“Nocturne”

                The coldness reminded me of home, which wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t already been homesick. It was windier than it had been when we arrived that morning and the deluge of wet flakes had started as soon as we’d left the school (of course) so we stood in a group huddled like penguins, our dress clothes less than adequate in such wintry weather, waiting for our bus. I stood next to Jenny, the hem of my black skirt soaking up the moisture from the deepening snow underfoot. It was too cold to hold our umbrellas, so we stood with our hands shoved in our jacket pockets, bouncing on the balls of our feet to keep warm, leaning forward to prevent our umbrellas precariously balanced on one shoulder from tipping too far backwards.

                The Prodigy stood on the outside of the crowd, talking to Jake Hullen. Jake appeared disinterested in what the flautist was saying; he shifted his trombone case from one hand to the other, the free hand going into his pocket to remain warm until his other grew too cold and he switched the trombone again. His breath plumed in front of him as he sighed, his eyes leading off to the left, looking for the bus.

We all felt as Jake did—tired, cold, uninterested in the rest of the world. We hadn’t been expecting such a high placing at the competition, and in all honesty we hadn’t been wishing for it, either. Our placement meant that the long bus ride home would be delayed even longer and our Saturday evening would be spent waiting in the band room of an unfamiliar school until we were scheduled to play a second time in the same school’s unfamiliar auditorium, the piece we’d brought from across the county to be judged by those much less forgiving than our parents and peers.

                Our tall, colorful conductor’s excitement made up for its lacking in the rest of us, however. Mr. Spien, upon hearing of our placement, clapped his slender hands like an excited child and bounced on his heels, uttering a proud but still restrained, “good job, good job!” to all of us, dusting us with praise with his shaking hands. He moved toward The Prodigy, who stood in the back of the crowd, his flute in hand.

“Excellent job, young man, excellent! Your solo won the judges’ hearts for sure.” He patted the flautist on the back, drawing only a small smile as a reaction, but heated stares from many of the rest of us who happened to hear the praise. He’d only been at the academy for a few months, but already the amount of recognition he’d received from Mr. Spien had far surpassed our instructor’s complements to the rest of us. He’d even, in a manner of days, stolen the first flue chair away from the rest of us—something that immediately brought him several enemies.

                Jake had moved inwards toward the rest of the crowd. The Prodigy was right on his heels, still discussing something of dire importance, his bright pink lips moving rapidly, his breath hitting the cold air with quick bursts of fog, wet curls of black hair bouncing as he used his free hand to rapidly rub his other arm, trying to generate warmth.

                As soon as The Prodigy’s talent as a flautist had been unearthed by Mr. Spien, the nickname surfaced and spread with a speed only attainable by high school gossip. His real name was Maurice Malmeen, a name that left in my mouth the greasy taste of regurgitated vowels. For this reason alone I called him The Prodigy; I was one of the few who were indifferent to him rather than exceedingly jealous or exceedingly avoidant. He seemed unconcerned with his talents when he didn’t have his instrument to his lips, which was peculiar but wasn’t something I thought much about in my spare time. Only when he played did his gift emerge unconcealed, the high voice of his flute cutting like a diamond the air of whatever particular venue at which we were performing. When there existed any occasion for jealousy to arise in me, it was usually overthrown by the fact that I could never muster the courage to play solos myself and the fact that I was always encouraging of good flute players. The band needed more of us, anyway.

                Lauren moved closer to me, her cheeks red from the biting wind, and nudged her chin in the direction of Jake.

                “Look at the poor guy,” she said, smiling. “The Prodigy’ll talk his ear off.”

                “Unless the cold freezes it off first.” I shivered under my formal clothing, the cotton shirt brushing against the inside of my coat. Even beneath my coat, the case of my flute felt like ice. Our salvation came, however, in the form of the transportation that had brought us half way across the county to the competition. “There’s the bus.”

