by Anna Bloom
Sweating from the exertion of battling a locked window, I unbuttoned my shirt, wafting it away from my body and unsticking my vest underneath from my skin.
I dawdled to the piano and lifted the lid, tinkling the keys. I could play, slightly; not enough to make the effort to practice worthwhile. Miss Kelley, my violin teacher, had wanted me to practice every lesson. She said it helped with the fluency of score reading. I stretched my fingers and clanged some chords. Yeah, nothing fluid about that.
Blue played piano, or at least he had...
Gah. Dropping my chin onto my chest, I took some deep and calming breaths. I had to get over thinking I kept seeing him. Whoever he was now, he no longer held any part of the boy who used to climb through my bedroom window. That hard and cruel glint in his eyes that last night told me that much.
With a deep bone melting sigh, I unclipped my violin case and pulled out the light mahogany instrument. Come to me my old foe.
“Are you going to behave for me today?” I asked. Funnily enough the violin didn’t respond. Instead, it taunted me with an almost dull sheen across its wood; look at me so unloved and unused.
I waited to see if any spark of enthusiasm would light my chest. It didn’t.
Pushing the keys on the piano, I tuned quickly, using my ear really, once I’d made sure G matched the piano. Miss Kelley had always taught me to tune from ear, running my fingers over the notes, keeping my eyes closed as I adjusted the keys so they ran from one to another with no flats or sharps.
My fingers cramped awkwardly. Already I regretted my summer of head in the sand.
But then, I’d never expected the call to come. No one could actually blame me for not getting my violin out of the case—I figured we were over, on a permanent break, that kind of thing.
You can’t prepare for something you don’t know is going to happen.
Tilting my bow, I ran some scales, cringing at the awful squeak I managed to produce from the A string.
Yikes.
G Minor scale proved better, slightly.
I’d always loved minor notes, they always sounded sad and desperate. They made my stomach ache with longing for things I didn’t know.
Once I’d warmed up, I hesitated, disappointment washing through me. Just because I was here, it didn’t mean anything had changed.
Carefully placing the sad violin down on top of the piano I rifled through my backpack and pulled out a Manila folder.
I shuffled through the contents trying to find something to spark a desire to play. In the end I stopped at an Amy Beach. Once I’d played it with all my heart, a haunting and aching romantic odyssey. The Opus 23 could make a grown man cry if played just right.
Now it just made me cry with despair.
Without a piano I counted myself in, running into the first stanza. My fingers screamed with annoyance and I glared at them before closing my eyes and trying to make the music flow through me.
That’s how it should be; an endless flow between the violin and me.
Frustration made me crank the bow too hard when it should be soft, making the love song an explosion of anger.
Breathe, Lyra.
As I did all too often, I allowed my mind to wander, losing sense of time and presence, transporting myself to a place when my heart would have wanted to hear the aching notes of despair pulled from the strings.
Gah.
I. Just. Couldn’t. Find. It.
My right elbow screamed, and I stopped to lift the violin from my chin. My eyes snapped open when my ears, ringing in the silence, picked up a creak of leather.
Green eyes stared at me.
“Sounded like a 3rd grader was strangling a cat.”
His voice cut through me, my knees shaking and knocking together.
“Is that the best you have, Lyra Lennox?” Why did it crush me when he didn’t call me Lyra Bird? I hated myself for waiting for it.
“Possibly.” I couldn’t meet his eyes, didn’t want him to see the shame I had hidden in mine.
“Well then, I’d say you’re screwed.”
His wide lips quirked, but the malice in his gaze made my heart slice clean in two.
Chapter Twelve
Jack
I’d steeled myself to seeing her again. Hardening the ball of tension in the pit of my stomach into a boulder of disdain.
I paused outside the door to practice room 17, and then double checked that I had the right place.
Lyra hadn’t sounded like that since she was around eleven.
I nearly went to the office to rip the admin secretary a new one for messing up my schedule. I almost went, but then on a second thought, I hesitated. First day nerves were normal. In the year that I’d held the job, I’d coaxed more than enough students through the frightening distress of realizing that the stage on which they performed had widened. They weren’t scared of Greene, or me, or any other member of staff. They were scared of their peers, ridicule, and isolation.
This wasn’t Lyra. I’d know her sound anywhere.
Turning the handle slowly, I cracked the door and peeked inside, before pushing the door open and walking into the room. My breath caught, catching sight of her, eyes closed, brow furrowed into a tight line of concentration. Her black and bronze curls nodded with the slight sway of her body.
My ears wanted to bleed.
I watched open mouthed.
The cranky screech from the violin sounded like it should be coming from a different musician, any other musician. A tone deaf one.
She stopped, breathing out a low sigh, tinged with dismay by the sound of it.
She knew. She knew she was awful. Not just awful. Utterly diabolical.
How had she got the scholarship? It didn’t make any sense. The Collins beneficiary who graduated just this summer had just taken up 1st chair cello at the Met.
Lyra sounded like she should be playing the hack saw at a country dance.
Her pale-blue eyes opened, widening at the sight of me.
