Cheers, clapping. Names. Trophies.
Did the blueberry place? Did – oh please no – did the rabid Erin take the trophy, the scholarship money, the promised lessons from a famous pianist?
Beck stares at his hands, his useless hands. He should’ve cut them off years ago instead of fantasising about it. Saved the world from hearing his agony made into music. Saved himself from the Maestro.
Something’s definitely stuck in his eye.
The Maestro is in front of him, hauling him to his feet. She jerks his suit jacket straight, murmuring indecipherable German. They’re leaving? Joey trots anxiously behind. They move through the maze of rooms and tunnels and down the stairs, out of an exit, and the cool night clasps Beck in its comforting arms.
He won’t go to school tomorrow. He won’t even move. He’ll just fade into his bed and he won’t exist.
It’s late. The night has a wintry bite. The bus stop is nearly a kilometre of walking away, and their tickets are for midnight. Joey will want to be carried. Beck just needs to locate his feet, his wits, his strength, and get through this.
The walk is silent, brisk, with the Maestro holding Joey’s hand so her small legs fairly run to keep up. No one can tell a dead boy walks with them.
What will she do?
They are a street away from the bus station and they pass the gate of a city park with huge heavy branched trees. Shadows hug their shoulders. The Maestro stops. She jerks free of Joey – who stumbles back, tired, surprised – and the Maestro turns on Beck.
He opens his mouth, but what’s there to say?
She has height on him, strength, weight. Somewhere there is a man who is Beck’s father and he must’ve been a skinny bean, because Beck sure didn’t inherit his mother’s physique.
She shoves him against the park gate with a clang. The air goes out of him.
Joey whimpers.
The Maestro has no words – not even a deluge of curses to outline his worth. She grabs him by the hair and slaps him. The sound of striking flesh is crisp, too loud, in the emptiness. Someone will see. Someone will stop her. Call the police, a mother hates her son.
The pain in his eyes must be encouragement, because she slaps him again.
Again – again – again.
Beck’s lips splits, his mouth fills with blood, he’s probably bitten his tongue in half. ‘Mutter, please,’ he whispers. ‘Not here.’ A dribble of blood escapes his lips.
The Maestro must see the sense. She lowers her hand and releases Beck’s hair so sharply he falls back and hits the gate again – this time with his skull. He grabs his head, spits blood, sinks to his knees. There’s probably blood on his only good white shirt, so what’ll he do next time? She’ll be furious because of his shirt and it’s not his fault. Not his fault.
The tears come in a blur, hot and heavy with hatred.
Joey is crying and whispering, ‘Don’t hurt Beck.’ It comforts him, just a little.
‘Steh auf,’ the Maestro snaps. Get up. ‘There is no word for what I think of you. You have destroyed me.’
Beck wipes his nose and smears wetness across his cheeks. Blood, snot? Does it even matter? He keeps his mouth closed, so nothing embarrassing can slip out.
The Maestro closes her hands into fists, but the shaking is ferociously visible.
‘You are my disease,’ she says, her voice eerily calm. ‘You will kill me with your disgrace. But it will never happen again, will it?’
If he opens his mouth, an ocean will escape and he’ll drown. He’ll drown. Please don’t make him answer.
She steps towards him, voice like a viper. ‘Will it?’
Beck’s lips part and the last of his music slips free and dissolves in blood and tears.
‘Never,’ he says.
Beck decides to rebel.
And by ‘rebel’ he means mostly lying in bed for two days straight, not making a peep, minding his manners, and cleaning the entire house for the Maestro, but still – defiantly – not playing the piano.
On the third day, he’s still burrowed under the quilts when Joey invites herself in with breakfast in bed for him. She has one of her pink plastic toy trays with tiny pots of her infamous concoctions. He spies bread crusts on the tray and feels a stab of guilt. While he sulks, who takes proper care of Joey?
Her brow puckers, concentrating on not spilling anything. ‘I’m cheering you up since you’re sick.’
Beck scoots into a sitting position as she lays the tray on his lap. Then she vaults on to the bed and nearly upends the whole thing in his face.
‘Then we can go back to school.’ She peers at him and squints. ‘Do we have to wait until your face feels better?’
Beck picks up a teaspoon and prods one of the pots – is that uncooked rice and peanut butter? ‘I don’t know,’ he says.
Any other parent would’ve hauled their teenage son out the door and lectured him about school. But Beck can skip three days and the Maestro won’t say a word. In fact, the Maestro is ignoring him and thereby ignoring Joey. The message is loud and clear – her children are worthless brats.
And the Maestro won’t walk Joey to school – as far as Beck knows, the Maestro hasn’t left her room much either – but how long before someone asks questions about the absentee Keverich kids?
Beck cautiously eats sour yogurt sprinkled with flour.
Joey pokes his cheek. ‘How much does it hurt?’
He glares. ‘It hurts when you touch it!’ The purple bruises cover his right cheek and his split lip has crusted in a scab. He just can’t smile, really, which is fine by him.
Joey watches anxiously as he finishes the bread crusts, which have been left plain to his relief. ‘Is it good? Am I a good chef, Beck?’
‘The best,’ he says.
‘Oh good.’ Joey beams. ‘I want you to feel all better. And I’ve got some extras –’ Beck pales ‘– but if you don’t want them, that’s OK! I’ll give it to August!’
Wait. What? ‘August?’
‘Yeah,’ Joey says. ‘She’s outside. I told her we—’
Beck wrangles himself out of the sheets and shoots out of his bedroom. He lunges for the front window and cracks the blinds. Yes, she’s there, swinging around a lamp pole, her lips puckered in a whistle. Has she been doing this every morning? Beck rakes his fingers through his hair and pulls hard.
Joey patters up behind him.
‘You talked to her?’ Beck says, strained. ‘What did you tell her about me?’ What if Joey splatters his embarrassing secrets? He’ll never go to school again.
‘I just said that your face was sad.’ Joey sticks her lip out. ‘And that you are a meanie because you haven’t played with me for ever.’
‘It’s been three days.’ Beck flies through the house and finds questionably clean jeans – screw the dress code – and a school shirt with holes in the collar. He slams a foot into his shoe so fast the tape snaps, and he has to spend precious minutes with string and scissors. ‘Get ready, Jo!’ he shouts. ‘We’re going.’
Joey barrels into her room screaming – probably from joy? Maybe? Who could know? She reappears with purple sparkly leggings, a jumper that says ‘I Love The Brachiosaurus’, her gumboots and swimming goggles.