Special Tutoring

Salut De Amour

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[German]

liebing : darling
Khan
Tschüß: see you

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The alarm clock sounded.

"Time to flip." Both Amy and I turned over on the beach mats that we had set out on the lawn outside my house. Even though we had driver's licences, both of us were too broke to afford the fuel to drive to the nearest beach, and so had to rely on the resources available. We could hear Ethan's violin playing from where we were suntanning.

"He's forever playing that song," I grumbled. Oops. I hastily dropped my sunhat over my face, hoping that Amy didn't hear me.

"Why do you care?" she mumbled, eyes closed. Her face wore her usual expression of being happy and at peace with the world. I wished I had half her peace of mind.

"Hmm, it is so annoying after a while." I tried my best to say the first excuse I could think of as calmly and nonchalantly as possible, so as to not pique her interest. "He hardly plays anything else."

"Maybe it has deep significant meaning to him. He plays it very well." Amy sat up and narrowed her eyes as she strained to listen. She shrugged her shoulders, falling back onto her mat. "I can't tell what it is either, except it isn't a contemporary song."

Duh.

Amy suddenly sat up.

"Wait a second, we can Shazam that song!"

"What?" I sat up too, watching her as she rummaged through her canvas bag.

Amy produced her iPhone with a "ta-da!" and fingered rapidly to the application she was referring to. Getting to her feet, she moved to the hedge separating our and Mrs Schmidt's garden, and stretched her arm upwards.

After a while, she came back, and plonked herself on my mat.

"According to Shazam, it's Salut de Amour."

"Salut de Amour?" I mumbled, storing the name away in the recesses of my brain for later digestion.

"Yup, so now maybe you can get closer to him, you know, by saying, I like your playing Salut de Amour. He will be like, oh my god Mai, you are so erudite. How did I not notice how sexy you are. Want to date?" Amy mimicked an obviously terrible impression of Ethan's accent, sending both of us into peals of laughter.

"No! No! He will be like, oh Mai, ve vill make sweet beautiful children together. Then we can all play Salut de Amour after dinner," I laughed.

Amy looked at me curiously.

"Children? Aren't you thinking a little too ahead of yourself? He barely notices us as it is."

I was going to refute her statement, when I remembered that I hadn't told her about what happened. I also remembered that what Ethan and I had was a "mutually beneficial agreement". Yeah, what was I thinking? Major Sigh.

"I have a healthy imagination, what can I say?" I shrugged my shoulders."So I heard that Sam Rhodes invited you to the Homecoming Dance, what are you going to wear?"

And with that, I effectively turned the conversation to the wonders of the yummy Sam Rhodes, our high school quarterback. But between you and me, after experiencing a man like Ethan, Sam Rhodes and those immature derps in our high school are so meh.

Just then, Ethan ran past in his jogging shorts. I was so engrossed in analyzing the effects of wearing a Herve Leger bandage dress (unlike my Mom, Amy's Mom is willing to roll out the scrilla. I will be wearing the most boring spaghetti strap LBD, which Qin wore for her prom. I wouldn't be surprised if Mom had worn it for hers *roll eyes*) on an exalted date like Sam Rhodes (yes, he has that much swag in our tiny high school community that we utter his name in its entirety), that I had not noticed that Ethan had stopped playing his violin.