Perfect Pitch (7 page)

“Would you like to explain yourself?” With that single question, the temperature of the room plummeted twenty degrees.
 

Sam resisted the urge to cross her arms over her chest, because that gesture would only make her look ill-at-ease. Even if she
was
ill-at-ease. Even if she wanted to turn tail and run out of the office, forfeiting the rest of her reign and any good she might even imagine doing as the Summer Queen.

“We were ambushed,” she said. “The photographer was lying in wait in the bushes at my house.”

Judith’s eyes narrowed. “
That man
had no purpose being at your house.”

“DJ Thomas was driving me home after dinner.”

“After an
unchaperoned
dinner.”

“We had someone with us!” Sam protested. “DJ’s son was there the entire time!” All right. Not the entire time. But close enough. Who was Sam trying to kid?
Nothing
would be close enough. Not for Judith. Not for the Summer Fair.

“Are you trying to tell me that Mr. Thomas’ minor son witnessed that type of misbehavior!”

Sam blushed. Judith made it sound like she’d performed a striptease on her front porch, complete with tassels and thigh-high boots. “Daniel was in the car when the picture was taken. The three of us went to a public restaurant after the game, Judith. I was home before eight o’clock.”

I stayed awake until midnight, wondering what might have happened if the photographer hadn’t been there. If Daniel had been old enough to find his own way home.

Some thoughts were better left unspoken.

“I won’t lie to you, Samantha. I’ve already heard from four board members this morning. Three of them want you to resign by the end of the day.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Judith stabbed a manicured finger toward the newspaper centered on her desk. Sam stared down at her own face, at her closed eyes, and she remembered the heat that had radiated from DJ’s hands. Judith spat, “It’s bad enough that your picture is displayed there, for every child in the state of North Carolina to see. But the article links you with
criminals
. With women of loose morals!”

Loose morals. What was this? The 1950s?
Sam was smart enough to keep her retort to herself.

Judith extracted a sheaf of paper from beneath the newsprint. “Do I need to remind you of the contract you signed, the day you submitted your application to become the Summer Queen?” Breathing through her nose, Judith turned to the appropriate page and enunciated: “If at any time, in the Fair’s sole opinion, Contestant becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, or scandal that affects Contestant’s image or goodwill, the Fair may immediately terminate Contestant’s Reign.”

Sam’s throat went dry. She knew the language of course. She’d read the document before she’d signed it. But hearing the words out loud, in the bright light of day…

“Ms. Burroughs, please…” Sam sounded like she was about to cry. She forced herself to stop speaking. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath before she began again. “I made a mistake. And you have every right to be upset with me. But my work here is more important than any single article in a newspaper. I’m so close to seeing results, after all these months of planning. I think Musicall might finally get funded, any day now.”

Judith pursed her carefully painted lips. “I said that
three
board members were demanding your resignation.”

Sam froze, afraid to ladle hope into the silence between them.

“But the fourth board member is Armistead Broadbush.”

Sam dared to take a breath. Mr. Broadbush was the patriarch of one of the oldest families in Raleigh. He lived in a mansion in the historic Oakwood district, and he was known for his lavish fundraisers that benefited the arts. The arts. Including the Raleigh Philharmonic.
 

Judith’s eyes sparked daggers beneath the weight of her mascara. “Mr. Broadbush called to say that he is willing to underwrite Musicall. For one month. In one school.”

Sam’s legs seemed to have forgotten how to support her body. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
 

One month. One school. She had such big dreams. She wanted to share music with every child in Wake County, from the littlest kindergartener to the oldest high-school senior.

But big dreams started small. And working with a single school on the project of her dreams was a far cry from being thrown out of the Summer Fair altogether.

Judith was scowling, as if she would have preferred pursuing disciplinary action instead of bringing Samantha the news she’d longed to hear for nearly a year. “Mr. Broadbush was very specific. He named the exact school he wants you to work with. James K. Polk Elementary.”

“Of course,” Sam said. “I’d love to work with Polk.” She’d pored over lists of schools for so long, she immediately knew everything about the institution. It was situated in the city of Raleigh proper, not in wider Wake County. It had a diverse student body. It had been used to try out multiple new programs in the last five years—testing initiatives, new curricula. If Sam had drawn up a list of her dream schools, Polk Elementary would have been at the top.
 

Judith shook her head. “I asked Mr. Broadbush to reach out to his fellow board members, to soothe ruffled feathers. He agreed, because he somehow thinks your program has a chance of succeeding. But you’ve only got a very narrow space to work in. One more misstep, and the Fair will have no choice but to invoke your morals clause. You’ll be asked to resign, without a single hesitation.”

