Page 22 of A Hard Sell

He was lying face down on his bed. He could barely hear her over the angst rock he was blaring. “Don’t you have a lesson right now?” he mumbled.

“Pardon?” She took a step into the room.

Luka lifted his head and glared at her. “I said, don’t you have a lesson right now?”

“I told her I had to use the washroom.” Marta pinched her eyebrows together. “Luka…is everything okay?”

“Fine,” he said flatly, flopping his face back onto his pillow. “It was fine.” He waited for her to reply, but when he looked up again, she was gone.

It was an hour later when his sister appeared at his door. “Hey.”

He hadn’t moved from his spot on the bed. The album was on its third play. “What?” he demanded. She never talked to him unless she wanted something, like to borrow money or try to get him to switch chores.

She shuffled into the room, then poked at the wolf figurine sitting on his dresser. “Nicki saw the talent show.” Nicki lived across the street and hung out with Yasmin a lot, even though she was a year behind Yasmin and still went to Luka’s school.

“So?” he snapped at her, his insides clenching.

“She said you were really good, but, uh…”

Luka willed himself not to cry. “Just say it. I’m a huge loser.”

“No, it’s… She said you were really good. That’s all.”

Luka scowled at her, deciding on the quickest way to get her out of his room, before the tears came. “I’m not trading you for the dishes again. Last time you didn’t even do them and Mom got pissed at me.”

Yasmin shook her head. “Just ignore the assholes, okay? And…and can you please play something else, for God’s sake?” Then she left, closing the door behind her.

Ignoring the assholes was easier said than done. He’d been on the bus for five minutes the next morning when the kids at the back started calling his name. “Luka! Come over and say hi!” And the same thing continued all day at school, from just about everyone. He tried to ignore them—he did. But the mocking laughter got under his skin and stayed there.

“Brown eyes, hey?” Stephen Mercer said, appearing next to Luka at his locker after lunch. “Who’s got brown eyes? Oh, wait, I do!” Stephen’s cronies erupted into hoots of laughter. “You got a crush on me, Luka?”

Luka’s heart fell. The brown eyes referred to Patrick Taggart, in fact, a sweet, quiet kid in his English class who also happened to be one of the stars of the basketball team. He admittedly had not thought about anyone grabbing onto the brown eyes thing, because the majority of people had brown eyes. That didn’t matter to this crowd, of course. If anything, it just encouraged them.

“Cooper has brown eyes!” Stephan announced, nodding at his main henchman, who snickered. “You like Cooper?” He pointed to a group of girls passing by. “How about the fat one there? She’s got brown eyes.”

Luka slammed his locker shut, an acrid taste in his mouth.

“Hey, Luka, don’t be shy, come over and say hi!” Stephen cooed in falsetto as Luka turned to make his way to math class. He could hear them howling the whole way down the hall.

His mom was taken aback when Luka told her he didn’t want to perform in her recitals anymore. There was a big one coming up and Luka was supposed to close the show. “I’m too old for recitals, Mom.”

“What do you mean, ‘too old’? Lucy and Rita are older than you.”

“Lucy and Rita are like fifty.”

“They’re in their forties!”

“It’s just…not my thing anymore.” Drawing and painting was a much safer way to express himself. No one made fun of his art. No one harassed him every day because of it.

Marta was crushed, but she didn’t push it. She seemed happy that Luka still played in his bedroom. His parents never stopped encouraging him, and he never stopped playing. He even started writing songs again. But he never performed in front of a crowd. And the longer he went, the larger his fear of it grew until it became insurmountable. Even allowing his best friends to see him play was a huge, huge scary step.

Letting Morgan in had been a mistake. One he was still paying for.

* * * *

“Where were you?” Thomas looked up from his laptop and frowned as Luka tiptoed back into his office.

“Oh.” Luka’s mind raced. “Morgan wanted to show me what he’d been working on.”

---