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Schroeder Felton’s dad dies four days before Beethoven’s 209th birthday.
That puts his death forty-six days before Mozart’s 225th, ninety-nine days before Bach’s 295th, and thirty-three days before Schroeder’s ninth.
A dead father is a real funny thing, once the casket is closed and the mourners are gone and the rest of the world picks its feet up and starts moving again. A real funny thing, that’s what Schroeder would call it, if his tongue weren’t quite so heavy all the time and his fingers didn’t sit so numbly wherever he put them, like half the strength in them went in the ground with his dad.
Mrs. Felton holds what must be the fortitude of fifteen women within her, the way she lets this big city full of big people doing big things move through her as she plans a funeral, makes the phone calls, and hums quietly to herself over pot over pot of mac n cheese because somehow she just knows it’s the only thing Schroeder will be able to stomach.
She’s had months to prepare herself, and maybe that is how she keeps her chin up as friends of the virtuoso offer their condolences in wave after wave before, inevitably, they too are swept up in the wave that is a million feet pounding pavement and the calls stop completely.
Tears don’t come where her son can see them, not for Kathleen Felton, not until she’s in her own bed that still smells like her husband if she pretends and she has a hand to her mouth, muffling the sobs that feel like they’re wrenching themselves from the missing cavity in her chest, all while the horns continue honking and the lamp posts shine on from the street down below.
There are angels on her shoulders but this city moves fast, faster, too fast for the slow march that is grief for a freshly-turned-nine-year-old boy.
(For this freshly-turned-thirty-one-year-old girl.)
So, it’s not exactly a surprise, when Kathleen takes Schroeder’s hand three months into this life spent tiptoeing around an empty baby grand piano against the living room wall and says, “I’ve been thinking, sweetheart. About moving us back home.”
She looks at him as she says it, as a million memories lodge themselves in her throat and she swallows them down, tucks them away. As she tries to remember being nine, and can’t, and wonders what that means for her son’s memories of a father in the ground.
“Home?” Schroeder asks, looking up at her with those dull-looking eyes, because one word seems to be all he needs, these days.
“Hennepin,” she tells him. “Where I grew up.” She grasps his hands a little tighter. “We’d be closer to Grandpa. If we get the apartment ready in time, you could start school with the rest of the fourth graders.”
Schroeder thinks about it, chokes on it, lets the reality of what they’d really be leaving settle onto narrow, nine-year-old shoulders.
“Dad’s here,” he says, voice almost cracking with it, but not quite.
They’ve only been twice, to the cemetery. Schroeder thinks he’d like to go more often, maybe, but it makes his mom’s face crumple and her breathing get weird and then she holds his hand too tightly and Schroeder has to shake her off to protect his fingers.
“A virtuoso’s hands are his most valuable asset,” his dad used to say, with a wink and laugh and probably other things that Schroeder’s already forgetting, because he’s nine and his dad is dead and it’s such a funny thing, a dead father.
His mom says, “I know,” because she does, because in this haze of what it means to be nine with all the music disappeared from his head, Schroeder’s just now beginning to realize that a dead husband must be a pretty funny thing, too. “But we’ll be back during Christmas, when we visit your aunt, yeah?”
She says it softly. She brushes the hair from his forehead.
Schroeder looks down at his mom’s hand in his. Tries to squeeze it with his own numb, heavy fingers.
Then he takes a very, very deep breath.
And says:
“Okay.”
***
Their house in Hennepin is bigger than their apartment had been. It belonged to a grandma, and that grandma died, and something about the ghost in the walls makes Schroeder feel more at home in his little twin bed and mostly-empty room.
He doesn’t tell his mom that part. She’s still worried about the fact that he hasn’t touched the piano since his dad’s casket closed with a thunk that’s still bouncing around in Schroeder’s head like a bass drum, and when she asks why all he can do is shrug.
He’s tried to sit down and play. Even just one scale. Even the Mary Had a Little Lamb warm-up he’s had memorized since he was five years old.
