The Fake Boyfriend Experiment(2)

“I sent it in, of course. A photo always attracts more interest in the story.” She smiled fondly at the photo, her pale green eyes looking way too happy. “It makes you look so polished, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t look like me anymore.” Maybe no one would know it was me… Oh. My gut sank as I saw my name in the caption beneath the photo, spelled correctly and everything. They even got my hometown of Westway, Massachusetts correct. “What paper is this?” Maybe it was the newsletter from the nursing home I’d performed at. That wouldn’t be so bad…

“The Boston Globe.”

“The Globe?” I croaked, horror welling over me in cold lumps of misery. “As in, circulation, seventy gazillion? As in, delivered to the doorstep of every single house in the state the day before school starts?” What if my friends saw this photo? They would totally disown me!

“Yes, unfortunately.” Crusty sighed dramatically. “We finally get a review in the Globe, and it’s not good.”

“Not good?” Ugly picture and a bad review? Because the day wasn’t going well enough, right?

Miss Jespersen picked up the clipping and read from it. “Lily Gardner has some skill, and with more experience, she has the potential to develop several years down the road.” She set the paper down with a guilt-inducing sigh. “Lily, we’ve been working too hard for you to get lackluster reviews like this. A year ago, every review proclaimed you an immediate star. Now, you’re reduced to having potential.”

I bit my lower lip, feeling even less like playing piano than I had five minutes ago. “It’s not that bad of a review. They could have said I should give it all up and start collecting snakes instead.”

“Snakes? Really, Lily. This is not a joke.” Miss Jespersen set the clipping on the piano, so it could mock me for the whole lesson. It was just sitting there, that little piece of paper, right in my line of vision, taunting me with that humongous velvet bow. “Your audition is in three weeks, but your performance has been declining all summer.”

I felt myself tense up at the mention of the audition. According to Crusty, if I didn’t make it into the secondary school program at the NorthEast Seminary of Music, my piano career would be over. Forever. As would my life. This was my chance to ensure my future, and I was blowing it. If that photo hadn’t destroyed my life already, of course.

Personally, I was afraid that making it into the program would be the final blow to my life. Starting with the winter term, I’d have to spend four to six hours a day at NESM after school, and all day on the weekends. My social life was pathetic enough now, but if I made it into the NESM program, it would be over. There would simply be no time left for anything but piano and classes.



My stomach turned and loneliness welled up in my throat. I had no good friends in the music world. My friends were all at school, and I’d barely seen them all summer. All I wanted was to be back at school with them, back to a life of at least some level of normalcy. If I got into NESM, I’d never see them. I would lose them. Tears burned in my eyes, and I turned my head away from Crusty so she couldn’t see. The thought of never spending another minute with my friends outside of classes was making me sick, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

“Lily.” Miss Jespersen tapped the piano to get my attention. “There’s no passion in your music anymore and without it, you’ll fail at the audition. You don’t want that, do you?”

Maybe I did. I mean, no, I didn’t. What would I do if I didn’t play the piano? It was all I knew. It was who I was. But I didn’t want that to be all I was. I didn’t want to get sucked into this conservative, lonely world, like a black hole that would rip me from my life until my friends gave up on me.

I was already nervous about seeing them tomorrow. What if they’d changed over the summer? What if they didn’t know me? What if—

“Lily! Do you want to fail?”

“No!” I barely resisted the urge to cover my ears and block her out. “I’m not trying to fail,” I snapped. “I’m trying to play. I’m just so tired and—”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. A top performer doesn’t let something like that stop her.” Crusty turned the picture of freakazoid me, so I had to stare at my ugly mug shot in the cruelest form of torture. “If I don’t see some improvement in the next week, we’ll need to think about taking you out of classes until the audition so you can devote yourself to piano all day—”