Recently, in my freshman year of high school, I, Lucas Whittaker, was able to land a job at one of the most well-respected places in our small, southern town: Mr. Abernathy’s Afternoon Daycare. Well, the phrase “land a job” might be a bit misleading, because fourteen sits right in the middle of the great divide between childhood and adolescence, where you’re old enough to start working, and yet not old enough to take up any actual jobs. There are, however, at least a dozen types of work (pseudo-jobs, you could call them) that many people can offer you around this age. If you’re the football type or a freshman runner on the high school’s track team, it’s actually pretty easy to find a quick job doing lawn work. Are you good with children ten years younger than you? Awesome, babysitting it is. Are you not good with children, but have a weirdly specific piano skill and are the type to be easily persuaded with money? Then eventually you’ll find yourself in my position.
Completely unknown to me, while performing a piano piece for my high school’s talent show, a certain Mr. Abernathy had been amongst the crowd. Mr. Abernathy, who had been teaching Pre-K for nearly twenty years, had a routine, where every Friday, he would roll out a smaller console piano onto the foyer of the daycare, and play music for the class. He had called it “Classical Fridays” and it was seen by all the parents of the Pre-K kids as a “wonderfully refined way to shape the musical palettes of their little ones.” It seemed pretty traditional, but the kids loved it, and Mr. Abernathy really was a great player.
That was, until he went tone-deaf. Receptive Amusia is the medical term, and it’s actually not as uncommon as you’d think, but of course it’s absolutely devastating when it happens to a musician. It can stop you from being able to hear the difference between two different notes, or to be able to recognize melodies that used to be familiar, and can even stop you from being able to properly read musical notation. It’s a real deal-breaker.
But Mr. Abernathy cared about his daycare, and certainly about his Classical Fridays, which had turned him into somewhat of a well-liked figure locally. Because of all this, he had decided that if he wasn’t going to be able to continue the shows himself, he would hire someone else who would be able to.
That’s why he approached my mom and me after the talent show with his offer, an offer which I was hesitant to take up. To be honest, when he first told me about the job? I… felt a bit like a poser, a fake, because Mr. Abernathy could’ve gotten a real piano player to play really, really good music for his class, but instead, he went to me. I didn’t understand why, because I seriously didn’t think my music was special, in any way. He said he felt “really confident about me” though, so with no reason to object, I did. But it still didn’t feel right.
And that’s how I began playing piano for Mr. Abernathy’s Afternoon Daycare.
These “Classical Fridays” all began somewhat the same, with my mom picking me up after school and driving me straight to the daycare, an older white church sort-of structure that had since been repurposed. Inside, the piano would be waiting for me in the foyer, a long and wide hallway with tall ceilings and windows that let the afternoon sunlight in from each end. Soon enough, twenty or so children would be sitting right beside me, crisscrossing on the wooden floor as Mr. Abernathy pulled up a chair to sit on just across from me. And then, starting nervously, hands shaking with my palms sweaty, I would begin.
The type of pieces that I would play, and the composers who I was allowed to play from were actually not curated by Mr. Abernathy, but by his wife, Mrs. Abernathy. She loved her husband’s music, and made sure that whatever I ended up playing for the kids, it would be something she could see her husband having played years ago. Usually, it was something light – the type of music that gives a really springy feeling, warm, like the sun on your face when you lay on your back on a freshly mowed lawn, and you can smell the grass, and the leaves of nearby trees rattling in the wind in your periphery.
It’s the type of music that would play if you were in a large garden, and in the midst of all the different things that a person would probably see in a garden, you spot a family of rabbits, just going along with their day, hopping across and wriggling under the hole in some broken fence into the nearby forest.
It’s the type of music that would play during recess, on a freshly mulched playground, where the wooden pellets below you still have their golden color, and the trees twist and reach their canopies, creating pockets of shade. You get a rush of heat down your back, almost a burning sensation as you go down the slide, its old metal construction having absorbed the heat of the day, but that doesn’t matter to you.
It’s the type of music that would play, if you were three, and had no worries in the world, and you were sitting in a bright, light hall surrounded by your friends, listening to someone much older than you play these really nice classical melodies on a piano. It was that kind of music.
And, when I thought about it that way? My nervousness began to disappear.
