Maya Blumenthal

Sonata in A Major - Winner (Grades 11-12)



Music. Everywhere my head turns, I hear music. Country music featuring wailing, querulous voices filled with angst. Jazz music with meandering melodies floating over intricate, infinitely layered chords. Rock music with electric guitar solos that make your heart race and basslines that make your bones thrum. And my personal bailiwick—classical music, classical piano music, filled with history and
virtuosity and the love and loss of a thousand generations.
It’s all in my head, of course. But it’s beautiful all the same.
He, of course, will never hear a note of it.
~~~~~

“How come we never do anything anymore?” he asks me, shutting his laptop with a decisive thud and inching closer to me on the couch in the back corner of the school library. I keep my gaze focused squarely on my own laptop screen, mostly because it’s easier than looking at him. And preferable to looking at him, if I’m being honest. “We do,” I say. “We are right now.”
He pouts. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. I mean real things. Like dates. Y’know, like the movies, or the fair, or that boring concert you took me to where your piano teacher played.” He rolls his eyes.
And this is how I know that James Cervantes will never hear any music in his head. James is a self-proclaimed STEM guy, proudly boasting that he likes logic and facts and science, not messy, subjective subjects like English or the arts. And the one time I took him to a classical music concert, a showcase given by my teacher—Mrs. Ekaterina Marmaledova (whom I, by her request, simply call Mrs. Katya), a highly esteemed piano professor at our local college, Merseth University, no less—he didn’t get it at all. He fidgeted and whispered through the whole thing, asking me why all the songs were so long and when it would be over. The only part he seemed to like was at the end, when Mrs. Katya invited her own students to come onstage and play, and I performed one of the competition pieces she had been teaching me, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. But I think he liked it not because it was good music—which it wasn’t; I fumbled and stumbled through the whole thing—but because it was me playing it. And this I know above all else: James Cervantes may not love music, but he does love me. I see it in his gaze, the way he waits after class for me and remembers all the things I offhandedly mention in our text conversations and buys me presents he definitely can’t afford. And, of course, the way he’s inching
ever-closer to me on the couch. James Cervantes loves me. I just wish I could say the same.
It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about it. So instead, I keep my eyes glued to my laptop screen. I already finished the thing I was supposed to do this lunch period—email an essay to my Spanish teacher—a while ago, but he doesn’t need to know that. “You know why we can’t do those things,” I say. “I’ve got piano. You’ve got your MIT application.”
“That was done a long time ago, Nat,” he says, smiling. “All sent in. Locked and loaded.” I’ve told him a million times that I prefer my real, full name, Natalia. If possible, my surname too: Natalia Tagore. I like the music of it, the way it rolls on the tongue, the way my surname reflects my Bengali

Hindu heritage. And he’ll remember that for maybe the first five seconds after I tell him. But in the end, he likes Nat. So Nat I stay.
“It’s time for us to relax a little,” he continues. “Lighten up! Feel that senioritis!”
“I’m a junior.”
“Does that really make a difference?”
“Yes.”
“Please, Nat,” he says, scooting closer, snaking his arm behind my neck. It takes all I have in me
not to shrug it off. “Tonight, huh? It will be nice and low-key. I’ll come over, we can study for the
APUSH test you said you had. I’ll bring my notes from last year. It won’t be much, but at least we’ll be
together. Like, really together.”
“I can’t,” I respond. “I have to practice.”
“And that’s just it,” he says, emitting a loud, frustrated groan. “You always have to practice.
Can’t you take one day off? That won’t kill you, will it? I mean, I’ve been working like a dog on my MIT
application and my online classes and all, and even I take breaks.”
