Clementine the Sun

Seeing the Sun

          "Closed for cleaning, Piano 3 meeting in the gymnasium."

          Louis' jaw dropped when he saw the sign on the door. He was already late; now he would have to rush to the gym. Scoffing and whipping out his phone, he looked for an email from his instructor. Sure enough, there it was, unread in his inbox. "Mr. Ericson is gonna kill me," he sighed. "The keyboards better have some decent speakers plugged in."

          Trudging into the gym, he found the rest of his class tapping away at plastic keyboards, practicing chords and arrangements. Not that he could hear them; the basketball and martial arts teams were also practicing quite loudly in the gym. His class had been shoved into a corner next to the door, right where the cold winter air leaked into the room. Despite the noise, his teacher noticed him sneaking over. "Mr. Hammond!" he bellowed. "I see you bothered to show up to the first class of the new term!"

          "Well, see, a certain dinosaur decided to use emails instead of scholarly texting apps, like most teachers do!"

          "That's enough lip out of you, young man. Get to your keyboard." Louis rolled his eyes at the hypocrite and began to make his way over when a shout distracted him. Reacting to the source, Louis watched a girl from the martial arts club throw a larger boy to the mat. She stood over him, her eyes ablaze.

          "Wanna try and grab me like that again?" she taunted. The instructor quickly dragged her away as she fought, her curly brown hair threatening to fly loose from her lopsided bun. She looked like the sun, ready to burst free and burn the entire room down. Completely entranced, Louis promptly tripped over his own foot. With a whoop and a theatrical leap forward, he fell flat on his face.

          As the rest of his class laughed at him (even the teacher struggled to hold back a snide chortle), his eyes only watched her as he stood, hoping she hadn't noticed. But, despite the instructor doing her best to give her a strict tongue-lashing, she gave Louis a sympathetic smile. Normally, Louis would have been royally embarrassed, but seeing her snap back to focus to pay attention to her teacher, Louis found himself proud to have given her a moment of relief. As he finally sat down to his keyboard, he found his burning cheeks more than sufficient against the door's cold draft.