“Just a sec, Greyson. The school isn’t normally budgeted for the trip, mostly since this is the first time we’ve made it to Nationals for a long time. So, look, we’re trying to get the money, it’s just not a given yet.”
“How bad is it, Miss Bray?”
“Honestly, at this point, I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not looking great. But I don’t want you to give up. I promise you guys, I’m going to do whatever it takes, OK? We haven’t worked so hard for nothing! OK, guys?”
I get a small murmur in response.
“Come on, guys, you can do better than that. You with me, guys?”
“YES, MISS BRAY!”
“That’s better. So kids, get outta here and don’t think we’re not having an extra rehearsal this weekend.”
I give each of the kids a smile as they march out, instruments and bags in hand. I can tell my news is weighing heavily on them. Five years ago, the school didn’t even have a music program. After I came here as a substitute teacher and heard how some of the kids wanted to learn the piano, I started to teach them in groups after school.
Slowly more and more kids came out of the woodwork. Some with no music training at all, some whose parents were driving an hour out of the way for practical and theory classes because the school wasn’t providing them.
Together with Sarah, who was also new at the school, we applied and were granted a small music budget for the school. And the more the music program grew, the more students were wanting to join and learn. Too many than the small grants could stretch to. But I didn’t have the heart to say no to them. How do you say no to a child who is begging you to learn something that you can teach them? But the school could barely afford new resources for the library and computer labs, and as too often is the case, music and art are viewed as luxuries.
So the last five years have been scrimping and saving. The music program students and I on the weekends, out washing cars and selling chocolates. Buying hand-me-down instruments at yard sales and barely readable orchestral scores. But those things didn’t matter to me, and it didn’t matter to the kids. All that mattered was we could get together and make music.
Five years ago, there was nothing and now the school’s orchestra has beaten every other school in their region and earned their spot in the Nationals. The only thing that was going to stop that bus leaving for Canberra was my dead body.
I walk around the music room, tucking in the chairs and putting away the music stands. I run my fingers over the old baby grand piano left to us by a benefactor in his will who had a grandchild who attended the school. I sit down and wiggle around on the stool, enjoying the squeaks and creaks it makes as I get comfortable.
My fingers graze the keys.
I love the sound of this old piano. The hours I’ve spent hearing new students fumble and find their way around it, and the sheer perfection that is the performance of some of the more advanced students. Making classics by Beethoven and Mozart their own.
I play the beginning notes of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and hum along.
“Dum dum dum dum dum … dum da da da…”
I close my eyes, letting my fingers find their own way over the keys. After “Moonlight Sonata”, it’s probably one of the most popular piano pieces in history and the bane of every piano teacher’s existence.
But I love it.
The simplicity, the pure classical form of question and answer. I wonder if there’s been a single day since I learned the piece myself when I haven’t played it. I know this piece like most people know how to breathe. It just comes naturally from somewhere within me. An involuntary action that comes from somewhere in the very genetics of your body, your cells.
The music coming from my fingers lifts my spirit and I feel it start to erase the stress and worry of the day away.
“Da dum dum da… da da da dumm.”
I think I’m smiling as I hum along which would probably look silly to someone who couldn’t feel what I’m feeling, as the music permeates my body and mind.
My fingers can feel the ending is coming and I have to hold them back to stop them from rushing to the end and let it come as Beethoven intended. In the notes’ own pace and time.
I giggle a little. And then giggle at my giggle. I shouldn’t be so happy at playing such a common, simple piece. But to me that’s the best music of all.
A clap from the doorway startles me and I can see a reflection in the piano’s polished woodwork even before I turn.
He’s back.
SEBASTIAN
I watch the kids stream out of the school’s double doors. There are more than I imagined could be crammed into what looks like an average-sized school building.
While I wait for the school to empty I count the windows and wonder which one is Cadence’s classroom. And if she’s there looking out at me.
I can’t believe I’m here. Like some creepy stalker, scouring the Australian coast looking for a woman I met in a store for two minutes once. Put like that, it really does make me sound crazy. But the crazy part is that it doesn’t feel wrong at all.
Why I’ve felt like I can’t take a full breath unless I’m in her presence since the moment we met, I don’t know. Why when I touch her, the air around us can’t even contain the excitement and breaks into sparks, I don’t know. Why when I saw her in the store, in the front row of my own concert, in the dark alley, nothing else seems to focus and all I can see is her, I don’t know. It just is.
When I opened my greenroom door to see the rosin box and my note laying there on the floor, discarded, I told myself to stop. Stop chasing her, stop thinking about her, stop wondering about what it would be like to be with her. Stop playing over and over the short but quippy conversations we’d had that had left my mind reeling and my body wanting.
And my resolve had held strong, and it had lasted… a night. And this morning, first thing, I had Hank drive me to the music store where it had all started and it had led me here.
I don’t know why she didn’t come see me last night.
But I am going to find out why, and I am going to change her mind.
***
The hallways are empty when I walk through them. I cringe a little at the latent smell of high school boy that’s lingering and I wonder how many of these lockers house rotting sandwiches and month-old fruit.
I pass door after door, staring into abandoned classrooms, chairs left haphazardly around the room, dust still billowing in the air from cleaned blackboards. Five, six, seven rooms I’ve counted and still no Cadence to be seen.