And James, of all people, is one who can’t afford to take breaks. My life, the life of a girl from an affluent upper-middle-class family with a white mom, an Indian dad, and expensive hobbies like playing piano (do you know how much a good Steinway grand costs?), is as far removed as possible from
his. He’s been an orphan since he was thirteen, his mom having died of childbirth complications and his dad having been deported back to Mexico and shortly afterwards dying as a result of gang violence. He has no one. No brothers, no sisters. He lives in a shabby group home in the scary part of town with
practically no money or material possessions to his name—not counting his school-appointed laptop, which he guards with his life for fear someone’s going to shoot him for it. He’s working furiously on getting into selective STEM schools like MIT to escape this future that’s laid out for him—he spends
every spare moment taking online classes offered by more affluent high schools, attending after-school science programs, or filling out financial aid applications to cover those online classes and after-school science programs. And yet he always manages to find time for me.
Time I don’t deserve.
“I like to practice,” I tell him, evading his actual question.
“And that’s what I love about you.” He buries his face into the crook of my neck, and I instantly tense up. It feels too close for comfort; I can feel every spot where his skin touches mine, sputtering and sparking like a thousand pinpricks. Like acupuncture. Like a torture method that I’m too polite to protest.
He doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort. He smiles—I can feel his chest muscles moving against my body—and in an effort to at least do something, to not look ungrateful, I put my hand on top of his. I decided a long time ago that holding hands is okay, as it doesn’t feel too intimate. It’s easily something I could do with my best friend, if I had one. Then he sighs deeply, almost orgasmically, and ruins it all.
“How about Friday?” he mumbles into my neck. “Friday night. We’ll go to dinner at a nice restaurant. You deserve to relax, Nat. You’re so smart, I know you work so hard...”
The compliments ping against my skin like it’s armor, repelled by that voice in my head asking if he really means them, or if he just wants something from me—something that he’ll never get.
“And you’re so beautiful,” he goes on, fingering a lock of my hair. “Never tell yourself otherwise.
You’re really special, Nat. I’m so lucky to have you. I can’t believe a guy like me—”
“Friday sounds great,” I blurt out.

He jerks away from me wearing an expression of surprise and pleasure; I can see his whole face light up. And I silently curse myself. I can’t believe I caved. Why can’t I just tell him no? Maybe it’s his backstory, or the way he wears his heart on his sleeve, or just that his endless slew of compliments really does get to me. But I always cave, and in the aftermath I always get that sick, sinking feeling in my stomach.
I straighten up and rise from the couch. “But for now,” I say, “I need to practice.” I check my watch—there are about twelve minutes left until the end of lunch. Allowing two minutes for me to get all the way down to the music wing of the school building and find an empty practice room (which is practically a redundancy—no one ever uses them this lunch period except me), that leaves me ten minutes
to warm up and run through my competition/audition pieces. Ten minutes is doable. Ten minutes is plenty.
“All right,” he says, nodding sagely, his eyes downcast. “I understand.” As if he’s doing me some sort of great service by letting me do what I should have been doing in the first place. I don’t say anything in response, just rise from the couch and begin to pack up my laptop.
As I’m turning away, he shouts out, “I love you, Nat.”
And I want to say it back. It should be so easy. Three words, just as many syllables. And they could apply to anything. I could just pretend I’m saying it to my piano, or my Rachmaninoff piece, or Mrs. Katya. To my mom and dad. To my childhood teddy bear, for God’s sake. To anyone but him.
But in the end, I just can’t.

~~~~~

So many composers have written about being in love. They’ve been inspired by their feelings of enamoration, infatuation, adoration, and it’s reflected in their pieces. But there are lots of pieces that have nothing to do with love. My Rachmaninoff prelude, the one I played at that showcase concert, is about the bells of Moscow tolling out over the city as Judgment Day arrives and it burns to the ground. That’s
pretty cool, I think. In the past, Mrs. Katya has taught me a Bartók sonatina about life in a small Hungarian village and a whole host of Tchaikovsky pieces about different months of the year, complete with Russian poems for each one that evoke images of snow-drop flowers and horse-drawn carriages and placid lakes under summer stars. And some pieces you can even invent your own meanings for. Mrs.
