Dark Notes

Daily exercise and food are required as part of the balanced musical diet, but eating is an inconvenience, seeing how I don’t have food or money.

As I stand at my locker in Campus Center, the empty ache in my stomach awakens with a groan. Layered on top of the hunger is a tight bundle of dread. Or excitement.

No, definitely dread.

I stare down at the printout of my afternoon schedule.

Music Theory

Piano Seminar

Performance Master Class

Private Lessons

The last half of my day is in Crescent Hall. Room 1A. All taught by Marceaux.

During English Lit, I overheard some of the girls blabbing about the hotness that is Mister Marceaux, but I haven’t worked up the nerve to wander over to Crescent Hall.

My insides coil tighter as I mutter aloud, “Why does he have to be a he?”

The locker door beside me swings shut, and Ellie angles around my arm, glancing at my schedule. “He’s really pretty, Ivory.”

I whirl toward her. “You saw him?”

“A glimpse.” She wiggles her little mousy nose. “Why does the he part matter?”

Because I’m more comfortable around women. Because they don’t overpower me with muscle and size. Because men are takers. They take my courage, my strength, my confidence. Because they’re only interested in one thing, and it’s not my ability to play the last bars of Transcendental Étude No.2.

But I can’t share all this with Ellie, my sweet, sheltered, reared-in-a-strict-Chinese-home friend. I think I can call her a friend. We’ve never really established that, but she’s always nice to me.

I stuff the schedule in my satchel. “I guess I was hoping for someone like Mrs. McCracken.”

Maybe Mr. Marceaux is different. Maybe he’s gentle and safe like Daddy and Stogie.

About a head shorter than me, Ellie smooths a hand over the cowlicks of her inky-black hairline and does this bouncy thing on her toes. I think she’s trying to stretch her height, but mostly it just looks like she needs to pee. She’s so tiny and adorable I want to tug on her ponytail. So I do.

She bats my hand away, smiling with me, and drops back to her heels. “Don’t worry about Marceaux. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Easy for her to say. She’s already locked in a cellist spot at Boston Conservatory next year. Her future doesn’t hinge upon whether or not Marceaux likes her.

“I’m headed to the gym.” She lugs a backpack half her size over her shoulder. “You coming?”

Instead of an organized PE class, Le Moyne provides a full fitness center, personal trainers, and a myriad of conditioning classes like yoga and kickboxing.

I’d rather cut off my 5-4-3 fingers than jump around in a mirrored room with disapproving girls. “Nah. I’m going to run the track outside.”

We say our goodbyes, but my curiosity about Marceaux has me calling after her.

“Ellie? How pretty exactly?”

She turns around, walking backwards. “Shockingly pretty. It was just a glimpse, but I’m telling you, I felt it right here.” She pats her stomach and widens her angular eyes. “Maybe a little lower.”

My chest tightens. The prettiest ones have the ugliest insides.

But I’m pretty, aren’t I? I’m told I am, less so by people I trust and more often by people I don’t.

Maybe my insides are ugly, too.

As Ellie bounces away and flashes her pretty smile at me over her shoulder, I stand corrected in my generalizations. There’s nothing ugly about Ellie.

In the locker room, I change into shorts and a tank top then head outside to the track that encircles the twenty-acre campus.

The humidity deters most of the three-hundred students from venturing out of the A/C this time of year, but a few laze on the park benches, laughing and eating their lunches. A couple dancers practice their synchronized warm-ups beneath the imposing steeples of the Campus Center building.

As I stretch my legs under the shade of a large oak tree, I stare out over the lush green grounds and rubberized walking trails. The same trails I walked with Daddy when my head barely reached his hip. I can still feel his big hand swallowing mine as he led me along. His smile was so full of sunshine when he pointed out the old cathedral-like stonework of Crescent Hall and speculated on the grandeur of the classrooms within.

Le Moyne was his dream, one his parents couldn’t afford. He never seemed sad about that. Because he wasn’t a taker, not even when he dreamed. Instead, he gave his dream to me.

Bending at the waist, I reach for my toes and let the stretch heat my hamstrings as the memories warm my blood. I look like Mom with my dark hair and dark eyes, but I have Daddy’s smile. I wish he could see me now, standing here on the campus, living his dream, and wearing his smile.

I grin wider, because his dream, his smile…they’re mine, too.