Calypso
~~~~~~~~~~~~
It always starts with a single note.
I take a deep breath, keeping my eyes closed, and set my fingers over the piano keys. Their cool faces are welcoming, like old friends. Slowly releasing my breath, I play. Music flows through me, flying off my fingertips, vanishing into the air. The melancholy tones lift, drift, build into a rush that gives me chills.
My smile unfurls in the quiet surrounded by song and burdened by whatever lies beyond the four walls of the Olympus College of Fine Arts’ theater room. The gentle lull of a morning breeze rushes into the moment. The touch of birdsong greets the progression. No arrangement is ever the same, even if the song is played on endless repeat, because no tune breathes into complete silence.
There is always a breath, a hush, a whisper. The world greeting music, an audience listening with enraptured awe, performers acting within the melody.
All the world’s a stage.
Some people aren’t fit for the spotlight.
Opening my eyes, I find the empty room basking in the slim early morning light that flows through the egress windows. Though the door connects directly outside, Olympus College of Fine Arts has the unfortunate circumstance of being built on and into a roll of hills. It makes first days for freshmen unbearable since the only thing worse than navigating a new college campus is navigating one up and down hills and stairs.
By the end of the year, we are all either athletes or failing attendance.
My fingers slow as the verse comes to a natural conclusion, then I puff a breath and lift my fingers to my kinky blond hair. Iruffle the fluff then I work on separating my hair into two equal poofs.
While I re-braid my hair, I stare at the notes etched into the sheet paper before me. Did it feelrightthis time? If it didn’t, can I blame the twitter of birds or the lack of an audience?
After all, I created this piece with the solemn hush of a packed theater in mind. That is as much a part of the song as all the notes strewn across the page.
Even if I’m not quite so delusional as to believe it could ever make it that far.
Miracles of that nature only happen once in a lifetime, and I’ve gone and used mine up.
Retrieving my hair clip off the bench beside me, I clasp my first long braid in place and start on the other. When both are done, I fling them over my shoulders, letting them slap against my waist, and reach for my glasses. The wide, dark frames open up a world beyond the bubble of the piano, and I can see the metal guards beyond the egress windows just as clearly as I can see the door on my left and the slew of student chairs half-circling ahead. Glancing over my shoulder at the clock above the whiteboard and Mr. D’plume’s desk, I wince.
I’m late.
Not late enough that anyone has intruded on my spare time and quiet, but late enough that my Stats professor will already be well into her lecture. Whether or not I make it to class at all depends solely on my mood. And after that song, my mood is melancholy and soft. It wants to wax poetic in English or look at obscure history. It does not want to deal with numbers unless they relate to the beats in a melody.
Math, I firmly believe, is for helping you sleep.
I rarely use it for anything else.
Packing up my music, I stretch, sluggish at the idea of going to statistics when I know half a dozen other more interestingclasses are available to sneak into. I’ve done it before, last year and all through high school. The professors either never caught me or never made a fuss about it if they did.
I’m somewhat intentionally plain and uninteresting, the kind of person who’s drawn to be a background character. Of all the colors in a pencil box, I am the stick that blends and softens and blurs. Unassuming to such an extent I’ve even been passed tests and quizzes during my gallivanting.
Smiling ruefully, I heave my backpack over my shoulder and head for the door.
If the internet was right when I looked up the answers to those tests, I need more help with my knowledge of color theory than with Statistics. All things considered, it’s the second week of school, and I already have almost all of next month’s busy work for math finished in my bag while I can hardly draw a stick figure.
“Good thing you’re not an art major, Calypso,” I mutter, and step out into the blinding Monday sun.
Lex
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A crisp note flying off a piano makes me stop short on my way past Mr. D’plume’s theater classroom. As more of the melody trickles into place, I turn my attention to the solid door.
Campus is vacant this early, well before most classes even start. Only a spattering of professors getting ready for lectures and a handful of stressed students in work-study programs meander the grounds.
No one is supposed to be in the theater classroom right now, not even Mr. D’plume.
