Page 36 of Haunt Me

“Nothing.”

“Oh, it was definitely something.”

Is she attracted to me?I can’t breathe.Is there any chance that she might find me—

“Don’t start getting too full of yourself,” she says and I burst out laughing.

No wonder I am completely in love with her.

Wait, what did I just think?

I am in way over my head.

Whatever, I might as well drown.

…

I bring my violin more and more often as the weather grows colder, even though my fingers go numb with it. But out here in the freezing cold, I have played more than I have in the last seven years.

“I have never composed music until now,” I tell her. “Never really played as much as I wanted.”

“What happened? Why did you stop playing?” she asks me.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me. You play the violin the way I think heaven must feel.”

My whole body gets covered in goosebumps. I lean back against the tree’s trunk, its ridges dusted with snow, pressing into my jacket, and I close my eyes to drink in the feeling.

“My music teachers would always try to get me to play at concerts, as you have to when you pursue any kind of training in classical music,” I tell her, “but I always made mistakes. It was my mom who stopped it when I was seven. James was five; he had already won a bunch of competitions for adults.Adults. I was still grappling with the preludes and fugues of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.”

“I don’t know what any of those words mean,” Eden says.

“Well, nothing good for a seven-year-old, I promise you,” I tell her, shivering. The memory of those books still haunts me. “In this particular competition, I messed up the end of my performance. And the middle. And a little bit of the beginning.”

Eden laughs.

“James was insisting that I could do it; he said I hadn’t messed it up when I was practicing at home. How I haven’t yet murdered that annoying little puppy I don’t know. But mom said that that was it. She was pulling me from the piano lessons. She said that even with the mistakes, I was better than pianists three times my age.” I swallow. “I think she was lying.”

“Why did she pull you?”

I close my eyes.

I remember that day perfectly. I remember how light I had felt at the prospect of being finally free of the classical music training, but the thought of disappointing her was too much. My stupid, childish heart couldn’t stand it.

“She said that it was because I didn’t enjoy it,” I tell Eden now.

“Your mom is so cool,” she replies, and the naked sadness in her voice just about tears me apart.

“Yes,” I say. “Anyway, that was the day I stopped being scared of music. And found out that I was head over heels in love with it.”

“I love this story,” Eden says dreamily. Her book is closed, a rare occurrence. “I think I love your mom. She sounds amazing.”

“She is. My dad too.”

“Oh? Is he a musician too?”

“Yeah. Was.”

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