“Now, Lily.” Crusty propelled me toward the door
I glanced over my shoulder at Rafe. “Thanks for trying,” I mouthed to him, trying to connect with this amazing world one last time before it was snatched away from me forever.
He nodded at me just before the door shut behind us.
CHAPTER THREE
Rafe inspired me.
For the rest of the day and all that night, I was fired up. After a summer of torment under Crusty’s shadow, Rafe and his band had been like a spark of life. I wasn’t just Lily the piano player. I had friends and a life, and when school started the next morning, I was going to have it back.
I’d been psyched for school before, but now I was so amped up that I was almost ready to camp out on the front steps of my house that night so I’d be halfway to the bus as soon as I woke up.
I needed to get to school, because once Miss Jespersen had pried me away from Mass Attack, the rest of my day had been miserable. It had been relentless and merciless attempts by my mom and Miss Jespersen to strip away the piece of me that had come back to life when I’d been playing the keyboard.
My mom had laid a major guilt trip on me for making her and Miss Jespersen think I’d been kidnapped when I’d bailed from my lesson. I was actually kind of surprised that Miss Jespersen had been worried about me. For one deluded moment, I actually thought maybe she was human, and I was even blindsided by the possibility that maybe she and my mom valued me for something other than my piano abilities.
Until she and my mom had gone off on the audition again, brainstorming ways to help me rediscover my passion for piano, to overcome the pathetic failure and disappointment I was fast becoming. Then the conversation was all about my lackluster playing, the terrible reviews, my inability to live up to my talents.
The time could not pass fast enough until school finally started the next morning.
As I rushed into homeroom on Monday morning, the only thing keeping me sane was the thought of my friends. Sure, it was an all-girls school, but that didn’t matter at this point. Even the fact that the school covered grades sixth through twelfth, so becoming a freshman wasn’t exactly like launching into high school, didn’t make a difference. I was officially in high school and I was going to enjoy it!
“Lily!” My best friend, Erin Fitzgerald, screamed my name as soon as I got inside the room. Her bleached out hair and her tanned skin were all about the summer fun I hadn’t had, and she was wearing a macramé necklace of rainbow-colored threads.
“Erin!” I dodged desks and groups of shrieking kids, hurled my navy backpack on the floor and threw myself at her, tackling her in a giant hug. “I missed you!”
She screamed and hugged me back, and I knew then that everything was going to be okay.
“Oh my God, you totally missed out this summer.” Erin grabbed my arm and tugged me over to where Valerie Collins and Delilah Somers were huddled up in the corner, in a private conversation intended to keep the rest of the world out. Everyone except me and Erin, of course, because my friends were my space, the place where I owned the world.
Val and Delilah were the other half of our foursome, though they weren’t as tight as Erin and I were. Erin and I had known each other since day care, whereas Val and Delilah had joined our inner circle when we all started attending St. Mary’s School for Girls in the sixth grade. But they were awesome, and I was so happy to see them.
Val’s hair was brown and curly, but it fell around her shoulders like it had its own personality. She was super outgoing, so her hair totally matched her personality. Delilah’s hair was fiery red, super thick and she always had the coolest hairstyles. Today it was in a half-updo with little French braids down the front of her hairline, folded into a mass of tumbling waves in the back. They were both wearing the requisite navy pants for our school, but Delilah was wearing a new black leather cord with a turquoise pendant around her neck, and Val had a pair of giant silver hoops that made her look like some exotic gypsy.
Huh. I fingered my tiny gold hoops and decided maybe I needed to do a little shopping. Since when did we dress up for school? We always had a pact that school was the place to be casual, since there were no boys to impress.
“Lily’s back,” Erin announced.
Val and Delilah whirled around, and their eyes went wide when they saw me. “Lily!” They screamed and jumped up, and I screamed back and hugged them.
Yay! It was so good to be back! “I’m so psyched to see you guys!” Excitement rushing through me, I flopped down at an empty desk, beaming at them. Hanging with Rafe’s band had been amazing, but this was so much better, because these were my peeps, my girls, people who I didn’t have to prove myself to. “So, did you guys have a great summer, or what?”