Chapter 1
Even though Grand River is a smallish town, the high school was big enough that a few months had passed between the day I enrolled and when I first heard her voice.
I was walking down the hall in the performing arts wing, thinking about finding an accompanist for my French horn solo, when I heard what sounded like an honest-to-god angel singing. Shimmering and bold and perfect. I expected some clouds to break apart and the windowless, dull blue and gray
linoleum hallway to be flooded with brilliant, dancing sunlight.
I paused by the practice rooms as the voice ran up an octave and sat on a high note, like it was the opening sound in a new world.
The voice stopped singing and I couldn’t help but peek in the window of the practice room. Just to, you know, see what an angel looks like. She was in there alone, reading music that was sitting on top of the piano. Such a very small person, with sleek, dark hair and round eyes that were almost too big for her face—not exactly standard pretty, and looking much more like an earthy fairy than the heavenly creature who had just been producing that sound.
Her pale hands fidgeted nervously over her sheet music, her brow creased, and for the very first time (out of what would become a multitude of times) I could completely see how someone could feel the urge to do anything to take care of this girl. To smooth the wrinkle in her forehead, to hold those fluttering hands still, to make the downturned rosebud mouth smile.
She looked up at me; we regarded each other, and neither of us blinked. Her big eyes narrowed in confusion. There was surprisingly hostile silence, and then I quickly turned and walked away, feeling like I had accidentally violated something pure with my ordinary self. I half-expected the door to open behind me, for her to step out on light feet and demand that I come back and explain why I had invaded. Why I had dared to look at her.
“Calm down, Tess,” I said quietly to myself. “School just ended fifteen minutes ago, you had a perfect right to be walking down that hall.”
But I didn’t slow my pace until I reached my car in the junior parking lot.
• • •
"How was school?” my mom wanted to know over dinner. She had picked up supermarket sushi and we were eating it in front of a rerun of Friends.
I shrugged. “It was okay.”
“Just okay?” she asked, eyeing me and not noticing the rice that had fallen off her piece of spicy tuna roll onto the couch. I tried not to look at it.
I knew she was still feeling conflicted about asking me to move after the divorce, in the dead of winter, from Chicago to Grand River, Michigan, the town where her sister, my Aunt Jenny, lived, and where Mom had gotten a good administrator job at the local university. Far away from my dad, and from where the entire sixteen years of my life had occurred.
"Yep, pretty much just okay,” I said, trying not to look at the scattered rice. I wasn’t angry at Mom, exactly, but I was very tired. Tired of pretending like I was fine with it all, that I was okay with being here, that I didn’t mind the incredibly awkward phone conversations I had with Dad, that I wasn’t a typical, obstinate, hate-the-world teenager. Sometimes the temptation to give her an all-out, stereotypical guilt-trip with stormy tears and slammed doors was almost too much to bear.
Especially given the fact that I had been at Grand River High School for almost two months, and all those magical new best friends that Mom promised I’d immediately make had still failed to materialize. I’d gone to a few club meetings, found a group of perfectly nice band kids to sit with at lunch, tried to make an effort to talk to people … but no one was as interesting or fun as my old friends back in Chicago.
And, of course, no one seemed to think I was terribly interesting or fun, either. Lately, I was inclined to agree with them.
“Have you decided about the festival yet?” Mom asked.“Are you going to find an accompanist and play your solo?”
Back in Chicago, since middle school, it had been part of the yearly routine for me to play a French horn solo in front of a judge at a citywide event each spring. I wasn’t all that great at French horn, but band was something to do when my favorite activity, swimming, wasn’t taking up all my time. They had the same sort of solo-and-ensemble competition here in Michigan, but I was finding it hard to care much about it.
But I knew it would make Mom happy if I at least gave the appearance of attempting to be genuinely involved in life
here in Grand River.
“Yeah, my band director gave me the name of some guy who plays piano, Micah something-or-other, so I guess I’m going to hunt him down tomorrow and see if I can set something up.”
From: Albatross by Josie Bloss
Trade Paperback Original | ISBN 978-0-7387-1476-9
Pubdate: February 2010 | Ages 12 & up
US $9.95 CAN $11.50
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