Katya once taught me how to interpret a Mozart sonata as if it were a story of me walking through a marketplace in India, seeing the sights, smelling the smells, and haggling with the shopkeepers. It’s almost definitely not what Mozart was thinking when he wrote the piece, but it evokes the same feelings
of happiness and wonderment, and that’s all that matters.
When I bang out these pieces in the old, beat-up, graffitied pianos of the practice rooms at Horizon High School, I can feel myself breathing easier. The knots in my shoulders loosen and my fingers become more relaxed—floppy like rag dolls, as Mrs. Katya used to tell me when I was four years old and
had just started taking lessons with her. The keys feel familiar, comforting, and muscle memory does the work of remembering what my fingers are supposed to do, leaving me free to improvise emotionally—a crescendo here, an accelerando there—and bring out everything I possibly can in each piece. It’s familiar, cathartic, freeing. I blaze through my favorite pieces feeling lighter than I have in a long time.
But everything changes when I begin to play the first movement Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Major, a piece I learned for a competition a few months ago and still keep in my fingers s for future recitals, auditions, or just showing off. It’s also one of my favorite pieces of all time. I heard one of Mrs.
Katya’s doctoral students play it at a recital about a year ago and instantly knew I had to play it myself.

It’s pretty, melodic and pleasant; it’s got the kind of catchy melody that you can easily hum absentmindedly in your car, which I often find myself doing. But more than that, it’s about being in love.
Although published posthumously after the composer’s tragically early death (at age 31—imagine that!), it was written in the summer of the year he was 22, which he spent on an Austrian countryside where he fell in love with a pianist named Josephine von Keller. It was a beautiful, fleeting summer romance, and he wrote the piece just for her, as a way to honor it.
Playing the piano is sometimes like acting. It’s telling a story through the way your fingers hit the keys, through articulation and dynamics and tempo. A piece is never just notes, Mrs. Katya has drilled into me a thousand times. Everything has to be taken into consideration to produce the desired effect, to tell the story you want to tell and evoke the emotions you want to evoke. When I play an angry, fiery
piece, it has to sound like it, through forte touches and harsh staccatos and a breakneck tempo. A sad piece has to be sad—slow, soft, with just the right amount of rubato so it doesn’t sound static. And a piece about being in love...well, it has to sound like I’m in love, with all the passion, drama, and
emotional extremes that that entails. Especially in the case of the Schubert, which suffers from the
pressure of my own favoritism. In my mind, if I don’t get it and all its emotions exactly right, I’ll be
failing Schubert, and Mrs. Katya’s doctoral student, and myself.
But how can I play it right, play it like I’m in love, when I’m not?
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I don’t want to fall in love with James. He’s a great person, a wonderful friend, and has been since we met when I was in ninth grade and he was in tenth. Sure, he doesn’t like classical music, but that’s okay. I like it plenty enough for the both of us. And we have fascinating conversations about the most random subjects: Will AI ever be able to compose music the
way a human can? What if the world had no country borders? Do “waffle” and “Wiffle ball” have a common etymological link? The kinds of conversations that are completely fanciful, functionally useless,
and far removed from my conversations with my other classmates, which mostly seem to consist of humblebrags about how tired everyone is as a result of the sheer number of AP classes they’re taking.
Both of us could get lost in these conversations for hours, our arguments and rebuttals taking us to some fascinating places that I, for one, never would have arrived at alone. It’s familiar and comforting and, honestly, more of a real close friendship than I’ve ever had.
And as if that weren’t enough, I know I’m pretty much all James has. He’s got no brothers, no sisters, no parents, no guaranteed future. He’s using what little resources he has, and isn’t using on getting into college, on random gifts for me. Stuffed bears, chocolates on Valentine’s Day, necklaces with treble
clefs on them. So there’s an extra guilt-trip factor there.
