Stupid. Who is he kidding? It’s never going to be different so why overthink it?
Beck would love to dump Joey at the preschool gate – drop and run – but he refuses to be that kind of big brother. Someone needs to walk her in, admire her cubbyhole decorated with sparkles and fruit stickers, and the nine art creations she forgot to take home. He always leaves with glitter on his hands. He’s pretty sure glitter is an evil substance that is magnetically attracted to people who hate it most.
The trick is to get out before the preschool teacher pounces. She always suffocates Beck with questions he can’t answer – Joey’s lunchbox is unbalanced, where is her fruit; she needs proper playing shoes, gumboots are unacceptable; paperclips are not OK substitutes for hair clips; when is their mother going to pop in for a chat; Joey has been acting far too aggressive to the other kids; is everything OK at home?
Beck exits before the cat pounces. He doesn’t want anyone to notice his damp shirt and coffee aura.
Is everything OK at home? Of course. His expensive piano is the reason his sister doesn’t get fresh mandarins or meat in her sandwiches. His mother doesn’t care to meet the teachers of her insufferable children. He’s doing his best, OK?
He’s late for his classes. Late, late, late. Which surprises exactly no one. But his school is where brain cells go to wither, where no one hands in homework, and half the class of fifteen-year-olds can barely read. No, really. He’s not even the worst. He can get through the basics, laboriously, and while everyone else screws with the teachers, Beck writes music.
Mostly in his head. He sucks at notation. But closing his eyes, resting his chin on his arms and creating, is the only way he gets through a day.
He can’t care about anything else. He can’t.
The music in his head is his pocket of relief, the only thing he passionately cares about. Well, it and Joey. If he stretches to care about something else – like what the Maestro thinks of him or how he fails at school or what he really wants to do with his life – he’ll be pulled too thin. His skin will part like old paper and the world will see how his skeleton is made of dark wishes and macabre dreams. They’ll know his heart thumps to the beat of the Maestro’s metronome because it’s too scared to do otherwise.
But worst?
They’ll see the emptiness inside him.
Being a pianist is stitched on his skin, but his bones are tattooed with whispers of you fake, you fake.
English is the worst class, because Mr Boyne refuses to give up on any student. He even makes Squinty Mike – the dude could get glasses and fix it, but, whatever – read aloud when the guy can’t even spell his own name.
Beck doodles music notes over his worksheet and feels his pencil sink into the ruts on the desk. Someone’s carved their opinion of school in four-letter words all over the lid. Their opinion isn’t as disturbing as the fact they had a knife in school. Beck hopes the kid is graduated and gone. And probably in prison.
‘… which will be quite a stretch for most of you,’ Mr Boyne says. ‘But that’s why the pairing isn’t random – no, Avery, there’ll be no switching. And Chris, if you could possibly pretend this class is interesting enough to stay awake for, I’d be ever so obliged.’
Pairing? Group projects? Is the world intent on being cruel today? Beck was so busy being mentally absent that he has no idea what the project even is.
Mr Boyne strolls down the lines of desks, rattling off names. ‘Move desks if you need to. Quietly. QUIETLY.’
Kids toss backpacks and books, noise escalating as they find their partners. Most are yelling questions or whining about their match.
‘No swaps permitted, Ellen. No swa— no, no SWAPS. Everyone pause for a minute while I say NO SWAPS ARE HAPPENING. Yes, it applies to you, Avery.’ Mr Boyne continues reading out names. ‘Emeka and Abby. Stephanie and Noah. Ajeet and – I can’t even read my own writing. Oh, Mike. Swap seats. Do it quietly. Do it now.’
Beck sweats.
Mr Boyne pauses in front of his desk and raises an eyebrow at the lines of scrawled semiquavers and crotchet rests. ‘Interested in my class as always, I see, Mr Keverich.’
Beck wishes he’d paid enough attention to know why he is being tied to someone and sentenced to death.
‘Beck and August.’ Mr Boyne strides past.
Beck purposefully doesn’t take note of the other kids, so their names and faces are a tangled confusion to him. He’s nothing like them. He has no phone, no internet, and he avoids sport in case he hurts his piano hands. And considering he’s forever lost in his head, his music, they’ve given up speaking to him anyway.
Then there’s the Maestro’s rule: no friends, no distractions.
‘The piano will make you great someday,’ she always says, ‘while a friend takes and takes and takes and leaves you with nothing.’
But as a tall, sun-kissed girl in a Save The Whales T-shirt appears in front of his desk, Beck knows exactly who she is.
August Frey.
She’s the kind of girl who wears handmade shirts over the top of her school uniform and gives soliloquies on tree frogs – not that Beck’s actually heard them, he’s just heard of them – and has dirt-blonde hair and never wears shoes.
She grabs the vacated desk next to him and dumps her books, with actual notes on the assignment. Beck angles himself to peek, but her handwriting is tiny and cramped, and he’s not so hot at reading sideways. Or front ways.
She gives him a small smile and Beck looks down. He’s never sure how to react to kids in his class. If he smiles, they might think he’s friendly, and then what? He’ll have to wear a poster board that says, If I ever make a friend my mother will noose me.
Mr Boyne has finishing shuffling the seating and returns to the front of the class. He always wears a bow tie with small fruit patterns on it. Today is bananas. How fitting.
‘All right, eyes to the front. Everyone listen up – which means you, Keverich.’
Beck blinks. Please don’t expect him to use his brain. He’s been up since five, hammering scales and arpeggios, and he’d kill for a nine-hour nap.
‘Now,’ Mr Boyne says, ‘you’ve been paired according to abilities, or lack thereof. A student who is failing with a student who cares about succeeding.’ He eyeballs everyone pointedly.
‘But that’s not fair!’ someone wails.
‘It’s great motivation to work hard,’ Mr Boyne says. ‘Or harder. Or, for the first time this year, work at all. You’re getting a chance to bump up your grades while being tutored. No one is allowed to squander this.’
Beck’s mouth opens by accident. Definitely an accident. Since when does he speak up in class?
‘But to be failing,’ he says, ‘means we’re trying in the first place.’
Snickers. A dark look from Mr Boyne. A curious one from his English partner-to-be.
‘Anyone with something smart to say gets a visit to the principal’s office.’ Mr Boyne adjusts his bow tie. ‘And then the principal will chat with your parents.’
Oh, how scary. As if any of their parents would care. Most of these kids are barely literate ghosts. Here one year, drifting off to work at McDonald’s the next.
Except for Beck, of course. While they’re fighting for a low-income job, he’ll be a famous pianist.
Great.
Mr Boyne clears his throat as if expecting the class will settle. It doesn’t. He raises his voice and rocks on his heels, like if he makes himself taller they’ll pay attention. They won’t.
‘The goal, naturally, is the essay. It will need to be two thousand words – that’s one thousand each – with detail, quotes and examples.’
Examples of what?
‘It’s due in two weeks, which is plenty of time to get to know your partner. You can meet after school or – oh, organise that amongst yourselves.’
Wait, meet after school? That can’t happen. Beck feels his world narrow in suffocation.
‘Remember the subject! The essay must be a detailed comparison of two opposite opinions—’
‘What if we agree on everything?’ someone yells.
‘Then get married,’ Mr Boyne says without blinking.