                “Finally.” Jenny tucked her chin further into the collar of her jacket and bent down to pick up her baritone. The sun was setting already behind the covered sky, the colors of its sunset hidden by the haze of the snow-bringing blanket of clouds. The early night light hovered like a haze, the drizzle from the sky blending with the gray of its origin. In less than an hour the world around us would be dark; I made a mental note to call my parents in the morning to tell them the news of our placement in the competition, excitedly anticipating my father’s long-distance praise.

                We lined up like little ducklings in front of the bus door as it slid slowly to a stop in front of us, our snow-frozen feet in a hurry to get us into the warm cabin that would carry us home. Once inside we kicked off our uncomfortable dress shoes, unbuttoned our neck adornments, and requested that the driver crank up the heat and change the radio station to 97.5 FM. The soft piano playing of Chopin soon wafted through the bus speakers, and we all got to settling into our seats for the ride home.

Those of us with umbrellas briefly opened our windows, shook the moisture off of the water resistant fabric, then wound them up and hung them upside down by the wrist straps on the latches of the windows, like dripping multicolored bats wrapped in their wings.

We’d sat in these types of buses dozens of times—the 8’ televisions at angles only owls could watch without getting cricks in their necks, the semi-soft seats bleeding upholstery from broken seams in the brightly-dotted fabric, the overhead compartments that never quite closed and every once and awhile spat something we’d stored in them back at us during a particularly sharp turn or while we traveled over a rough road. Since coming to the academy I’d grown accustomed to traveling to performances in a bus rather than in a car with just my parents, as I had back home. I always felt that the bus drivers never took snowy roads as seriously as my mother had, but I tried not to think about it as we began our ride home.

                Jenny and I shared pair of seats near the middle of the bus, spread out our things, and had our delayed dinners—sandwiches and chips—that we’d packed early that morning and brought with us. After we finished, Jenny sought out two open seats on which she could sprawl out and fall asleep.

                “I’m tired from lugging that baritone around,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

                “I have to work on my math homework anyway,” I replied, glad for the chance to work without distraction and hopeful that math would take my mind off of how homesick I was feeling.

                “Fun.” She packed up her things and moved to an empty pair of seats further back in the bus. I opened my trig book and got to work.

The light outside had changed from haze to a palette of blue, the dark branches of the trees we were passing standing out in sharp contrast to the cerulean snow-covered hills behind them. Large flakes of snow were falling now, grazing the window with their back-lit silhouettes, acting as a damper on the sounds of the world. The steady rumble of the bus tires on the road beneath us was growing quieter and further into the distance as if the earth were falling into a dream-filled sleep.

                Nocturne, I thought. The aptly-named piece we’d played at the competition had fit this atmosphere so well. Meticulously, Mr. Spien had worked on our perfecting the mood of the short, 25-measure song. He spoke his commands only in whispers, forcing the room and all of us in it to fall still and remain quiet enough to hear his hushed words.

“You have to be able to hear everything, everyone,” he explained to us, his voice like air flowing out of the end of a rusted through pipe. “This is night. The world is asleep. You’re playing a dream, but not even a dream. The memory of a dream.” He got us to the point where we sat in silence a good minute or so before we played, basking in the silence of the room, to the point where someone’s raspy breathing would draw scowls of disapproval.

These practices went on for weeks until at last we sat in the large auditorium of the school on the other side of the county, their ceiling slanted downwards toward the stage where ours remained flat, their seats padded where ours remained plain steel, on their stands the words “North Elmwood High School” where ours read “St. Cecilia’s.”

                We sat in our starch-pressed and itchy performance attire, our necks held stiff by the tight formal ribbons around our collars, our arms pressed close to our sides, camouflaging from the audience the nervous sweat stains ringing our armpits. Mr. Spien stood in front of us, looking unusually regal in his formal wear, his stance akin to a sprinter about to break from the starting position. His hands were raised in front of him, commanding our attention.

“Shhhh.” He let his call for silence trail off his lips until it was nothing. He stood poised as a statue, the baton tweezed lightly between his fingers, his eyes rolling about in their sockets until his pupils met each of ours to be sure we were ready.

“Like a memory,” he whispered. A slow upswing of the baton, a steady inhale, and we began to cast nightfall upon our audience.

