A Thousand Perfect Notes(9)

Joey perches on the bench making sandwiches and wearing a dress-up chef hat and an apron that says Kill The Cook – Beck swore to her it said Kiss The Cook, but when she’s older he’ll be in trouble. She has creamed corn, stale crackers and a lot of mayonnaise.

‘Thanks, Joey.’ He wraps both sandwiches in tin foil and tries not to think about it.

‘You’re welcome, Schwachkopf,’ she says cheerfully.

There’s bitterness knowing the only reason she uses those insults and curses is because the Maestro yells them at Beck. If he played better, Joey wouldn’t be a parrot, squawking lines of acid and knives.

‘When I’m a chef,’ Joey announces, ‘I’m going to have a big pink knife. Like, a massive one.’ She makes a chopping motion. ‘Then I’ll cut things up. BAM.’

‘What about a pink spoon?’ Beck says. ‘Or a pink whisk?’

Joey gives him a you’re-an-idiot-why-do-I-have-to-put-up-with-you look. ‘Can you cut things up with a whisk, Schwachkopf? I want a knife.’

Of course she does. Tiny, scary, violent child.

Beck wonders if he ever juggled What I Want To Be When I Grow Up fantasies at her age. All he can remember is the piano. Sitting on the Maestro’s lap – back when her hands didn’t shake – as she guided his baby fingers up and down scales. When he was Joey’s age, he was already the piano’s barnacle. But Joey gets a childhood. She is the baby, the sweetheart. And currently it’s more lucrative to threaten an oblivious Joey to make Beck work harder.

Or maybe the Maestro will inflict the piano on her too, someday.

Beck wishes he could do something. Protect Joey? Save her? But he’s so pathetic he can’t even buy her chocolate, or a proper birthday present, or even tell her that he hates it when she calls him Schwachkopf.

He’s spineless.

They’re about to leave for school in a blast of autumn air when the Maestro calls. Beck grinds his teeth. He practised from 5:03. She has nothing to yell about this morning.

Unless Joey let slip about August …

She promised.

She’s five years old.

Beck drags himself back to the kitchen. He wonders how hot her coffee is.

‘Ja, Mutter?’ he says, weary.

The Maestro is in her routine place at the table, red-blotted papers spread before her. Purple smudges beneath her eyes say she’s not sleeping well – but who can in this house, with the piano going all hours?

‘I have some tutoring going late,’ she says in German. ‘Don’t loiter on the way home. Come back and practise immediately.’

Beck breathes out and a thousand pieces of dread roll off his shoulders. ‘Ja, Mutter, of course.’

He’s out the front door before she realises she didn’t criticise his morning playing. The door slams behind him and he yells at Joey to wait for him – she’s taken off already but is also wearing a necklace of Christmas bells, so locating her isn’t hard – when it hits him.

How wrong everything feels.

How wrong it’s about to become.

August Frey has been sitting in the gutter on the opposite side of the street. She springs to her feet like she ate crickets for breakfast and waves. What is she doing here? Is she messing with him? She’s not wearing shoes, just blue hemp anklets and Sharpie doodles on her feet.

She doesn’t belong on this street. She doesn’t belong in his life.

Beck’s eyes snap away and he charges up the street, a breath away from running. He snatches Joey’s hand and practically knocks her over in an effort to walk faster.

August catches up with a skip and a bounce. ‘Good morning, antisocial Keverichs!’

She’s not going to give up, is she?

Beck mumbles something like hello and glares at the ground.

August falls into step beside him, a disconcerting spring in each step. At least she wears her uniform like a (semi) normal student, her red polo shirt making Beck’s look pinker than usual.

Beck only slows the pace when they’ve rounded the corner and there’s no possible way the Maestro will see them. Not that she’s in the habit of peeping out the window to be sure they get off safely. Between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., they are none of her concern.

‘And I thought I was a fast walker,’ August says lightly. ‘You’re so odd, you make me look normal.’

He bets neither of them have even tasted normal in their entire lives. Beck is so beyond normal he can’t even focus on the fact that he has a pretty girl determined to hang around him.

Pretty? Well, she sort of is. She has freckles and those oceanic eyes and she looks like she could beat an Olympian in a sprint. Not the perfect hair kind of pretty or even the clean and tidy kind of pretty … she’s just—

Oh great. He’s analysing what counts as pretty? This needs to stop.

‘We can’t talk to you,’ Joey says.

August doesn’t look surprised, or even offended – more like she swallowed a smile and is trying not to let it escape. ‘Why?’

Joey squints. ‘You’re a stranger?’

Beck could hug her. ‘Be firm.’

‘YOU’RE A STRANGER,’ Joey yells and then looks pleased.

‘I’m hardly stranger than you two,’ August says. ‘Plus you know my name, you know where I live, you know my favourite colour, and we hung out yesterday afternoon.’