In the fall she turned eleven, Alvarez set a brochure on the music stand. The paper was thick. The photograph showed the Meridian's lobby, cream stone and tall windows, a concert harp artfully blurred in the background.
"Youth scholarship," Alvarez said. "Auditions in October. They have a fee. They also have a waiver if you ask without shame. I will write the letter. Your aunt will sign the forms. You will play the Bach and the Prière. You will not add extra notes because you are nervous. You will not apologize before you begin. If they ask why harp, you will not tell your whole life unless you want to. 'My mother taught me, and Miss Alvarez teaches me' is a complete answer."
Nia touched the brochure carefully. "They'll have a better harp than this."
"Yes."
"What if my feet get confused? Their pedals won't stick. I might be early on the C."
"Then you will adjust in the first two bars and no one will die," Alvarez said. "A good instrument is not a trap. It is a larger room. Walk into it. Don't redecorate it out of fear."
June read the brochure at the kitchen table with a pen in her hand and her mouth set. "If they humiliate her, I will have opinions."
"They might," Alvarez had told Nia, who told June. "People humiliate what they don't expect. Our job is not to be unhumiliatable. Our job is to play in spite of the possibility."
June signed the waiver. She wrote a check for the bus pass refill and labeled an envelope AUDITION in block letters, as if the letters could escort Nia through the plaza. The night before, she ironed the white blouse until it looked like a decision. Nia repacked the navy bag four times: folder, photocopies with Denise's faint pencil still visible under Alvarez's darker marks, plastic tuner with a battery that might or might not survive the morning, soft cloth, banana that would be added at dawn, a hair tie, the brochure folded small. She did not pack a harp. There was no version of her life in which she packed a harp. The email from the center said house instruments were available for applicants who requested them on the form. Nia had checked the box. Alvarez had made her check it twice.