Music Makers

*no, I didn't give up on the other story, i just wanted to share this short story wit ya. Enjoy and leave comments, no matter how critical!! Gracias, amigos!!*

Chad ran down the hallway, tears streaming down his face. The old school walls peered down at him degradingly, dismissing his childish sorrow as petty, eight-year-old nonsense. The principal’s office was the last door on the right, but Chad ran to a wall near a wooden door and leaned against it, crying. His tiny fingers felt along the splintering wood door, his mind not really focusing on what it was feeling.

Suddenly, his flow of tears subsided into a mere trickle, and he lifted his head and listened. What was that? He pressed his ear against the door. A slow tune wound its way through the door to his ears, diluted and muffled. Sniffing and wiping the tears from his eyes, Chad cautiously opened the door and stepped inside.

The room he was now in was plain, and had four ordinary white-washed walls. However, these walls were covered with lots of papers and posters, depicting how to properly hold instruments, and what certain musical symbols meant. In the small room, rows of trombones, tubas, flutes, clarinets, and drums could be seen leaning against racks or perched upon shelves on the walls. What grabbed Chad’s attention the most was the large, grand piano in the middle of the cramped room directly in front of a small window near the ground.

A teenage girl sat on the piano bench, her fingers dancing over the white and black keys, stroking them, urging them to sing. Her plain hair was tied back out of her face, revealing relatively ordinary features beneath two distracted eyes. As soon as she heard the door open, the distant look on her face evaporated and her hands froze, the music dying in the air. She stared at him for a moment, not sure what to say.

Chad wiped his hand over his nose, sniffing, and fearlessly approached her. “You’re not dressed for school,” he told her.

Her eyebrows lifted, but she smiled. “I don’t go to school here. I’m just passing through.”

Chad was now right beside her, peeking over the piano bench up at her. His bright, brown eyes shifted to the pale sheets of music resting against the piano. “That’s pretty music,” he commented.

The girl followed his gaze to the papers. “Oh, I wasn’t playing from those.” As if to prove it, she shuffled the papers together and flipped them over so only their white backsides were showing. “I’m not very good at reading music.”

Chad clambered onto the bench beside the girl, as she scooted over to allow him to sit on her right. “Music can be read?” he asked in a disbelieving tone.

“Mhm,” the girl replied. She reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out a wad of paper. She unfurled it and straightened it to the best of her ability, then held it in front of the little boy. “See these marks?” she asked, gesturing. “Each one is like a word of a story.”

Chad’s eyes widened. “Can you read them?”

The girl nodded. “These I can read. I wrote them.”

The boy traced one little finger down the wrinkles in the page, his mouth slowly opening at how many confusing lines and dots he counted. Curious, he asked, “What do they say?”

The girl smiled again, and rubbed the wrinkles smooth. Then she placed them upon the piano and positioned her fingers lightly upon the keys. A gentle sound emitted from the piano, and slowly a song began to grow inside the tiny music room. It started softly first, with a simple melody drifting its way through the air carelessly. Then, a series of deep, echoing notes combined with the light ones , like a skilled tango – each part weaving its way around the other, and yet each complimenting its opposite and adding to its sweetness. The tune rose high, and then dropped low, and then twisted and turned. It was sad, and then happy, and then soft and still before growing to an almost deafening volume.

As the girl played, her eyes regained their far-away look, like she was remembering something that had happened a long time ago. Slowly, the notes grew spread apart, and then they wound down to a gentle stop. Chad stared at the girl with confusion. She grabbed her music and stuffed it back into her pocket before facing her new friend again.

“The music said you were happy. And then you were sad. And then you were happy again.” The little boy tilted his head, almost like a bird – innocent and curious. “Why were you sad?”

The girl’s mind struggled to find a simple answer to his simple question. “I used to be sad because my daddy left me. That was a long time ago. I don’t remember much about it anymore. I’m happy now because I have a daddy and a mommy who love me very much.” The teenager studied the little boy’s tear-stained cheeks.

“Why were you crying?” she asked, in the same manner the child had asked her.

His forehead grew creased and his lips twisted into a frown. It was almost funny how serious he looked, but the girl didn’t laugh. “Because Tommy Blankley called my daddy a hobo.”

The girl raised her eyebrows. “Did he now?”

