Blood, Sweat, and Schradieck

Chapter Eight - Alyss

The Paganini is giving Alyss trouble. Again.

Alyss lowers her violin and glares at the sheet music on her stand, although part of her knows it's ridiculous and it's not the poor sheet music's fault. She's been in this practice room for nearly three hours and she refuses to leave before conquering this stupid variation. Anything less than that would be admitting to defeat, and Alyss hates to lose.

Still glowering, she tucks her violin under her chin and begins the variation again, at one-quarter the original tempo. It's the ninth variation of the twenty-fourth caprice - the left-hand pizzicato one - and she can't get some of the fourth-finger pizzicati to sound.

She can't even think with the bow right now, so she just sets it down and turns the few bowstrokes into right-hand pizzicati. After a few minutes, nothing else is working, so she isolates the first fourth-finger pizzicato and plays it over and over, trying to get it to sound consistently.

After several minutes of this practice, she exhales in frustration. It's sounding about half the time now, and she's tried everything she can think of. Sighing, she sets her violin down and reaches into her bag for her practice notebook. She flips through all the notes she's taken from her lessons. Maybe there's a gem of wisdom from Mrs. DuLacy in there somewhere that will save her life.

No such luck. Petulantly, Alyss slams her practice notebook shut and tosses it across the room in a rare fit of anger. 

She's at her wit's end, and the logical part of her know that practicing when she's like this will be completely useless. At the very least, she needs to work on something else.

So Alyss circles the offending left-hand pizzicati so she'll remember to ask Mrs. DuLacy about them at her lesson later in the afternoon, and reaches for her Bach partita.

It's a week and a half until Nationals, and Alyss has never been so nervous about a competition in her life. She tries to stick to the schedule Mrs. DuLacy helped her create, but she still ends up in a practice room during her scant free-time hours or when she can't sleep. 

At least the Redmont Conservatory contingent doesn't have to travel, she reflects idly as she practices a tricky string-crossing passage in the Bach. Nationals this year are in Araluen City, and they'll be held at the historic opera house barely twenty minutes from the Conservatory. 

Part of what makes her nervous is, there are so many other school entering representatives. There are at least two other major music schools Alyss knows of in Araluen City alone, and most of the major fiefs have their own schools as well. It will be stiff competition.

Also, Alyss feels woefully underprepared. She's trying to crack down on her practicing, but something still seems off. Her intonation, which has been wonderful ever since the competition preliminaries, has inexplicably started to slip. She's had trouble with the left-hand pizzicati in the Paganini before, but never to this extent, and she'd at least been able to make them sound.

She doesn't know what's wrong, but she doesn't like it. Part of her wonders if maybe, this was her peak. If it's only downhill from here on. If maybe, she's not cut out to be a violinist. And this thought hurts.

She's finally got the string crossings to a place where she can control them, and her tone is surprisingly good, so she goes back to the Paganini. She's determined to at least make a little progress, and her mind has benefited from taking a break. She attacks the Paganini again.

Alyss figures out that she can get the pizzicati to sound if she uses much more force with her fourth finger than she originally thought necessary. The result seems a bit spastic and explosive, but at least it's sounding. She figures she can fine-tune it later, and begins to bring the variation back up to speed.

Finally, she's satisfied. She decides to run through it one more time, just to reassure herself it wasn't a fluke. There's something very satisfying about a solved problem, she thinks smugly to herself as her fingers fly across the fingerboard, all of the pizzicati sounding evenly and clearly.

Suddenly, the music breaks off as a stabbing pain runs down Alyss's left wrist. She gasps in pain, almost dropping her violin in shock. She manages to catch it and set it down with her shaking right hand, before sinking to the floor to examine her left wrist.

The pain is gone as quickly as it came, and Alyss can't see anything abnormal with her wrist. She half-wonders if she imagined it, but she dismisses that thought. No, the pain is too fresh in her memory for it to have been a figment of her imagination.

But everything seems to be working fine now. Alyss decides if it happens again, or if other problems arise, she'll tell somebody. Otherwise, it was probably nothing at all, and Alyss doesn't want to be seen crying about something trivial. She's too strong for that.

She glances at her phone. Her lesson with Ms. DuLacy is in twenty minutes, and that's not really enough time to get anything else done. She might as well take a break, get something to eat, because after her lesson, she has orchestra and then several more hours of practicing. 

Alyss packs her instrument and her music away, being careful of her wrist, but it seems to be fine. She slings the backpack straps of her violin case over her shoulders, the hard plastic covering of the case coming to rest comfortably against the small of her back, and ducks out of the practice room, turning the light off and leaving the door open. She heads down the hallway quickly. If she hurries, she might even have time to make it to the dining hall to grab some fruit or something. Much better than a granola bar.

The hallways of the Conservatory are relatively busy - it's a break between classes - and Alyss has to maneuver carefully around other instruments. She reflects wryly that several months ago, this had felt so unfamiliar and strange, and now it's like home. She really loves it here. She can't believe how far she's come as a musician in the few short months she's been at the Conservatory. Sure, those have been some of the hardest months of her life, physically, mentally, and emotionally, but she's come out a better person and musician because of it. And she's gained some of the closest friends she's ever had.

Speaking of friends...Alyss hears a familiar voice around the corner, and feels her face break into a smile. It's Will. Alyss quickens her pace, eager to see him. It will be a bright spot in her otherwise dull day. But then Will laughs, and she hears another voice answer him, and she stops in her tracks, heedless of the other students pressing around her.

It's Cassandra Regan. He's talking to, and laughing with, Cassandra.

It sounds like they're having a good time, too. 

Alyss can't breathe. It feels as if someone's hit her in the stomach with a baseball bat. She feels her eyes fill with tears, but she wipes them away angrily before they can slide down her cheeks. She will not cry. Not over Cassandra. And it's a free country. Will can do whatever he wants. Why should she care?

Alyss turns on her heel. She'll take the back way out of the Conservatory. Because she can't walk past Will and Cassandra without yelling or even worse, crying. 

It's snowing pretty heavily outside, but Alyss doesn't care. In fact, she almost relishes the bitter cold biting her nose and cheeks. It gives her an excuse to have red eyes and a red nose. She walks quickly, her head down and her forearms wrapped tightly around her stomach, toward the dining hall.

And if a few tears drop off her chin, no one can tell. The swirling snow and the fact that everybody else is inside takes care of that.