Music Lessons

I sitting at my piano trying to feel the notes as they were written on the paper. Dad told me a long time ago that all the best pianist could feel the music and make others feel it to. I could feel it sometimes when I was deep in thought but now I couldn't feel what the composer wanted me to feel Chopin's Prelude in e minor. It wasn't sad music or happy music if it was I could draw on my own memories to feel it. That's what Dad taught me to play not just with my hands but with my heart. When I played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata I thought about the sadness of Mom's first miscarriage before Travis was born how we all cried and the loss hung like fog around our house. But when I played Mozart No. 21 Piano Concerto I thought about the day he was born how proud I was to be a big sister and have a little brother.

But this music I downloaded from the eye was dull like gray sky day with rain pouring down. I tried to play it like that I kept going back to the day I was six when it rained for what felt like forever but was just two day. Mom caught me looking at my swing and asked what was wrong.

"Nothing, I just want to go outside and play."

"I know sweetie but you'd caught a cold." She said kissing the top of my head.

Dad playing his guitar I went over to him with my pouted lip "Daddy will really get sick if I go outside?"

"Maybe how about I tell you a story?" He said putting down his instrument.

"Yes," I jumped in his lap "A forty-nine story."

A look of sadness pass over his face "Okay."

Mom sits down on the couch with us "Josh a nice story."

"There are bad stories?" I ask mystified by the thought.

"Yes, but it will be a long time before you hear them," Dad said stroking my dark brown hair.

"That's it," I say taking my jacket writing a quick note to my roommates. It wasn't the memory of a gray sky of Terra Nova but the memory of a red sky. The earth that Dad came from a dying, hopeless, place that's what this music was about. Dad told me about red skies but I never asked about the feeling of it. In truth I never wanted to know about Dads earth. We had learned about it in history but it gave me chills to think about a world without green grass, that was over populated, and starving. Where there was a limit on even the number of children you could have. I was fourteen when we learned about the Family is Four Act of 2128. Emily was four and to think that she wouldn't exist or how Aunt Zoe shouldn't have been born.

)()(

"Kara!" Emily opened the door and I hug her tightly.

"Hey Em," I say. "Is Daddy home?"

"Yep." She takes my hand leading me to the back yard talking the whole way. "I was listing to Daddy play music. He's going to teach me the flute this summer. I told him I wanted to play it because when we went to the Eye for some more music he brought up pictures of all the instrument and I choose the flute. But, I also want to play the guitar like him and maybe the piano like you."

"I'll teach you the piano." I say thinking about the summer and how I always had more kids in the summer but teaching little kids like Emily was easy. They were so eager to learn, it was teenagers that were forced to come that were difficult.

"Daddy said you would."

"I what now." He asked as we enter the backyard.

"That Kara could teach me the piano." Em said sitting in the little chair that I sat in when first started music lessons with Dad.

"I'm sure she will but right now I think you sister and I have to talk." Dad stands to hug me.

"We do," I say as Emily starts to protest but stops she knows that this is a adult conversation so she leaves.

"What wrong Kara?"

"I want to know about 2149." I blurt out. Since that was year was Grandpa blow up the portal we always referred the future as 2149.

"Why? You never asked about it before?"

"Its this," I hand him the sheet music. "I can't feel it."

"Let me guess your trying to feel the hopelessness of it but can't."

I sigh "Yeah, I can feel music that's sad because I've been sad and happy."

"But you've never felt hopeless." He smile a parental smile. "I'm happy that you don't know this feeling as a parent you never want your child to feel like they have no control. But, right this is something you need to know." He looks to the sky, its a beautiful fall day. In Terra Nova there is no winter the coldest its every gotten 55 degree's. "Your sure about this?"

"Yes." I say like a child waiting to hear another story.

"In 2149 I was seventeen a year younger then you. Each day I wake-up to a rusty red sky it was red because there was to must iron in the water. The sky is blue because it reflects the ocean. I would get up and get dressed for school we rarely had fresh food because Grandpa was in jail and grandma barely made enough for your Aunts and I to live off of. Before I could leave our small apartment I had to put on a re-breather. Do know what a re-breather does?"

"Kinda it take the bad stuff out of the air."

"Right, well by then the air was poisonous if you went outside for longer then a couple of hours without a mask of kind. Walking to school I would pass rows of shabby tents with mostly young children some no older the Emily. They were third children or orphans left on the street to fade away like they never there in the first place. The government didn't care about them because of the wars. With earth dyeing the powerful country like America and China were fighting over the scraps of natural reasons. I would get to school and learn about place that were once green but now a baron land and I would watch films on animals that had been erased long before I was born."

He looks at me. I been to quiet not giving my two cents was rare. "I'm fine, Dad." Really I'm not my stomach is full a dread just thinking about this.

"Then I would go home pass the tents trying not to look at the hungry eyes of the people as I passed. Once I got to the apartment building I went to the woman next door who watched Zoë. Being a third child Zoe couldn't go to school because it cost money for her while it was free for Aunt Maddy and myself. So, I would was teaching her how to read, write and, a little history. Maddy would do the matt your Aunt she was always good at that stuff. Then Mom would come home tried and make dinner, sometimes she just went to bed. We would wake her and eat dinner. I would question Zoe on spelling words or state capitals after. Once it was bed time I would look out our window. The red shy would a sickly shade of green no stars not even the moon. I knew the next day would be the same and the day after and the day after that day. This place was the dream that I never thought I would have."

He stands kissing the top on my head. "Be thankful that your here in this world and not that one I come from. But, remember this is yours." Dad press a flower into my hand "Don't make the mistakes of past.