The winter concert at thirteen had a program printed on blue paper. Jonah’s name was in the middle, not the end. The end was a senior. He did not mind the middle. Middle was a seat on a train. He played. Renee in the detergent jacket clapped in the right places because she had asked him where they were. He had told her. She had written them on her hand. The ink smeared. She clapped anyway. After the fries she fell asleep in the passenger seat while he sat with the keys in his lap in the parking lot, not driving, not old enough, waiting for her to be awake enough to tell him to go. She woke and said home. He said okay. Home was the window and the rule and the bowls. He could do home.
Mr. Adeyemi’s unlocked room smelled like dust and the cleaner the janitor used on the stage. Jonah liked the dust. Dust meant the room was not a show. He could fail a passage and try it again without a cap in the audience. Failure without an audience was a luxury the atrium had not offered. He used the luxury. When the room became storage he grieved it for a week and then signed the community sheet. Grief was allowed to be a week. It was not allowed to be a policy. Policy was what Denise had almost made with a hand on a pink coat. He did not make a policy out of a locked door.
The fellowship city Priya lived in had rain and a piano in a church basement she could use if she unlocked it for the children’s choir. She played Jonah’s line for the choir director, not as a boast, as a question: would this work for kids. The director said the kids would rush the left hand. Priya said then it was honest. She told Jonah. He said tell them to wait. She said that is your line. He said they can borrow it. Borrowing was how he had started, a sweatshirt of a song from a video with the sound low. Borrowing was not theft if you gave it back better. He was trying to give it back better. Some days he did.