But the fact is that I don’t love him.
I absolutely do not love him the way he loves me. This is a simple truth that I have accepted over the past few years, every time he’s slipped his hand into mine and I felt like some sort of broken, heartless monster when I felt no desire to reciprocate. I feel nothing in that area for him. When he holds my hand or
embraces me so tenderly, a tenderness that’s utterly wasted on me, it almost has the opposite effect—repelling me, begging for a chance for me to escape..
But how can I tell him that? I feel like I’ll destroy him if I ever try. He’s hinged his life on two things: MIT and me. Sure, MIT could reject him and he could go to another good STEM school, but it wouldn’t be the same—as he’s told me in many impassioned rants as he worked on his application essays
or filled out financial aid forms for summer programs to beef up his resume. And sure, I could reject him and he could find someone else. But I know in my heart of hearts that for him, it wouldn’t be the same.

And I don’t want to be responsible for taking away one of the pillars on which he’s built his life, letting it collapse like a Jenga tower after that one crucial keystone block is taken away. The weight of his
world is on my shoulders, and while I absolutely do not want to bear this cross, I fear the consequences of giving it up even more.
But none of that changes the fact that I do not love him.
The Schubert may be one of my favorite pieces, but at the same time it’s able to torture me, taunt me with what I’ve never been able to give it. My stomach churns as I think about this, as I try to evoke the nonexistent feelings of love in the music. The notes come out forced and stilted, and I even hit some wrong ones. That which has forever eluded me makes the familiar, comforting keys under my fingers feel
utterly foreign.
So I drop the subject and pound out Bartók’s dissonant chords once more.

~~~~~

There is no music in this place, and it instantly makes me feel on edge. What kind of restaurant
has no music piping through the speakers at all? Not even subdued classical piano pieces? I want to ask
the waiters, but they all look like they’d slit my throat with their sharpest silverware if I dare defy the pure
artistic vision of their establishment, so I keep my comments to myself.
I haven’t the faintest clue how James could ever manage to afford this place—he couldn’t even
afford his own transportation; my mom and dad picked him up from his group home in our car and
dropped us both off here. And although he tells me that I can order whatever I want, his treat, I notice that
he deliberately orders the cheapest thing on the menu. I know I absolutely do not deserve what he’s doing
for me, and the guilt makes the gnawing pit in my stomach grow.
After the snooty waiter leaves, the silence feels all-encompassing. This...date, or whatever James
wants to call it, is a lot fancier than previous things we’ve done, and somehow it feels heavier, more
significant. I think James knows it too, and it’s evident from the shy smile on his face and the way he
averts his eyes that he’s planning something big. Something I want to avoid as long as possible.
“So,” I say, “remember the other day when we were talking about the words waf le and Wif le
ball? I was thinking maybe there are other words that sound similar that could be linked, too. Like,
maybe...” I’m grasping at straws here. “Well, I can’t think of any now, but, uh...maybe you can? Any
thoughts?” It’s lame, I know, but right now I’d try anything.
“Nat,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “I’ve been emailing back and forth with the people
who manage financial aid at MIT, telling them about my situation and everything. I mean, yeah, I did
write about it in my essays and stuff, but I wanted to contact them personally. I’ve been sending them my
transcript, my SAT scores, things like that, too. And they say—” He takes a deep breath. “They say
there’s a good chance I could get in with a free ride for all four years.”
“That’s great!” I say, and I really mean it.
“Thanks,” he says, pleased. “And that’s kinda what I wanted to talk about. Like, I was just
wondering... What kinds of colleges are you looking into?” I open my mouth to answer, but before I can,
he says, “Didn’t you say you wanted to apply to Berklee School of Music next year? Like, that was your
dream school and everything?”
I have to admit it is. It’s an amazing, highly selective school—Mrs. Katya went there, and she
constantly gushes to me about what an amazing musical environment it is and how I would flourish there.