The boy nodded seriously, so seriously in fact that he almost fell off the piano bench. “Yes. But my daddy’s not a hobo. He’s a street musician,” Chad said in a proud tone. “And so I hit Tommy. And then Mrs. Summers told me to go to the principal’s office. She didn’t believe me that Tommy called daddy a name.”

The girl’s wise eyes examined the little boy’s, and she asked slowly, “Do you know what makes me feel better sometimes when I’m sad?”

“What?”

“Playing the piano. Making Music.”

Chad crossed his arms. “I can’t make music. I can’t read music.”

“You don’t need to be able to read music to play it,” the girl informed him. She glanced around the room for a moment, thinking. “Sit really still,” she said suddenly. “Listen.”
Chad uncrossed his arms and stuck out his neck, as if that would help his straining ears to hear. He didn’t hear anything at first, and was about to tell the girl so, when suddenly he heard the birds chirping outside. He struggled to turn around backwards on the bench to peek out the open window. There, he saw wind chimes, and as soon as he laid eyes on them, a lost gust of wind found its way to their metal pipes.

The girl watched him carefully, her small smile creeping back onto her lips. “What do you hear?” she whispered. He looked up at her, and then at the piano. One small finger reached out to the D key. He was afraid she would be mad, or tell him he was too little to touch the piano, but she smiled encouragingly and he cautiously pressed a note two keys to the right of the one he was pressing now.

“What else?” the girl asked, urging him on. Slowly, he began pressing more keys, and a halting, stuttering tune began to begin in that small, dusty, band room. “Good, good,” the girl murmured. “Keep playing that,” she said, and she reached out with experienced hands to the keys in front of her.

Deep, solemn notes began mixing with his high, cheery ones. The mixture was rich, and knowing that he helped create it gave Chad a content feeling, like letting the sun dry you after you swim, or biting into a chocolate bar. The simple melody he created was contrasted by her harmony, and the song began to swirl around in the air around them.

“Don’t worry about hitting a wrong note,” the girl said, after one of his fingers slipped. “Just keep playing. Stop thinking. Let your fingers play without your eyes. Let your heart play without your mind.” And soon, Chad stopped wondering how the tune would sound when he pressed certain keys; he found he already knew. His fingers wandered over the slick, smooth keys with purpose, and he liked the sound they made.

The minutes soared by, but eventually their heart-felt song shrank and slowly stopped. The girl and the boy stared at each other. Breaking the silence, the girl told Chad, “You got it in you, kid.”
“What?” Chad asked, alarmed that something was inside him.

She laughed. “Music.”

Chad stared at his hands, as if looking for some sign that she had seen. “My mommy says I’m too little to make music. My daddy teaches me in secret, though.”

“My dad used to teach me, too. Hey, will you promise me something?”

“What?” he asked, curious.

“Will you promise me that no matter what anyone tells you, you’ll still make music?” she requested, her kind eyes staring into his young face. He nodded solemnly. She smiled. “Good. I think you’ll be pretty good some day.”

“As good as you?” he asked in a hopeful tone.

She leaned closer to him and whispered as if confiding a secret to him. “Better than me.” He gasped. She laughed. The sound was nice to his little ears. “I think you should go to the principal’s office before you get into more trouble.”

Chad sighed and slid off the old piano bench. He walked over to the door slowly, criss-crossing his feet in a child-like waddle. “Hey, kid,” the teenager called after him. “What’s your name?”

He turned around and stated proudly, “Chad William Bent. What’s yours?”

“Denise Beasley,” she lied. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Will you come play here again soon?” he asked, hopefully.

Regret twisted the girl’s stomach. “Maybe,” she lied again. He smiled at her, revealing a hole where a tooth had recently fallen out. With a skip, he was out the door. The girl’s eyes focused on the door he had disappeared behind. “William Bent,” she whispered. Her father’s name. She stood up and walked over to the low, open window, brushing past the wind chimes and sliding into the bushes outside.

A few minutes later, Chad pulled his teacher by the hand into the old, abandoned music room. It was silent and empty now, save for the dusty instruments that had witnessed everything in the room only moments before.

“She was in here, I promise,” Chad insisted, running to the bench and peering under it as if to find his friend hiding underneath.

“Chad, there’s no one here. Now if you don’t come with me right now, you’ll be in even more trouble,” his teacher chided him. Chad wasn’t listening. At least, not to her. His eyes and ears were trained on the metal wind chimes swaying softly by the open window. They were creating a quiet, light tune, but there was no wind…