Cantabile [on hold]

02. Adagio

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ADAGIO
slowly

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SOPHIE WOOLSTONE, DEPUTY head girl and once anonymously voted prettiest girl in the school was the closest thing I had to a best friend. We'd sort of been pushed together from the start, back when she used to be a bit music crazy too.

"My plan's to get grade 8 before I leave school," she always told me, in cello, because that was what she'd played since age 6. "That way, if I get a grade every two years, I'll have plenty of time to spare."

Of course, it didn't quite work out like that. People change, and Sophie realised around the time she started becoming older, maturer, prettier, more fashion and self-conscious, that she no longer enjoyed playing the cello. She kept it up for a little while longer, though. "It'll look good on my CV," she insisted. "I'll just get grade six, then I'll stop."

She never did get grade six, and her cello now lay under her bed, piled underneath revision notes and textbooks. It hadn't been touched in two years.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why she didn't ditch me along with the cello – pity? guilt? maybe because she actually liked me? – but I wasn't complaining.

"What are you doing?" I asked, walking over towards her as she jammed a piece of wire into my locker. "Sophie, Sophie, stop! You'll break it!"

She glanced up at me. "The locker or the wire?"

"The locker. Why are you trying to break into my locker?"

"Because! I put my jacket in there yesterday, remember? And I'm fucking freezing right now!" I sighed and pulled out my key from my bag. "I don't see why you can't just leave your locker open like a normal person. What's someone actually going to steal from here?" I opened up the locker to reveal the contents. "An empty packet of Digestives? A lone sock? Your manky old piano music?"

"This?" I added, pulling out Sophie's leather jacket – too sizes too small for me, and way too cool for me to pull off.

She took it from me, and draped it over one shoulder whilst leaning on the lockers and giving me a sad smile.

"What?" I asked.

"You know this is the most we've spoken all week."

"Yeah, I know."

"S'a bit shit."

"It's just really not that long now. 'Til Juilliard. The home straight, you know? So I've got to keep going."

"Can't you take this lunch off? Just the once? It would be nice to actually talk to my best friend. Catch up."

Catch up on what? My life was a string of repetitive boring events, and Sophie knew all about them. She knew exactly what had happened in my life for the past few days. There was no catching up needed. As for her, she broadcasted everything she did either via Twitter or her Snapchat story, so I was up to date with her life too.

"I can't."

She shrugged. "Alright. But you're coming to my birthday, okay? For definite."