Playing the Heart Strings

1. New Friends are Old Friends

“Ava, are you paying attention?” asked my mother, glancing at me from the driver’s seat. “Please check the GPS for the exit we need to take, I know it’s coming up.” I broke my gaze from the trees flying past my window to glance down at the GPS.

“It’s exit 7, mom,” I replied to her, pointing at the exits. “This is exit 6, so the next one will be ours, and then we take a right and stay on that road for a few miles.” She smiled at me gratefully and continued to drive, silence falling over the car once again.

My name is Ava Lynn Richards. I turned seventeen on the same day that I got the letter that caused this move, exactly three months ago. It was from an elite high school of fine arts that I had applied to during sophomore year. For ninth and tenth grade I had attended the public school in my town, but when I learned of East Oaks Academy, I was in love. Students chose an art to specialize in, like a vocational school, and were trained for basic knowledge in other arts. Of course, they also learned required subjects like math, science, and English, but the main focus was the arts. As I played the viola and enjoyed other forms of art, I applied. I sent in an audition tape and was thrilled to be invited to the campus for a live audition. And on May twenty-ninth, I received a letter accepting me to be part of the East Oak family.

The problem was, East Oaks Academy was in a different state. Although my mother and father embraced the idea of me attending the academy, East Oaks was not a boarding school. After searching for a place for me to stay, Mom found the perfect solution. I would stay at the home of an old family friend, whose son I had been friends with as a child. They owned both parts of a two-family house, so I was given my own side of the house, already furnished. I was sure there was a catch, but they assured me and my mother otherwise. So here I was, a Bostonian girl headed to New York to start on her dream.

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 “Ava? Honey, we’re here,” said my mother softly, placing a hand on my arm. I blinked my eyes open and sat up, looking drearily at the new surroundings. And then I saw it.

“What the hell is that?” I asked in horror, staring at the house in front of me. It was painted an awful pea green and had grey-purple accents. A mustard-yellow 835 stared at me from above the door. “Is that the house?” My mom smiled at me, nodding her head in amusement.

“I promise you, Susie and Ben are both quite sane, although I’m not sure about Dean,” she giggled, referring to her friends and their son. “Last time I saw him was six years ago, when he’d just turned eleven. Nobody is sane at that point.” I guess she did have a point there, so I smiled and opened the car door.

All of a sudden, I heard the garish purple door open. “Elke, is that you?” called a high, sweet voice. My mother turned to the sound and grinned. Only her best friends called her by the name Elke, her true German name, for she now introduced herself as Elle and went by it at work and in everyday life. “Leave your bags in the car, Ben and Dean will carry them inside for you. Come say hi, ladies!”

Susan Carper had met my mother when they were both freshmen in college. While my mother had gone into law, Susie had studied architecture and now prospered with her own interior design company. Why she was currently living in this monster, I had no idea, but I was sure that she had a reason. Susan and my mother were best friends and polar opposites- mom had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a chiseled Nordic bone structure courtesy of her Norwegian father, while Susie had dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a round face that gave her a look of fun and youthfulness. And while my mother relied on schedules and normalcy to get through the day, Susie waltzed through each hour with her eyes closed, relying on her keen sense of direction to maintain her path.

We entered the side of the house that Susan and her family lived in, which I learned was about twice the size of my side. I was perfectly ok with that, though, since it would be just me. As Susan began happily chatting with my mother, I surveyed the room, which was just as awful as the exterior.