I flush. It’s not like she didn’t hear me practicing all week.
“I’m sure she will,” he says. I keep my annoyance off my face as I pack up my books. He rubs the back of his neck slowly, as if it hurts. “You can always call me if you have any questions. If you’re uncertain of anything.”
“Why did you say that?” I ask her after the front door has closed after us.
“What did I say?”
We walk fast. I take a deep breath. The first one in an hour. “That you hope I work hard enough! Now he’ll think I’m lazy.” I’m sure that we’ve made a bad impression: the shoes, her tea.
“No, he won’t. I’m sure he won’t.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because I’m just —”
“You just insulted me.”
“I didn’t!”
“Everything has to be negative with you.”
“You’re so sensitive,” she says. “Whenever it’s someone you want to impress, you get so . . . it’s like I don’t even know you.”
“Of course, I’m acting funny. There’s so much pressure. . . .”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You act weird, too!”
She sighs. “Claire. Let’s just . . . not fight. Okay? I don’t even see what there is to fight about. You are getting to take the lessons, aren’t you?”
We’re silent until we get into the car. She grips the steering wheel with both hands. I watch her nervously check the traffic, looking three times before taking her turn, tapping the brakes when a bicyclist dashes past on our right. Eventually the air blasting out of the vents heats up. I smell lilac in the air and realize she probably put on perfume to come here.
“Sorry, Mom.”
“It’s okay.”
“He’s great, isn’t he?”
“You know, he seems a little . . .”
Here it comes. There’s always something. “A little what?”
“A little too easy-breezy. Like he’s used to getting what he wants.”
“I thought he was nice to you.” He seemed extremely polite to me.
“He was,” she concedes. “At least on the surface. But you never know.”
“You’re so suspicious.”
“Well, he is a man! When you’re as fortunate as he is, and that handsome, it’s easy to be nice.” Her laugh is dark. “Of course I’m suspicious. I should be suspicious.”
“He’s an amazing teacher!” Surely she isn’t going to veto this because he’s a man.
“Mom! See, this is what I mean. Please stop second-guessing everything.”
I glue my eyes to my phone, so upset that I start going through my e-mails, pausing on the clothing sales and deleting all the junk. She isn’t happy unless the sky is falling.
“I’m just being careful, that’s all. If anything happened to you . . .”
“I know.”
I look away, at the view of warehouses and fast-food chains flowing past. It is only us two. She wasn’t close to my dad’s family, and aside from a few visits from one of her sisters every few years, we don’t see her family. They live in the Philippines, and it’s too expensive to go there.
She touches the Saint Christopher medal hanging from the rearview mirror, crosses herself, and whispers a prayer. “What is his full name again?”
“Paul. Paul Avon.”
She whispers his name, her accent hard on the v, and crosses herself again. “Will you at least text me when you get there?” I watch slices of light cross her glasses.
“Yes.”
“And you have to come right home afterward.”
“Of course.”
“I really am proud of you. Dad would be, too.” Her tone makes my stomach do a flip-flop. I feel more pressure when she’s nice to me.
Changing my schedule is a breeze. I ask the photography teacher, Mr. Mullen, if I can leave class to play the piano in the auditorium. “My new teacher wants me to practice more.” I say it loudly to make sure that when people see me in there, they won’t think I’m a loner freak — though they probably already do. I’ve been at this school so long, there’s no changing my label.
Mr. Mullen must hate school as much as I do, because he just lifts a faintly bitter eyebrow at me and waves me away. I lift my chin a little as I sail out of the room. Freedom. It’s like I don’t even have to ask. I guess when you’re an honors kid, don’t do drugs or anything criminal, and basically act like a mini-adult, you can do what you want. There really isn’t much time to waste, though. The first competition, a small one in a Burlingame hotel, takes place in a month.
“Gangway, major ego coming through. Double wide, double wide.” My head snaps to Ben Haden. Blond, his hair sticking up like an exclamation point. Blue eyes gleefully on fire. I don’t know what he has against me, except my grades, but he’s never stopped saying mean, hateful things. I’ve avoided him for years. I stick my tongue out to hide my shame, then scurry off.
The piano sits at the back of the stage, a dried-out shell that’s well hidden in curtains of the same color. Sickly yellow lights hang from the ceiling. The empty seats scallop around me, extending outward to the walls like ripples. Behind the walls of the theater, I can hear the lunch ladies bang pots. It’s so empty that my ears cling to anything happening outside the open door. Sneakers scuffing the concrete. Ryan DeGuzman’s distinctive, relaxed laugh, like he’s comfortable with himself. Ryan, who is gorgeous and a senior and who I’ve never had the guts to say hello to, even though sometimes, he says hello to me. And then I do the dumbest thing — I pretend that I’m confident and give him my best cooler-than-thou toss of the head. It’s a total act, but I mean, what am I supposed to do, stop and talk to him? No way. I feel like everything I am naturally isn’t good enough. There’s no 4.0 on my body for him to admire, and he probably doesn’t like classical music, and then there are my glasses.
I wish I felt I was more like the other students, but maybe deep down, they’re lonely, too. Even people with tons of friends, like Jasmine Granger, quiet and feminine and beautiful, are probably lonely sometimes. But it just doesn’t seem like I have much else in common with those kids, sitting in class, head in the clouds. Their heads are just not in the same clouds as mine.
Sometimes, playing so far from everyone else, the loneliness gets like an itch between my ribs, somewhere deep, where I can’t scratch. The piano sounds terrible then, with its edgy ring, its grumbly low notes. And then there’s the middle F, which sometimes sounds and sometimes sticks. It’s not good for much but scales and these new exercises Paul wants me to do, so it feels like watching the same television program over and over.
What does Paul want me to sound like? I don’t really know. I think of the lightness of the girl who plays before me — her quickness, her speed — and sing over my notes, covering up the sound of my playing.
My honors biology lab partner, Duncan, and I pour methylene blue into a test tube, and he mentions some shock jock on a radio station.
“I don’t listen to the radio much.”