The music just won’t come.
So his mom worries, and Schroeder’s chest aches even as weeks go by and his tongue seems to slowly un-swell, making way for words that are harsher than he remembers them being, more jagged with this hole in his chest that is beginning to scar over but is still so there, so huge in its power to mold him into this new version of the new kid from the city, the boy with no father, the prodigy who can’t even find it in himself to play a simple scale.
His mom peeks her head into his new bedroom, only frowning a bit when she sees he still hasn’t finished unpacking and quickly masking it with a lilt of, “Mrs. Plepler next door told me some of the kids are putting together a baseball game.”
“Good for them,” Schroeder says, crossly. The shelf in his new room isn’t quite wide enough for last year’s recital plaque and the picture of him and his dad at the symphony two summers ago, and for the past ten minutes he’s been trying in vain to make the two stand up straight.
He can’t explain why it’s so important the both of them stay together. He just knows that it is.
Quietly, his mom crosses the room, takes the two picture frames, and arranges them so they’re angled inward on the shelf. The extra space lets them both fit, without either hanging over the side.
She turns, and kisses him on the forehead. Then she pats his face, gently, as she gets to her feet. “Go play.”
“I don’t--”
“Schroeder.”
Schroeder realizes she isn’t asking. He thinks about arguing for all of thirty seconds.
“Fine,” he mutters. “But if they’re jerks, I’m coming home.”
His mom looks kind of tired, Schroeder notices. His chest aches again, but not enough to regret saying it. Not enough to retcon his disinterest in a group of kids from the suburbs, his disinterest in anything, anything other than his desire to just stew and stew and stew.
“I’ll take it,” his mom says.
***
“It’s a joke, is what it is,” a blond-haired kid is yelling at a girl with more freckles than Schroeder can count. “You’re making up rules!”
“You’re making my people run,” the freckled, sandy-haired girl shouts back, just as heated if not more so. “They’re going to get tired out! Just because you couldn’t find a catcher--”
“I had a catcher. You poached him!”
“All’s fair in love and war,” the girl says, stoutly. She shifts her weight on the pitcher’s mound so her hands are on her hips.
“C’mon Patty,” another kid calls from first base. “They’re down by four. It’s not gonna matter!”
That sets off the blond kid, who immediately starts shouting again.
There is bright sun and green grass and Schroeder’s still getting used to this, these big open spaces and quiet streets and cookie-cutter houses, and so when he asks “What’s going on?” in a bemused sort of way it’s not entirely his fault, this first foray into this group of dusty, underage ball-players.
The boy to his left doesn’t even double-take a new, random kid letting himself into their baseball game. He just sighs in a way that seems too weary for what must only be around four feet of stringy-haired second-grader. “We’re losing.”
“Because they’re cheaters,” another girl pipes up. She’s got the bluest eyes Schroeder’s ever seen. “Dirty rotten cheaters.” She, unlike the other boy, looks Schroeder up and down, something sparkling in her expression as those eyes catch on his a-little-too-long hair. “Hey, it’s the new kid. What’s your name, new kid?”
And Schroeder, with his chest full of scars and his working, unswollen tongue, crosses his arms and says, almost without thinking about it, “none of your business.”
The girl narrows her eyes. “Do you want to play or not?”
“Not,” Schroeder shrugs. “Baseball’s dangerous. It can break your fingers.”
“It’s true,” the other boy nods, still not removing his eyes from the game. “America’s most barbaric pastime.”
“Hey,” the girl snaps her fingers, like a lightbulb’s hit. “You moved into Ms. Raymond’s house, yeah? Our mom said you have a weird name. Like-- Chowder.”
“Schroeder,” Schroeder corrects, automatically. Understanding hits. He scowls. “Hey.”
The girl grins her triumph, holding out her hand as if to shake his. “Lucy van Pelt. Prettiest girl at the ballpark.”
Oh, brother.
Schroeder gives her hand a disinterested look. Unperturbed, she drops it. “This is my stupid brother, Linus.”
