by Sara Zarr
Lucy picked up the laptop and went back to her desk. She didn’t want him to see her relief and adjust future answers to that question to anything but his own feelings.
Yeah. Now we have Will. Maybe she should tell him
, as long as they were having this deep brother-sister talk, about her own conversations with Will. “Gus…” she started.
“I think he’s my best friend.”
She turned. He looked so sweet and sincere. She could tell him all the reasons h thign="is grown-up piano teacher could not be his best friend. No one he’d known such a short time could be.
But that would make her a hypocrite.
“Okay,” she said. “Just promise me you’ll stop googling the competition.”
“Promise.”
Non-specific holiday decorations had gone up at Speare over the weekend. Apparently the least potentially offensive thing about December was snow, not that it would ever snow in San Francisco. There were sparkly styrofoam snowflakes hanging in the hall, and cut-outs of cheerful snowmen on various classroom doors. The one on Mr. Charles’s door had been enhanced with a drawn-on Shakespearean-era ruffled collar.
“Merry whatever, I guess,” Lucy said to him, feeling a sense of satisfaction at turning in her second-to-last Munro draft. He’d like it, she was sure. He took the paper from her, surprised. “This draft isn’t due till Wednesday, you know.”
“I know. I’m ready for your notes.” She stayed by his desk for a few seconds while other students came in. “How was your Thanksgiving?”
“Nice. Turkey. Same as ever.” He put her paper in his in tray. “How about yours?”
“Ditto. Sort of.”
“Looking forward to reading your paper.”
Carson was at their table in the second-floor lounge at lunch, and Lucy paused, wondering if she could turn back without him noticing. She didn’t know how to act, if what Reyna had said about him liking her was true.
“Hey, Luce,” he said, barely glancing up from his phone.
“Hiii.” Lucy approached the table with caution. “Is Reyna coming?”
“Meeting with Ms. Spiotta.” Spiotta taught Reyna’s English class and was the head of the department. Carson leaned to reach one hand into his backpack, on the floor next to him, while still operating his phone with the other hand. “I got you a Heath bar.”
Her favourite item in the machine at school. She took it from him and sat down. “Sometimes I forget how awesome you are, Carson Lin.”
“Yes, you do.”
Lucy ripped open the candy-bar wrapper, forgoing the real lunch of leftover turkey and roasted veggies Martin had packed for her. She slid the Heath out on its cardboard tray and offered Carson half. He shook his head.
He was a great guy. And she wouldn’t make the whole thing worse by giving him the You’re a Great Guy speech. All she could say was, “Sorry if I was kind of crazy on Wednesday.”
He finally put down his phone. “It’s okay.”
“It’s been a weird time for me,” she said, biting into the thick toffee of the first half.
“I know. For you, for Reyna, for the Lakers, yeah. No one ever asks if it’s a weird time for me.” He changed his mind about the chocolate and put the entire second half of it in his mouth at once.
“Is it?”
He chewed, and chewed some more, and swallowed and said, “I think life is just a weird time.”
“Happed open. Yeah.” Lucy finished off the Heath. “Can I tell you something?”
“No. Kidding! Yes.”
She could practise the words on Carson before she tried them out on her mom. “I started playing piano again. And I think I might want to go to music school. Might.”
“Like make a comeback?” he asked. “Be all famous again and whatnot?”
“No, not like that. Definitely not like that. More like because…I just want to. It’s what I love. I think.”
“Like I love Apple products and plan to camp out at their offices this summer until they give me an internship, even if it means not bathing for a month and living on Slim Jims?”
“Like that,” Lucy said, pointing her finger at him. “Well, maybe not exactly. But that’s the gist of it.”
“You didn’t love it that way before?”
“I don’t know.” She thought how she could explain. “Okay, remember how your grandma was freaking out at you about your grades the other night?”
“No, I totally forgot about that.” He rubbed his chin, fake-professorially. “But I’m intrigued. Go on.”
“Multiply that by a factor of, I don’t know, fifty?”
Carson pretended to write an equation on the table with his finger. He studied the blank surface. “Ahh.”
“So I don’t know if I loved it. I don’t know if I got the chance. I mean, you shouldn’t have a ‘career’ by the time you’re eleven, right?”
Carson got serious, staring at the table and spinning his phone on its back, over and over. “I wish I’d known you then. I wish I’d heard you play. I don’t know anything about that kind of music. Do you think I could hear you someday? Play that stuff? I mean obviously I’ve stalked your past on YouTube, but in person?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, touched that he wanted to. “Someday.”
“Cool.”
“You know what?” she asked.
“No. What?”
“I wish I’d known you back then, too.”
When she got home, she saw Will’s car parked a little way down the block. She came into the house quietly, through the back. Martin had left a note on the island – he was doing errands, and her dad was at his downtown office, which he didn’t really need but rented to keep from going stir-crazy in the house.
She detoured to the bathroom, to wash her hands and check the mirror. Her hair suddenly struck her as…excessive. The hair of a teenage girl who thinks hair is more important than it actually is. She smoothed it down and pulled it over one shoulder, which helped some.
