Chapter 8: The Piano
One Friday evening in the fall after the 66th Hunger Games, Cato, Caleb, and I come back to my house really really tired. We trade off. Half the time we go to their place and eat their food. Half the time we go to mine. Tonight, we come in and are too tired even to prepare a post-training snack. Instead, we just pile up on the cool, clean, stone floor in the front room without even bothering to take off our shoes. We've learned not to complain or allow the physical strain to show at training but it's different here. We all know we're about ready to pass out. Every so often one of us lets a hand fall onto another's stomach or side just to make sure we're all still able to push them away.
After a while, Caleb sits up, goes into the kitchen, and returns with two cups of water. "Drink slowly," he tell us, going back to get himself a cup. We do, sitting now with our backs against the wall. Caleb comes back in and sits down on his brother's other side.
"Clove?" Cato says after a moment or two.
"Cato?" I answer him.
"What is that?" he asks, his eyes on the closed upright piano.
"You've been coming over here for more than two years and you don't know what that is?"
"I never thought about it." That doesn't make much sense to me. It's a big wooden thing. How could he never have thought about it? But I answer him anyway.
"It's a piano."
"For music?" he asks. Apparently, the word is familiar to him but not exactly the meaning. I nod. He gets to his feet and goes over to stand in front of the instrument. I follow him instinctively. My mother would be furious if he hurt it. "How does it work?" he asks, looking confused.
"Here," I say, giving him my cup of water. There, now he's got something in both hands. He can't touch the keys. I rinse my hands in the bucket of water, dry them meticulously and return to the other room. Then I remove the sheet and open the lid carefully, revealing the eighty-eight white and black keys. "Don't touch it," I warn. "My mom would get mad."
"Ok," he says, keeping the cups in his hands and contenting himself for a few moments with just looking. "Can you play it?" I nod. "Are you allowed to play when your mother's not here?"
"Yes." Caleb gets to his feet, leaving his cup on the floor, and pulls the bench out for me to sit.
"We've never heard you," he says.
I sit and tell them, "I'm better at the violin. I've been learning that forever."
"He's not gonna know the difference," Caleb teases his brother. "He barely knows what this thing is, let along how it's supposed to sound." Cato glares at him but he doesn't dare pick a real fight now because that could damage the piano. "Go on," Caleb says to me. "Play." So I do. I play a short twenty-six note song with my right hand. My mother has taught me entirely by ear. Each note in each song has a designated number. For this song, there are only three different notes. I keep track of them as I play: Three, two, one, two, three, three, three, two, two, two, three, three three, three, two, one, two, three, three, three, three, two, two, three, two, one. "How'd you do?" Caleb asks once I've finished.
"Fine," I answer. "Well, actually, but that's a really simple song."
They both speak at the same time. Caleb says, "It sounded simple," with a grin, and Cato says, "It sounded nice."
I ignore Caleb and speak to Cato instead. "Thank you." We hear the sound of a step being taken at the other end of the room and all three of our heads turn that way. "Oh, hi mom." It's late. She must have been lying in bed waiting for me to come tell her I was home and say goodnight before she went to sleep.
"I didn't know you were home," she says. "Are you teaching them?"
I shake my head. "I said they couldn't touch it unless you said so."
"Wash your hands please, boys," Mom instructs. "And then Clove can teach you the song she just played." Looking pleased and excited, Cato and Caleb go off into the kitchen to clean up a little and then each sit beside me on the bench.
I explain the song to them the same way my mother taught me. First, I have them pick three notes all with another key in between. Cato takes three black keys, rebel that he is, and Caleb takes three white ones with black ones between them, just like me only eight notes higher. I teach them the numbers and then play the first part of the pattern through once for them, counting out loud. "Three, two, one, two, three, three, three, two, two, two, three, three three." My voice follows the pitches a little. "You try." Caleb, who can follow any pattern and any instruction, picks up on it immediately and plays it back just as I did. Cato isn't as sharp as his brother so his version is slower and the concentration more apparent on his face but when he gets through it he looks up at me again, waiting for my approval and I've rarely seen him smile so big. He looks the way I remember feeling when I first played the fiddle. "That was right," I say. "Do you want to try again?" He does and it's much better this time. Then I run through the rest of the pattern, have each of them play it back to me and then I play the full thing through with one of them and then the other. It sounds funny when I play with Cato because he's on the black keys and I'm on the white, but it doesn't matter.
"That sounds lovely," says my mother, who has been standing behind us watching for a few minutes. "Don't forget it and come back tomorrow and she can teach you more, ok?"
"Thanks," Cato says to her. He and his brother get up, give me a "See you tomorrow," and leave.
"You did well teaching them," my mother says as I close up her piano.
I smile as I return, "I learned from the best." She kisses the side of my head.
"Cato seemed to enjoy playing."
I nod. "Yeah, he did."
In the year and a half before his first reaping, I find out how very right we were to say that. Just about every time Cato's over at my house, he asks to sit down at the piano. He takes to it faster than I did, but that might be because he goes to bed tapping out the song he's learned on his hands. The piano is for him what the violin is for me. Eventually, my mother begins to teach us both at the same time and soon after, has us play together, me on the violin, him on the piano. We make a good pair.
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Disclaimer: Don't Own
AN: A little shorter again this time but the next chapter is pretty long and mad intense.
Points if anyone can tell me what song they were playing.
Also guys, I listen to music all hours of the day and night and I've got a whole list of potential songfics. I've written a couple, but I'm not sure if they're any good, and I've got probably a dozen more songs that I could put stories to. Would anyone be interested if I posted some? I've got a couple up already (Kiss it Better, and Frieden im Krieg/Peace in War) but I don't know if it's weird that I write a million and one songfics. Thoughts?
Fun fact, I get super excited when I put new chapters on here. I post something and like two days later I'm like "Time to post again!" and I have to make myself wait to give people time to read. I'm a goof.
Second, less-fun fact: (I keep forgetting to put this in here) sorry if there are typos in here. I'm an imperfect proofreader.
To my lovely reviewers:
Ghanaperu: I'm glad their interactions seem realistic. I remember how boys acted when I was young (tuggin' on my hair and stuff) so I drew on that to write Cato's and Clove's behavior. Brutus and Clove are complicated. I'm not sure if he likes her or if he just wants to push her to get better because he knows she's got it in her. I doubt he even knows himself and Clove certainly doesn't. Their relationship becomes more complicated throughout this story and the alternate ending. Whoa! Now I put it like that I just want to say there's no BrutusXClove in this. At all. Gross. Their coach-trainee relationship becomes complicated.
P.S. You should totally read HP.
hungergames98: I'm glad the organization makes sense to you. This story is obviously covering a lot more time than The Conspiracy so it doesn't go together in quite the same way. In theory, Clove takes Brutus' advice, but never really admits it, the same way he doesn't admit that he's actually being constructive when he's giving her a hard time. You'll see a lot more of District 2-born Tributes-to-be as you read more about training.
SilentHeartClato: Thank you! And yay! Please do, and let me know what you think. :)
Also, I just had a thought. Is this a good way for me to answer reviews? At the end of the next chapter? or would you rather I messaged you guys?
~Billy
