Life Is A Risk

Waking Up

Isabella can't sleep. She was asleep, but she's not now, and now she can't get back to sleep.

Charlie Patterson is in her head.

It's not the lead guitarist of Sunrise Bend that she's thinking about, exactly, but something he said.

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"I know that everyone copes differently. God knows we've had our own share of loss, and we've all coped with it differently. But I've only known you for a few hours, and I can see that you are miserable, Isabella Martinez. Not playing is killing you. So why won't you play?"

"I played with my mom," Isabella had confessed. She wasn't sure why. It was like Charlie said, they'd only known each other for a few hours, so it was beyond her why she trusted him with things she had only just trusted herself with. "Playing without her - it feels like I'm betraying her."

"Your mom would want you to play, Isabella. She only wanted you to be happy, and she wouldn't want you to miss out on her behalf." A bitter look crossed Charlie's face for a moment, before it was replaced by the soft look that had graced it seconds earlier. "I don't want to pressure you, Isabella. But consider it? For her?"

Before Isabella could respond, Willie called them over to talk about the lighting ideas he and Jada were brainstorming.

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Isabella pushes the blanket back and swings her legs over the edge of her bed, her mind made up before the question really crossed her mind. She'd been so afraid of playing again, thinking that it would be like forgetting her mother. Now, thanks to Charlie, she could see that it was the opposite that was true. Playing was not only remembering her mother, but honouring her memory.

Isabella would honour that memory if it killed her. (Which, you know. It probably wouldn't, but Isabella was determined.)

She crept down the hallway, careful not to wake Jada or her father. She avoided the creaky floorboard at the top of the stairs, pausing briefly when she came to the living room. There was a vase of dahlias - her mum's favourite - on the coffee table in the centre of the room. The table was cluttered with notebooks, actual books, pens and goodness knows what else besides, but the dahlias stand tall in the centre. They seemed to be telling her 'It's okay. I love you, mija.'

Isabella takes it as a sign as she continues through the house.

It seems to take both an eternity and a second to get to the studio.

Once she's there, a pit seems to open up in Isabella's stomach. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

No.

Isabella won't turn back. She refuses to back down. Not after so long hiding.

She takes a deep breath and pushes the doors open.

It's eerily quiet in the studio. It's colder than it was outside, as well. The whole room feels like a ghost of the place it once was. Instruments that used to ring with chords now lie inactive against the wall. The well-worn couch now just seems old, rather than welcoming. And the piano stands in the middle of the room, like a giant mountain Isabella fears she may never be able to climb.

But she's armed with ropes made of determination, and this time, she won't fail.

The fabric covering the piano is somehow both rough and soft beneath her fingers. Isabella pulls it off and lets it fall to the floor, a cloud of dust billowing up around her. She takes a moment to just stare at the dark wood of the piano. Memories seem to dance across the lid. Her mother carefully showing her which keys to press to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Her mother clapping after Isabella finished performing the first song she ever wrote. Her mother, sitting out here, late at night, careful keystrokes ringing through the house as she played a song that Isabella would never get to hear completed.