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid,” the kid says. “They are made stupid by education.” He looks at Schroeder. “Bertrand Russell.”
Okay, Schroeder thinks. Sure.
Before Lucy or Linus can say anything else, the blond kid at the pitcher’s mound starts barking orders. “Linus!” he calls. “Second base! No blanket!”
Immediately, Linus begins jogging out onto the diamond. “Sure thing, Captain!”
“Lucy!” The kid calls. “Outfield!”
“No!” she yells back, immediately. “I want to be able to see the cute new catcher!”
“Outfield!” the kid on the mound repeats. “And you’d better get to it, or I’ll slug you!”
“You can’t hit a girl!”
“Try me, van Pelt!”
The girl huffs. “Fine!” She turns back to Schroeder. “Gotta go. Feel free to clap when I catch the game-winning goal.” Then she winks at him, before turning away. Actually, honestly winks.
Oh, brother.
“And-- you!” The kid at the mound trails off, as he considers Schroeder. After another moment of thought, he leaves the mound to jog over to where Schroeder’s standing. He’s a little sweaty, switching his cap to face backwards on his head as he goes so that he can most efficiently assess his newest prospect.
“Who are you?” he demands. “Are you the new kid?”
“Guess so,” Schroeder shrugs. “We moved into Mrs. Raymond’s house. My--”
“Right,” the kid cuts him off before he gets to his name. “What do you play?”
“C’mon, Chuck!” the sandy-haired girl calls from home plate. “Put a mitt on him and stick him in the middle or something! We’re burning daylight!”
“Give me a minute!” the kid whose name must be Chuck calls back. He turns back to Schroeder, looking mildly desperate. “You ever played catcher? We could sure use a catcher.”
Schroeder nods once, so fascinated by this group of insane kids he’s forgotten that he’s completely uninterested in joining their gladiator ring. “Once or twice. Just in school.”
“Good,” Chuck nods. He points to the left. “There should be gear in that chest.” He makes a sign with his hands. “This is curveball.” Another sign. “This is fast. We’ll just start with those two, because they’re the only two I can throw.” He finishes the sentence looking mildly sheepish. “Got it?”
“Um,” Schroeder says.
“Good,” Chuck says again. And then he’s jogging back to the mound, already yelling at the girl with the blue eyes again to “Stay where you are, Lucy, good grief!”
Schroeder walks over to the chest of equipment, because it feels like the thing to do. The box is freestanding, meaning the kids must lug it out here every time they want to play.
“C’mon, new kid!” the sandy-haired girl calls again, looking annoyed.
Schroeder considers the mask in his hands for a moment. He wonders if his dad would’ve wanted him playing catcher. Putting his hands on the line like that. It gets caught in his throat for a minute, the fact that he’ll never know.
He glances back at the faces waiting on the diamond. Chuck gives him a thumbs up from where he’s perched on the pitcher’s mound, surrounded by the greenest grass Schroeder’s ever seen because the real truth of the matter is, he’s never seen much grass in the first place.
Swallowing the ache, Schroeder secures the mask over his face.
It fits perfectly.
***
They don’t win.
That’s why it’s so strange, when the blond kid in charge whoops his way off the mound as the game ends. He hugs Linus. He hugs a girl with red, curly hair. He hugs Schroeder, who pats his back in a bemused sort of way.
“Sixteen to thirteen!” he caws brightly, even pulling a girl with glasses from the other team into a hug. “We only lost by three!”
“Good ol’ Charlie Brown,” Linus says, fondly. “Now there’s an example of lemons out of lemonade.”
“He’ll get existential about it soon,” Lucy says, certainly. “But not before he buys everyone sodas.”
“Charlie Brown?” Schroeder asks. “Huh. I thought it was Chuck.”
Lucy rolls her eyes. “I know they say the cute ones are dumb, but I hoped you’d be different, sweet stuff.”