One day, when I had been playing for about half an hour, I wrapped up the piece, and the kids watching me from the floor began clapping very politely and on-sync. I could sense some rustling in the crowd as Mr. Abernathy rose from his chair.
“Alrighty, everyone.” He grinned widely, creasing the sides of his cheeks as he clapped his hands. “Let’s go back to the classroom for reading time. I’ll be there in just a moment,” He began guiding the children back into the nearby classroom with small gestures of his hand. I could vaguely see the figure of Mrs. Abernathy just through the shaded window, ushering them into various seats as they began to crowd around her. Soon enough, the hall had been emptied. Mr. Abernathy grinned at me.
“Great work today, Lucas.” He reached a hand into his coat pocket. “How much do I owe you-?”
“-Twenty, right?” He finished his sentence without waiting for a response from me.
Mr. Abernathy then took out a large wad of cash that had been folded in on itself and was held together by a thin rubber band. He shimmied out a single twenty-dollar bill from the roll and handed it to me. I tried to take it with some grace, as if not to ogle at the rest of the enormous money stack that was very clearly in plain view.
“Yes sir, thank you,” I said as I pocketed the bill.
“You know,” Mr. Abernathy began, as he sat back down. “My ears don’t allow me to gauge music quality real well no more. But – when I look at the faces of the audience, and the face of the person playing? I tell you what son, that conveys a whole lot.”
“Really?” I replied shyly.
“Oh yeah. You know, when you first came in, about a month ago, and I watched you play? Boy, you looked downright terrified at points.” He laughed quietly. “But… after a while? I didn’t see that look on your face no more. Nah, in fact this session was probably your best one. It seems you’re settling in.”
I smiled, considering his words. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Honestly, I think it’s gotten a lot easier these last couple of times.”
“So let me ask you this-“ Mr. Abernathy leaned forward, arms crossed. “What do you think changed for you?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Um, well, I guess there’s this thing that happens whenever I play, where like, I kind of just get absorbed into what I’m playing? Like the music will remind me of different memories, experiences, just, good things, I guess. It takes my mind off the idea of being worried.”
Mr. Abernathy smiled, like he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Yeah… same thing used to happen to me when I played.”
He sort of looked down to the floor, and his smile was gone, so I felt awkward about continuing the conversation.
“Ah – you know, here’s a word of advice.” He sprang up again. “Whenever you feel scared, just – downright shaking in your boots type-a-scared, and you don’t even want to press the keys? Do the same thing you do when you’re on a roll and everything’s going great – go to that happy place.”
“If you can do that, and you can distract yourself from all the evil, unhelpful thoughts buzzing ‘round up in there?” He smiled. “Man, there won’t be a thing you can’t play.”
I grinned, feeling my cheeks warm up from Mr. Abernathy’s words. It made me feel better about my piano skills, that a musician much older than I was knew exactly what I was going through.
There was a rhythmic click-clacking sound on the wooden floor, and out from the adjacent classroom from across the hallway came Chloe, Mr. Abernathy’s daughter who was the same age as me, who looked like she had been in a hurry to reach us. She beamed when she saw me, her curly hair dancing around her shoulders.
“Lucas! I was seriously worried I was gonna miss your session or something.”
“Hey, no, I was just about to leave so you got here like, right on time,” I responded.
Mr. Abernathy smirked as he got up and began walking to the classroom. He put up a hand as a goodbye wave.
“I gotta go help the missus with afternoon reading time. I’ll see you next Friday, Lucas.”
“Thank you again, sir!” I waved back hurriedly. Chloe smiled.
“So, what’s up?” She asked. She had on this round sort of sun hat with a flower pattern sewn in around it.
“Not much, honestly,” I said. “Just, you know… school.”
“Ugh, school.” Chloe sighed. “I hate school. School sucks. Like, homework, right? I wonder whose idea that was.”
“You can’t actually dislike school that much,” I responded.
“Probably not.” She giggled. “I was just trying to relate. But yeah, no, I get it. Freshman year’s been hard, it’s like school’s becoming my entire life. I haven’t had much time for anything else.”
“Yeah, exactly.” I nodded. “I’m already waiting for summer.”
“Right?” She said as I zipped up my bag. “Are you going to wait for your mom on the patio or something?”
“Probably, yeah,” I replied.
“I’ll walk you out, c’mon.” She said warmly.
