Schroeder was nothing if not indefatigable. If he could practice the piano for eight hours a day (provided his parents let him and it was not a school night), then he could handle any obstacle, especially when Beethoven's reputation was at stake.

Unfortunately, Lucy was every bit as obstinate as he was.

For the first time in his life, he tried to pass her a note during homeroom — and it came back to him unopened, and she had written on the outside RETURN TO SENDER.

He tried to catch her when they were leaving class, but she spotted him and strode straight into the girls' restroom. He hung near the door as long as he dared, but a few kids started giving him funny looks, and when the hall monitor headed toward him, Schroeder darted away, red faced, to his next class.

At lunch, he waited for her at a table near the cafeteria's doors, picking at his roast-beef sandwich as a sort of peace offering, but she did not show up. After tossing his leftovers into his locker, he tried the library, knowing she had study hall next, but he could not find her anywhere. Fortunately, he happened to pass Pig-Pen, who thought Lucy might be up on the third floor, since she had started spending her study-hall period practicing with her debate team in Room 302. Schroeder climbed his way up to the third floor only to shrink back from the door which he had been just about to enter when an accordion started screeching out some Beach Boys song.

"Accordions playing rock music," he shuddered to himself, making a face.

Despite his sensitive ears' protest, he forced himself to peek through the long, narrow window on the side of the door. He could see Lucy with an older boy and girl, each with black hair; the girl had on more makeup than her parents probably knew about, and the boy was producing the horrific music. Lucy was clearly enjoying herself, bobbing her head and snapping her fingers. Schroeder considered opening the door and interrupting, but he could not think of what to say once he did (though that accordion music certainly made it hard to string two intelligent words together). Eventually, he retreated, sighing over his musical Kryptonite.

He made one last bid after school. He figured he might catch her on the bus ride home, so he waited outside the vehicle by the front wheel while the other kids climbed on first; however, Lucy soon emerged from the school's stone facade with the older kids from earlier. The boy with her carried his accordion case in one hand while he gestured animatedly with the other, holding his companions' attention. When the trio reached the sidewalk, Schroeder started toward them, but Lucy caught sight of him and made a coy step toward her new accordion-playing friend.

"Hey, Captain," she said, loud enough for Schroeder to hear her over the crowd of kids. "What do you think of playing some polkas, schottisches and waltzes for Lillian and me while we research Beethoven this afternoon?"

"That's certainly going to be an interesting combination," the other girl cracked, but the boy chuckled.

"Lucy's just the type of person who knows what she likes and doesn't blush about it," he said. "You gotta admire a girl who is true to herself."

"True blue," Lucy smiled, patting her hair.

The other girl snorted. "You're a big flirt, Captain."

Schroeder hung back, frowning. Lucy's veiled threat had done its trick, and he did not try to pursue further. He watched the trio turn, laughing, up the sidewalk and start toward the houses in the distance.

"What is the deal with that girl today?" Schroeder muttered, spinning to jog back to the bus before the doors could close.

A quick scan of the school bus showed Schroeder that Linus was also not onboard today; that was not unusual since the younger boy had several friends who lived near the school, and Linus sometimes went over to their houses to study. Still, coupled with Lucy's absence, the lack of Van Pelts seemed to drive home to Schroeder that he was nowhere closer to getting relevant Beethoven information into Lucy's hands.

At the bus stop, Schroeder climbed off with his other friends who lived in their neighborhood, but instead of jogging to his house to start work on Wellington's Victory like usual, Schroeder found himself passing his front lawn. For some reason, he did not feel like sitting in his quiet living room just yet, even to play his piano.

Even Beethoven took breaks now and then, he contemplated. Those wise words sounded familiar for some reason; he tried to remember who said them, but he drew a blank.

He followed the perimeter of the block once, twice. On the third round, he passed his mailbox and impulsively crossed the street, and in minutes he was at the edge of the Van Pelts' lawn, where Lucy's psychiatry booth sat on the grass in all weathers. She had outgrown the old one, and she and her brothers — well, mostly her brothers — had built her a roomier booth last summer, with a sturdy hole to place a big beach umbrella to shade her during the warmer months, and a little basket on one side to hold magazines for her patients to read while they waited for the doctor. Lucy bragged that she was saving up money to add an espresso machine and a hot-cocoa bar eventually.

Schroeder gazed at the sign which now announced that the doctor was out. He checked his watch, seeing that it had only been about twenty minutes since he had exited the school bus; Lucy was probably at one of her teammates' houses by then, studying about Beethoven while listening to accordion music, as though she saw absolutely no problem with such an abominable merging. Schroeder wondered how long she would be gone.

It's not like she can't study Beethoven at my house and listen to a wholesome instrument like a piano, he argued. Why did she have to be so stubborn about this?

Exhaling, he spun to head home, but after a few steps, he caught sight of a familiar figure walking toward him. Linus staggered a little under both the weight of a stack of library books, which he steadied with his chin, and the weight of his bookbag. Schroeder broke into a jog toward his friend, his own backpack jostling on his shoulder, and he soon reached the younger boy.