She’s really something, this Lucy van Pelt. Quick with the jabs, quicker with the eyerolls. She hasn’t stopped talking since Charlie Brown sent her to the outfield, something Schroeder has quickly deduced to probably be for personal sanity reasons, since she didn’t touch a single ball all game.
“Lucy,” Linus chides. “Be nice.” He turns to Schroeder. “Sorry about her.”
“For her calling me cute? Or dumb?” Schroeder asks, deadpan.
“Let’s say it’s both,” Charlie Brown says, appearing suddenly behind Linus and Schroeder and putting his arms around both their necks to squeeze in between them. “That’s just Lucy for you, new kid. Sodas on me?”
Something about his excitement is infectious. Schroeder finds himself saying sure, I guess. And then he finds himself being shuffled down the street toward the nearest diner, and then he finds himself squished into a booth between Charlie Brown and a kid named Franklin as the two teams leave the game behind and mingle into a regular group of fourth-graders.
And then he has a soda in his hand.
And Schroeder keeps waiting, as Patty and the girl with the glasses begin arguing about some summer reading list, or as Lucy and Charlie Brown take turns trying to land scrunched-up straw wrappers in Linus’s drink, or as Franklin drags him into a discussion about his Grandpa’s new car, for the other shoe to drop.
He waits for it to all crash down, like every other happy moment has since his dad went in the ground. Like when he watches TV, and suddenly the kid’s program changes to his dad’s favorite newscaster, and his chest starts hurting. Or when he hears a clip of Sonata No. 29 and it brings unexplained tears to his eyes.
Schroeder waits. And waits.
And all he finds is warmth and laughter and the clink of quarters as a scowling teenager delivers more sodas to their overstuffed, too-loud booth.
***
The tears don’t come until Schroeder gets home, wrapped in his mom’s arms and unable to explain the problem.
No, the kids weren’t mean. They were great, actually. He hopes some of them are in his class.
No, he’s not hungry.
No, he doesn’t know how to tell her what’s wrong.
Because how do you explain the betrayal and hurt of what it means to go out and have a good time, even though your father is dead?
***
“I’ve got it,” Charlie Brown says to Schroeder, Lucy, and Frieda, setting his lunch tray down on the table with a clunk . “I’ll invite her to the Hennepin High football game.”
“She hates football.” Lucy doesn’t even look up from her magazine. “I heard her telling Violet.”
“No you didn’t,” Schroeder rolls his eyes. “Violet’s got the flu.”
“You didn’t notice when I got the flu,” Lucy immediately frowns, suddenly alert. Her blue eyes flash. “I had the flu two weeks ago, and you didn’t even call.”
“Maybe because you hate football,” Charlie Brown cuts in, as Schroeder rolls his eyes again. He thinks for a moment. “I’ll bring Snoopy. Girls love dogs.”
“You’re hopeless,” Frieda sighs, with a look at Schroeder, who just snorts a little.
Good ol’ Charlie Brown.
Weirdly, Schroeder’s new school is a lot like his old school. Just-- smaller. And somehow full of more friends. The trick to Hennepin Elementary, it seems, is joining a baseball team. Everything else just sort of follows.
There’s also the fact that none of them know about his dad’s cancer, which helps. In the months before his dad had finally lost his fight, Schroeder couldn’t walk down the hall of his old elementary without a million whispers following him, or teachers giving him little consoling pats on the shoulder. He supposes they all meant to be comforting, but it just felt like a-- spotlight.
And not the kind he’d always dreamed of.
“You should talk to Linus,” he offers. He’s getting better at letting the memories steamroll him and then just popping back up again, ten months removed from the last time he’d seen his dad smile. “With how Sally’s been lately, and all.”
Linus. Sally. Frieda. Even Snoopy. All names that Schroeder has learned, all new pieces in the puzzle that is Hennepin and what it means to live in the after and new. He’s doing it badly, he’s pretty sure, being a friend. He’s too quiet, most days. Too mean sometimes, when he does decide to speak.
But he’s trying.
“Good grief,” Charlie Brown mutters to his plate of cafeteria meatloaf. Why is it always meatloaf? “Don’t remind me.”
