Falling Stars (Shooting Stars 5)

"Someone could have warned me she was standing right there," he complained.

"Who could possibly interrupt you when you are giving us one of your lectures. Howard?" Cinnamon asked with feigned innocence.

"You should have expected it anyway," Steven told him. "Living in this place is like living in someone's ear," he said, grimancing.

"What's that mean?" Rose asked. Little alarms went off in all our hearts. Steven shrugged.

"You know, with Ms. Fairchild popping out behind us. I check under my bed every night," he said facetiously, but I wondered to myself why it was that the boys never felt as spied upon as we did. Why wasn't this mysterious person at their bedroom windows, too?

I looked at my watch,

"I have to get to my lesson," I said. standing. "I'll talk to you later." I whispered to Cinnamon.

"Knock him dead," Steven called after me.

Knock him dead? Right now, I thought, I was afraid I might not have the strength to hold my violin, much less play it. I was terrified of being too nervous and having Mr. Bergman march me down to the street to play for pedestrians again, so I sucked in my breath, counted to ten, and when I began to perform for him. I concentrated as hard as I could on my work. He listened with those critical eves so fixed on me. I was sure he was going to rant and raze the moment I lifted the bow. Instead, he nodded softly.

"You're getting there," he said. "You're riding the music well. Now, I want you to think of it as a wild horse you have just trained. It needs direction: it needs authority. Impose yourself upon those notes. Don't play exactly what you see, but how you see it. In short., this is what we mean when we speak of interpretation. I want your personal stamp on this now. I want you to be more than simply a musician playing someone else's creative work. I want you to become part of the process.

"This is a freedom and a task I don't assign to my students until I feel they have the talent and the skill to handle it," he added.

He stopped short of hammering home a compliment and left it hanging in the air for me to pluck and complete instead. I nodded, studied the music for a few moments, and then began again, closing my eves and thinking of my Uncle Peter, his smile, his words of encouragement. I thought of the farm. Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Simon, and imagined them sitting there listening to me play. I did bring myself and who I was to the melody. I couldn't describe exactly what I had done and I wasn't sure I could ever do it again the same way, but when I was finished. Mr. Bergman was smiling and nodding.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, you will do fine."

With a heart full of hope and excitement. I left my lesson and prepared for the remainder of our day. Unfortunately, Rose wasn't as happy with her work. She said she missed steps, lost rhythm, and just looked clumsy, but Mr. Demetrius assured her she wasn't. Ice said Mr. Littleton gave her unusually enthusiastic compliments, and Cinnamon reported that Howard, squashed a bit by Madame Senetsky at breakfast, was less pretentious on the stage. She admitted she even liked his performance herself and thought it helped her do better. Steven was very happy, too. claiming I had left Mr. Bergman in so good a mood he tolerated his small improvisations.

"No," I told him. "Improvisation, interpretation, that's what he's after now. He wants you to impose yourself on the music, be a part of the creation."

"Listen to her." Steven cried with some surprise. "Our little Honey Child is becoming a sophisticated New York musician."

I blushed with embarrassment,

"That's generally the idea, isn't it?" Cinnamon snapped, stepping up to defend me immediately.

"If you got serious for a minute, you might have the same sort of success," Rose added.

"If you shut off your wise talk, you might," Ice asserted. "but I doubt you can do that,"

He looked at the four of us and shook his head, raising his hands as if to surrender.

"Please don't castrate me," he begged. "I'm sorry. girls. I'm sorry" he mocked and walked away.

The four of us looked at each other and laughed. We were truly becoming sisters, looking after each other. We were really becoming a team. Each of us lent something to the others. I thought. Cinnamon was our wit. Ice our muscle. Rose our beautiful face. And me? I was our conscience.

On Thursday Uncle Simon had a bouquet of fresh flowers delivered for each of us with a card wishing us all good luck on our first Performance Night. I had told him how much the girls loved the arrangement he had sent to me. We called him immediately and everyone took a turn thanking him. He was too shy to say much more than. "Don't think anything of it. Living in a city, you need as many flowers as you can get."

Daddy got on and apologized again and again for their not being here my first Performance Night. I tried to make him feel better by telling him it was really just little more than a dress rehearsal.

"The next one will be more important,'" I said. Mommy was frill of questions about our daily life and how I was adjusting to New York City. I could never lie to Mommy, at least not well enough for her to not see it was a lie. She heard some of my unhappiness in my voice, unhappiness I couldn't yet verbalize or explain.

"Maybe I don't belong in big cities. Mommy." "Give it time," she advised. "Your wonderful talent will take you to many more cities. Honey, beautiful places. Think of what you would deny those hungry ears if you came home and played only for your Uncle Simon and us."

I laughed and assured her I would be fine, but I missed them all so much that it made me wonder if I ever could become a world-class musician, or actually. if I really wanted the fame and the opportunities as much as the others. At times Rose looked like she had just as many doubts about herself as I did about myself.

Rose's half-brother Evan arrived on Friday. Madame Senetsky granted her permission to meet him at his hotel when he arrived. Since we were

performing on Saturday night, we were not given any assignments for Friday night or Saturday. but Ms. Fairchild warned us that time off meant time to relax and prepare ourselves mentally for our big night.