Page 7 of Crescendo

Lydia

“I think that’s enough,” Ella said with her voice tight as she shut the lid on the piano, and I raised my eyebrows at her.

“We’ve only just started.”

She smiled politely at me. “You flew here all the way from LA, and worse still, you had to meet Eliza and Hannah. I’m sure you’re exhausted and want nothing more than to crash.”

I knew British culture well enough to know when something was a polite excuse to tell me to go away.

I couldn’t puzzle it out—she’d been so enthusiastic about learning, and then as soon as she got her fingers on the keyboard and I started showing her how chords were formed and what they meant in the context of given keys, she shut down, just nodding along when I talked and giving monosyllabic responses whenever I asked a question.

I hadn’t even progressed to D Major before she stopped suddenly enough to cut me off, shutting the lid and mentally checking out, eyes looking just past me instead of at me.

I was no stranger to people ducking out of lessons early.

I knew when to push and when not to. I stood up, putting my disappointment somewhere else for the time being.

“Well, I hear we’ve got a big breakfast tomorrow,” I said.

“But good work with your first lesson today. We’ll make a proper composer out of you yet. ”

“You do know you’re a student, right?” she laughed. “As I recall the story, you explicitly chose to be a student instead of a teacher…”

“Out of spite. And I’m teaching you out of spite. I told you, I’m a very spiteful person. Now, let’s get to sleep. Flying takes it out of me.”

So I said, but once I’d taken a shower and gotten changed into my pajamas and tucked up in bed, I couldn’t get my mind off of Ella, and the lesson, and the song, so I ended up on the phone, Melinda picking up cheerily.

“Cheers, guvna,” she said.

“Mm-hm. That’s what everyone sounds like here.”

“How’s your posh life? It’s nighttime there, right?”

“Just past eleven…” I paused. “It’s the middle of the workday there. I just realized. Should I leave you to it and brag about my posh life tomorrow?”

“I’m working from home right now… trying to pound out a written plan for the team. And my brain’s deep-fried right now, so I could use a break. Talk to me, superstar. How’s student life?”

“Ah… it’s good. There’s this girl—”

“Oh, god. Don’t tell me you got to London and started hitting on people.”

I snorted. “Calm down, Melinda. I’m not hitting on her. I wouldn’t date someone here, I’m in LA and I’m not about to uproot my whole life for a London girl. No… my roommate, Ella Hendrickson.”

“You paid out the ass, and you have roommates?”

“It’s kind of the point. It’s very… community-oriented. She’s got the same liaison and everything.”

“Like college days all over again… so what’s up with Ella? A bastard to live with?”

“Categorically, I’m the bastard to live with. No, she seems fine. Just… I can’t read her,” I said.

She sighed. “Why am I totally not surprised you’ve taken it upon yourself to figure her out? You’ve probably turned her into a personal class project while you’re at it.”

I laughed. “More or less. She’s brand-new to composition.

Played a little bit of clarinet in school, but she doesn’t seem to want to play the clarinet now—some kind of mental block.

Doesn’t know how to play the piano. I asked her what key she’d written her application piece in—you know I like to see when people go it’s in F# Minor but it uses heavy Dorian borrowing and chromatic extensions into the Locrian mode and when people go, oh, you know, G Major.

Ella… she said it was in the key of music. She didn’t know what a key was.”

She whistled low. “Damn. Did you listen to the piece?”

“Of course I did. Turns out it was in D Major. Typical for a clarinetist. Emphasis on the minor chords, so she thought it was in a minor key.”

“Was it good?”

“It was… not… very,” I said. “Impressive for how little time she’s spent learning—makes sense she’s a quick study, she is a doctor by trade—but it’s deeply uninspired.

Chords with no subtlety, the sections are completely stagnant, no sense of motif or musical progression, a meandering lead melody played flatly on the violin throughout. ”

Melinda laughed. “So I guess the reason you’re all I can’t read her is related to why you sound so interested in her despite this.”

“She’s not very good. I tried to show her some basic music theory on the piano and she backed out after about ten minutes. I assume she’s good at the clarinet, but she can’t even bring herself to touch the thing. So I don’t know why she’s so… compelling,” I said.

“Is she hot?” Melinda said flatly, and I scoffed.

“That’s not related.”

“That’s a yes.”