"Need some help there?" he asked, holding out his hands.

"Nah, I got it," Linus huffed, and a few beads of sweat trickled down his face. "This is good weightlifting. Builds muscles. Works up an appetite." He glanced at Schroeder's backpack. "Incidentally, did you eat all your lunch today?"

"No, I got half a roast-beef sandwich and a bag of chips left," Schroeder admitted.

"Mind if I have it?" Linus asked with a smile. "Mom has her meeting with Mothers Against Child Neglect tonight, so if she forgot to pick up some frozen dinners at the grocery store, that means cold cereal again. Of course, I like cold cereal, but variety is the spice of life, after all."

Schroeder dug his sacked lunch out, and Linus lifted his chin off the stack of books to allow Schroeder to place the leftovers on top. It was then Schroeder spotted a portrait of Beethoven on the front cover.

"What's all this?" Schroeder asked.

"Oh, Lucy's recruited me to help her research Beethoven," his friend replied with that look of endurance which he often wore during one of Lucy's assignments for him. "She really wants to make a good impression with the debate team and asked me to check out a few books from the public library for her while she's at her teammate's house today."

The perfect opportunity.

"You didn't have to go all the way to the library," Schroeder pointed out. "You could have just borrowed them from me. You don't even have to tell her they came from me."

Linus, however, held up a hand, shaking his head.

"Sorry, Schroeder, but Lucy has given specific orders not to receive any Beethoven-related material from you."

Schroeder stared at him. "…Did I do something to make her that mad?"

Linus shook his head again. "No, she's not mad at you. She even mentioned to me in our science class that she was glad you had offered to help her research."

"Then why has she been avoiding me lately?" Schroeder pressed, his mind reeling from the contradictions.

"Sorry," Linus answered, taking another step toward his house, "but I'm not allowed to tell you, under threat of getting my blanket taken away."

Schroeder bit his lip, digesting that with a baffled frown, before he remembered something which made him snap his head back to Linus with a sharp, suspicious look.

"She's not 'playing hard to get' just to make me chase her, is she?" he questioned, a slow burn beginning to course through him.

"Not at all."

"You sure?" he challenged. "The last time she was at my house, she made some comment about how I would someday notice she's dating another guy, and now she's been talking up her debate-team captain who plays the accordion and who knows so much about Beethoven."

"You mean that Sebastian kid?" Linus returned, blinking.

"I guess. I never met the guy."

Linus frowned. "Lucy's not the type to lead some guy on just to get you to notice her."

Schroeder threw up his hands. "Then what else could it be? The one time I want to hang out with Lucy Van Pelt, she says, 'No, thanks' and won't tell me why!"

The injustice of the situation was almost too much. For years Schroeder had tried to encourage Lucy to have a genuine interest in Beethoven; whenever he saw a glimmer of it, like those times when she had brought him a sincere present for Beethoven's birthday, he would try to nurture it, but Lucy had stubbornly resisted, preferring for him to forget his hero and focus solely on her. Now that they could finally experience Beethoven in a mutually beneficial way, she had pulled away from him in favor of spending time with some dilettante with an accordion.

Schroeder exhaled, folding his arms. "I'll never understand girls."

Linus frowned, stopping in his tracks, and Schroeder halted as well. The younger boy leveled his gaze with his friend.

"Schroeder, are you only seeking my sister's company right now because her debate is about Beethoven?"

Schroeder rubbed his neck, looking away. "Well, I mean…"

He fell silent, unable to come up with an adequate response or, at least, one which he would be willing to say out loud. Linus regarded him with a steady-eyed gaze before he spoke.

"As your friend and as Lucy's brother, may I give you a piece of advice?"

Schroeder made a face but nodded. "Shoot."

"Do you remember the old adage, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'?"

Schroeder drew back. "What are you trying to say?"

"Not what you think," Linus replied evenly, but his eyes grew a little stern. "Let me give you my own version of that saying, Schroeder, as it applies to this situation. Until you're actually fond of my sister, just stay absent."

Schroeder opened his mouth but promptly closed it again, wincing. With a grim, knowing look, Linus turned and continued down the street. Schroeder shook his head to himself.

"I could take him more seriously if he didn't have his blanket sticking out of his backpack as he walked away," he observed wryly.

Even so, as Schroeder headed for home, Linus's words continued to repeat in his mind.

Just stay absent. Just stay absent…

Despite Schroeder's attempt to heed Linus's warning, Lucy's dive into the debate team had a number of unforeseen consequences which spilled over into his life. For starters, since she had left off manning her psychiatrist booth, Charlie Brown had lost her listening ear, and after enduring nearly two and a half weeks of Lucy's absence, he had grown more listless than usual. Wednesday afternoon found the glum boy in Schroeder's living room, sitting sideways in the armchair by the window, with his knees hooked on one armrest while he leaned back, gazing blankly at the ceiling.