“Is that the best you have, Lyra Lennox?” Her name burned my throat.
“Possibly.”
I sneered, muttering something vile and hurtful under my breath. On my run this morning, around the lake behind the complex, I’d promised I’d stay calm.
Lyra and calm didn’t go together. The sooner I got on board with that the better.
“What were you attempting to play?”
She swallowed and her pulse fluttered in the base of her throat. “Amy Beach, ‘Romance’.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “It lacked passion.”
“Thank you,” she snapped.
The left side of my mouth curled. “Again.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
She dropped her violin to her side, dangling it in loose fingers, like she wanted to let it slip to the floor and splinter into two, but then lifted a defiant chin at me. “Why are you here?”
“Sadly, I’m paid to listen to this rubbish.”
Her lips parted, but her eyes narrowed. Mentally, I checked the high brick walls of my defense system. Dropping my McQueen backpack onto the floor and bashing it out of the way with my foot, I perched down on the piano stool and folded my arms tight across my chest.
“I can’t play with you watching me.” That obstinate chin lifted higher.
Sighing, I rubbed at the knees on my slacks. “If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. Then how would you feel?” I kept my voice even and calm, locking back the heightened emotions from the car the night before. I couldn’t let her get that level of reaction out of me again.
“Even more stupid than I feel right now.” She huffed a breath.
I wished I could even sympathize with her, but my heart existed of nothing more than black ice, and it was her family who’d made it that way. I grabbed for the paper on the music stand, quickly sweeping over it. “Do you have the piano accompaniment?”
“W- what?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Do you have the piano?”
“Ugh.” She gave up all attempts at communication and reached for a curled around the edges folder. Her fingers shook so much she couldn’t grip the sheathes inside.
Reaching a long arm into her space I grabbed at the folder. She gasped, her shaking hand catching a hold of my wrist. “Jack? Is this from last night?”
Her pale gaze inspected the graze across my knuckles. I met her stare, resenting the tightening in my stomach and trying to ignore it. “Not quite the start to term I expected.”
Total truth. From the moment I’d walked onto campus yesterday morning everything had teetered off balance.
I wouldn’t show her that though.
“Me neither,” she whispered, and a gentle brush of her breath fanned over my skin. I stiffened, fighting off the familiarity of it.
Without a word, I found the sheets I needed and put them onto the piano. Running my fingers over the keys, I reminded myself of the tune—not what Lyra had been screeching as I came in.
She froze, not even her chest rising and falling. “You still play?”
I flicked my gaze over her, lower lip pulled beneath her teeth. “Yes.”
“But...” Her cheeks colored. “But your dad, he burned your piano.” She paused, listening to the notes, before sighing, “That’s beautiful.”
Her eyes shone with a film of glittering water and I snapped my gaze away from her. “Let’s start,” I barked and launched into the intro, not giving her time to prepare properly.
Good.
Let her struggle.
That she knew me, knew sad little tales about my pathetic past burned me down deep. My fingers flew over the keys as she struggled to find the rhythm.
“Jack, please.” She gasped a deep breath, voice cracking. “Please, just stop. I can’t play like this.”
My fingers stopped, crashing down on a final note. “Why can’t you play, Lyra? What happened to you?”
She shrank back at my tone, and for a split-second I consider dialing down the asshole... but I couldn’t. She deserved it.
She was about to respond, her rich skin blanching, when the door cracked open. “Aha. Good to see you two are working together so well already.” I straightened up at Greene’s greeting and pulled in a haggard gasp of air.
“Come on then, Lyra, let’s hear you?” He clapped his hands, his stupid bow tie too bright for this time in the morning.
She stared at me wide eyed.
“Come on, Lyra, don’t be shy. I know your offer was very late, but you must be excited. This really is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“I am.” Her voice squeezed out, white fingers clenching the neck of her violin.
“Oh, shoot.” I pulled his attention by slapping my forehead, like a complete fucking idiot. “Professor Greene, I’m so sorry, I forgot that Laura Foster was looking for you when I came in. Something about a clash of lecture halls.”
Greene groaned and rolled his eyes. “Already? It’s only the first day of class.”
I pulled a ‘so it is’, face.
“Lyra, we can meet after lunch if you like? Back in here?” He nodded to her expectantly.
She was still frozen. What the hell was wrong with her?
“Lyra, you’ve got English this afternoon, haven’t you?” Why was I helping her? I was a fucking idiot.
She nodded. “Yes.”
Greene pouted, his eyebrows wriggling behind his glasses. “I shall wait. I’ve got good feelings, Lyra.”
Her eyes met mine, begging me not to say anything.
He waved and turned back for the door, humming some awful ditty. “See you in class, both of you.”
After the door shut, we stared at one another. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Don’t thank me. Get better. You won’t last a week here playing like that. This isn’t high school, Lyra, and anyone else will want your place, and your funding.”
She nodded and her lips pressed together.
“Why can’t you play?” I demanded, banging my hand on the keys of the piano.
She hitched in a breath like a desperate dart of pain had slashed her chest. She rubbed across her T-shirt with her forearm.