I’m not sure I’d get in, but it’s a nice pipe dream all the same.

“Well, you probably know this,” James continues, “but it’s, like, less than ten minutes from MIT.
You should apply there, Nat. I know you’ll get in, you’re so musical and there’s no other pianist quite like
you...I’ve looked into the application process, and I totally think you could do it—”
“You’ve looked into this?” My voice is suddenly very small, and my throat feels tight. “You’ve
done research and everything?”
He gets a blank look on his face. “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Wait a minute,” I say, feeling sicker by the minute. “That’s not why you applied to MIT, is it?
Because I told you I wanted to go to Berklee and you chose someplace close to there?”
“No!” he says, looking almost defensive. “I’ve wanted to go there for a long time. Before I even
met you.” And I realize now that it was a silly question. Have I forgotten all his raves about what an
amazing school MIT is? He’d want to go there regardless of anything. He’s not hinging his future on me.
“But,” he adds, “I do admit that your going close to there is a nice side benefit.” He smiles, and
the sickness returns. “We could go to college together, Nat. We’d see each other every day, just like now.
We could have a future.”
“No, James,” I say. “This is one possibility for a future. We can’t say anything for sure. This—” I
gesture around at ourselves. “This isn’t exactly endgame.”
He blinks, and I can see the hurt in his eyes. “You don’t want this?”
“No, no,” I say hastily, “it’s not that I don’t want this, it’s just...” I take a deep breath, counting to
10 like my mom has told me to do, trying to figure out how to sugarcoat this as much as I can. “It’s really
soon to plan all of this, don’t you think? Anything could happen between now and then. Right?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding, but he still looks a little wounded. His eyes are downcast.
I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. That’s not too intimate, I decided a long time ago. It’s the
kind of thing friends would do. “Maybe we should just take this one day at a time. Focus on today.”
“Okay. Today.” He smiles and moves his face closer to mine, cups my cheek in his palm and
raises my chin close to his. “I love today,” he murmurs, close to my ear. And before I know what’s
happening, he’s kissing me. On the lips.
And the music in my head ceases. Not in a beautiful, euphoric way that romance novels describe
kissing to be like. Time doesn’t stop; fireworks don’t go off in my head. Instead, the music has
abandoned me. Inside and out, there is no music, no rhythm, no familiar progression of notes—and it
leaves me stranded, treading water in an endless, nondescript sea of white noise that I can’t escape. My
breath is taken away from anxiety, not joy, because this is officially veering into uncharted territory, here
there be dragons, the furthest away from what I could have ever possibly wanted. It’s wrong. It’s so, so
wrong.
But when he finally breaks off, after what seems like an eternity, he’s smiling bigger than I’ve
ever seen him smile before.
“I love today,” he murmurs, “because it has you in it. And I love you.”
He’s said it many times before, but this time feels the most intimate of them all. And I want to
duck under the table and hide. I want to drown. I want to die.
He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear in a heartbreakingly tender gesture, and then leans in again.
But this time I’m prepared. I push away from him as gently as I can.
“No, James,” I say. “Please. No. I don’t feel comfortable with this.”
His eyes widen in surprise.

“I...” I desperately grasp for words, but I seem to have lost the ability to communicate in more
than one-syllable fragments. “Just. Please. No.”
He looks down at the floor and nods. “All right. I understand.”
My heart lifts. Maybe this will be okay after all. “You do?”
“I don’t want to do anything that would make you feel uncomfortable, Nat,” he says, with such
conviction, such absolute assurance, that I think maybe I do love him.
But all it is is a fleeting illusion.

~~~~~

As I suspected, after that, everything is okay. Well, for the next two and a half days. My false
sense of complacency comes to a grinding halt on Monday when I step out of seventh-hour English and
find myself face-to-face with him.
