A Thousand Perfect Notes(17)

Joey watches anxiously as he finishes the bread crusts, which have been left plain to his relief. ‘Is it good? Am I a good chef, Beck?’

‘The best,’ he says.

‘Oh good.’ Joey beams. ‘I want you to feel all better. And I’ve got some extras –’ Beck pales ‘– but if you don’t want them, that’s OK! I’ll give it to August!’

Wait. What? ‘August?’

‘Yeah,’ Joey says. ‘She’s outside. I told her we—’

Beck wrangles himself out of the sheets and shoots out of his bedroom. He lunges for the front window and cracks the blinds. Yes, she’s there, swinging around a lamp pole, her lips puckered in a whistle. Has she been doing this every morning? Beck rakes his fingers through his hair and pulls hard.

Joey patters up behind him.

‘You talked to her?’ Beck says, strained. ‘What did you tell her about me?’ What if Joey splatters his embarrassing secrets? He’ll never go to school again.

‘I just said that your face was sad.’ Joey sticks her lip out. ‘And that you are a meanie because you haven’t played with me for ever.’

‘It’s been three days.’ Beck flies through the house and finds questionably clean jeans – screw the dress code – and a school shirt with holes in the collar. He slams a foot into his shoe so fast the tape snaps, and he has to spend precious minutes with string and scissors. ‘Get ready, Jo!’ he shouts. ‘We’re going.’

Joey barrels into her room screaming – probably from joy? Maybe? Who could know? She reappears with purple sparkly leggings, a jumper that says ‘I Love The Brachiosaurus’, her gumboots and swimming goggles.

No time to argue. He finds some old pizza buns in the fridge – if there’s no mould, then they’re OK, right? – and stuffs them into her lunch box.

As he’s scooting them out of the door, he catches a glimpse of his face in the hall mirror. The swelling has gone down, but the handprint is pretty unmistakable. No one at school will care, of course – kids show up with broken arms and stitches all the time. Fights. Angry parents. Bike accidents. They live in that part of town. The school doesn’t care if dozens of students have bruises or stitches or hollow eyes. It’s too much and the teachers don’t get paid enough for this.

But August will care.

Why does it matter?

Why is he even rushing to walk to school with her?

Because the last time they were together, he carried her home and he felt helpful and kind. And she thanked him. And it was good.

Beck locks the front door – he doesn’t know or care where the Maestro is – and Joey sprints across the dewy grass to August.

‘WE’RE GOING TO SCHOOL!’ says Captain Obvious.

Beck suddenly remembers a million reasons why it’s not OK to be around August. What is he doing? He feels like nine left elbows and a stomach full of butterflies. And his face.

But he deserved it. He failed. Just a simple task, play a Chopin piece, do it well, and he flunked it on purpose. Right? Did he even try? Did he?

He can’t get rid of the pure elation of his own music flooding that hall. Or how thunderous the applause was. Or how beautiful it was, like a thousand stars exploding in his hands. It was even better than the rubbish he writes between classes.

But it was wrong – wrong – wrong.

August pops out two earbuds and stuffs her iPod in her pocket. She gives Joey a high five and then turns to – stare.

‘Hi, Beck,’ she says softly.

Beck wishes he could disappear or become someone else entirely.

He grabs Joey’s hand and starts walking without a word, mostly because his brain is blank. He has no explanation why he wanted to see her. But now he’s seen her and it’s a mistake.

If August notices the ignored greeting, it doesn’t show. She falls into step beside him, wearing tattered Converse on her feet for once, and bouncing a little with each step like there’s music in her soles.

Is her foot OK now? Did her parents roast her for being violent at school? Did she really hang around his house waiting every morning? What does she want from him? What? What?

‘So,’ August says, dragging the word out to cover the galaxy of silence between them. ‘You haven’t been at school for a while.’

‘I’ve been sick.’ Of everyone and everything.

‘What happened to your face?’ Only a mouse could hear that whisper.

‘I practised smiling,’ Beck says. ‘The mirror punched me for my efforts so, good news, you were right. I suck at it.’

He stares at the ground while he says this, counting the cracks, the times he steps over a broken bottle, how often Joey trips on the uneven cement.

‘Oh, that’s the thing about me,’ August says, calm. ‘I’m always right. You get used to it, especially if you practise saying “you were right, August! I was wrong” about fifty times before bed.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘Me too,’ Joey says, squishing to walk between them.

They walk in silence, the weight of a joke and a lie as heavy as holding the world. Joey jumps cracks, yanking on Beck’s arm at each leap, which only reminds him how much he aches.

It’s only when Joey pauses to steal a handful of daisies from an unsuspecting garden, that August says, ‘So what happened really?’