“Some boys would be grateful to have a pretty girl pining and planning to marry them,” Lucy informs them all, turning the page in the magazine. “Some boys appreciate the privilege of a pretty girl wanting to hold their hand.”
“Well,” Schroeder says, flatly, “some boys have brains.”
Lucy looks up from her magazine to glare at him. Schroeder squints right back.
“So,” Charlie Brown addresses the table at large, hopefully. “Football game?”
“Blockheads,” Lucy shakes her head, turning back to her magazine. “The whole lot of you.”
***
Here’s the thing about Lucy van Pelt:
She is, without a doubt, the most annoying person Schroeder has ever met.
She’s vain and sarcastic, smart and stuck-up about it, and so caught up in what others think that he wonders how she manages, keeping all those opinions neatly filed and organized in her brain.
She’s also obsessed with him, though Schroeder’s beginning to get a creeping suspicion she’s more interested in pushing his buttons than she is in him as an actual person.
It’s impossible to avoid Lucy completely, given that she and Linus spend so much time outside their house together that in order to do so he’d have to cut Linus out, too, and Schroeder is wholly uninterested in losing a friend over something as silly as an unrequited crush.
That doesn’t mean the sight of that raven-dark hair coming flouncing around the corner doesn’t make his eyes roll as hard as Peppermint Patty’s fastball.
“Can you stop following me?” he snaps at her, one after-school stroll through the halls on a day he’s feeling particularly mixed-up inside.
“I’m not following you,” she retorts. “You’re the one following me.” Then she skips past him, grabbing the pencil he’d won in the Christmas Raffle out of his hand as she heads directly into the music room.
“I’m not-- Lucy!” Schroeder follows after her, exasperation in his voice, only to have his breath immediately knocked out from under at the sheer beauty surrounding him.
“Whoa,” he murmurs, spinning in a slow circle to take in the three pianos lining the left wall and the millions of instruments and music stands along the back shelves.
Lucy raises an eyebrow at him, pencil held in her left hand. “Never seen a trumpet before, sweet stuff?”
Schroeder isn’t listening. He crosses the room in a few steps, setting his backpack on the ground at the base of one of the pianos as he goes. Thoughtlessly, he runs a finger across the keys. Feels the smooth coolness of them against his skin.
But he doesn’t sit, doesn’t press.
It still hurts too much.
“You have to push it, genius,” he hears Lucy say, from somewhere behind him. “That’s how pianos work.”
He ignores her, and she huffs out a breath. And then, without warning--
A hand on his, pressing down until the key gives beneath it. D above middle C, echoing clear and mellow through the music room.
Schroeder jerks his hand back as if burned, accidentally elbowing Lucy in the process.
“Ow,” she says, petulantly.
The air in the room has disappeared, the sound of the note reverberating against the brick walls, against the music stands, against Schroeder’s skull.
His heart is pounding. His face is warm. He’s worried he’s going to be sick.
“Excuse me,” he mumbles, and then he’s stumbling out of the music room, through the hallway, around the nearest corner.
Out of sight of anyone but an unlucky school custodian, Schroeder presses his forehead into the cool brick of the schoolhouse wall, trying to steady his breathing.
This is called an arpeggio, his dad says, his large hands over Schroeder’s much smaller ones.
That was beautiful, his dad praises, after a five-year-old’s clumsy fingers finally find their way around Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Play for me, his dad asks gently, around the weird tube in his nose. Promise you’ll keep playing for me, Schroeder.
Schroeder takes a long, shuddering gasp, using the wall to help him sink to his knees and turn, hugging them to his chest. He’s worried his eyes might be wet. He’s more worried that they might not be.
Today is four days before Beethoven’s 210th birthday, after all.
In that hallway, in that school, Schroeder Felton is nine years old, and for the first time, he’s learning the significance of an anniversary.
Schroeder Felton is nine years old, and he’s choking on the realization that no matter what happens, he can never go back.