Schroeder did not mind his company, however; besides being quiet and respectful, Charlie Brown had been visiting Schroeder since the latter had been a baby. Some of Schroeder's earliest memories was of his older friend coming over to play with him or listening to Schroeder's impromptu concerts on his toy piano or reading to Schroeder excerpts from a Beethoven biography. Having someone around to listen while Schroeder played gave the pianist a sense of normalcy which he had not realized he had been lacking — although he could have done without Charlie Brown's constant sighing.

Another consequence, to Schroeder's distaste, was that the accordion player had gone over to Lucy's house this particular afternoon after their club's practice, and he had taken his instrument with him. When Schroeder had gone out to check the mailbox earlier, he had spotted Lucy and her accordionist on the Van Pelts' porch; she had flipped through a stack of books on presumably Beethoven while her new friend had played Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The butchering of Bach's soulful composition via accordion would have been bad enough, but Schroeder's mom had been keeping the downstairs windows open to let in fresh air, and Schroeder caught strains of the music whenever he paused in his piano playing.

Furthermore, the debate-team captain's playing had also drawn the attention of a certain beagle. According to Charlie Brown, Snoopy had dusted off his old concertina, now fancying himself as the "world-famous polka player," and had gone over to jam with Lucy's team captain.

"Et tu, Beagle?" Schroeder had muttered when he learned of this.

Schroeder could hardly stand such a crime against good taste and the auditory senses. For a while, he kept pounding away at Wellington's Victory in an attempt to drown the two aerophones out, but when his hands began to cramp, he had to leave the piano and put on a Brahms record, needing something to cheer him up. Brahms could usually lift his spirits when Beethoven could not.

Now, he sat on his piano bench with his back to the covered keyboard, his fingers drumming on either side of his legs. As hard as he tried to focus on Brahms's beautiful piano concerto, his mind kept stealing back to the Van Pelts' porch, where Lucy currently read about Beethoven and looked to some older boy with an accordion to tell her about the composer while Schroeder had to suffer through the noise.

I can't stand this. I can't stand this.

"Charlie Brown," Schroeder blurted out, "you've known Lucy the longest, right?"

Charlie Brown rolled his round head on the armrest to look at Schroeder.

"Probably," he replied. "When we were little, her mother would ask me to come over and play with Lucy while Mrs. Van Pelt did housework or ran to the store."

Schroeder quirked an eyebrow. "Sounds like you were a babysitter."

"I prefer remembering it as going on a playdate with a much smaller friend," Charlie Brown replied, looking back at the ceiling, "but it was still an honor that the Van Pelts thought I was so responsible."

"Semantics aside," Schroeder said, "what's the deal with Lucy lately?"

"You mean about her being on the debate team?"

"No, the debate team makes sense," he replied, twisting in his seat to face his friend, "but why is she giving me the silent treatment all of a sudden? She doesn't come over in her free time anymore. She doesn't bug me about my health or try to get me to take a break or spend time with her. Linus says she's not mad at me, but what else could make her act so weird?"

Charlie Brown shrugged. "I only claimed to know Lucy, not understand her."

"Don't you even have a hypothesis?"

"If I did, it would probably be wrong."

"Try anyway."

Charlie Brown laced his fingers over his stomach. "Maybe Lucy's finally moved on."

Schroeder furrowed his brow. "From what?"

Charlie Brown glanced at him. "You. What else?"

"Impossible," Schroeder scoffed, leaning back until both elbows rested against his piano cover. "The moon hasn't crashed into the earth yet."

"I told you my hypothesis would probably be wrong," Charlie Brown reminded him. "I just thought it made sense. Lucy's hanging out with new friends from a club where they seem to encourage her. She tends to be drawn to people who pay attention to her."

"So why didn't she leave me alone years ago?" Schroeder snarked.

His friend shrugged again. "One time I was talking to my mom about Lucy, and I asked why she acts the way she does, and Mom said it's because negative attention is still attention. So, maybe that's why she latched onto you."

"Ignoring someone is negative attention now?"

"You didn't always ignore her exactly," Charlie Brown pointed out. "Insulting a girl is still paying attention to her."

Schroeder slid his fingers into his hair. "That's fair…"

"So is talking to a girl about Beethoven all the time."

"I do that with everyone though."

Charlie Brown lifted his hands slightly. "Well, what do you care, anyway? You've been wanting Lucy to leave you alone for years. You've done a lot of things to avoid her company, except lock your front door."

"Only because Lucy would've tried climbing through a window instead," Schroeder cracked to himself.

A rising tide of agitation made his fingers antsy for movement, and he lifted the piano cover and played along to the Brahms concerto. Just like clockwork, he began to feel better, and it was then that a new realization stole over him, causing him to smile.

Maybe the debate-team captain showing up was not so bad. If Schroeder offered his help in front of the guy, Lucy would not dare to refuse without giving him a good reason. Schroeder just had to force himself to be near accordion music long enough to make his bid — he had to try.

"For Beethoven," he whispered to himself, steeling his nerves.