“Hi Amelia.” I looked up from my math to see The Prodigy standing in the aisle next to Jenny’s open seat, his low, quiet voice bringing me back to the present. His hair had dried into a mess of curls the vague shape of a thunderhead, loose coils falling in front of his eyes as he bent his tall frame to speak to me. He held his backpack by a shoulder strap in one hand and had his flute clutched protectively in the other.

“Hi Maurice,” I replied warily. What did he want? 

“Jake said he wanted to work on homework, so I figured I’d move. Mind if I sit here?” He smiled sheepishly, drawing his head slightly into his shoulders as if he were afraid of my rejection. I was a bit annoyed; my math book lay in plain sight on my lap and there were other seats open around us.

“I’d go further back in the bus,” he explained quickly, taking note of my hesitation, “but any further back and I start to get carsick.” He shrugged. “Bus sick, I guess.”

As much as I wanted to finish my math homework, I figured I should be nice to him.

“This is where Jenny was sitting,” I said, “but you can sit here until she comes back if you want.”

He smiled again. “Thanks.” He turned sideways and shimmied into the seat, his billowy blue coat sleeve, still cold and a little damp, brushing up against my bare forearm as he sat, sending goose bumps racing up my arm and across my neck and chest.

“Whatcha doing?” He glanced at my math book and I braced myself for a conversation that would rival in length his prior conversation with Jake.

“Trigonometry.”

“Oh.” He adjusted himself in the seat and pulled out his iPod. “Never understood that stuff.”

He said nothing more, to my surprise, but watched over my shoulder as I tried to concentrate on the problems. Mozart’s Requiem was now filtering through the bus’ speaker system, aiding my work, and I completed a few more problems before glancing back up at The Prodigy, who had pulled a sandwich out of his backpack and was eating it slowly. He wasn’t watching me anymore and was turned instead to the right, the blue mixture of scenery outside the window across the aisle holding his attention. Looking at his profile I noticed his nose was sharply pointed, like someone had pulled on the tip, warping it and the rest of his face so that it at all directions led to the point.

 Through the buds shoved deep into his ear canals, the sound of drumming and heavy electric guitar could be heard over the Mozart playing through the bus speakers. I laughed to myself. He’d really be The Prodigy if he went deaf and could still rock the flute.

 “What are you listening to?” I said it loud enough so that I thought he could hear me. He had just taken a bite from his sandwich and he turned with a look of surprise towards me as if he hadn’t expected me to talk to him, his cheeks bulging out like a chipmunk. He chewed a few more times before speaking through clenched teeth to avoid making a mess when he opened his mouth.

“Metallica.” He went back to chewing.

“You don’t like the Requiem?”

He shook his head as he swallowed. “Hate it. Much prefer James Hetfield to any choir.” I didn’t know who James Hetfield was, but I ascertained that he was anything but Mozart.

                “Metal, huh?” I said. “Why don’t you play guitar or something, then, instead of the flute?”

                He shook his head. “I can’t. I have to shut my eyes when I play, especially during solos. If I try to read the music—if I look at anything, really—I screw up.”

                “Oh.”

                “I tried guitar a couple years ago and I had to keep looking down at the frets to place my fingers. I couldn’t play anything more than a couple notes at a time.”

                I tried to visualize him standing in front of the judges today, performing with his eyes shut. His solo had been flawless; it was probably the component of Nocturne that had boosted us so high in the competition. We had approached the end of the piece delicately, barely touching our lips to our mouthpieces, tiptoeing across the notes as we climbed and descended the staff as vines climb and twist about garden posts, our collective volume swelling and falling away, until every sound but the subtle drone of a horn in back hung in the air.