Chloe went ahead of me as she pushed the door out onto the front lawn, where large Willow trees sat in front of the daycare, their leaves and branches looking like they had been perpetually trapped in a melting state. A gravel driveway cut in from the main road, where I looked out for my mom’s car.
“So, how’s playing for my dad been going?” Chloe asked, leaning on the patio fence.
“Good, honestly,” I said. “It was nerve-racking at first, but I think I’m at the point where it’s not really getting to me anymore.”
“That’s good…” She smiled. “You’ve got no reason to be nervous, you know. Your piano skills are awesome.”
I laughed softly. “No, seriously.” She giggled. “Honestly, I was kinda bummed that I didn’t get to see you play today. You’re like half as good as my dad. That means a lot, in case you couldn’t tell.”
I lit up. “Really? I never got to see your dad play, I heard he was great though.”
Chloe looked off somewhere past the trees. “Yeah… you know, my dad never did anything professionally with his piano stuff. He was seriously great, but always just kept it to the daycare sessions and private family parties. It never made sense to me.”
“You mean, like, he was only ever focused on this place?” I said, talking about the daycare.
“Yup, pretty much.” She looked off again. “I guess it ended up being for the best though. It means his entire career didn’t like, sink, whenever he went tone-deaf.”
I looked off for a moment, taking in her words. “Yeah, I guess that would suck.”
“Totally.” She responded.
We didn’t say very much for the next few moments, since I think we both felt sort of awkward. Suddenly though, Chloe lit up again.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” She turned towards me. “I was wondering if I could, um… ask a favor of you?”
I perked up in curiosity. “Oh, I mean, sure, I guess it depends what it is?”
She smiled. “So, my dad’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to do something special for him, that isn’t like, mom’s tenth present of new socks in a row.”
I giggled. “Totally. That’s nice of you.”
“Right? So, I was trying to figure out what I could do, when I found these-“ She pulled out a couple of folded pieces of wrinkly, yellowed papers from her back pocket. She handed to them me. “They were in a box with a ton of my dad’s old paperwork that he asked me to throw out.”
It was a handwritten composition. On the very top of the first page were the words “Draft: The Bramblewood Sonata.” The wavy hand-done lines that made up the staff were filled with inked notes and symbols. It went on to the second page, where only a single staff had been drawn. The rest of the page was blank.
“Woah… Mr. Abernathy wrote this?” I asked.
“Yeah, I had no idea he ever composed music,” Chloe said.
“So… what’s your plan with this old song of his?” I questioned.
“Well…” She started. “It’s unfinished, and obviously, he’s not going to be working on it anymore, with, you know-“
“Yeah, I know.”
“Right. So, I was wondering, since you’re a musician and all that, if you could, um… Ugh, never mind. This is so dumb. I’m sorry.” She waved her hand as if to disregard everything she had said.
“What? No…” I said. “It’s not dumb, seriously.”
She let out a big, big sigh and looked straight towards me. “Lucas Whittaker, I was wondering if you and me could finish the piece in time to play it for my dad’s fiftieth birthday.” She had let it all out in one long breath.
“Stupid?” She asked, almost like she was waiting for confirmation that it was stupid.
Disclaimer: I didn’t think it was stupid at all. Honestly? That sounded super fun to me. And honestly, if it meant I would get to do something with my time besides schoolwork…
“It’s not stupid at all. I’d be really happy to help you with that.” I said.
“Really?!” She replied.
“Yeah! I mean… when would you like to get started, and stuff?” I asked.
“Ooohhh, good question.” She wondered.
At that moment, I saw my mom’s blue SUV slowly turn onto the gravel driveway, stopping in front of the patio.
“Is that your mom?” Chloe asked.
“Yeah, it is,” I said.
“Then here,” She quickly took one of the papers from my hands and snatched a pencil from her pocket, scribbling something on it. She quickly handed it back to me.
“It’s my phone number. Call me whenever you’re available, OK?”
I looked at the paper, somewhat flustered to where I had forgotten to respond. The fact she had a pencil on hand probably meant she had been planning on this.
“Oh… uh, yeah – totally.” I played it cool. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Really? Alright.” She said. “You better get going now. But, Lucas… seriously?”
“Yeah?” I turned around.
