Heart's Tempo (Wattys2014) [EDITING]

Chapter 14

She hadn’t heard from Henry for the last three days, which was a good thing. He was probably too busy practicing with Fourth for the upcoming competition. If he called her or even sent her a text message she would have ignored him completely. Not because Fourth is her boyfriend now but she didn’t know yet how to tell Henry about them.

Now she was running along the hallways of the music school. She was late fifteen minutes already for the competition and she didn’t know if she’d make it to Fourth and Henry’s performance. How could she have been this late? If only the school wasn’t so big and the students knew how to give proper instructions on how to get to the Performing arts hall…

“Nisa?”

She suddenly stopped and turned around to see who called her name. She was actually surprised to see Fourth was there – no, wait. Was their performance over? Did she miss it?

“Why are you running?”

“I’m late! I am so sorry! So, how was it? How did your performance go?”

“Nisa, it’s okay. We haven’t performed yet. We’re the last ones to perform, so we really need lots of luck now.”

“How many participants are there?”

“Ten. All of them seniors, this is probably their last chance to go to Prague if they win this competition. It will boost their ‘resume’, if you know what I mean.”

Then, for no reason at all, Fourth embraced her and kissed her on her head.

“For good luck…” he said, never letting go of her.

“Do your best. Remember, this is all you ever wanted to do. This is what you’re good at; show them what real talent is.”

From a distance, Henry watched Nisa and Fourth – he wanted to turn away immediately, he wanted to approach them and pull Nisa away, he wanted to hurt himself…he wanted to disappear at that instant. So this is really it, then? Nisa chose Fourth…Henry could only think of one reason why. She could never trust him again, not after what he did before. He forced himself to walk away, but it felt like he was pulling a ten ton iron ball on each feet. As soon as he reached the stairs to the second floor, Henry closed his right hand into a fist and punched the wall. He was so mad at himself that if he could hit the wall with his head, he would.

“…no one else to blame here.” Henry said to himself as he willed his feet to walk away again, this time to the clinic to get some bandage for his right hand.

Fourth and Nisa went on their way to the concert hall. It was just enough to accommodate around two hundred people, to Nisa’s estimate. Fourth headed to the backstage while Nisa took a seat on the middle row where some students were cheering for the other participants. Backstage, Fourth was looking for Henry. They were told to get ready in ten minutes and he wasn’t there yet. He tried calling his cell phone but he wasn’t picking  up; his violin case was there, so where the heck could he be?

“Henry!” Fourth walked towards him in an almost panicked state. He noticed there was bandage on his right hand.

“Yo!”

“What happened to your hand? Did you get into a fight or something?”

“Kind of…but that’s not important.  We’re up next, right?”

“Yeah, but can you play with your hand like that?”

Henry closed and opened his right hand several times, and showed Fourth that he can still play his violin. Once again, their names were called and they were asked to be ready in three minutes.