to come untangle them.

“We need more scientists,” Mr. Christie declares from the front of the classroom.

He’s standing, but he places a foot on the seat of a chair. He kind of leans into the chair, placing his right hand on his right knee, in emphasis or something, as if this position makes him a more passionate lecturer. It can only mean he’s about to dispense a new assignment, especially since it’s the start of a new week—our second full week of classes.

He strokes his reddish beard, pushes his wire-rimmed glasses back up on his nose. He wears corduroy slacks, a button-down shirt, a shabby jacket. I wonder if he wishes he were at Williamson instead, if he’d rather be a college professor, but then I’m sure like all the others he thinks Themis is its own sort of heaven. Tenure awarded after just
a few years, the wildest assignments you can dream up, and a whole army of students to sing and dance for you.

“Thomas Friedman says we need more scientists,” Mr. Christie says, elaborating in his deep baritone. He pauses. He pauses a lot in his lectures. I bet when he writes his lectures he puts
pause here
in his notes. “Do we need more scientists?” he asks. “Is that what our world needs? As the world gets flatter and we run in place faster just to keep up, do you”—he pauses again, this time to point at all of us in the room—“agree?”

We don’t know. We haven’t read the book. But he’s about to assign it to us.

Still rocking back and forth against his right leg, he says, “Tonight, I want you to begin reading
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
. And I want you to think about what we need most. You can agree or disagree with Mr. Friedman.”

Of course. It’s encouraged, in fact. We’re not expected to agree with teachers or texts or the conventional wisdom. We are expected, however, to back up our dissent with facts and arguments and logic. Mr. Christie teaches history, but not the pilgrims and tea party kind. He teaches world affairs. He says he’s concerned with what’s happening today in the United States and in the world and how we got here. That’s why he’s not going to assign any textbooks this semester, he says. Instead, we will read modern works by modern writers on the modern world and come to modern conclusions, he says.

“Please read the first five chapters before the next class,” Mr. Christie says. “For each chapter, I want you to write a ten-word statement on what each of you deems the most cogent point in that chapter—no more, no fewer than ten words. You need to be able to distill your thoughts and impressions succinctly and be prepared to present them in a lively discussion.”

He pauses, paints a smile on his face. He looks pleased with himself, as if he can simply decide by fiat that the discussion will be
lively
. Make it so, Mr. Christie, make it so.

“Class dismissed.”

I reach for my backpack and sling it over my shoulder, ready to leave with T.S., until Mr. Christie calls me over. He’s my junior advisor. I walk to the front of the classroom as the other students file out. “Alex, let’s chat for a minute,” Mr. Christie says.

He still hasn’t moved his leg off that chair. He rests his hand on his knee, as if he’s a statue. Maybe there’s glue on the bottom of his shoe. Maybe he realized it when he parked his foot up there and now he’s too proud to admit it. Maybe he’s going to ask me for a knife or an X-Acto blade to slide between the bottom of his shoe and this chair. But then he takes his foot off the chair and stands like a normal person. Well, as normal as any Themis teacher can be.

“Let’s talk about your spring project,” he says. Another deep pause. “What would you like to do? How would you like to make your mark on Themis Academy?”

I picture a dog, a naughty little beagle pup named Amelia, whizzing on the carpet, making her mark.

“This is kind of going to be a big surprise and all, but I thought I’d do something music-related.”

He misses the sarcasm, just beams instead. His eyes are like saucers, as if I just said the most creative, delightful thing a student has ever uttered.

“Music-related! That’s genius!”

Who would have thought the piano girl would do her project on music? It’s mind-blowing!

“Tell me more, Alex.”

I’m about to utter the name of my favorite symphony, then I stop. Because Beethoven betrayed me last week. And then I betrayed him with the way I played. How can I do my spring project on Beethoven after what we did to each other? He didn’t even write a piano part in the Ninth Symphony, for God’s sake. He wrote a million piano concertos but just happened to leave out
my
instrument from the greatest piece of music ever written. How’s that for injustice?

Then I realize it’s perfect.
Injustice.
It’s the perfect subject because it suits me right now.

“I want to do my spring project on the injustice of Beethoven
not
writing a part for the piano in the Ninth Symphony. Did you realize that, Mr. Christie? He left the piano out. It’s scored for the largest group of instruments of
any
Beethoven symphony and yet he left out the best instrument ever in the entire world,” I say crisply. “He included
trumpets and horns and oboes and violins and even a bassoon of all things. There are vocals in it too. You can be a singer and sing ‘Ode to Joy’ in the Ninth Symphony. But what do we get? Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Mr. Christie nods, several times. Then he narrows his boring brown teacher’s eyes and assumes a thoughtful, contemplative look. “I think that’s simply a brilliant idea, Alex.”