Schroeder Felton is nine years old, and he hasn’t touched a piano since his dad’s funeral until right this very moment , and like a baby, he’s losing his marbles in the hallway about it.
And that’s what gets his breathing to even out, fingers splayed wide against the cool brick wall, brain running memories over and through, over and through, over and through. That’s what makes him clench his teeth hard enough to crack, let’s him focus on the feeling of it, gives his panic a purpose that can then be siphoned by loosening his jaw, exhaling the tightness out through his lips.
Schroeder Felton is not a baby. He will gather his marbles back up from this hallway through sheer willpower, because the funny thing about having a dead father is that picking yourself up off the floor in the weeks, months, years that follow becomes a practicable, repeatable skill.
So Schroeder practices. And Schroeder repeats.
And when he finally finds it in him to open his eyes past the ache in his chest? The first thing he sees are Lucy van Pelt’s shiny black Mary Janes.
Good grief.
“Um,” Lucy swallows, holding his pencil out to him and wearing an expression that he’s never seen on her before, “I’m sorry, Schroeder. I, I didn’t mean to be a bully. I just--” she trails off, seemingly lost for words.
The great Lucy van Pelt. Rendered speechless at the sight of him.
And they said it couldn’t be done.
“It’s alright, Luce,” Schroeder sighs, getting shakily to his feet. “Not your fault. It’s been a strange day.” He looks around for his backpack, then remembers he left it in the music room. “I’ve gotta grab my bag.”
To his chagrin, Lucy follows after him, albeit giving him a little wider berth than before. She just looks at him carefully out of the corner of her eye, as if worried he’s going to break down again.
Rats. With her mouth, he’s going to end up having to explain his dead-as-a-doornail dad to every kid at school. He hopes Charlie Brown won’t kick him off the baseball team, when he hears the story of his batteryman going to pieces all because of one lousy note on the piano.
He takes a deep breath before entering the music room again. Lucy looks at him curiously.
Once again facing down the innocently gleaming piano, Schroeder gets another lump in his throat.
And then, for some reason, he sits down on the bench.
“Do you play?” His voice is scratchy.
Lucy shakes her head, putting her elbow on the top of the piano and resting her chin on it so she’s looking down at him. “My mother tried to make me, but I just played badly until she let me quit. It didn’t work until I finally made Rerun cry from banging so loudly.” She makes a face. “First thing one of my brothers have been good for.”
“Linus is alright,” Schroeder says, fairly. His heart is just about pounding, now, as he sets his fingers on the keys. Something about arguing with Lucy makes it easier, like if his brain is half-distracted, he can rely on the muscle memory of his fingers.
He just hopes it’s still there, all these months later.
Because Schroerer has to do this, he’s suddenly and absolutely certain. And it has to be today, because if it’s not today, it might be never.
Schroeder Felton made a promise, one year and three days ago. And somehow, Lucy van Pelt is going to help him keep it.
“Linus is a blockhead,” Lucy says, stoutly. “Everyone thinks he’s perfect, but he can’t even watch Rerun for more than an hour without losing him.”
Schroeder holds his breath.
And then he presses down on D.
There’s a beat. It echoes, echoes, echoes.
He forces his thumb to hit the C.
The next breath is a little easier.
“And, think about it,” Lucy is saying, “his best friend is Charlie Brown. And that has to say something about his general sanity , doesn’t it?”
C again. D. E. Thumb under to F. Schroeder plays the whole scale. More air squeezes into his lungs.
“Charlie Brown’s a good kid,” the half of him still aware of Lucy’s annoying presence argues. “He lets you keep playing on the baseball team, even though you always end up picking dandelions or falling asleep.”
He gets his thumbs back to middle C.
“You think I want to be on that stupid team?” Lucy scoffs. “Without me, Charlie Brown wouldn't have enough players. He practically begged me to come be the Outfield Queen. Once, he traded me to Peppermint Patty, but had to ask for me back because they missed me so much.”
“Mm,” Schroeder hums, staring at the keys.