“Thanks a lot, I appreciate it.” She smiled as she threw two thumbs up.
And just like that, boom. Butterflies.
It didn’t take very long for Chloe to call me – I had planned to call her when I got the time that Saturday morning, but ended up waking up to a loud ringtone from my bedside. I answered, not exactly awake but not asleep either.
“…Hello?” I said.
“Heyyyyy, Lucas, sorry if this is like, a bad time. Did you just wake up or something? You croaked that ‘hello’ out like a frog.” Chloe replied.
“Uh, yeah, actually.” I rubbed my eyes. “It’s cool though.”
“Well, I’m gonna be at the daycare with my mom today. She’s just cleaning up and stuff. If you’re free to come over, you’re totally allowed to use the piano.”
I perked up, remembering The Bramblewood Sonata immediately.
“Would we be able to practice your dad’s piece while your mom’s around…?” I questioned.
“Oh, yeah.” She audible giggled. “I told my mom all about you, and the piece, and just the plan, generally. She’s in on it.”
I asked my mom to drop me off in front of the daycare about an hour later, heading up the wooden stairs onto the patio and tapping on the door. Through the window, I could see Chloe appear from a room, for some reason on roller skates, breezing through the large hall towards the door. That honestly seemed kind of cool, but… she didn’t know how to break? Which was made evident when she flailed her arms and ended up being stopped by the wall instead. She slid more carefully towards the door, opening it.
“Hey!” She grinned. “Glad you could make it.”
“Totally!” I responded. “Um, what’s with the skates?”
“Ohhhh, I like to put them on when helping mom clean.” She stated. “Skates and a Swiffer mop make dusting, like, twice as fast. Come in!”
The dark wooden floor of the hall was glossy, and still wet in some spots, not having dried yet. Chloe led me through the middle, trying not to slide across any of the soapy parts.
“We rolled the piano onto the back porch so we’d have an easier time cleaning,” Chloe said. “These skates made it sooooo helpful. The only thing is that I’m still working on braking-“
I hurried as Chloe was just about to knock into the back window, when I quickly reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back to a stop.
“Woah, you good?” I giggled.
“Yeah, thanks.” She laughed.
I quickly let go of her after I realized I was holding her arm, feeling embarrassed. I could see her noticeably blushing.
“Um, maybe you should, like, take the skates off for now,” I suggested.
She nodded, still smiling awkwardly. “You know what? Good idea.”
Sliding the door open to the back porch, I saw the piano from yesterday. Chloe dropped her skates by the door and took a seat on the stool.
“Thanks again for helping me out with this, by the way.” She said. “It’s not, um, you know… easy for him? Like the whole going-tone-deaf thing. He seemed so disappointed afterward, always beating himself up about it like it was his fault or something. He kept swearing he wished he hadn’t postponed the piece so much.”
When I had first started the job for Mr. Abernathy, I had heard about his condition, but I had never really taken the time to imagine what it would be like living with it. And honestly, hearing Chloe talk about her dad, it made me understand what he was going through.
I honestly really liked playing the piano, even though I wasn’t any good at it, and I liked the way it made me feel. So for a person to lose all of that, to something they have no control over? You wouldn’t be able to believe it. It’s the type of thing you’d make yourself into a scapegoat for, even if it hurts you – because at least that’d feel like some sort of answer.
“I’m sorry your dad had that happen to him.” I sat on the stool next to her, in front of the piano. “I feel like I’d probably react the same way if I was in his shoes.”
“Yeah… I guess any musician would, huh?” Chloe responded.
“Probably…” I trailed off. Trying to shift the conversation, I thought it would probably be a good idea to figure out how we were going to finish a half-written song all by ourselves, anyways.
“So, like… how do you wanna go about this?” I started.
“I’m not sure, honestly.” She put a finger to the corner of her mouth. “Hey, maybe we could start by trying to play what’s there so far?”
“Yeah, that’d be great, actually.” I pulled the wrinkled papers from my pocket, unfolded them, and placed them on the sheet rack. I squinted. Trying to read Mr. Abernathy’s handwriting through the uneven lines and mess of symbols was like deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.
“Um… OK….” I scrunched my nose. Chloe audibly snickered.
“Huh?” I murmured.
“You can’t read my dad’s handwriting, can you?” She asked.
