Catering didn’t pay much, but it was more than I had now.
“Ninety-nine freaking dollars.” I sighed in dismay. “I’m never questioning a superstition again.”
I wondered how Noah Kincaid felt about payment plans.
CHAPTER5
A Quiz
Wednesday arrivedwith a brilliant blue sky to welcome my next Music Theory class. Breakfast was off the table again, as I hadn’t trusted my stomach to keep it down.
I’d arrived early and laid claim to a seat in the front. Being so focused on staying far away from Noah, I barely avoided sitting right next to a certain doe-eyed Charlie Davenport.
Just like Monday, the guy I was indebted to strolled through the door with barely a minute to spare. My spine straightened in reflex as I took in his getup, which was as tasteful as the last time we crossed paths. White dress shirt, navy blazer, and shiny brown loafers. He took a seat four rows away without even a glance my direction.
Fortunately, I was able to pay attention during this lecture. Professor Slade put us into small groups to discuss the composers that influenced our own playing, and I earned more than a few eye rolls when I mentioned Claude Debussy. It was painfully cliché, butClair de luneresonated with me early as a child. I’d found a comfort in the piece that was warmer than any lullaby, and it’d quickly become my equivalent to any other child’s security blanket.
All it took was one concert my family attended on vacation where we heard Oliver Bishop—a young prodigy turned piano god—play Debussy’sLa Mer. He’d opened a door for me with that song.
Debussy’s style was so heavily sensory-focused that goose bumps enveloped my arms any time I listened to his work. After months of begging my parents and getting nowhere, I practiced in secret and played back what I could remember by ear.
The subterfuge didn’t last long, but being on the receiving end of my father’s ire was worth it when my parents allowed me to play Debussy.
Clair de lunewas the crowd-pleaser and the reason my father accepted my new obsession. It provided a soothing balm during decidedly brutal recitals.
When I’d had a particularly rough day—when Father yelled himself hoarse between lessons, Motherforgotto set my plate at dinner for the fourth time that week, or when my father decided words didn’t send enough of a message—I would playReverie. It never failed to work some sort of magic, warming me from the inside out until my worries melted away with the chords.
And on rare days, the ones where everyone got along and I didn’t need to force my smile—when family actually meant something more than public relations and people who drove me to recitals, or a father who made me practice until the sun rose because I missedonestupid note—I would playArabesque. My favorite.
I didn’t share all of this with the group, of course. They were too busy trying to one-up each other by naming composers so scarcely known that their pieces were the equivalent of made-for-TV movies. Instead, I focused on doodling a cupcake in the corner of my notebook and tried not to notice the abysmal quality of my writing tool.
Now that I’d seen how the other half lived, my little blue pen left a lot to be desired. It only worked half of the time, and it tended to smudge on parts of the paper without rhyme or reason.
But I’d say that wasn’t too shabby for a fifteen-cent pen.
Halfway through class, Slade called us back to our seats. Blaise walked across the front of the room and smiled much too happily as she handed small stacks of paper to each row of desks. This couldn’t be good.
“On Monday, I mentioned this is a highly intensive program, and we have neither the time nor resources to help students who lag behind,” Slade said. “Music Theory isn’t for everyone, and some of you, frankly, aren’t cut out for it. Now that you’ve helped your classmates understand why you’re here, it’s time to showmewhat you can handle. Blaise is passing out your first quiz.”
The boy in front of me handed me a stack of papers, and I grabbed one before passing them back. Clicking my pen, I scanned the first page of questions with a smile. It looked easy enough.
“These questions cover theories and terms you should already be familiar with as a pianist. You have thirty minutes to complete this quiz,” Slade said as he surveyed the room with sharp eyes. “If anyone fails, I strongly recommend you postpone taking this class until you’ve built a solid foundation.”
A sliver of unease crept up my spine, and I nibbled on the end of my cheap pen. Dropping the class meant losing my scholarship, and that definitely wasn’t an option.
The first section of basic notation was a breeze, and putting dynamics in the correct order from quietest to loudest was child’s play. The second section was a little tougher, with diagrams of harmonic intervals. I tapped my pen against my lower lip, wishing I hadn’t zoned out every time my piano teacher back in Kansas opened her mouth. This stuff never made sense to me, though. When it came to music, I liked keeping things simple. If I heard a piece I liked, I’d fiddle around with the keys until I could replicate it. It was a sound strategy that’d gotten me this far. I never had to mess with the boring technical side of piano.
Slade’s quiz was on a whole other level. Skipping over the third section—which must’ve been written by aliens—I flipped to the last page. Short-answer questions on music analysis stared back at me, and I swallowed hard. How was I supposed to analyze someone else’s work on a piece of paper? Either I’d feel something when listening to it, or I wouldn’t. This wasn’t what music was about for me.
I sucked in a deep breath and scribbled down my first impressions of the examples before making a few educated guesses on the third section. Thirty minutes later, I was one of the last students to hand my quiz to Blaise. That didn’t sit well in my stomach.
“Your homework is posted online, and I expect everyone to have the reading completed before Friday. That’ll be all,” Professor Slade announced at the end of class. I lingered as nerves pinballed around my stomach at the thought of confronting Noah about his pen—before realizing he’d already left.
Well, there went my opportunity to ask about a payment plan.
But the nerves were persistent, and I decided to rip off the Band-Aid by approaching our teacher’s podium, where Professor Slade gathered his papers and talked to Blaise.
He looked up and raised an expectant eyebrow.
