It’s been a busier first day back at school than I wanted: avoiding Mykenzye and her comments, dealing with constantly breaking pencils and ghost worms, hearing weird dripping noises everywhere, and, most of all, worrying about the mark on my skin and Keisha’s.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I walk into the music room after school, but it catches in my throat and I cough. There’s no way that my disastrous day isn’t connected to the mark on my arm. And now that my best friend has the same mark, what does that mean for her?
For the moment, I’ve convinced Keisha that it might be a late-blooming bruise from fencing practice. She almost didn’t believe me, declaring, “I’m too good to get hit that hard.” But what will she think when the “bruise” doesn’t heal? I need to get answers for the both of us before she becomes suspicious.
I find my seat and get my instrument ready, rubbing rosin on the strings of my bow and placing my chin pad on the body of my violin.
“Ready for the audition?” asks Ines, another sixth grader, as she sits down next to me and taps her foot repeatedly on the chair leg. Her hair is in two long black braids down her back, and a small red flower sits at the end of each braid.
I wish I could do my hair like that, but it would probably look like two dying snakes shedding their skin.
“I hope so,” I confess. “But we’ve still got a couple weeks. And I’ve been practicing.”
Ines smiles. “Me too. My mom and abuela have been helping me. They were both in mariachi when they were in school too.” She takes out her violin bow and twists the knob at the end to tighten the hairs. “Was your family in mariachi?”
I shake my head. “No. They don’t really know anything about it. We’re Cuban. I just like the music.”
I discovered mariachi music listening to the radio with Abuelito on our front porch when I was eight. I’d convinced him to listen to something other than Cuban music and found a station where a man named Vicente Fernandez sang, his voice full of passion and strength. A chorus of violins and guitars tumbled out of the speakers and filled my ears. I begged Mami and Papi to let me take violin lessons the very next day. I haven’t stopped playing since, something that’s obvious from the calluses on the fingers of my left hand. And the fact that I tap out rhythms on my thigh all the time.
“Yeah, me too,” Ines says, running her bow slowly across her violin and twisting the silver pegs near her chin to fine-tune the strings.
I do the same, but the wooden pegs on the neck of my violin keep slipping, making the strings lie loose and flat. I grab some wax from my violin case and apply it to the pegs so they’ll hold the strings tighter. Mr. Quintera, the mariachi director for the seventh and eighth grade, calls us to attention and explains the audition process that will take place in a few weeks.
“Each student will play a piece you’ve prepared as well as one piece that I will give you,” he says. “We’ll spend our practice time together working on the piece we will all play.”
My stomach rumbles, and I take a deep breath. I want to focus on practicing my individual piece, not Ms. Faruqi’s stupid world fair project. Or pencils sabotaging my schoolwork. Or weird noises.
Or the marks on my arm and Keisha’s.
I wipe my hands on my jeans. I place my sheet music on the metal stand in front of me, but the top of the black stand lowers with a thud. I grab the edges of the top and raise it again, but it sinks slowly, like some invisible weight is pushing it down.
Drip
Drip
Drip
My skin crawls. There it is again. The water.
I snap my head from side to side, searching the classroom, checking again to see if anyone else hears the noise. But all the students are focused on their own music and instruments. No one seems to notice the sound of a faucet running.
“Here, you can share with me,” Ines says, scooting her stand closer to me. “That one seems messed up.”
Mr. Quintera snaps his fingers and explains the song we’re all going to play, “México Lindo y Querido.”
Ines flips her music to the right page as everyone prepares their instruments. Just as Mr. Quintera begins the song and the class starts to play, I look at the sheet music and squint. The notes sway and bounce across the page, twisting and changing position. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. I’d cleaned my glasses before class, like always, so why does the sheet music look like a splatter of paint drops?
I glance at Ines to see if she’s noticed, but she’s playing perfectly as usual, following the music with no problems.
Mr. Quintera tilts his head to the side when he sees I’m not playing. I quickly raise my violin to my shoulder and tuck it under my chin.
Taking a deep breath, I watch Ines for a moment and figure out where the class is in the song. I’d practiced “México Lindo y Querido” enough over winter break, even giving my parents and abuelitos mini concerts in the living room, so I’ve got the song memorized.
Calming myself down with another deep breath, I raise my bow to join the class in the piece. But as I look down the neck of the violin, something’s wrong.
The wooden peg holding the D string begins to turn. Instead of loosening, the way it did at the beginning of practice, it’s tightening the string, winding harder and harder around the peg, as if turned by an invisible hand.
“What the frijoles?” I mumble. Violin pegs don’t just tighten on their own.
The mark on my arm stings, burning as if it’s on fire. I wince and drop my bow onto the D string. It snaps and flies loose from the peg, whipping through the air and snapping against the lens of my glasses.
Gasping, I lower my violin and press my hand to my cheek. Good thing my glasses protected my eyes, or I’d be a pirate for Halloween from now until forever.
Ines keeps playing with the class but whispers to me, “You okay?”
My heart pounds in my ears. I know violins shouldn’t take on a life of their own. I know notes on sheet music don’t just swirl and move for no reason. I know the dripping sound I keep hearing isn’t because the building for Port Ballí Primary School is probably a thousand years old.
“I . . . I have to go,” I say, quickly packing up my instrument and rushing out of the room before Mr. Quintera can say anything.
Hurrying to the bathroom to check my glasses, I feel my backpack grow heavier and heavier. I slip it off my shoulders and open it, wondering what could weigh so much. All I see at the bottom, between my diary and crumpled notebooks, is the effigy, the smirk across its face now joined by a moldy black splotch growing like a tentacled monster on the center of its belly.