He holds up his index finger, then places it against his mouth. “You can research scholars, music experts, interview great classical pianists….”

Blah, blah, blah.
As if I don’t know how to do research.

“But how ever will we have you perform it if there’s not a piano part?” Mr. Christie asks, looking absolutely confounded.

My heart stops. Did Mr. Christie actually just say that? “Perform it? I can perform it? For the whole school?”

I tell myself not to show emotion in front of him, but my brain is pretty much popping all over with excitement.

“That’s ideally the goal. A performance for the entire student body and the teachers. But how would you do it if there’s no piano part?”

My eyes widen and I’m the only kid in class who knows the answer. “Liszt,” I say, and in that moment I want to kiss the Hungarian composer. “Franz Liszt transcribed it for the piano. It was a daunting task, and it took him years. He almost stopped. But he soldiered on and he did it. And that’s why he’s my musical hero. That’s the heart of my spring project.”

For a moment I feel chills, good chills, thinking of Liszt, thinking of his dedication, his brilliance, his quest to turn all of Beethoven’s symphonies into solo pieces for the piano Liszt loved as much as I do.

“I am totally behind this. But we will also have to get it approved, of course, by Miss Damata,” he says, then quickly corrects his faux pas. “I meant
Ms.
Damata.”

But she’s already Miss Damata to me now. “Miss Damata? Who’s that?” I ask.

“She’s the new music teacher.”

“I didn’t know we had a new music teacher,” I say. Elective classes like music start the second week of the term.

“Mr. Graser had a job offer in California over the holiday break,” Mr. Christie says, referring to Themis’s previous music teacher. “He accepted it, but never fear. Everything happens for a reason, for we were able to quickly secure Victoria Damata. She has taught at Juilliard.”

“Juilliard?” I ask, practically salivating. She knows people. She knows the right people. She can help me get in. I will do whatever she wants. Juilliard has less than an eight percent acceptance rate, and if a former teacher from Juilliard just landed at my school I will do everything on this earth to get in her good graces, and she will write me the most amazing letter, and she will phone up all her contacts, and she will put in all sorts of good words for me, and in less than two years I will be in New York training under the greatest teachers the world has ever known.

“Yes, Juilliard. I do know how very much you want to go there.”

I nod, unable to speak. I will curtsey when I meet Miss Damata. I will sweep her office, empty the trash, fetch her sheet music any time of day or night.

“Allow me to introduce you. Come with me.”

Mr. Christie gestures to the door of his classroom and I walk out with him, then across the quad, where for the first time ever I’m grateful for his presence. Today, he’s my Carter buffer. He opens the door to the music hall in some sort of ridiculously gallant gesture and there’s
Ms.
Damata at the piano. Her blond hair is piled on top of her head; she wears a high-necked beige blouse, a pencil-thin green skirt. I flinch for a second, thinking she knows what I did to the piano that night last week.

But then she smiles, warm and kind, and I know she could never be mad at me for that. She would understand.

I adore her instantly.

Miss Damata is a rock star.

She’s performed as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. She won the Rachmaninoff Piano Competition. She plays in the Mostly Mozart Festivals in the summer. Oh, and she has a bachelor’s degree in music from Juilliard too.

I know this because I haven’t stopped asking her questions. She is gracious and warm; she answers everything I ask. I ply her with more questions. “Who is your favorite composer?” I ask.

“Schumann,” she answers. “Anything by Schumann.”

“I love Schumann too,” I say. “Wait. Do you mean Clara or Robert?” I ask. Robert Schumann was the more famous
of the married pair of pianists, but his wife, Clara, wrote beautiful piano pieces, concertos, even a piano trio.

“Clara,” Miss Damata says.

“Me too!” I say, and my stomach growls. I place a hand on my belly, hoping she didn’t hear. I haven’t gone to the cafeteria since the run-in there last week with Carter and Kevin. I’ve been subsisting on pretzels and Clif Bars and whatever T.S. or Maia brings back for me. “Most people don’t know about her work,” I add. “But, then again, you’re not most people. You’re a star. You’re a Juilliard grad! A Juilliard teacher.”