"Lord," Ruth said, half to the ceiling. "You are ten. Stop being precise if you're going to make me cry on a Sunday." She did not cry. She pulled Aaliyah in and kissed the cracked white bead. "You played. That remains true even if the video gets the chord wrong. Truth is not an upload."
Aaliyah did not watch the clip again. At school on Monday two children had seen it and one of them asked her to play the birthday song on a desk, which she did, with her knuckles, badly on purpose, so the desk would not become a stage. The other child said the woman in the video was racist, and Aaliyah, who had felt the sentence in her body and also heard the apology, said, "She was wrong about me. That's what I know for sure." The teacher, overhearing, did not turn it into a lesson. She nodded and started math, which was a mercy Aaliyah thought about later with gratitude. Not every true thing needed to be curriculum by lunch.
Andre called that week, not on a birthday. He had seen the video because a cousin had sent it with three exclamation points. His voice on the phone was the voice Aaliyah knew, warm and slightly delayed, as if distance were a bad connection even when the connection was fine.
"You sounded like her," he said. "I mean that in the best way."
"I sounded like me," Aaliyah said, and then, because she was not interested in punishing him across a wire, "But I used what she taught. Ruth says hi. She doesn't, yet. She might."
He laughed softly. "Tell her I'm glad you weren't alone there. I should have been closer. I say that a lot. Saying it isn't the same as a ticket, I know."
"Are you going to buy a ticket?" The question came out cleaner than she felt.