There was a fenced-off area behind the cafeteria where delivery trucks came to unload food (or whatever it was that they made lunch out of). It was called the pen. It wasn’t a very pretty spot—just an offshoot of the parking lot butting up against a concrete wall with a single door and vent. This was where Avery and Mel met every day after school. There were about a hundred better places to meet, but Avery liked the pen the best. Even though they weren’t doing anything there that required privacy, Avery still liked the fact that it was their place.
The pen was also where the grounds crew piled the mountains of leaves they blew out of the administrators’ parking spaces and the path. These piles were like the Alps of Saratoga. They were supported by the cyclone fence and completely obscured the view of the road. These were the perfect leaves—the ones that hadn’t gotten wet or started to decay. Some were still fresh and soft, in gold and orange and red. There were enough dry ones to make the right crunching noise.
Mel was there, gazing up in awe at the trees. She almost blended into the pile, with her orange hair and brown hoodie.
As Avery approached, Mel tossed herself backward into the leaves.
“Congratulations,” Avery said with a smirk. “You’re eight years old.”
Mel reached forward and grabbed Avery by the front of her jeans and tossed her lightly into the spot next to her, where she landed face-first and coughed unappreciatively.
“Smells nice, huh?” Mel grinned, grabbing a handful and throwing it at Avery.
“You are so going down.”
Avery managed to get up and cover Mel with a blanket of leaves within about two seconds. Unable to shake them all free, Mel did the more appealing thing—she just grabbed Avery again and pulled her down on top of her. She felt Avery resist for just a second—they were outside the school, after all. For a minute Avery really didn’t care. All that mattered was that she was sinking deeper into the pile with Mel under her.
“Okay …” Avery said, extracting herself. She glanced around to see if anyone could have spotted them, but there was no one in sight.
“Where are you going now?” Mel said, pulling herself out of the pile.
“Home. I have to practice.”
“Can I come?”
This was a new thing of Mel’s. Avery would normally drop Mel off, but now whenever Avery said she had to practice, Mel wanted to come and be her audience. The attention was nice, Avery supposed, even if it was a little weird to have someone staring at her back while she worked. Piano practice didn’t exactly make for fun listening unless, of course, you liked hearing the same two or three bars of a piece of music played over and over again.
“Don’t you get bored?” Avery asked.
“Nope.” Mel grinned.
“Then you’re weird.”
“If you say so.”
“Okay, weirdo,” Avery said. “Come on.”
The house was mysteriously quiet when Mel and Avery arrived. This was never a good sign.
As Avery went to sit down at the piano, she jumped back in alarm as a tinny version of “Take Me to the River” assaulted her from the suddenly animated mouth of a mechanical fish. Laughter from the direction of the stairs. Running feet.
“Your brothers are so cute.” Mel laughed.
“Uh-huh,” Avery growled. She reached up and popped the batteries out of the Big Mouth Billy Bass that sat on top of the piano and shoved them into her pocket. Billy Bass was her greatest enemy, but she couldn’t convince her parents to part with it. They thought it was hilarious. Avery plucked out his batteries every time he came on and blamed the theft on her brothers.
She sat down on the bench and closed her eyes for a moment. That fish always put her in a mood.
“Did you get your application yet?” Mel asked.
“For?”
“Music school.”
This was not a topic that Avery liked to discuss. There was nothing Avery wanted more in the world than to go to music school, but just the thought of applying terrified her.
“Which ones are you going to apply to?” Mel asked. “Have you decided?”
“Not yet.”
“But you’re applying to ones in New York, right?”
“I guess so,” Avery said mindlessly, setting her fingers in position for her C scale. “I don’t know yet.”
“But you want to go to New York, right?”
“I’m going to get started, okay, Mel?”
No answer. Pages flipping.
Running through her scales took twenty minutes, and she wanted to keep her concentration. She liked to put some mental energy into them, even though they were automatic. Once she was finished, she set her task for the night on the music stand. The piece she was working on was Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto no. 3. She’d been avoiding work on this for over a week. Two bars were tripping her up and driving her crazy—she couldn’t seem to get through them, no matter how hard she tried. Today she had to crack them.
Behind her she could hear Mel gently clearing her throat.
Page one was fairly painless. She reached up and flipped to the second page, down the third…. The beginning, she had. It was coming, though. There they were, the dreaded two bars with her teacher’s notes scrawled between them in tiny spider print.
And … she did it again.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She wanted to kick the piano right in the guts, stomp on the pedals until they snapped off. The fact that she had someone staring at her became unbearable.
“Mel,” she said, turning around on the bench, “would you mind if I took you home?”
“What?” Mel said, looking up from her statistics book.
“Can I take you home?”
“Why?” Mel asked, while clearly trying to quell her quivering lower lip.
“Because I really need to work.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“You’re already being quiet,” Avery said gently. “I just need to be by myself and do some work on this.”
“What’s the matter?”
“There’s nothing the matter,” Avery said as a sudden edge came into her voice.
“Then why do you want to take me home?”
Avery groaned out loud and put her hands over her face. Mel got up and came toward her. Avery stiffened. She didn’t want her shoulders rubbed, or her hand held, or her arm touched. She wanted to get these two bars right.
“Mel, please,” Avery said.
“Are you mad at me?” Mel asked. She started blinking rapidly, and Avery could tell that she was on the verge of tears. “I can sit upstairs.”
Now she really wanted Mel to go, and since this was her house, she could get stubborn about it and force the issue. But that would only cause a big argument, and her brothers would probably hear. It just wasn’t worth it. And that annoyed Avery even more. She felt trapped.
“Fine,” she said. “Sit upstairs.”
Mel didn’t say anything as she gathered her things, but Avery could tell from the way Mel avoided looking at her that she was hurt. She probably even wanted Avery to feel guilty about sending her away.
When Mel was gone, Avery sat for a moment with her eyes closed and tried to collect herself to start again. But she was anxious and annoyed now, and there was no way she’d get through the piece. She’d just have to go back and work on the material she already had down.
“How can I go to music school if you don’t let me practice?” Avery muttered under her breath.
Instead of starting again, she kept her eyes closed and sat there, soaking up the quiet as if it were sunlight.