The room was empty. With all the chairs stacked to one side, the lights turned off and no babble of excited voices it felt hollow, almost eerily so. She stepped into the room, crossing the boundary and closing the door behind her. As she glided over to the piano she allowed her mind to become clear and tranquil. She sat behind the piano, and danced her fingers across the keys, not pressing down, merely allowing herself to feel the cool, sleek surface. She sighed, and then started to exercise her fingers; steady, solid scales, before she reached into her bag and took out the sheet music.
As she coaxed her fingers along the familiar path of Beethoven's Sonata 'Quasi una fantasia', her thoughts wandered. She pondered the drama in her life, comparing its banal qualities to the emotional rising and falling of the music. She idly contemplated the nature of relationships in the school, but religiously avoided any thought of her own troubling love life.
As her hands traced out 'Für Elise', the tragedy and joy in the melody reminded her of some age-old romance, and she regretted the lack of anything so profound in her life. Inevitably this caused her mind to slip into forbidden territories, so, with another sigh, she gathered her sheet music and carefully replaced it in her bag.
Somewhere between the piano and the door her sway became a strut, her face hardened and somehow, as she passed through the door, she felt heavier, and a stray thought crossed her mind – a distant image of a man with his arms above his head, supporting a globe. She assiduously trained her thoughts to mundane high school issues, and as the door slammed shut so ended her brief foray into deeper waters. The haunting boom of the door echoing through the deserted corridors cut off her access to that world.
Playing the piano was her secret delight; it calmed her tempestuous temper and allowed her to relax. She only allowed herself to be that person – the one who loved classical music, the one who studied mythology, the one who was vulnerable – in private, or sometimes, very rarely around one other person who she trusted more than any other. She knew that if she wasn't careful about who she was relaxed around she would get hurt; she would be mocked, taunted, and, worst of all, understood. It had happened before.
There was one place where she felt more close to being herself in than anywhere else, and that was with the glee club. When singing, dancing, immersed in music she felt on the precipice of connecting, and she knew that if she made that jump she would either find somewhere where she truly belonged, or fall farther than ever before.