"Don't sir me. It makes me feel like a boardroom."
"Okay, Dad."
Richard's eyes flickered at the word, which Ethan used rarely and therefore powerfully. Then Sophia tugged Ethan's sleeve, and the summer began.
The intensive was a furnace of sound. Students competed without always admitting it. Teachers demanded more than praise could cushion. Ethan found himself average in some rooms and startling in others, which Helena had predicted and which still surprised his vanity. He learned to sleep despite practice-room leakage through walls. He learned that Sophia snored lightly and denied it with majestic confidence. He learned that homesickness could arrive in the middle of a perfect phrase and had to be breathed through like a difficult shift.
Once, during a late practice, a boy from another state glanced at Ethan's scratched case and smirked.
"Charity special?" the boy asked.
Ethan looked at him, not angry so much as tired of an old song.