James’ last class of the day is AP Physics, on the other side of the building from my English
class. Usually, when the bell rings at the end of the day, I get my coat from my locker and then wait there
for him to catch up with me, after which we talk for a few minutes as I head to the buses and he heads to
the parent pickup lane where a taxi waits to drive him to his group home. I usually dread the few minutes
I spend waiting for him, as they make me look like an incredible dork. But usually it’s him who waits for
me after our classes when we walk together to the next one, so I guess it’s the least I can do.
I confess that I haven’t exactly been the most mature of friends in this scenario. After the debacle
on Friday, I’ve been accidentally-on-purpose avoiding him all day—heading straight to the practice
rooms instead of the couch in the library at lunch; taking alternate routes to class and hoping he’ll just
accept that I was taking longer than usual to leave and stop waiting for me. I guess there was a part of me
that didn’t really think everything was okay, and thought the best way to address this situation was to
avoid everything altogether. Unfortunately, it seems that James has the opposite approach. I can’t believe
he got here from AP Physics so fast; he’s sweating and gasping for breath. He leans against the doorway
and pants out, “Nat—hi—I wanted—to talk to you.”
“This soon?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. He doesn’t respond and looks a little disappointed, so I
grasp his shoulder in a way I hope is reassuring. “C’mon. I’ll go to my locker and we can talk. Take a
moment to catch your breath, okay?”
He nods and takes some deep breaths, and I nod encouragingly at him as I start walking down the
hallways to my locker. But he’s barely exhaled twice before he starts up again. “Nat, I wanted to talk to
you about Friday. All the things that happened, y’know, I wanted to clarify.” He’s talking so fast that the
words jumble up in his mouth, barely understandable.
“Clarify what?” I say as nonchalantly as I can.
He opens his mouth to speak, but runs almost headlong into his AP Physics teacher, Mr. Nelson,
who is standing in the hallway like a brick wall and looking down his nose disapprovingly at James. “Mr.
Cervantes,” he says, “I really don’t appreciate your leaving my class early. That was unacceptable.”
“Yes, Mr. Nelson,” James responds.
“Next time, please give me some advance notice,” Mr. Noble says. “And make sure to have a
valid excuse.” He turns his reproachful gaze on me, and I bristle. It’s not like I asked James to do this.
James only responds, “Yes, Mr. Nelson. Sorry, Mr. Nelson.”
After Mr. Nelson walks away, James turns to me again. “When you said you didn’t like,
y’know...what happened on Friday, I wanted to ask you what exactly made that happen.”

I’m not sure what to think. The music in my head is skipping and starting like a scratched record,
leaving me stranded.
He turns his gaze to the floor. “I don’t want to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.
You’re beautiful, Nat, and I love you—” my shields reflexively go up— “and I just, I really think a future
between us could work.”
My heart speeds up. Not again.
“It’s been amazing these past two years,” he says, “don’t you think? And I just...I really want that
to continue. You’re an amazing girlfriend, and I really think this could work. I have absolute faith in it,
Nat. Like I said, two years from now when you’re at Berklee for your freshman year—because I know
you’ll get in,” he says at my attempt to protest—”we could see each other every day. We could even
move in together once we’re upperclassmen; we could find a nice house on campus. I’ll teach you
Spanish and you can play the piano for me. And after graduation...” His eyes are shining; a crowd of
students has formed around us now; my heart is beating out of my chest and I can barely catch my breath.
And before I can stop myself, he’s lowering to the floor, getting down on one knee.
A gasp comes from the crowd, and the music in my head comes to an abrupt halt.
“James,” I manage to squeak out. “Is this what you were trying to do on Friday?”
He nods, and when he tilts his head up at me, he looks for all the world like a longtime partner
and soon-to-be husband, like we’ve been dating for ten years instead of two and he’s twice the age he
actually is. He certainly isn’t lacking the deep devotion in the eyes or the tremble in the hands. It looks
out of place on a rumpled, sweaty seventeen-year-old, but I know in my heart that he means all of it. And
he’s even holding out a ring. It looks expensive, and the crowd oohs and aahs at it. The inside of the box
says Lynn’s Jewellers—he must have gotten it from the local jewelry store—and, in smaller text below,
PROMISE RING #0342. And the gemstone is an amethyst—a sparkling, vibrant purple, my favorite
color. He remembered.