“Oh, well, no, it’s not that… well, yeah actually. It’s difficult.” I confessed. It was all penciled in, with thick strokes of graphite that kind of made you question whether a note was an A or a B. Also, some of the lines just liked to converge together, reappearing later down the notation, and then when I looked further, some notes had been partially erased, scratched out, or glazed over with white-out, which did not fit the color of the paper. It was the gross, goopy white out too. My mind began to spin.
I shoved aside all my racing thoughts, determined to get somewhere with the piece. I started at the very beginning, interpreting the first few notes.
“I think the beginning goes something like this?” I played carefully, following along with the notation the best I could. As I continued, I picked up speed, learning to interpret the scratches and scrawled notes.
It was slow, but a melody was starting to form, and it wasn’t like any of the pieces Mrs. Abernathy had curated for me at all… it wasn’t light, or airy, but it was exciting, like the soundtrack to an old movie. It had an uplifting feel, something that made you proud.
It was the type of music you’d hear when you finished the first day of a new school year, and even though you had been terrified for every single reason your mind let you think of, it had actually gone really well, because while it hadn’t exactly been fun? It was way less worse than you originally thought it would have been.
It was the type of music you’d hear the evening of said day, where you’re with your family and relatives at a restaurant, and everyone’s so ‘proud of you’ for ‘growing up so fast’ and doing ‘so good’ and a ton of other things with the word “so” in them that you don’t exactly process it all, but it adds to your growing sense of happiness anyways.
It was the type of music you’d hear when you’re playing the piano on a Saturday afternoon, and a friend of yours that you met not too long ago is sitting really, really close to you, which kind of makes you nervous because you’re not used to them doing that, but you don’t really mind it either, because they’re cool, like the type-who-roller-skates-indoors sort of cool, and honestly, like, who does that?
It’s the type of music you’d hear when you’re playing piano, and you’re in your happy place.
I reached the last line of the second page when the notes trailed off and the piece came to a stop. There was clapping from behind me, not from Chloe, but from someone who had just walked onto the patio. I turned around to see Mrs. Abernathy, wearing an apron with work gloves, had a proud look on her face.
“That was wonderfully done, Lucas. Were you playing my husband’s sonata just then?” she asked.
Chloe butted in before I could say anything. “Yeah! We’ve been starting on the whole sonata-project-thingy.”
“I smiled, looking over to her mom. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, ma’am.”
“It’s the first time I’ve managed to hear it.” Mrs. Abernathy went on. “You know, Alex first started the piece as a gift to his mother. He wanted to play it for her birthday.”
She crossed her arms, gazing across the yard. “It’s a shame he could never finish it.”
Chloe looked at her mom. “You mean… he wrote it for Grandma?”
Mrs. Abernathy smiled sadly. “He sure did. Did I ever tell you why he named it Bramblewood?”
Chloe shook her head.
Her mom opened a wooden folded chair that had been resting against the wall and sat down cross-legged right next to us.
“He only told me about it when your Grandma passed.” She started. “He said – and this is paraphrasing it- that back when he first picked up playing the piano, his mother would tell him stories about a forest monster that hid deep in the woods, far away from any sort of people. That monster was Bramblewood.”
“Really?” Chloe murmured.
Mrs. Abernathy smiled and continued. “Grandma would tell him that Bramblewood was scared of people. Didn’t want to be around them. But, if you played an original melody, that had never been heard before, close to the woods, just close enough for him to hear it, you might be able to catch a glimpse. Bramblewood loved music, according to Grandma.”
I thought about what Mrs. Abernathy had said. The name of the sonata sounded weird to me at first. But now, I could imagine Mr. Abernathy writing a piece for his mom, wanting to bring up old memories between them.
“It’s funny.” Mrs. Abernathy began again. “You know, when he got older, my husband had actually planned to play the song for her by the woods near her house on her birthday. At first, I thought it was some sort of way to joke about the old tales and all that, but you know, when he explained it to me? Gosh, Alex sounded so… terrifyingly serious.”
She giggled, continuing. “It was almost like he actually wanted to see the darn thing.”
Mrs. Abernathy got up and shuffled back into the daycare, leaving us with a few obligatory messages like “I’ll get out of your hair now,” and “Chloe, hun, please be more careful on your roller-skates, mm-kay?”
Chloe leaned over, resting her head and arms against the piano.
