‘I’ll try not to bleed all over your house.’ August limps inside after Joey.
Beck is having a small heart attack. So what does he do first? Does he give her the phone? Offer to bandage her foot? Give her some water? There’s no food to offer, unless she wants cereal, and –
She’s going to see how bare the house is. How cold. How bleak. They don’t own much, just useful furniture and filing cabinets of music. No decorations. His family collects bruises and German insults instead of crockery and photo frames.
‘This is the kitchen.’ Joey guides August down the hall and into the tiny yellow kitchen. She pulls up a chair – at least the preschooler has manners, sort of … when she’s not swearing at someone – and then she stands back and stares at August seriously. ‘Do you need a Band-Aid?’
August raises her foot and surveys it. ‘Probably a big Band-Aid.’ Her soles are black with dirt and the blood has mixed with the grime so it’s impossible to see the extent of the injury.
Beck gives her their house phone. His hands are shaking – stupid, stupid. But he can’t quell the urge to do a quick dash around the house and check each room, each corner, to be sure the Maestro isn’t here.
He abandons August to make the call and gets Joey a snack – a cup of milk and two biscuits – and gets her settled in front of the TV for the afternoon programmes. When he inches back into the kitchen, August hoists herself off the chair.
‘He’ll be here in a minute, so I’ll wait on the driveway.’
‘Oh, yeah, of course.’
He follows her out, feeling like an idiot but filled with the crushing need to be polite. He can’t leave a bleeding girl alone on the sidewalk. But he doesn’t want to meet her dad. He just wants to hide.
He should be at the piano.
What if the Maestro comes home early—
Stop.
They sit in the gutter, August cradling her damaged foot again, poking at it and emitting little hisses, and Beck holding her satchel.
‘Contrary to your scowls and German insults,’ August says, ‘you’re a bit of an angel.’
First time he’s been called that.
Beck shrugs.
A rattling blue station wagon pulls up on the opposite side of the street. The driver window is down and a man with long hair leans out and waves.
August reaches over and punches his arm lightly. ‘Thanks, Beck. By the way, what is your full name?’
He narrows his eyes. ‘I think your ride is waiting.’
‘OK, I’m totally getting to the bottom of that story someday.’ She takes her satchel off him and limps across the road. She waves over her shoulder, but Beck is already escaping inside.
Close the door.
Have a solid barrier between himself and the world.
Remember what it felt like to carry August.
Never ever forget that.
Ugh, what is wrong with him?
Beck sentences himself to the piano. He doesn’t even change from his uniform or make a snack – he just plays hard and fast. But he can’t focus on études. All he can think of is how he carried August. And possibly ruined all passive-aggressive attempts to get her to hate him.
The Maestro thunders into the house at dusk.
From the way she bangs the cupboards in the kitchen and slams the kettle on, Beck decides not to venture out. At all.
But she comes in.
Her hands are trembling badly tonight and even clenching them in fists doesn’t cover how viciously they shake. ‘I expect you had a full afternoon practice?’ she snaps, like he’s already wronged her.
Beck breaks off in the middle of a scale. ‘Ja.’
‘Good.’ She grabs his doorframe, to steady herself or her shaking hands he doesn’t know. But she’s freaking him out.
‘Are you – OK?’
‘Schwachkopf.’ The Maestro’s lips pull back – in a smile? Beck feels like a small mouse a cat has decided to lunch on. ‘Did you tell your teachers you’d be absent tomorrow?’
What?
Panicked, Beck stands, unsure if he should run because she’s about to slap him into the middle of next week, or risk asking—
The confusion must’ve been too plain on his face, because the Maestro lets out a long-suffering sigh. ‘The championship? The one we have been training for all year.’ Her lips curl in a sneer. ‘Did you forget, Schwachkopf?’
‘Nein,’ Beck says. ‘I’ve been practising for it.’
He didn’t forget. August just – distracted him for a moment. And that’s proof of why he can’t have friends.
If he were a piano, all his strings would have snapped.
The terror isn’t the performance – it’s the aftermath with the Maestro.
She’s unforgiving over a mistake. But worse? A flawless piece doesn’t earn congratulations or celebratory ice cream. Instead there’s depressing and crisp instructions on how he still needs to improve.
Maybe if the Maestro says ‘you did well’, the entire world would explode.
But even though Beck hates performing, there are, at least, small benefits. Odds are another contestant will wish him luck, a judge will shake his hand, there’ll be a whisper of ‘impressive’ and ‘that’s talent to watch out for’, which Beck knows is a lie – the Maestro keeps him grounded in the truth of failure – but is nice to hear all the same. Nice, because as much as he pretends to hate music, it’s part of him. It is him.
He’s done a thousand contests and concerts and exams and lessons. He knows how it plays out.
He always gets nervous.
It’s all the people. The rows of a million eyes.
And how the Maestro will react afterwards.
The concert hall is jammed with tuxedos and formal wear and the haze of a thousand perfumes. Voices blur, hundreds at a time, and Beck fairly feels the sound of them. Tonight has been sponsored so thoroughly it’s hosted in the City Concert Hall. Since the Keverichs live in the suburbs, it took nearly four hours to get into the heart of the city. Four hours in buses and trains, trying desperately not to sweat too much in formal wear. Four hours of the Maestro’s glare. Four hours of Joey singing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’.
All so Beck can compete in the championship for Best Young Pianist of the State.
He’s not the best. He’ll get a clap on the shoulder, a smile from a judge, the audience’s admiration – but he won’t win. He never does. What is the point of being here?
Beck stands in the behind-the-stage performance waiting area. When the stagehands move the huge purple curtains, he glimpses the blasting light, the sea of audience, the flash of the shiny piano. This grand piano probably costs more than his entire house.
Just wait until the clapping starts – das gottverdammte Klatschen.
He hates clapping. Hates hands. Beck’s soul slumps and folds back into those tiny dark fantasies of having no hands, of not being physically able to do this. Wishes, just wishes.
He stays locked in them while the Maestro takes Joey off for another toilet break and more young pianists fill the room. At least they don’t yap like the audience. Most are humming concertos under their breath, and their parents hover over them, more likely to puke with nerves than the performing kids. Everyone is under sixteen. In a few months Beck wouldn’t even qualify for ‘young’ pianist. If the Maestro makes him enter adult contests? He’ll crash and die. What is talented for a kid is average for an adult.
Beck closes his eyes. Forgets. Zones out so far he reaches the place deep inside where his own music lies. Little notes clamouring to be free. His own notes. His own creations. His fingers tap a tattoo against his other clammy palm.
If people cut him open, they’d never accuse him of being empty. He’s not a shell of a pianist – he’s a composer. Cut his chest and see his heart beat with a song all his own. Oh look, the world would say, this boy is hiding a universe of wonder in him after all.
‘I said hello. Are you deaf or something?’
Beck’s head snaps up so fast his neck twangs. When he loses himself like that it’s hard to come back.
‘Hi.’ His voice is gravelly and he feels slightly dizzy. His fingers tap on his thigh, not the Chopin étude, but the music inside him.