Beyond The Coral (A Luberto Story)

Chapter 12- The Music Man

Alberto was still recovering from the whole fiasco with the cooking class, but he now had to deal with the problem of finding a new class he would be interested in taking. What made it harder was that he had no idea where anything in the school was.

As he reached the end of a hallway, he decided to take the stairs up to the second floor. Despite having fewer students, the second floor was still busy and full of potential rooms for Alberto to investigate. Alberto decided to just go room by room to see if anything interested him in the slightest.

First, a horde of students stood around a door that was labeled Psychology.

Definitely no, Alberto thought. He wasn't even sure what 'Psychology' was, nor did he know how to pronounce it.

A second door on the opposite side of the hallway was labeled Sewing. Inside was a class full of people, all standing around a teacher making something with a sewing machine.

Alberto winced in discomfort. Back in Portorosso, Alberto once tried to knit Machiavelli a 'cat sweater.' That only ended in a terrible mess of wool and lots of new scratches across his face.

Another door a few rooms down read Genova History. The classroom also had a decent amount of students inside. But Alberto already knew his answer was going to be 'no.' He already had to take a history class; why would he voluntarily take another?

Alberto wasn't having much luck with the classes near the front of the hall, so he decided to check out the classes near the other end of the hall. They looked much emptier, anyway.

As he approached the end of the hall, Alberto heard a faint sound coming from one classroom in the corner that progressively got louder as he moved closer. Eventually, Alberto could distinguish the sound upon reaching the door of the classroom. It was very clearly someone playing the guitar. At least, Alberto assumed it was. He vividly remembered a man named Tomasso, one of Massimo's fishermen friends, playing the guitar from time to time in Portorosso. In the mornings before going to catch a big haul, he would sometimes play old Italian love songs in the town square, right in front of the gelato shop. It was one thing that Alberto could remember so easily, particularly because it always fascinated Alberto. He never spoke personally to Tomasso, nor did he ever try to ask questions about the music he was singing. But Alberto always listened from a distance, picking up an appreciation for simple, good-feel music that would sit in the back of his mind.

Alberto looked at the door and read the class name: Music Appreciation. It sounded vague; was it a music playing class, a music listening class, or both? Alberto wasn't sure, and he wasn't able to tell since no students were in the room. Unlike the previous classrooms, the music room was dead empty, all except for one teacher sitting at their desk, holding a guitar and playing an unfamiliar, yet enriching melody.

The teacher was a man with dark, olive skin and a pair of circular-rimmed glasses. He had short, curly brown hair with a matching beard. He also wore a blue plaid shirt with faded blue jeans and a pair of brown leather shoes. Unlike some teachers Alberto had seen throughout the day, the man was dressed very casual, which almost reminded him of something a student would wear instead. It didn't seem like the man had noticed Alberto standing in the doorframe, listening to the man playing his song.

It seemed like the man was in a different world, not because he was distracted, but rather because he was being entranced by his music. He was focussed on something that seemed otherworldly. His eyes stared at seemingly nothing, and his body swayed ever so slightly to the relaxed tempo of the song. The song was soft spoken and played in a minor key, feeling neither sad nor happy. It rather gave off a feeling of nostalgia and yearning for the past, something that Alberto seemed to connect to. Alberto was jolted back into the past as he remembered his days in Portorosso, listening to the love songs of Tomasso as the waves of the sea swayed against the sand and the sun warmly hugged his face.