Home > A Thousand Perfect Notes(7)

A Thousand Perfect Notes(7)
Author: C. G. Drews

‘What about a pink spoon?’ Beck says. ‘Or a pink whisk?’

Joey gives him a you’re-an-idiot-why-do-I-have-to-put-up-with-you look. ‘Can you cut things up with a whisk, Schwachkopf? I want a knife.’

Of course she does. Tiny, scary, violent child.

Beck wonders if he ever juggled What I Want To Be When I Grow Up fantasies at her age. All he can remember is the piano. Sitting on the Maestro’s lap – back when her hands didn’t shake – as she guided his baby fingers up and down scales. When he was Joey’s age, he was already the piano’s barnacle. But Joey gets a childhood. She is the baby, the sweetheart. And currently it’s more lucrative to threaten an oblivious Joey to make Beck work harder.

Or maybe the Maestro will inflict the piano on her too, someday.

Beck wishes he could do something. Protect Joey? Save her? But he’s so pathetic he can’t even buy her chocolate, or a proper birthday present, or even tell her that he hates it when she calls him Schwachkopf.

He’s spineless.

They’re about to leave for school in a blast of autumn air when the Maestro calls. Beck grinds his teeth. He practised from 5:03. She has nothing to yell about this morning.

Unless Joey let slip about August …

She promised.

She’s five years old.

Beck drags himself back to the kitchen. He wonders how hot her coffee is.

‘Ja, Mutter?’ he says, weary.

The Maestro is in her routine place at the table, red-blotted papers spread before her. Purple smudges beneath her eyes say she’s not sleeping well – but who can in this house, with the piano going all hours?

‘I have some tutoring going late,’ she says in German. ‘Don’t loiter on the way home. Come back and practise immediately.’

Beck breathes out and a thousand pieces of dread roll off his shoulders. ‘Ja, Mutter, of course.’

He’s out the front door before she realises she didn’t criticise his morning playing. The door slams behind him and he yells at Joey to wait for him – she’s taken off already but is also wearing a necklace of Christmas bells, so locating her isn’t hard – when it hits him.

How wrong everything feels.

How wrong it’s about to become.

August Frey has been sitting in the gutter on the opposite side of the street. She springs to her feet like she ate crickets for breakfast and waves. What is she doing here? Is she messing with him? She’s not wearing shoes, just blue hemp anklets and Sharpie doodles on her feet.

She doesn’t belong on this street. She doesn’t belong in his life.

Beck’s eyes snap away and he charges up the street, a breath away from running. He snatches Joey’s hand and practically knocks her over in an effort to walk faster.

August catches up with a skip and a bounce. ‘Good morning, antisocial Keverichs!’

She’s not going to give up, is she?

Beck mumbles something like hello and glares at the ground.

August falls into step beside him, a disconcerting spring in each step. At least she wears her uniform like a (semi) normal student, her red polo shirt making Beck’s look pinker than usual.

Beck only slows the pace when they’ve rounded the corner and there’s no possible way the Maestro will see them. Not that she’s in the habit of peeping out the window to be sure they get off safely. Between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., they are none of her concern.

‘And I thought I was a fast walker,’ August says lightly. ‘You’re so odd, you make me look normal.’

He bets neither of them have even tasted normal in their entire lives. Beck is so beyond normal he can’t even focus on the fact that he has a pretty girl determined to hang around him.

Pretty? Well, she sort of is. She has freckles and those oceanic eyes and she looks like she could beat an Olympian in a sprint. Not the perfect hair kind of pretty or even the clean and tidy kind of pretty … she’s just—

Oh great. He’s analysing what counts as pretty? This needs to stop.

‘We can’t talk to you,’ Joey says.

August doesn’t look surprised, or even offended – more like she swallowed a smile and is trying not to let it escape. ‘Why?’

Joey squints. ‘You’re a stranger?’

Beck could hug her. ‘Be firm.’

‘YOU’RE A STRANGER,’ Joey yells and then looks pleased.

‘I’m hardly stranger than you two,’ August says. ‘Plus you know my name, you know where I live, you know my favourite colour, and we hung out yesterday afternoon.’

‘I don’t know your favourite colour,’ Joey says indignantly.

‘It’s blue.’ Beck says it without thinking and then blushes dark enough to make a beetroot proud.

August meets his eyes with a smirk on the corner of her lips. ‘Trophy for Keverich. What gave me away?’

The blue anklets and blue doodles on her feet and blue wool twined around some of her hair.

‘Random guess,’ Beck says.

Joey jerks her hand free to run a few metres ahead and leaps over a huge crack in the cement. She lands with a thump and her bell necklace clangs.

August moves ever so slightly closer to Beck. ‘You don’t smell like coffee today.’

‘I’ve come to realise I hate coffee.’

‘Then my bribe isn’t going to work, is it?’ August jiggles her satchel. ‘I have a mango. Totally unseasonal mango and probably imported but I’m willing to share.’

Only one more block and they’re at school. She makes him so uncomfortable.

‘I’m not taking your mango,’ he says. ‘We’re not friends.’

‘We’re not,’ August agrees, ‘we’re essay partners. I want good grades and you don’t want to get expelled.’

‘Why don’t you just ask Mr Boyne to swap you? With someone who cares?’

August presses her lips together. ‘You say you don’t care, but your eyes say differently.’

His eyes?

‘Dude,’ August says, ‘your eyes have this permanent devastated look, like someone stole your ice cream and stabbed your puppy and then told you sprinkles were illegal. Your eyes clearly say they want to pass this assignment.’

They’re at the school gate and Beck has never been so glad to see it. He could hug the broken wire fence right now. Being with August is like a hurricane of confusing emotions.

‘Maybe sprinkles are illegal,’ Beck says, ‘and no one’s told you yet.’ He grabs Joey’s hand and drags her towards the preschool.

Amongst the clamour of hundreds of kids elbowing their way to class, August shouts, ‘I’ll see you after school!’

Beck walks faster.

The high, primary and preschool are all squashed into two massive buildings. They’re old. The air conditioners never work, so forget about heating. Most of the bathroom doors don’t lock, if they’re lucky enough to have a door. There isn’t even a covered eating area, so rain or shine, kids wander about the sports oval and leave muesli bar wrappers everywhere they go. It’s a dump. Beck feels sick dread for when Joey graduates to primary school and has to face these horrors.

He leaves her behind the safe, high fences – covered in rainbow streamers – of the preschool and trudges to class.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)
» The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash #4)