“You know… our house has a bunch of woodlands in the back too. Just behind our backyard.”
“Woods, like… are you thinking…?” I asked.
She smiled. “About rolling the piano out to the forest? Yeah, I might be thinking about that.”
I soon went home, thinking over the piece again and again, and about how I could possibly finish it. It didn’t seem too difficult, since after all, a lot of what I would be writing would just be repeated melodies. I mean, the majority of the song really was finished, but then, playing it for Mr. Abernathy… and the story of Bramblewood? The entire thing seemed so silly, honestly.
A few days later, I had just finished printing out a new and complete sheet notation for The Bramblewood Sonata when I got a call from Chloe.
“Lucas, hi!” She started. “So, big news, my dad’s coming home early tomorrow, so we’ll be celebrating his birthday probably around two o’clock or something like that. My mom knows you’ll be there, but my dad’s still clueless.”
“Totally, so be there at two?” I replied.
“Yeah! Ah, well, maybe one-forty-five, just so we have time to get everything prepared. Actually, do you know how to move a piano… quietly? As in, no one in the party can see or hear us do it, and it’s a huge secret until I drag my dad out to the backyard, and you’re just sitting there, by the woods… uh, with the piano?” She sounded breathless. “Is that possible? Is that something we can do? Because that would be great. Like, perfect, actually.”
“Um…? I mean, to be completely honest with you, no…? Well, OK, I don’t think so,” I said. “Unless you can like, tell your dad not to go into the backyard?”
“Got it, I’ll tell him we have a surprise but he’ll have to wait. He loves surprises. Then you know what? Come at like, one-thirty. And be ready to help me move a piano across our back lawn. Don’t worry, it’s smaller than you think.”
I gulped. “Yeah, got it.”
So around one-thirty that afternoon, my mom dropped me off in front of Mr. Abernathy’s house. It was a large older-looking farmhouse, with an even larger amount of land, and, if you looked across towards the back, a densely wooded forest. The home of Bramblewood.
I rang the doorbell, and almost immediately Chloe came to answer. She poked her head through the nearby curtains to check who it was, and then slowly cracked open the door. Wordlessly, she gestured for me to come in, so I stayed silent, assuming that she wanted to keep the whole thing secretive.
We walked through the back halls into the dining room, avoiding the living room where a large group of people were already gathered. I could actually recognize a few faces from the daycare, parents of children who attended Mr. Abernathy’s school and would arrive for pickup. Mr. Abernathy himself, though, was nowhere in sight.
“Hey, glad you made it,” Chloe whispered. “You feeling good about this?”
“Yeah.” I lied. “Well, sort of.” Partially lied.
“No, actually.” That was the truth.
Chloe looked at me. “Yeah, I can’t expect you to.” She smiled sadly.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I’ve been, like, super demanding or whatever. I just, well…” She trailed off. “I was just really happy when you said you would do it.”
I smiled, awkwardly. “Why’s that?”
She blushed. “Because it was you. And also because I suck at playing the piano and wouldn’t be able to do this on my own.” She snickered. “But mostly because it was you. AKA, this really cool person who knows how to play the piano, and cares about me enough that they’d be willing to help me with a stupid project like this. I think that’s cool of you.”
My cheeks felt warm – too warm. I was probably blushing.
“I guess I said yes also because it was you? AKA, this really cool person who skates indoors? Like, who does that?” I laughed quietly. I was definitely blushing.
Chloe giggled, looking away awkwardly. We kind of just fell into silence as everything around us filled my senses – the voices, the people, the distant clapping and laughter. And a very sudden realization that we still had to move the piano.
“Hey, uh, so what’s the deal with the piano?” I asked.
Chloe grinned, embarrassed. “Oh, so, funny thing, my mom had it moved outside just before you arrived. I told her about the plan and she said she didn’t want to put any pressure on us, so she got it moved with the help of a few of the people at the party.”
I suddenly felt so much more relieved. “That’s really nice of her.”
Chloe smiled. “You ready to get out there now? You can take your time and get ready and everything. Like, go to your happy place, or something.”
I smiled. “Yeah, something like that.”