Gus and Will were in the music room working on the piece for the showcase. Gus’s playing sounded slightly lethargic at first; then Lucy realized Will was probably having him go through the piece at three-quarter time, a kind of deliberate and extremely focused practice Grace Chang had used with her when prepping for a performance or competition.
This time she wouldn’t barge in on the lesson and send Gus out. She stayed in the hall awhile, listening. She remembered what Gus had said about Will being his best friend. And about wanting to be like hg tson aer.
She had to tell him what was going on, before he heard it from their dad or Martin or figured it out on his own. They’d been in this thing together nearly their whole lives; she couldn’t go rogue now without letting him in on it. She waited at the kitchen island and tried to focus on homework until Gus and Will took their break.
About twenty minutes later, they came into the kitchen, Will first. Lucy touched her hair and felt surprised to realize how happy she was to see him. “Hi.”
“Just the lady I’m looking for,” he said.
Gus opened the fridge and asked, “Why?”
“Because Lucy’s my buddy, buddy.” Will chucked Gus on the back of his head gently. “Do you want to go back to the music room? Or upstairs? Or take a walk?”
“Why can’t I stay with you?” Gus closed the fridge, a couple of cheese sticks in his hand.
“Because,” Will started, but Lucy cut him off.
“You can,” she said. “Here.” She hooked her foot around the stool next to her and pulled it out. Gus sat, and Will went around to the other side and leaned on the island. It occurred to Lucy that she should talk to Gus alone, without Will there. It was kind of between them. But Gus liked him so much, and everything just sort of seemed to work when Will was around.
“So,” she said to Gus, “I have to tell you something. Kind of a secret. I don’t want Mom or Grandpa to know. Yet.”
“What about Dad?” Gus peeled back the wrapper of one of his cheese stick
s.
“He knows. Sort of. Martin too.”
“What is it?”
“Um. Okay. I…” She glanced at Will. “I’ve been thinking about playing again. And I sort of have been. Playing again.”
After a pause Gus said, “Piano?”
“No, trumpet.”
He didn’t laugh. “Since when?”
“Thanksgiving,” Will said. “While you and Aruna were downstairs. Cool, right?”
“You know, too?” He looked from Lucy to Will and back to Lucy. Confused.
“Well, he was there.” She left out the parts where she’d already been talking to Will about it before that, that he was the one who’d brought it up in the first place.
“But…yesterday you said how you weren’t happy.”
“I wasn’t. Before.”
“Grandpa’s not going to let you.” He said it like it was the end of the conversation.
Lucy’s face heated with frustration. Grandpa was thousands of miles away but still there. “I’m not asking Grandpa’s permission. It’s not going to be like it was. Will’s helping me and—”
“Have you been…teaching her?” Gus asked Will.
Her.
“No,” Will said. Lucy confirmed it with another no, and her eyes met Will’s. Say something, she thought. Say something to make it better. “Be happy for her, Gustav.”
That wasn’t it. It sounded parental and disappointed. Gus turned red. “But…you&rs&heBe happyquo;re…” He jumped off his stool and stalked out of the room, leaving his cheese.
When he’d gone Lucy said, “Well, that sucked.”
Will rubbed his hands over his face. “Let me go talk to him. Unless you want to?”
“No, I think you.”
“Okay. Then do you have time to grab a quick coffee when I’m done here? We can debrief.”
“Yeah. Just…don’t tell Gus.”
They walked to a coffee shop on Fillmore. “Is he okay?” she asked.
“He’ll be fine.” Will hunched his shoulders in the cold. “I’m kind of surprised how he reacted. Were you guys really competitive or something?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he’s mad about me playing.”
“Fooled me.”
“He’s mad that you and me…have been talking. He didn’t know. Yesterday he called you his best friend.” Then, feeling she’d told a secret, immediately added, “Forget I said that. Okay? Seriously. I’m the worst sister.”
He touched her arm. “No, you’re not. Like I said, he’ll be fine.” Then he added, “God. That’s really sweet, him saying that.”
“I know.”
They went into the crowded cafe, and Lucy ordered off the holiday menu, something called a Mega-Minty Mocha.
“Whipped cream?” the barista asked.
“Oh, probably not?”
“Come on,” Will protested. “If you’re getting that, you gotta have the whip. This is no time for restraint.”
She said yes to the whipped cream, feeling her mood lighten, and they waited for their orders. “I can’t believe it’s December already.” It was the first holiday season in for ever that Lucy hadn’t had a dozen benefits and recitals to do. She wouldn’t have to bust out a green velvet dress this year.
“Wait till you’re my age. There’s one of those every day. ‘I can’t believe I’m thirty already.’ ‘I can’t believe it’s tax time already.’ ‘I can’t believe I’m tired already, it’s only eight!’ Et cetera.”
Lucy cracked a smile. “But you get to do what you want.”
“Doing what you want still affects others. At any age. As we have just experienced. Here.” He pointed to a vacant table. “Go get that. I’ll bring our coffee over.”
She hung her coat on the back of the chair and sat down. When Will put her Mega-Minty Mocha with its tower of whipped cream in front of her, she groaned. “This is mortifying. I’m a real coffee drinker, you know. Not a fake.”