                Mr. Spien held us in a fermata as Maurice stood, his chair creaking softly. I sat behind him and never saw anything but his back when he played. I watched his shoulders rise as he took a preparatory breath, and from his flute he ushered the melody we had all heard before but that, as was the case each time he played, held us in awe, our breaths suspended until he finished.  Each note sounded as if it described a lifetime, the tender tones hovering in the air, resembling the gentle humming of a wet finger running along the rim of a crystal wine glass. The solo was only five measures long, but the voice he gave it lasted for hours in our heads. His final b-flat rose, hung, and then slipped hauntingly away, absorbed by the air of the auditorium. The room was left in the quiet stun of the note’s presence and all that had preceded it and it remained quiet until the clapping finally rose out of the memory of the deceased song.

                Mr. Spien stood aside and presented us to the audience with a wave of his arm, then specifically acknowledged Maurice. The applause grew louder, and as much jealousy existed on the stage, I’m sure all of us were at least secretly amazed by his performance.

                I was watching him now as he sat next to me, his head bobbing lightly to the music coming from his ear buds, his hand lightly keeping beat against the case of his flute. I was curious as to why he chose me—aside from Jake—to talk to that evening. I liked the company, but I wanted to know why, I decided to be bold and ask him.

“So why’d you come sit back here?”

“Huh?” He pulled the ear buds out of his ears entirely.

“There are like five open seats. Why’d you come sit by me?”

He spoke as he turned off his iPod and rolled the headphones around it. “Well,” he said, “It’s because I can’t go further back on the bus without getting sick, like I said. Also,” he shifted as he put the iPod back into his coat pocket, “you’re one of the few people on this bus who’ll willingly talk to me. In all honesty, though, I hadn’t been expecting 20 questions.” He smiled at me jokingly, but I felt my cheeks get hot.

“Sorry.”

“No, hey, no worries. I like to talk. Like I said, not a lot of people talk to me willingly.”

“You were talking to Jake before we got on the bus,” I said, recalling earlier.

“Talking at, not to. He wasn’t interested, I think I annoy him.” He was quiet for a moment. “What is it you guys call me? The Savant?”

I was taken aback at is acknowledgement that he had a nickname. I figured we’d all kept it from him well enough so that he didn’t think he was known by anything other than Maurice Malmeen.

“The Prodigy,” I replied.

He laughed. “Yeah. A lot of people are jealous of me. Or are afraid of me, or something. I’m good at flute—that means I’ve got it made, according to them.”

“It’s a pretty impressive talent you’ve got,” I admitted. I tried to be truthful while trying to avoid stroking his ego.

“Thank you,” he replied. “But there’s a reason I’m in music and not in anything else.”

“Your parents?” His mother and father were a sinewy Yuppie couple from the northeast who always showed up to the concerts we held back at the academy. They sat in the front row and gave a standing ovation after every piece in which their son had a solo. Though my own parents hadn’t been exceedingly pushy about my pursuing music, I figured that his might have been.

“Nah. Well, they encouraged my flute playing when they saw what I could do, but they encouraged it even more after they saw that I was failing trig.”

“You’re failing?” Trig was difficult, but not that difficult. “How?”

“Let’s just say my abilities in music don’t apply to anything else.” He paused, hesitating over what else to say. “I have dyslexia,” he said finally. “Pretty bad. I mix words up most of the time. Numbers, too. That’s why classes like this—” he reached out and tapped my now closed trig book “—are such nightmares. But for some reason it doesn’t affect my ability to read music, so I do that. Also, once I know the song, I don’t need to look at the pages anymore.”

“I didn’t know you had dyslexia,” I responded, not knowing what else to say.

He shrugged. “It’s why I’m never in class. While you guys are going at a normal pace, my tutor works with me to help me even catch up. If I’m not practicing my flute, I’m trying to finish my homework.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah.”

Our conversation ceased. We passed a rest stop to our left, the lonely streetlamp hovering over the pairing of bathrooms illuminating the glittering snow that was falling faster now than it had all day. A set of tire tracks slowly being filled in by the falling snow was the only trace of anyone having been there that day.

The scene brought me back to my days before St. Cecilia’s Academy, back when I was at home with my parents. I was younger but still heavily involved in music; every other day a practice, every weekend a recital. I had dressed in black and white—a modest skirt and a button-down top—even in the cold, snowy climate back home.