“Natalia Morgan,” he says, and my heart skips a beat at his use of my full name. In six years,
when we’ve graduated from college, when we’re settled into our lives and accomplished and happy like
I’ve always known you will be—” He takes a deep, happy breath and lets it out. “Will you marry me?”
“No.”
The crowd’s awws are cut short, replaced by gasps of scandalized shock. And honestly, I
probably deserve it. I’m scandalized at myself—I didn’t know I would say what I said until it was already
out of my mouth, into the ether. And James—poor James. My heart wrings for him. He looks more
shocked and hurt than I’ve ever seen him, on the verge of tears, and I almost want to take it all back.
Almost. But the music has started up again—in a minor key this time, slow at first, but gradually speeding
up, becoming more fiery and intense. I know exactly what I want to say, but for the first time, I’m saying
it.
“James,” I say. “It’s not even the end of your senior year—of high school, not even college—and
you’re thinking about marriage? Marriage is a lifetime thing. It’s a commitment. Don’t you think this is
just a little premature?”
“You asked me that at the restaurant, too,” he says. “But I know I want this.”
“How long?” I ask, barely wanting to hear the answer. “How long has it been since you decided?”
He cups my cheek in his hand and turns my face to his, looking me straight in the eye. “Since the
moment I first met you.”
I shake my head. “That’s got to be an exaggeration.”

“It’s not,” he says fiercely. “The desire has just grown over time. Every day I want this future a
little more.”
He wouldn’t be out of place on those cheesy dramas my mom likes to watch. It’s smarmy and
makes my skin crawl. But for once, it doesn’t make me feel guilty; it doesn’t make the pit in my stomach
open up. It just hardens my steely resolve; makes me even more sure of what I’m going to say.
“You know how I’ve planned out my whole life to escape my situation,” he says. “I’ve planned
my application to MIT and all the things I’ll do to get in, I’ve planned what courses I’ll take while I’m
there, and I know all the right Silicon Valley people to get in contact with so I can have a good career
post-graduation. I’ve got it all in my head, so that I can get myself a future where I can be happy for once
in my life. Well, Natalia, you’re part of that. You make me so happy, the happiest person on earth. And I
want that happiness forever. I think you can give it to me.”
“That’s the thing, James,” I say, my voice breaking. “You’re treating me like I’m something you
have to work for. Like I’m a trophy, or some sort of badge of honor you can display for the rest of your
life to say, ‘I’m successful!’ You think only in terms of what would make you happy. But that’s not who I
want to be, or how I want to be treated.”
“That’s not true, Natalia,” he responds. “I love you. I always have.”
And as the music in my head speeds up, urging me on, I find the voice to force out the words I’ve
been thinking for so long. “Well, I don’t love you.”
The crowd gasps. Whispered accusations fly amongst the students—ungrateful and bitch and
other, worse things—but I force myself to block them out.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him. “But I don’t. I’ve never felt that way for you. I was just afraid to tell
you because I was worried I would hurt your feelings. But you know what? Now I’m not afraid anymore,
because you’re not showing any consideration for my feelings. And James, I really don’t want to hurt you.
You’re a smart guy, and you’re driven, and I’m not just saying that so you’ll agree to whatever I’m saying
next, I really mean it. If we disregarded everything, all of this, I would like you as a friend. But James, I
don’t love you. Please, please just accept that.”
He looks shattered, and the way he slowly closes the ring box and puts it back in his pocket
breaks my heart. But I can’t stop now.