“Yes, she’s attractive. I’ve been around attractive women who aren’t good at music before. Are you kidding? I live in LA, and you think I’ve never met someone hot and dumb?”

“Okay, touché.”

“It’s something about her,” I said, my voice a quiet longing tone.

“She looks at the musical instruments like they’re the greatest things she’s ever seen.

She talks about music in these hushed, reverent tones.

Someone played one of my most lackluster scores just to make a point to me—don’t worry about it, I have a rival, apparently, turns out—”

“What?”

“I said don’t worry about it. My rival played my worst piece just to make a point. Ella looked like she was having a religious experience listening to it, like she could feel every pizzicato pluck deep in her heart.”

She hummed quietly. “Guess it makes sense,” she said after a second. “You’re the best of the best, but you’ve lost your passion. She’s not, but…”

“But she has what I don’t,” I said, finishing the thought for her as I rolled onto my back, looking through the thin curtains out at the other side of the London street, beautifully ornate townhouses lined up in a row.

“She’s got dreams. She doesn’t just have dreams, she’s got the dream.

She’s got that—that fire that burns in your belly.

She wants this. So much she’s scared of it. ”

“I think she’s probably just scared of you, dude.”

“Whatever happened to put her off the clarinet, it’s there .

I can see it in her face, like it’s running through her veins.

You can tell she wants, so badly, to do this, but it’s making her afraid to actually take the music into her own hands.

And I… I want to get to the bottom of it.

Want to figure out what makes her tick. Dammit, Melinda, she’s got potential, I can just smell it, if she’ll get out of her own way. ”

She gave me that dramatic groan she did where she acted like I was the most unreasonable person alive, which seemed like an exaggeration.

I was probably in the top ten, sure, but single most unreasonable person alive?

That was a tough spot. “Dude, tend to your own studies instead of trying to do hers for her, okay? You always make things worse when you get nosy. It sounds like she’s got some serious stuff she’s working through, and if you poke around in it, you’re probably going to poke a bruise.

And you don’t want to spend two months living with someone you’ve offended and made hate you. ”

“I’d rather that than go forever not knowing if maybe I could have done something more, could have… could have seen where she’d end up. I’m not going to pry… yet. I just want to help her believe she’s a musician.”

“I’m telling you this now so that once it goes badly, I can say I told you so. But forget Ella. How’s everything else? You wanna tell me about that mortal enemy of yours now?”

I laughed. “Ah… Eliza. Girl from Liverpool who puts on an accent pretending to be posh. She’s got a lackey and everything. They’re a charming little duo.”

Once I finished catching Melinda up on everything and said goodnight, promising to let her know how the weekend was going, I lay there in bed with the phone at my side, and I stared up at the dark ceiling for a while before—moving carefully and quietly, like I was afraid of being caught—I slipped my headphones from the desk and plugged them into my phone, listening to Ella’s application piece again.

It wasn’t very good this time, either. But I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed listening. And I couldn’t get it out of my head.

∞∞∞

The pub was packed full when we all arrived the next morning, the whole gaggle of us pushing in together after we’d met up at the Crescendo building and headed to a spot just down the road, a little pub place that apparently redesigned themselves every time Crescendo was having a cohort come through because of how popular it was among the students.

It was a warm, dark space, a cozy feeling despite the grand, opulent feelings around the rest of the area, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the low light and find Olivia waving me and Ella towards a table close to the bar, but I didn’t really need Olivia to help find it, given Eliza’s voice standing out from a mile away.

“Lydia Howard Fox herself joins us,” Eliza said as I slotted into the seat across from her—Olivia Gould and her group, conversation already loud and laughter flowing as I sat down.

“You’ll have to get used to my presence,” I said. “I am a student here.”

Ella smiled sweetly next to me. “Don’t be too starstruck, if you can help it, Lizzy.”

Gone was the closed-off, emotionally-exhausted Ella of late last night.

She had a brightness in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in general, probably exhausted yesterday and, hopefully, picking up a bit more today.

Here instead of the tired, distant-stare Ella was the one who prickled at Eliza by joining in calling her Lizzy, but this time Eliza let it slide, rolling her eyes.

“I’m not starstruck. Good morning, everyone.

I take it we’ve all been practicing hard already? ”

“Not really,” I said. “I ate pie and slept.”