Elliott played like a man possessed.
It was ridiculous.
I’d seen him around but never spoken to him. He was small and quiet, but when he got up on that stage he was a different person.
He seemed to grow.
To expand.
What confused me most was how he could be so calm about it. Playing in front of all these people, his soul completely exposed.
He played the opening of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. Some of the other students knew the piece and were humming along, anticipating each step. He moved—dipping, shifting from side to side. He wasn’t perfect, but he was very, very good. Obviously, he’d practiced this piece. He’d polished all the edges until they shone.
He finished to a round of applause. Whispers of conversation fluttered around me. Some of the kids were talking about how great he was. Others were pointing out small mistakes to their friends. Something they might have done better.
Sung got up next and didn’t bow or introduce her piece. She just stood there for a few seconds, staring out at the audience. As she brought her bow up, I could see her fingers shaking. She kept sniffing as well, and after playing maybe three bars, she stopped and scratched her nose. Then she started over.
I couldn’t tell what Sung was playing. At first I thought it was Mozart, then Bach. It shimmered and wavered in the strangest ways. She seemed to be constantly doubling back on herself. It actually sounded like more than one piece, maybe three or four mashed together. But no one in the audience appeared at all confused. I thought I heard someone else playing as well. A cello rumbling out long, low notes.
Cathy was right in the middle of the crowd, her arms crossed, her eyes on me. On the other wall I could see Mr. Powell. He gave me a flip of his eyebrow, then a thumbs-up.
I leaned toward the stage again, and what I was hearing didn’t match the movement of Sung’s bow, which was steady and tight. I closed my eyes and felt worse. All the sounds came at once. I exhaled, slowly letting the air out.
What was I doing here? Why was I even bothering? All these people would be staring at me. Judging me. Trying to figure out ways they were better than me. Just waiting for me to fail.
There was no way I would be able to do this. There was that tricky part I’d messed up on before. My hands were sweaty. How was I going to keep my bow steady?
I found that I was tipping, almost falling over. I grabbed my violin at the last second before it slipped from my arm.
I felt Alisha’s hand on my shoulder before I saw her or heard her voice.
“Are you okay, Will?”
I shook my head. “I’m really dizzy,” I said.
Sung was still on the stage, but she was no longer playing. She was just standing there, her bow in one hand, violin in the other. The audience was clapping. She bowed, and as she left the stage, I could feel everyone looking at me. Whispers flicking through the crowd. Snarling faces exposed for a second before hands went to mouths and secret words were spoken.
Everyone was talking about me.
Everyone was looking at me.
Everyone was waiting for me to perform.
I tried to spot my group, but they were somewhere beyond my vision.
“Can you perform now, Will? Do you feel up to it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I ate something bad. My stomach feels awful.” I hiccupped and tasted a sampling of the contents of my stomach shooting into my mouth.
“You don’t have to perform right now, Will,” Alisha said. “It’s just a fun thing we do so everyone can get to know one another. So we can all hear one another play.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not a big deal.” She rubbed my shoulder, which made me feel even worse. Because now it felt as though everyone was watching me being comforted by Alisha, who, if they wanted to believe it, was the only reason I was even at this school.
“Do you think you can make the afternoon class?” she asked.
“No,” I said, dying of embarrassment. “I need to go home.”
“Okay, Will. I can take you home,” Alisha said.
Mr. Powell was by my side as well. “Are you not going to perform?”
“Not today, Charles,” Alisha said.
“We’ll get you on the list for tomorrow then,” he said, grabbing my arm.
Alisha shot him a look, which I spotted out of the corner of my eye. “Will can perform when he’s ready,” she said as she walked me from the cafeteria.
* * *
When we entered my apartment building, I told Alisha I had to go lie down. She turned to knock on her father’s door.
“Can you not tell him?” I said quickly.
“I was going to ask him to look in on you,” she said. “Your parents won’t be home yet, will they?”
“No, but I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.”
“Okay. I might just stop in and say hi though,” she said.
“But then he’ll ask why you’re here and…” I inhaled, my hand on the railing. “I don’t want him to worry.”
Her eyes dropped and she nodded. “Okay.” She took a step toward me, reaching again for my shoulder. But I didn’t want to be comforted. I felt like an idiot. And now that I was away from the school, all I wanted to do was go back. To be with everyone else. To get on the stupid stage and play the stupid piece.
“Are you certain you’ll be all right?” she asked.
“I really just need to lie down. My parents will be home soon anyway.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
I waited and watched her drive away, then went upstairs and lay down on my bed. I knew what was happening to me. I mean, I could tell everyone that it was something I’d eaten. That I had dizzy spells sometimes. I could make up any number of excuses. But in the end, it was pretty simple.
I went to the Internet and searched out stage fright. That’s all it was: stage fright.
It happens to everyone, I told myself.
Which, once I started reading, I discovered was entirely true. And it could happen for a million different reasons. Self-confidence cropped up a lot.
As in lack of.
Fear of judgment. Of making a fool of yourself. And, of course, fear of failure.
I began to wonder if Jon had the right attitude. Don’t care. Just get up there and do it because it doesn’t even matter.
By the time my mother got home, I had confused myself with advice. Meditate, watch something funny, practice the piece to death, breathe, tell yourself you can do it, run up and down stairs, do jumping jacks, imagine your incredible success once you have performed perfectly.
But how could that happen? With my sweaty hands and quivering stomach?
“Will, you’re home,” my mother said, standing in my bedroom doorway.
“Yeah, it ended early today,” I lied.
“How was it?”
“Good,” I lied again. “Great,” said the ultimate lying machine.
She hugged me, holding on for a moment. “I am so proud of you. It’s great to see you coming out of your shell.” She held me away from her. “You are going to be such a success, Will, I just know it.”
The thing was, I hadn’t known I had a shell.
And that I hadn’t come out of it.
Maybe that was the problem. My shell had been broken and all I wanted to do was put it together again so I could crawl back inside.
Forever.