It was a bright, slightly windy day. I sat in front of the piano, which looked extremely funny and out of place having been dragged across the yard towards the edge of their property, where it rested, silently, by the trees. It wasn’t too far off though, and I could still see the bustling and commotion of people inside the house, just through the windows. I soon made a habit of checking my watch for the time, then looking over to the back patio, then to the piano keys, as my heartbeat ramped up and up, and back to my watch.
I had laid the new, finished notation sheets in front of me, and was now just waiting for people to funnel out into the yard, so I could begin. And yet, I felt this really nauseous, sort of queasy feeling, like the type you get when you’re at the top of a roller-coaster, and there’s no way you can back out, so you just have to hold on and brace yourself. Missing a note, or even losing my focus in the middle of the piece, were just a few of the many possibilities that awaited me.
And then, I heard some noise, and looking over to the patio, I saw Chloe come out excitedly, followed by Mr. Abernathy. There was Mrs. Abernathy too, and a few others whose faces I didn’t recognize. The crowd was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, only six or so people. But then, I looked at Mr. Abernathy – he seemed ecstatic.
“Lucas!” He exclaimed happily as he approached. “You’re one heck of a surprise birthday present, you know that boy?”
I smiled timidly. “Happy birthday, sir. Um…”
I looked to Chloe for some sort of signal of when to start. As the others crowded around, she smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.
“You got this.” She mouthed quietly.
“This project was put together by Chloe,” I stated. “Mr. Abernathy, I hope you enjoy it.”
He grinned. “Ah, man, of course I’m gonna enjoy your work! What’s this, Beethoven, or an original song?”
“It’s an original song – not by me – but, I think you might recognize it.” With that, I began.
My hands were trembling, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to focus over the dozens of voices in my head telling me otherwise. But I pushed them all away, because I was at the piano, and people were watching me, and it was way, way too late to back out. So I played.
I kept my eyes trained on the notation and the keys, not paying any attention to Mr. Abernathy or the others. Soon enough, actually, I started to feel like I was in a vacuum – like me and the piano were the only things around. That, and the music, the notes, and the melody.
I felt more and more confident as I played, not really worrying about the judging eyes or facial expressions of the people watching me or even about impressing Mr. Abernathy or Chloe. I was just listening to – no, feeling the music – as I played.
It was the type of music you’d hear when you find yourself getting to know someone, a person who you think is really cool in every sense of the word, and you feel just really happy because you’ve gone on kind of an adventure with them, and you’re finally at the end of it, the most stressful part – but contrary to all your fears, it’s actually going well.
It was the type of music you’d hear when suddenly, out of the corner of your vision, you swear you can see a creature through the trees in the forest.
He was hard to make out. Two glowing eyes, bright and amber in color, with greenish robes draped loosely around a body made of tough, raw wood – stiff, creaking, and covered in bark and moss. Above his head sprouted two long, winding horns, which branched off into smaller twigs, that held berries, black and red. Bramble.
I came to the end of the piece. I heard a large applause and cheers of delight, but I wasn’t paying attention, because I could have sworn that I saw Bramblewood clapping for me, too, before slowly walking backward into the dark of the woods, the final sight that I got of him being those large, amber eyes.
I looked over to see Chloe giving me an OK sign with a large grin on her face. The others exclaimed a few words of approval before talking amongst themselves. Mr. Abernathy, though, walked over to me with a warm, bright smile.
“You know, I thought to myself that it was silly y’all had the piano all the way out here.” He said, gesturing to the forest. “But as soon as you began, I knew exactly what it was all about. Thank you, Lucas.”
That “thank-you” from Mr. Abernathy meant a million words to me.
“You’re welcome, sir.” I smiled awkwardly. “It’s not much though, really, honestly it was Chloe’s plan from the start-“
“You’re too humble, kid. You know why?” He bent forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I saw Bramblewood out in the trees.”
I was shocked. “You- you saw too…?” So it wasn’t just an illusion, he was real!
He smiled. “Sure did. That’s one rare opportunity, son.”
I smiled as we both took one more look towards the woods. I remembered those eyes, glowing out from all the trees and shrubbery. I guess he really had been a part of my audience, after all.
I stayed at the party for a while afterward, watching along with a crowd of serious-looking adults in flowery dresses and nice suits as Mr. Abernathy blew out the fifty – yes, fifty individual candles – on his birthday cake. Mrs. Abernathy always liked to put exactly the right amount of candles, she said, no matter how silly it looked, which is an awesome idea. Like, honestly, imagine being a hundred, and you get a cake with a hundred individual little candles on it. That’s just cool.