“I’m not judging.” He sat across from her with his soy latte. “So. Other than the Gus situation, how are you?”
How was she? She felt good to be there with him. Bad about Gus. Happy about playing. Worried about her mom and grandpa coming home. “Confused,” she said.
“That’s okay.” He hovered his spoon over her whipped cream. “Do you mind?”
“Whipped cream is vegan?”
Sheepish, he said, “It’s my weakness.”
“Go for it.”
He scooped off the top and stirred it into his latte. “You’ll get used to being confused. Adulthood is a perpetual state of confusion.”
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk?” Lucy asked, taking a cautious sip of her drink.
“How is it?”
“Minty. Mega-Minty.”
“Okay,” Will said. “Here’s a question. What do you love?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“What do you mean what do I mean?”
“I mean it’s a broad question.”
“When you’re trying to figure out what you want,” he said, “and you sort of know what you don’t want, it helps to know what you love. So what do you love?”
“Gus.”
“Hm.” He touched two fingers to his mouth, then said, “No people. People are complicated. What do you love, uncomplicatedly?”
“Chocolate.”
“Goes without saying. And?”
One of Will’s hands rested on the tabletop, the other on his mug. Lucy focused on his hands and thought about what she loved. Loved loved. What gave her joy. “Well, music.”
“Come on, Lucy. Obviously. What about music?” he pressed. “What music?”
She took a deep breath, thinking. “Okay. Beethoven’s Fifth. You know how you’re not supposed to say that one? I mean that might be the only classical piece half the world knows, so if you’re…you know, if you’re us…you’re supposed to have a better, cooler, more obscure answer. But I freaking love it.”
“Hey, there’s a reason it’s so popular.”
“That part in the third movement when the cellos have been playing and then the horns come in? And that clarinet stuff in the second, when they’re running counter to the flutes. Love.”
“Me too. It’s perfection.”
“And Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’. First movement. Major love.” Her excitement grew. She forgot about Gus being mad at her and listed more moments and minutes of favourite pieces, stuff she’d played and stuff she hadn’t. The whole time, he watched her intently. She’d never felt someone so focused on her. Even a concert hall full of people didn’t feel this way.
“What else?” he asked.
“Do you know Ryan Adams?”
“A little.”
“There’s this one song with a simple guitar intro and these two little drumbeats…or, wait.” She pulled out her phone, found the song, and played the first ten or fifteen seconds through the speaker.
He bent forwards to get his ear closer to her phone. “Nice.”
She stopped, overwhelmed with example after example that came to mind. Not only music, but also nature, food, and even though they were complicated, people. Like Carson, being so awesome to her today even though he’d been hurt, and Reyna and her willingness to show up wherever, whenever. People liker.y were come Gus. People like Will.
“Why do people…we…why do we drag around like life is so awful?” Why did they forget that there was so much to love?
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I guess…because there’s also a lot that is awful. That’s the struggle of getting old. To make sure you don’t let what’s hard or painful or whatever obscure the beauty.”
“You’re not old,” Lucy said with a laugh.
“No. But I’m older. Than I was. Than you.”
She looked at her Mega-Minty Mocha, which was turning into a lukewarm sludge of sugar and cream. “You’re lucky. Sixteen is hard.”
“I know. But you’ll get through it. We all do. Your mom, your grandf
ather. Me.”
“My grandfather was sixteen?”
“I’m not saying I’d put money on it, but the odds are in my favour.”
She smiled at him, thinking how lucky she, of all the people in the world, was to be sitting at this coffee shop right now with this person who made her feel so totally good.
He finished his coffee, put his glasses back on. “So. I like your list. When I’m feeling confused, creatively or generally, sometimes it’s because I don’t know what I care about. I forget, like you said. And I think if you can remember what you care about, or at least remember how
it felt to care about anything, well, it helps. Keep thinking about that.”
“Okay.”
“And Lucy, Gus will come around.”
She nodded. She didn’t want him to go.
“All right.” He got up and put on his coat and smiled down at Lucy, the multicoloured Christmas lights around the cafe window framing his head, and she knew she’d passed from look to stare many seconds ago. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, and lifted her hand in a wave. “Bye.”
“Talk to you soon, Luce.”
She walked home in a slight daze, emotional, light-headed. A menorah in a neighbour’s window was so pretty, it almost made her cry, and the rising moon in the dusk was just barely a sliver, a new moon, and she had to stop to marvel at it.
What is this? she asked herself, putting her hand on her stomach.
She knew the Mr. Charles kind of feeling and the stalking-Joshua-Bell feeling and the crush-on-her-tutor Bennett feeling.
Joshua Bell was a stranger. Bennett was gay. Mr. Charles liked her and everything, but when she compared him to Will, she could see that no matter how many times Mr. C said “friends”, it all really boiled down to him being her favourite teacher, and her being the teacher’s pet.
This was not that.
When she got back from the coffee shop, she considered going straight to Gus to try to talk to him, but she wanted to be alone. Needed to. She spent a little time up in her room making attempts at homework. At one point her phone beeped a text message, and she lunged for it, thinking it could be Will.