We would always be the last to leave recitals, my parents lingering to speak with the teacher or with other parents whose child, tired and wanting to go home as I did, would spend his or her time swinging from the banisters of the auditoriums in which the recitals were held or slowly removing, button by button, their uncomfortable dress clothes until their parents would notice and usher them away with the explanation that “we really ought to get this little one home.” My mother would kiss me as she buckled me into the backseat, promising me pancakes in the morning. My father, night-blind and therefore forced to relinquish the driving to my mother, would sit in the back with me, watching with reserved amusement as my head grew heavy with sleepiness, bobbing up and down until I finally would succumb to sleep. He would then remove his overcoat and drape it over my body, staving off the goosebumps that would, had I been left uncovered, arise beneath my less-than-warming concert attire. I would sleep beneath his coat until we reached home and I could be properly put in bed, a scenario that had played itself out nearly every weekend until I was sent to St. Cecilia’s.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Maurice’s voice was full of concern as he saw me wipe away the beginnings of tears that the memory brought.

“Nothing.” I sniffled, trying not to look like I had to blow my nose. “I just kinda miss my parents.”

                “Homesick, eh? That’s right, you’re not from around the academy, are you?” I shook my head. “That’s tough. How long have you been coming here?”

                “Since ninth grade.”

                “Your parents wanted you here?”

                “Yeah, my dad especially. He’s a pianist. As soon as he saw I had an interest in music—” I shrugged “—I was going to St. Cecilia’s, come hell or high water. Not that he forced me or anything,” I quickly corrected. “I wanted to go. He wanted me to go, too.”

                Maurice smiled softly at me. “Sounds like a good guy.”

                “Yeah.” I tried to pull myself together a little better. “I don’t know what my problem is. I think all this snow reminds me of home and my parents.”

                He nodded. “It’s a good memory to have.” 

                “Yeah.”

The whole bus was quiet now; the majority of the overhead lights had been switched off, the ones remaining had been left by people who had accidentally slipped into sleep. The soft yellowish light provided by these few bulbs was enough to be able to make out one’s immediate surroundings, but very little else—most of the bus was cast in black silhouette, the heads of my band mates poking up over the head rests, the few pairs of feet dangling in the aisles from those supine across two seats, sleeping.

I figured it was sometime past ten-thirty or so as I looked over at Maurice, who was quietly observing the same scene I was. I wondered if anybody on the bus knew as much about him as I did now, even after such a short conversation.

                “I can help you with trig, if you want.” I said it after we sat in silence for a bit.

                “What?” He turned toward me, the moistness of his eyeballs shining in the dull light, his features softly illuminated in yellow.

                “I can help you with your trig. I mean, I know you said you already have a tutor, and I don’t know much about dyslexia, but I get this stuff, so I thought that would help.” I shrugged. “If you want.”

                “Really?”

                “Sure.” I saw him smile at me in the darkness, his teeth reflecting the light generated by the few bulbs still in use on the bus. 

                “That’d be awesome,” he replied quietly. It was dark enough outside now that I couldn’t tell the trees from the hills from the sky—all that was rushing past was blackness. The bus shook pleasantly as the tires carved their way through the freshly-fallen snow that no other cars had had the chance to break up. I could no longer prevent myself from drifting to sleep, the back of my head softly hitting the headrest as my consciousness began to slip. Slowly, the last threads of my awareness of the world faded away. I heard movement beside me, the crinkling of fabric the last sound hitting my ears, and as my eyelids fluttered open briefly before closing for the night, I saw the dull shine of the overhead lights reflecting off of Maurice’s blue coat as he draped it across my shoulders.

I was in a warm, familiar place again—beside my father in the car, riding home after a late-night recital, the lull of the car’s motion on the road shaking me soothingly to sleep. I felt my father’s overcoat across my chest, keeping me warm, and I could hear his soft breathing next to me as I drifted away, and though I was somehow aware that what I was experiencing was not reality, everything in my mind truly did exist in the moment, seen through a lens hazy and just slightly unclear—soft, happy, and delicate—like a memory.