E, D, C, D, E, E, E, his dad sings, soft in his ear. Play it with me, Schroeder. E, D, C, D--
“Hey,” Lucy brightens. “I know that one.” She starts to hum, then sing along with him. “Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb--”
Schroeder plays the warm-up all the way through. Then he does it again. And again. There’s something big in his chest, something warm and sharp and aching all at once, and all he knows is that it’s the right feeling for this day and this moment, here in the Hennepin Elementary School Music Room. By the third playthrough, Lucy has stopped singing.
“Schroeder?” she says, sounding uncharacteristically timid again. “Are you alright?”
Schroeder laughs, and that’s when he realizes he’s crying again.
“Never better, Lucy van Pelt.”
***
He plays every song he can remember, while Lucy sits there leaning against the piano like she’s scared to leave him alone and chattering about a million people and events and stories Schroeder couldn’t even keep straight if he tried.
He plays Für Elise. What he can remember of Symphony No. 5. Most of Waltz in A minor-- all arranged by his dad to be simple enough for a six, seven, eight-year-old’s growing fingers.
“You’re pretty good,” Lucy comments, when Schroeder finally finds it in himself to bid the piano goodbye and the two of them begin making their way home. Coming from her, the compliment is like telling someone they’re the next Beethoven. She looks at him all curious-like. “How come you’ve never played at church before?”
Schroeder considers her, frowning. “If I tell you, do you promise to keep your trap shut about it?”
Lucy looks even more intrigued, smile going all conspiratorial. “It’s a secret? Schroeder, you rascal.”
Schroeder just shrugs. “You have to promise.”
“Fine,” Lucy announces, reaching out to stop him on the sidewalk. Before Schroeder figures out what she’s doing, she’s got his hand in hers. “I promise,” she says, interlocking their pinkies. “Your freaky piano-prodigy secret is safe with me, Schroeder Felton.”
Schroeder quickly drops her hand, cheeks reddening. What if Charlie Brown or Franklin or someone drove by and saw?
“Um,” he starts, to get them moving again, “My dad taught me to play the piano. But he-- died. Last Christmas.” He shrugs, like the whole thing is no big deal rather than the most singularly defining moment of his nine-almost-ten years of life.
Lucy’s eyes are round as dinner plates, but she doesn’t stop walking. “Your dad?” she says. “He’s dead?”
“As a doornail,” Schroeder confirms. It’s easier to be blunt about it, he’s found. “I watched them put dirt on his casket and everything.”
“Is that why you don’t like playing anymore?” Lucy catches onto the whole crapshow of an afternoon rather quickly, for a girl as self-absorbed as she is. She sounds intrigued by the premise of a boy with a dead father. “It makes you sad?”
“It did,” Schroeder shrugs. “I think it might be a little better, now.”
“Oh,” Lucy says, quietly. For what feels like the millionth time that afternoon, she seems momentarily, impossibly speechless. “Well, I won’t tell anyone. Not even Rerun. You can trust me.”
So Schroeder just says, feeling a little tired from his jumps between peaks and valleys of adrenaline all afternoon, “Thanks, Lucy.”
And the weird thing is, he’s pretty sure he means it.
***
The very moment Schroeder gets home, he drops his backpack and takes a seat on the bench facing the baby grand piano in the living room-- the one that hasn’t been touched since its master’s fingers got too shaky to do the keys justice but was carted to Hennepin anyway, because it’s the biggest piece of his father that Schroeder and his mom have left.
The sound of Schroeder’s playing echoes and swells through all the empty places in their ghost-filled home, like a warm summer breeze pooling in cold pockets of mid-December snow and settling there, a gentle reminder of the sun.
Schroeder plays until his fingers feel like they’re going to fall off, and pretends he doesn’t see his mom wiping hastily at her eyes as she goes to prep that night’s meatloaf.
And when he gets his thumbs back to middle C and flips the sheet music back to the beginning, his chest hurts in a way that makes sense.
In fact, Schroeder wouldn’t want it any other way.