I tinkled the ivory, wrenching my attention from her torn face. “Let’s go again.”
“I can’t,’ she whispered.
I watched, momentarily stumped as she packed her violin away and grabbed at her bag. She almost ran for the door.
“Oh, Lyra.” I called as she wrenched it open.
Her blue clear gaze inched cautiously across my face.
“Can I have my jacket back please?”
After the door swung shut, I dropped my head down onto my hands. This could be an absolute nightmare.
I needed Lyra Lennox far, far away from me.
The morning passed by without further incident. Greene hadn’t managed to find Laura Foster, which was good; that way he hadn’t yet discovered my blatant lie.
Lectures were okay, all students eager.
Lyra sat at the back, her gaze distracted.
I glanced over her, finding her attention focused on the tree outside the window. The leaves had turned at the edges and she looked at them almost wistfully, not focused on the concept of performance lecture.
“What is performance?” Greene clapped his hands, snapping them all to attention.
I beat my biro on the desk where I took notes which would then be typed up later and sent out.
It was a rock and roll kind of job, but someone had to do it.
Alex-I’m-such-a-douche-Collins flicked his hand up, almost like he didn’t want to put his hand up properly; far too cool for that. I rolled my eyes and stabbed my pad of paper with my pen.
“It’s a show,” he said once Greene had acknowledged him.
Pathetic answer. My drifted gaze automatically to Lyra. Her plump lips were pursed in a petulant rosebud. My tongue pressed against the back of my teeth as I tried to forget what they tasted like.
Greene nodded in a ‘you’re wrong but I can’t tell you because you are the son of a really important patron’ kind of way. I smirked.
“More than that.” Greene rolled his hand, waiting for more.
A blonde with generous tits in a tight tank lifted her hand. “It’s a connection between the player and the audience.”
I almost missed Lyra’s flick of a gaze in my direction.
I needed to stop looking at her before Greene noticed.
“Yes!” Greene fist punched the air. “It’s when you communicate intimately with someone, using just music as your form of communication.”
Lyra shifted in her seat. Okay, now I really needed to stop watching.
“You play, even if it’s to a huge concert hall, the largest arena in the world, a stadium full of eighty thousand people, but every single person hears you playing just for them. They don’t care about the other people in the audience, it’s just you and them.”
I’d heard this lecture before, more than once. I’d never truly heard it until right then.
I hated the fact that I could hear in my head, Lyra playing from her bedroom window. The memories needed to go do one and leave me the hell alone.
“Now...” Greene launched into his next bullet point. “Some of you probably play more than one instrument. Lyra here also sings.”
I kept my gaze on my doodles on the pad in front of me.
“What’s the difference between the violin and singing when you perform, Lyra?” he called out to her.
A too long pause stretched around the silent auditorium. She shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, milky coffee skin staining with pink.
“Well?” I prompted.
Her lips parted, eyes wide like a rabbit caught in bright headlights.
Alex, of course, stepped in. “I find, Sir, when I play, the violin tends to immerse me more, it’s like playing under water. Every note is automatic, and the audience fades a little. I imagine if you were singing and people were singi
ng back then you’d connect with them more, you’d stay on the surface of the performance.” He smiled at Lyra. “Is that right, Lyra?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly it.” She threw him a grateful smile and I considered whether it would be unprofessional to punch him out.
The lecture droned on, my attention barely holding. The time ticked by so painfully slowly it felt like a million deaths.
On the hour, Greene glanced at his wristwatch and wrapped it up. Everyone scrambled from their seats.
Quickly, I sorted my stuff and slipped it into my bag. For a moment I hesitated, my body automatically turning for Lyra. Alex stepped in first. “Want to grab some lunch?” he asked her.
“Oh sure.” She kept her face down, tucking strands of bronze and ebony curls behind her ear. The blonde looked put out and shouldered her bag with a, “Hmmph.”
I shot her a smile and she straightened up, glancing me up and down. Alex put his hand on the small of Lyra’s back and guided her from the room.
“Lyra,” I called.
She turned, face far paler than normal.
“Eight am sharp.”
She nodded just once and then slipped away.
All I wanted was a bloody drink. Whether I’d have the strength to resist I didn’t know.
Chapter Thirteen
Lyra
“I need to go and look for a job.” I sighed, stirring my Diet Coke with the paper straw, turning the tube to a brown soaked mush.
Eva groaned and flopped her head on the table. “How can you even be thinking about finding work? Just going to lectures is exhausting enough.”
I grinned and pushed our shared cookie toward her. “Maybe if you weren’t out every night, you’d be able to get up for lectures.”
She contemplated this as she nibbled a tiny crumb of cookie, her skin blanching green. Eva had survived more hangovers this week than I’d survived practice sessions with Jack Cross.
He was definitely Jack Cross now. There could be no denying it. Jack Cross was an asshole of the highest order.
Wednesday, he’d made me cry when my scales were sluggish. I’d tried my hardest to keep it in, but the anger I’d felt at his endless criticism had morphed itself into pathetic tears.