“And what’s more,” I say, “I don’t think you really love me either. If you did, you wouldn’t do
this when I was so clearly uncomfortable with it. You wouldn’t do this at all. Especially after we’ve only
had one kiss, and after I told you not to do that again. You say you want to do whatever it takes to make
me uncomfortable, but—” I gesture around— “do I look comfortable? You’re a hypocrite, James. If you
truly care about me, act like it.”
“I do love you, Natalia. I do.” His words are heavy, laborious, like they’re pieces of his heart he’s
chipped away just for me. “What can I do to prove it? What can I do that I haven’t already done? Because
if I’ve failed at anything, believe me, I’ll do whatever it takes to make it better.”
“You can’t do anything,” I say. Ritardando. Decrescendo. The music becomes more calm as I
become more sure of myself and my thoughts start to race a little less frenetically, becoming more clear. I
know what I want. I know what I’ve always wanted. “All you can do is really and truly listen to how I
feel. And this is how I feel.”
“So this is it, then?” he asks, finally getting up from the floor and looking at me straight-on.

I sigh and nod. “I guess this is it.” And, God help me, I stick out my hand for him to shake. Like
we’re ending a business transaction. I’ve never broken up with anybody before, especially not after
something this serious, and I genuinely can’t think of anything better to do.
“I’m sorry, James,” I say, and a part of me really is. “I think you’re really smart, and really
driven, even if you are a hypocrite. And wherever life takes you...” I take a deep, labored breath. “I wish
you all the best.”
He averts my gaze for a few moments, then looks up at me one last time with his piercing,
penetrating gaze. “Goodbye, Natalia,” he says, pronouncing my name slowly, enunciating every syllable
of it on his lips. Just the way I’ve always wanted him to say it.
Then he turns away and leaves. And in that moment, as the crowd disperses and he gets further &
further away and my heart rate slowly returns to normal, a part of me wonders what it would be like if I
called him back. If things were different. If we could have the future together that he so badly wanted.
Maybe, given enough time, I could find the good in it too.
But I know it’s better this way.

~~~~~

The professor in the audition room at Berklee College of Music tells me that my choice is highly
unusual. Perhaps not unprecedented, but unusual. He tells me that other professors may not let me go
through with it; they may have made me cut that piece from my audition repertoire. I tell him I know all
of that, and I thank him for letting me keep it on my setlist. He simply nods, looking slightly amused, and
says that he looks forward to hearing what I have produced.
The first three pieces that I submitted to Berklee’s website when signing up for my audition are
all pretty normal selections. The Schubert sonata, of course, because I couldn’t not include it. The
Rachmaninoff prelude—I’ve almost learned to suppress the acidic feeling that rises up in my stomach at
the memories of James there in the audience at that showcase concert, cheering me on. And a new piece
my teacher has assigned to me, the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a surprisingly fast
and fiery piece that’s not at all what I expected from the name when she played it for me for the first time.
It’s frankly a miracle that I got through it at the audition without my fingers getting tangled up, and I
silently congratulate myself when I finish.
But the fourth piece, which rounds out my twenty-minute selection, has never been published in
any books, although I’ve managed to provide the professor with a copy—the original manuscript, no less.
In fact, this is the piece’s very first public performance, outside of the practice rooms at Horizon High
School, Mrs. Katya’s piano studio, or my own home. Like the Schubert piece I so dearly love, the top of
the page bears the heading “Sonata in A Major - 1st Movement.” But the right-hand margin bears the
name of a different composer: Natalia Tagore.
This sonata is not about love. Well, at least not in the same way that the Schubert is. It’s about
someone else’s love, and the tumultuous, turbulent feelings inside of me that that love provokes. But
instead of being a guilt-laden reminder of what I have not, thus far, felt, it’s a celebration of all the things
I do feel. It’s an unabashed, unashamed expression of my emotions.
And when I sit down at the piano in that audition room, take the music I hear in my head at every
turn and release it out into the world, I feel lighter than I have in a long time.