It was around five or so when people began to leave, and Mom texted me that she’d be picking me up soon.
“Hey,” I said to Chloe, who had just finished stuffing a third piece of cake in her mouth. “My mom’s gonna be here in a bit, so I’m probably gonna go and wait outside for her.”
Her eyes lit up enthusiastically. “Oh! I’ll walk you out.”
The weather had gotten a bit cooler since I first arrived, and now a gentle breeze swept over everything. The sky was cloudy, and rain looked close behind, so instead we sat on the steps of the patio, protected by the roof overhead. There was silence for a moment, as we just watched the clouds roll by. I shifted my gaze to Chloe slightly, and saw her catch it, but we both kind of just looked away, embarrassed.
“Hey,” She began with a timid smile. “Honestly, thank you for everything you’ve done, for like, me, and my dad, and just, you know, all of it.”
I smiled. “Of course, it was really fun.” Fun was a simple word to use for it, because it had been a lot of things. Fun, funny, weird, interesting, rewarding, nerve-racking – all of those words could have described it pretty well. But honestly, I don’t know if there’s a single word in the English dictionary that could mash all of those things into one.
“I’m glad.” She said. “You know… I kind of realized something through all of this.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “I feel like, now that I’m in high school, all that I’ve been thinking about is myself. Like, schoolwork, homework, trying to balance my social life and fit in somewhere in all the groups and weird cliques, and even the future. What college will I go to? What job do I want? It feels like I only get the time to think about myself.”
“But…” She continued. “As soon as you get the chance to do something like this, you suddenly relearn all over again how awesome it is to do things for other people. To think about others, to put effort into other people and their lives. It’s so underrated.”
I smiled with a realization – that’s exactly what I had been feeling, too. All this time, I had been spending so much effort on myself, on school, homework, and pretty much all the same things. Heck, even playing for Mr. Abernathy had started out as a way for me to earn money – another thing I was doing, originally, just for myself.
That day, I hadn’t played for Mr. Abernathy for money, or to impress my parents. No, I played for him because I wanted to – because I wanted to help him finish something that he never could. And that felt really, really nice.
“I get it now, too,” I said. “Playing for your dad felt good because I was able to be a part of his life in a positive way. I wasn’t thinking just about myself for once, because I was spending so much time on someone else.”
She grinned warmly. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I’m glad I was able to get your help with this. You’re a really cool person, you know that Lucas?”
I smiled. “Hearing that come from you of all people, like, the queen of coolness? Is crazy.”
Chloe laughed, harder than I had ever heard her before. “You’re funny.”
There was a flash of headlights, and I soon saw my mom’s car begin to roll into the long, gravel driveway.
“That’s your mom, isn’t it?” She noticed.
“Yeah, it is. I guess, um, I’ll be seeing you around?” I asked, hesitating as we both got up.
She smiled. “For sure.” And, as quick as the thunder that sounded from a distance, she leaned forward, planted a kiss on my cheek, and walked to the door.
“Call me sometime, Luc!” she exclaimed as she went back inside.
I could have sworn I saw her wink. Like, wow. Wow!
On the ride home, I thought about a lot of things. Like the piano, and Mr. Abernathy, and Chloe, and how nice kisses are. But most of all, I thought about Bramblewood – the mysterious forest creature that didn’t like being around people, but could bear it for just that split moment.
Who knows why Bramblewood kept himself hidden? Maybe, he knows that he’ll be hunted, or caged, like some sort of circus animal. But there’s also plenty of people out there who would love to be his friend, and would even protect him – I know I would.
Or maybe, just maybe, he’s never given caring about other people a shot.
I just hope that I get to see him again one day. Make an original piece, drag a piano out to the forest, whatever it takes.
Because I would like to be able to prove to him that thinking about, caring for, and putting effort into other people is a really nice experience.
Because everyone deserves a friend – especially Bramblewood.//
About the Author
Brandon Natusch is a recent high school graduate, having been vice president of his school’s writing club. He first started writing in elementary school and has since fallen in love with telling original stories. He hopes to one day have his work seen by other people, and not just his overly-supportive friends and family.
About the Author
