‘Do not fail,’ she hisses.
Beck’s legs take him onstage. The silence pounds a symphony on his temples. The stage smells of wax floors and hot lights and shined leather. He tugs at his cuffs, wishes them longer, stops because he’s being conspicuous. The lights are so bright the audience is reduced to unidentifiable black blobs.
Is that supposed to make them less daunting? Instead of eyes, he’s watched by a sea of faceless ghouls.
He’s at the piano. Meine Güte, it’s huge.
The audience shifts, trying to remain patient after the hours of music, wanting to leave and hear the judges confirm their personal favourites as winners. Beck will be unmemorable – too gangly to be cute, too old to be incredible, too stupid, stupid, stupid. The piano is a beast and it owns him.
Stop cowering. He’s done championships before. He’s played in bigger halls.
This one shouldn’t be different.
He slides on to the piano stool, still warm.
What if they picked him for last because he’s a Keverich? This kid will bring down the house, they probably surmised, if he’s anything like his mother.
But he’s not. They’ve cut out his heart by making him last.
Beck’s hands hover over the keys – rows of black and white teeth.
Play Chopin. Play fast and wild and prove yourself.
Just play the notes.
Notes.
Play.
Notes.
What – what – what is he meant to play?
Time knots around his throat. Hurry up. Think. He rakes desperately through his mind for the curls of notes he’s practised all year, but the Chopin has gone.
There are no notes.
No. This can’t happen to him.
Beck raises his head and sees the Maestro and the co-ordinator hovering at the edge of the curtains, petrified or furious, or both simultaneously. Stage fright doesn’t happen with this level of competition. Shouldn’t happen. They’re better than this. He’s better than this.
BUT HE HAS NO NOTES.
The Maestro won’t stand for this – she’ll think he’s doing it on purpose.
Play something.
The Maestro will kill him.
Play something.
A wave sweeps over the audience, a murmur of confusion, a whisper of empathy at this poor darling trapped on stage with no notes. What a sad way to end an evening. They’ll remember him for sure.
Play. Play. Oh – please – just – PLAY.
And he does.
At first Beck doesn’t know what it is. They’re notes, so that’s a good start – but it’s not Chopin’s whispered opening and launch into a sharp rain of fast notes. This is dark and heavy, with bass chords that would make Rachmaninoff proud and an accompanying melody light as air. The music is sugar and charcoal. The bass crashes with something viciously violent in Beck’s soul. So he repeats that part because it feels so good.
This piano will not make a fool of him. So he slams his fingers across the keys and owns it.
It’s not Chopin.
Don’t think about it now.
Beck’s fingers calm and skate to the high registers, adding something sweet to the feast of darkness. It aches in minor, like butterflies and broken wings. If the audience doesn’t lose some tears over this, they have no soul.
He leaves the butterflies bleeding over their wings and descends back to the pits of volcanoes and terror.
He plays like it’s his last moment on earth. He plays so he feels like crying.
And then it’s done.
Silence.
Sweat trickles down his forehead – sweat and tears and horror. They don’t know if they can clap because this isn’t a carefully metered classical piece they expected. It isn’t on the programme. The judges – oh, the judges. He forgot he forgot he forgot—
He snaps to his feet, ready to bolt off the stage, but his legs are weak and it’s all he can do to turn around and bow. That’s when he realises they are clapping. It’s not tentative or polite – it’s bold and excited and amazed. There are flashes of colour and jewels and glints of teeth in smiling mouths as they stand. Every single person stands. Each clap says what did we just hear?
What did he just play?
The notes he’s been doodling on his homework and tapping on his thigh all the way to the concert hall?
Beck finishes his stiff bow and walks off the stage. He left his lungs on the piano seat. He can’t seem to breathe.
The applause fades as a microphone blasts to life – but Beck can’t focus on words. Someone hands him a cold bottle of water and he slinks to a chair. Sits. Rolls the icy bottle over his forehead. His shirt sticks to his back and he feels hotter than the sun.
Where’s the Maestro?
He blinks through a curtain of sweat and held-back tears and sees her. No eye contact. But Joey goggles at him.
He feels sick. Not nerves sick, fever sick, like he needs to cool down immediately or go supernova.
Backstage is a buzz around him, as notes are compared and the trophies are rolled out by stagehands. The co-ordinator flaps around trying to organise the kids so they’ll be ready to walk onstage when called. Someone’s parents are crying.
Then the microphone crackles and words smash into Beck’s ears.
‘… an unfortunate mistake which leads us to regretfully disqualify contestant number ten, Keverich, Be …’
No.
He risks a glance at the Maestro. She’s been carved from marble, every muscle taut and frozen.
The judge continues with, ‘Though Keverich’s performance was the most extraordinary thing I’ve encountered in thirty years of judging, it was not the required piece for this classical championship. Now, we move to the awarding of …’
There are people talking to the Maestro. Her answers come slathered in a thick accent.
Beck zones out. He touches his own forehead and despite the galaxy exploding inside him, he’s glacial cold. He feels dead. Bury him, please. What has he done? What has he done? He shuts his eyes against the burn of tears.
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.