I looked at the case and shrugged.
“Enthusiastic, I see. Okay, you’re what I call a challenge, and why shouldn’t I have one the first day of school? Why should anything come easier to me?”
He opened the case and began to show me how to put the clarinet together, set up the reed, and hold the mouthpiece correctly. He told me to hold it between my teeth, pretend to say “doo,” and blow.
“That’s it,” he said. “Blowing long tones will get your abdominal muscles used to the pressure.”
I did it again and again, and he smiled.
“That’s a pretty good sound. Something tells me I have my new clarinet player,” he said. He said it as if he had been waiting for me for a long time.
It gave me chills, because sometimes that was just the way Mrs. March made me feel.
I looked back at Lisa, who lowered her flute and smiled. Maybe it was my imagination, but it looked as if everyone was looking at me and smiling.
It was as if everyone from Dr. Steiner down had been waiting for me, as if they had all known that what would happen some rainy night on the Santa Monica highway would deliver me to this very place.
18
Fast Learner
You were a big hit with Mr. Denacio,” Lisa said after the bell rang. I put the clarinet in the locker assigned to me. She put away her flute, and we were on our way to English class. “I could tell, because he always looks annoyed when he gets a student to start from scratch. He’d like everyone who enters his class to be concert-ready.
“So tell me the truth,” she said almost in a whisper. “You really did play the clarinet at your previous school, right?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Then why was an instrument left here for you?”
“It was meant to be a surprise.”
She nodded as if she understood why I wasn’t telling the truth. “Everybody tells little white lies here,” she said.
“I don’t.”
She smiled coyly again and continued walking silently. I had little opportunity to speak with any of my other classmates until our lunch break. All the time I was with her in my classes and on the way to them, I could see that Lisa was using me to make herself look more important. When we entered the cafeteria, that was even clearer. Students who were eager to learn more about me looked up from their tables in expectation. She took her time deciding where and with whom we should sit and finally decided on a table with three other girls.
We set our books down first, and Lisa introduced me to Charlotte Harris, Jessica Taylor, and Sydney Woods. Charlotte and Jessica had light brown hair cut and styled almost identically. Sydney had auburn hair brushed shoulder-length. I didn’t think any of them was particularly pretty, but after Lisa introduced them all to me and me to them, they acted and spoke as if they all had won teenage beauty contests.
Lisa began by telling them as much about me as she knew. I was a little more nervous, because all of them had been to Santa Barbara frequently, and I thought they would be asking me detailed questions about stores and places to go. I waited to hear what they liked about it and quickly agreed.
“Isn’t there a place you liked more?” Sydney Woods asked me.
I pretended to think about it and then shook my head. “We didn’t go out to eat that much, and my father hated the beach.”
That was certainly true about Daddy, I thought. Mama practically had to drag him the few times he did come along, and all he did was complain about hot sand or the water being too cold.
“So, how did you get that limp? Born with it?” Jessica Taylor asked me.
“No, car accident,” I said quickly.
While I was eating, I saw Lisa lean over to whisper in her ear. How long was it going to take for everyone in the school to hear the story the Marches had created for me?
“My parents know your aunt and uncle,” Charlotte Harris said. “They say they are one of the richest families in Southern California. Is that true?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know the other rich families.”
Everyone laughed, and when they saw that I didn’t mean it to be funny, they looked at each other and laughed harder. Later, that was the information that flew around the school: “Sasha doesn’t know the other rich families.”