Summer at Whitaker was a series of rooms that smelled of resin and rain on stone. Elijah took the bus with a monthly pass Denise had laminated so it would survive his pocket. The artist-teacher, whose name was Nadine Cho, did not praise him for surviving the lobby. She had heard about it anyway, because buildings leak, and she declined to use it as a preface. She said, "Play," and he played, and she stopped him in the same measure Mrs. Keene had once haunted and said, "You're explaining again." He laughed, startled, and she raised an eyebrow, and he stopped explaining.
He made a friend, a clarinet player named Sofia who competed with him over who could describe scales with more disgust, and then they did their scales anyway, side by side in a practice room that was too small, trading complaints like food. He missed notes. He had a week in July when his wrists ached and Cho cut his repertoire in half and told him pain was information, not a character trait. Denise came to the summer recital and sat in the tenth row as if the seat were a family property. Harper introduced the program in four sentences and sat down. He did not tell the lobby story. Elijah noticed the not-telling and filed it under things that were not enough and not nothing.
In the fall he entered Whitaker as a sixth grader in a building that no longer rose like a photograph. Lockers stuck. The academic side was harder than the piano, especially math, which did not yield to voicing. He stayed after school. Mr. Okonkwo, visiting for a partnership concert, shook his hand and said, "Don't become a person who only talks to pianos," and Elijah, who had felt that danger, joined the kind of chaos that was the cafeteria table with Sofia and a boy who danced and a girl who could not whisper even when she tried.
Harper saw him in the halls. They nodded. Sometimes Harper said, "Mr. Brooks," with a careful neutrality that Elijah accepted as the best available dialect. Once, in October, Harper stopped him by the trophy case and said, "If you ever want to tell me what the spring cost you, I'll listen. You don't owe me that."
Elijah considered it. The trophy case reflected them both, the tall man and the boy who was taller than he had been in April.
"It cost me a few minutes of thinking I might have to be angry and play at the same time," Elijah said. "I can do that. I'd rather not have to. You don't have to keep stopping me to check."
"All right," Harper said.