Andante

II

Halfway through his violin lesson he was fuming again. 
First of all, he was forced to play one of the first Kreutzer etudes for half an hour, even though he practiced the Bruch. I mean, come on! A Kreutzer from the beginning of the book? He had his fucking LMus! 
Then, when he finally did  get to play the Bruch, his violin skills seemed to have taken a one way trip to Mars or something. Intonation: off. Thirds? Don't even get him started. Vibrato? Uneven. 
He got destroyed, of course, and he had to fight back tears when he put his violin back in its case. 
He won though. Duh. Thirteen year old guys don't cry. 

¨I hope you practice a lot more this week, Eddy.¨ his teacher felt the need to say. 
He wanted to hit the wall, but instead he meekly said: 
¨I will, sir. Sorry about today, I don't know what happened.¨
He did know what happened, of course. He was shit. 

He ran home as quickly as he dared, his hand supporting the violin case on his back. 
He crashed into the door of his house and tried to run  up the stairs straight away, but of course his mum was there to stop him. He rolled his eyes when she couldn't see. Seriously, could she not see he just wanted to be alone? 

¨Hi Eddy, how was math tutoring?¨ she asked. 
¨Fine.¨ he replied, non-committally. 
¨Did you learn anything?¨
¨Sure, I guess¨, he said, looking longingly up the stairs. 
¨How was violin lesson?¨ his mum asked, in English now. She was really trying to get him to talk, hey? 
¨I don't want to talk about it¨, he mumbled. He could feel the tears pressing on the inside of his eyes. 
¨I'm going to go practice now¨, he said quickly, and ran up the stairs. He knew she was looking up at him, but he just needed to get away. 
He set the violin case on the floor gently before throwing himself onto his bed, the flood gates opening now. He curled up in fetal position and let his disappointment in himself pour out of his eyes. 

He didn't allow himself to wallow in self-pity too long though. First of all, he really needed to practice. And second, he had no desire of having his mum come up and check on him. Even though a hug might have been nice. Thirteen year old guys didn't need their mums to solve their shit. Plus, he didn't need endless questions about why he was crying. 
So after a few minutes he hauled himself up, splashed some water in his face and took his violin back out of its case. 
First of all he played the Bruch, and of course it went fine now. Yeah, he could play it when he was on his own... he just wished he could play it in front of other people too. 
Then he took out the wretched Kreutzer etude. If the teacher was going to pull it out again, he was going to make damn sure he could play it properly. 

He'd been going for about an hour, relaxing into the music, his tears forgotten, when his phone buzzed. 
He picked it up and his heart made a little jump when he read the text message.

       'Hi, it's Brett. I hope your violin lesson went well!'

He rolled his eyes and groaned at the recollection. He sure as hell wasn't gonna tell Brett how it really went though. He thought for a second and quickly typed:

     'Yeah, went great! Played the Bruch. You still up for tomorrow?'

The answer came almost instantly. 

     'Cool! Yeah, definitely. See you then!'

He would have replied, but he only had like 100 messages a month. His mum would kill him if he went over his limit. 

At dinner Eddy was quiet, he didn't have very much to say. The questions that his mum did ask he managed to dodge by being pretty much mono-syllabic. His sister did more than enough talking for the both of them as usual anyway. 

.After dinner he said:
¨I'm going to my room again, I have lots of homework.¨
It was true, as well. He had a test for French next week, and he really, really sucked at French. And he was going to play video games with Brett tomorrow. Shit! He suddenly realised he hadn't asked his mum yet!
He walked to the top of the stairs and called:
¨Mum, I've invited a friend over tomorrow. We're going to practice violin, okay?¨
His mum appeared at the bottom of the stairs straight away.
¨What about your homework?¨ she asked.
¨I'm going to make sure it's all done tonight.¨ he promised.
¨Who is this friend?¨ his mum said, that suspicious look on her face.
¨He's nice, mum. He's also from Taiwan. I met him at tutoring today.¨
These were probably the longest sentences he'd spoken to her in the last week.
His mum sighed.
¨Okay¨, she acquiesced. ¨As long as your homework is done!¨

He actually managed to get some serious work done as well, so he was feeling marginally better about French. At 9:30 he rolled into bed, and he fell asleep straight away. 
He didn't sleep that well though. He kept waking up, the lingering image of a soft, warm hand in his head.