Page 62 of Crescendo

“I’m not very good at it.”

He barked a surprised laugh. “I know that’s not true. You just need to sit down and let yourself bleed over the music, sweetheart. Let yourself feel every little second of it, every part that hurts, every part you hate, and every part you love. You cantake a leaf out of your brother’s book and channel it all into your instrument.”

“I can’t—the clarinet—no.” The words rushed from me like a gasp.

“That’s okay.” He wasn’t fazed. So calm, so constant. “Another instrument. It doesn’t even have to be one you particularly like or know very well. Just… hit it, strum it, blow it like you’re trying to destroy the whole world. Just let it out, darling. You’ve carried it long enough.”

I heard a sound from outside the door, someone moving around, and jolted back to the present, swiping frantically at my face. “I have to go, Dad.”

“Okay, sweetheart. I love you. Papa loves you. And we’re all so proud of you.” His voice broke a little and I knew he meant Callum, too.

God, how I wanted to be worthy of the three of them, to be good enough to be proud of, to be doing well enough to deserve their pride.

I hung up the call, wiped clean my face—though there was no hiding the blotches and puffy eyes—and knew I couldn’t withstand going back to class. It was late in the day. Someone would hold onto my stuff or I’d collect it tomorrow, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t be here right now.

I fled the building and half ran back to our flat. And I stood in the music room, staring down that piano. It had to be that. The piano was the foundation of composition. I had to know it. I had to beat it. It had started this whole spiral and it was where I was going to end it.

My heart pounded as I sat on the familiar stool feeling broken and bruised and alien. My fingers were stiff and uncoordinated as they hovered over the keys.

I didn’t know how to do it. I’d never done this. I played with precision and care. I’d always done exactly what Papa ormy music teacher told me—exactly what every teacher told me. I thought about posture and technique and creating beautiful sounds.

“Callum,” I whispered out loud, my voice angrier than I’d expected. Not at him. “How did youdothis? How doIdo this?”

Four years of holding every single thing in. I had no idea how to be messy.

But this whole thing was messy. Losing your brother at twenty-seven was messy. What happened to him was wrong and hard and horrid.

My heart pounded in my chest.

It was death. And Ihatedthat. It was a million endings and eternal pain. It was a million things I’d never said and never would. A million people he’d never gotten to be, never gotten to meet. It was a life unlived and the terror of letting that go.

It was loss and grief and pain and that feeling like I wanted to rip my own heart out just to stop it from hurting.

And I wasangry.

A cry—primal, painful, harrowing—ripped itself from my throat, leaving me raw as my fingers slammed into crisp white keys.

And I bled into the piano.

Chapter 15

Lydia

Sometimes I hated music.

To be fair, I never started it. It always came around when music hated me first.

That practice room session with Hannah had been a gift and a curse, and not just because now I had to worry about Hannah blabbing about me and Ella to everybody. I’d seen something there—some elusivesomethingin the sound, in what genrewas, and I’d come so close to grasping it that my fingertips had brushed it.

And then it slipped away, and I’d spent the past few days desperately trying to find it again, feeling around in the void, reaching for it, finding nothing.

Nothingwas an accurate summary of the days since I dragged Ella to the Philharmonic against her will and only succeeded in making her avoid me. It had been obvious she’d been miserable the whole time in the performance, but she’d refused to leave, hadn’t budged, brushed me off with a whisperedit’s finewhen I tried to touch her reassuringly and gesture if she wanted to leave.

I hadn’t heard a single note of the symphony, my mind so occupied worrying about Ella—right up close to the stage in the front seats, where she got the most up-close-and-personal experience possible with the thing that tortured her. All in all—as far as dates went, really not the best.

Melinda had been telling me I was pushing too hard, that I needed to let up and not try tofixher. Never had that been more evident than when we got back from the Philharmonic and Ella practically ran into her room with no more than a quietsorrymy way and cried without speaking to me the rest of the night.

Clara had picked up on Ella not being with it while we were out for drinks, and she’d sent me a text checking in on Ella, and for some reason, I told the truth about how she’d hated it and it had sent her into this spiral and I didn’t know what to do. My tone was just a little too worried forjust a concerned friend,probably, but I didn’t confirm or deny anything, and she didn’t ask—just told me Ella was probably going through some things and that I should give her space.

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