Chapter 11

I am destined never to sleep in again. It’s five in the morning, and Willow is knocking at my door and texting my phone at the same time. I hurry downstairs, and let her in while I finish getting ready.

“Crap¸ it’s cold out there,” she says, shutting the door quickly behind her and pulling her other glove from her hand to breathe on her palms to thaw them out.

“Seems like a weird time for apples,” I say, rummaging around the downstairs for my other boot. The house is in disarray, my mom’s remodeling now spreading to the railings for the stairs and the now knocked-down wall that divides the formal dining room—also known as my dusty piano room—from the kitchen.

“Yeah, but the apples are at their best now, right before winter hits. That’s why they always want people to pick the trees bare,” Willow says. “Wow, you’ve got a lot going on in here,” she adds, taking careful steps toward the kitchen.

“Yeah, my mom’s sort of gone nuts with this remodeling thing,” I say, tossing a box of paint tarps out of my way during my search. “Sorry, I’ll just be a second. I can’t find my boot. And I need to grab my jacket.”

“Your dad at work?” Her question is completely innocuous, and a few weeks ago, I would have just answered, “Yes,” without a second thought. But it paralyzes me now, and all I can do is stand in front of her with one boot in my hands, looking around the torn-up shreds of my house—proof that my mom is going through some sort of breakdown.

“My mom kicked him out,” I say, nodding and looking around at every little thing left in our house. The only items even remotely my father is the piano that Willow is now leaning on.

“Oh,” she says, and I can tell she’s not sure where to go from here.

“It’s sort of new, and I don’t quite know how to talk about it yet. Or…do I talk about it? Maybe I do,” I say, my eyes catching a tuft of gray fur in the corner, under a box. My boot!

“I get it,” Willow says. “My parents are divorced. They split up four years ago. It got ugly, but it’s better now.”

“My dad cheated,” I say. “I’m not sure it’s going to get better.”

“Mine too,” she says, tapping out a few short notes on the piano. “But eventually my mom met someone else too, and now they sort of get along.”

“Yeah, well, my dad had an affair with my best friend, so…” I don’t know what makes me just come out and say it like that, but it feels good to say.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” Willow says, her eyebrows stretched up into her hairline and her hands gripping the front of the piano bench.

“Yeah, that’s sort of the reaction I had,” I say, trying to make light of it, as if this will ever be something I can make light of. When she taps out a simple melody on my piano again, it stirs something in me, and I move to sit next to her and splay my fingers out over the keys, pressing down hard to form a minor chord, letting it echo in the empty house.

“I only ever get to hear you play the xylophone. You still practice the piano a lot?” Willow asks, and I press down on the minor chord one more time, this time slowly, so the notes aren’t as loud.

“I haven’t practiced in a few weeks. It was sort of always that thing my dad made me do, and now…” I say, changing one note and playing the chord again.

“Do you hate it now? The piano?” she asks, trying to match the chord I just played. When she presses her hands down, something’s off, so I move one of her fingers and she does it again, this time getting it right.

“No,” I breathe, running my hands over the smoothness of the keys, searching for that comfortable place where they feel home. “I don’t hate it. I love it. But I hate my dad, so I feel like maybe I should hate this too.”

My eyes closed, I let my fingers feel for a few more seconds, and then I slowly let them take over, playing softly at first, but growing stronger and more forceful with every single note—until I’m practically pounding out rhythms, my arms flexed and my fingers typing up and down the keys quickly, running the length of my instrument until I stop abruptly in the middle of the song.

“Well, damn,” Willow says, and I pull my hands back into my lap, curling my fingers, perhaps a little from shame for giving in and playing something my father would have liked. “What was that?”

“Rachmaninoff,” I say. “And I’m never playing it again.”

Willow doesn’t question me or ask me to play something else, and she never asks about my father’s affair. My awful admission though has somehow made us closer, and I’m actually looking forward to the parade and a night with my new friends.