Part 2
“How long has that been your piano?” Ms. Pike asked.
“Thirteen months. Since we had to sell the real one.” Lucy pressed a split piece of tape back into place. “My mother died before that.”
Ms. Pike drew a breath, but Sophie spoke first.
“She told you she didn’t want to play.”
The words came from beside the bench. Sophie’s face was still pink, but she looked directly at the teacher.
Dylan nodded. “Twice.”
Ms. Pike glanced across the room. Whatever response she had prepared did not come. She asked the class to close their folders, then called the fifth-grade hallway and requested that their homeroom teacher collect them early.
When the others had gone, Ms. Pike stood beside the paper keyboard without touching it.
“I need to take you to Dr. Torres,” she said.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.” The answer came quickly. “I’m going to tell her what I did.”
Principal Torres’s office contained two visitor chairs, a bookshelf crowded with binders, and a spider plant whose vines reached almost to the floor. She moved the plant before Lucy sat so it would not brush against her shoulder.
“Would you like Ms. Pike to stay while you tell me what happened?” Dr. Torres asked.
Lucy considered the question. “Until she tells you first.”
Ms. Pike sat in the other chair. Her back was straight, and her hands rested together in her lap.
“I made Lucy play after she said she didn’t want to,” she began. “I thought she was showing off at Sophie’s expense. I wanted to put a stop to it.”
Dr. Torres looked at her. “By making her prove what she knew in front of the class?”
Ms. Pike pressed her thumb into the opposite palm.
“I thought she couldn’t,” she said. “I wanted everyone to see that.”
Lucy studied the seam in the office carpet. Ms. Pike had not made the truth smaller, but the words no longer sounded like a lesson plan.
Dr. Torres asked Lucy about the sign on the piano and about Sophie.
“I touched one key after class,” Lucy said. “I knew I was supposed to ask.”
“And when Sophie was playing?”
“I was checking the notes.”
“For her?”
Lucy shook her head. “For me.”
Dr. Torres folded her hands on the desk. “Those are matters Ms. Pike could have addressed with you privately. They do not justify making you perform after you said no.”
Ms. Pike looked down at her hands.
“No,” she said.
Lucy was not sure agreement changed anything yet.
Dr. Torres called Dan. She said only that Lucy was safe and that a classroom incident required his presence.
He arrived thirty-five minutes later wearing steel-toed boots and a charcoal work shirt with DAN stitched above the pocket. Safety glasses were still hooked over his collar.
He entered too fast, then stopped when he saw Lucy sitting upright.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He crouched in front of her and checked her face anyway. The brim of his cap had folded beneath his fist.
Dr. Torres explained the incident in plain order: Lucy’s movements during Sophie’s performance, her refusal, the forced performance, and Ms. Pike’s decision to report herself. She did not describe Lucy as a prodigy. She said only that Lucy had demonstrated years of previous training and appeared distressed by the way it had happened.
Dan stood after she finished.
“Did Lucy say no?” he asked Ms. Pike.
“Yes.”
“And you called her up anyway.”
“Yes.”
His grip tightened around the cap, but his voice became flatter. “Then please don’t call it an assessment when you write it down.”
Ms. Pike met his eyes. “I won’t.”
Dr. Torres explained that the school would review what had happened and that Ms. Pike would not make performance or showcase decisions concerning Lucy. She did not promise Dan a particular punishment or ask Lucy to accept an apology.
Then she turned the conversation toward what Lucy wanted.
Cedar Ridge already worked with Riverbend Community Music Center, which provided a limited number of need-based placements for district students. There would be forms, an assessment, and no guaranteed place.
In the meantime, Lucy could join the school’s aftercare program twice a week and use the music room while a staff member supervised from the open doorway.
“Ms. Pike won’t be your supervisor,” Dr. Torres said. “Not unless you ask for that later.”
“I don’t want her to.”
“Then she won’t be.”
Dan looked at Lucy. Hope and worry appeared together in the tightness around his eyes.
“Do you want to do this?”
Lucy touched the edge of the paper keyboard, which now covered half of Dr. Torres’s desk.
“Yes.”
Dan stared at the blue keys. “I thought you left that on the kitchen table.”
“It folds.”
“You’ve been carrying it to school?”
“Sometimes.”
His mouth opened, then closed. He reached toward the clear-glued seam but stopped before touching it.
“I should’ve known.”
Lucy looked at the bent edge of his name patch. “I didn’t tell you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel much better.”
The following afternoon, Lucy signed into aftercare, completed her math worksheet, and waited until Ms. Hernandez unlocked the music room.
The door remained propped open. Ms. Hernandez sat at a folding table in the hall, close enough to see the piano but far enough away not to seem like an audience.
Without twenty-six classmates or Ms. Pike’s challenge pressing her forward, the grand looked larger.
Lucy unfolded only the center section of the paper keyboard and placed it on the music rack. She sat, adjusted the bench, and rested her hands in her lap.
Five minutes passed before she raised them.
The first key resisted, then sank. A single note filled the room.
When it faded, Lucy’s hands were still suspended above the keyboard, unable to play the second…
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