Sam knew she should be worried. She should be disappointed that she was being given such a short leash, that she was being forced to work on such a stripped down vision of her dream. She should be terrified that she had no remaining room for error—one more false step, and she was doomed forever.

But she couldn’t keep from grinning as widely as if she’d just donned her Summer Queen tiara for the first time in her life.

* * *

Three days later, Sam was standing in front of a classroom, making her pitch for Musicall. She’d practiced her words for hours, rehearsing in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. She’d even recorded her voice on her phone, playing it back to listen for ums and ers, for any little distractions that might let attention stray.
 

And all of that preparation had served her well. She’d started off her morning meeting with Reginald Holcomb, the principal of James K. Polk elementary. The man had actually given her half an hour out of his busy day, looking at the charts she presented, studying her statistics about how music classes helped children with their academics, increasing self-esteem and problem-solving ability.

Apparently, that presentation had constituted jumping through a hoop she hadn’t known existed. Holcomb’s eventual smile spread across his face like sunshine on a field of spring-green shoots. The principal invited her to repeat her presentation three times during the day, to teachers taking their lunch breaks in the faculty lounge.

Speaking to the educators, Sam was doubly, triply, quadruply glad she had rehearsed her words so thoroughly. If she had been any less prepared, she would have been distracted by cans clanking free from the soft-drink machine, by whispers from teachers’ side conversations, by the scents of dozens of lunches, mingling in often unsavory ways. It didn’t help that someone burned a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

But serving as the Summer Queen had taught Sam a lot in ten months. Composure had become her default state, and she held her chin high through the harried question and answer sessions at the end of each presentation.

Again, she must have said something right, because she was invited to speak to the entire fifth-grade class during their last hour of the academic day. Taking a quick break in the deserted teacher’s lounge, Sam went over her notes. What a day—from the sternest of principals to the mix of teachers… Now, she was past the gatekeepers. She could finally talk to the kids she
wanted
to work with.

And she couldn’t be more pleased with the way the session turned out. Her goal was to convince the kids to participate in Musicall on a long-term basis. Ordinarily, that would mean adding music classes to the daytime curriculum, offering after-school sessions one day a week during the school year, and promoting two-week camp sessions during the summer. With only a month of funding, though, and the school year reaching a fever pitch as teachers tried to complete their agendas, Sam had thrown all her energy into the after-school program. She would offer classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, weaving together the activities so that each day built on skills mastered the meeting before.

Now, at the end of a long academic day, she gave the kids a taste of the program. Starting with clapping exercises, she taught them the difference between whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes. She tossed in whole rests and half rests. Then, she divided the room into sections and set them to perform a song. The first two attempts dissolved into cacophony and laughter, but by the third try, they had the rhythms down well.
 

Sam couldn’t keep her eyes off a little girl in the front row of the “quarter note” section. The child had frizzy blond hair, and freckles splashed across her face. Her arms were scrawny, and Sam could make out scabs on both her elbows. The girl’s jeans were ripped out at the knees. She was a fighter.

But she was determined, too. Even when Sam set the group a more complicated task, spicing the rhythm with alternating half rests and quarter notes, Blond Girl settled in with a tight smile. She nodded her head as she counted time, fiercely determined to complete the entire song.

Sam could have been looking through a time machine. Sure, the hair was different. And Sam’s headstrong ways never translated into torn and dirty clothing.
 

But Sam knew the look of a child who would sink her teeth into battle to get what she wanted. Sam had been desperate for her first piano lessons, pledging everything her parents required. Her first four sessions at the keyboard had cost her three months of table-setting, table-clearing, and dishwashing, without help from anyone. But Sam had been driven. She had succeeded.

Another child caught her attention, a big boy sitting off to the side, as if he wanted to disappear in the shadows at the edge of the auditorium. His hands were meaty, and his cheeks jiggled as he clapped.

But Sam saw herself in that child as well. She recognized the shining joy in his eyes as he mastered a particularly tricky rhythm. She saw the way the boy took a deep breath, how he relaxed as she applauded her appreciation at the group’s effort. Sam understood that rush of success, that feeling that once, just once, she had accomplished what an adult asked of her, perfectly, without any excuses. She had followed the rules, and she had succeeded, and she had made her music teacher proud.

Laughing, Sam called out, “All right! One more pattern, and then we’ll call it a day. But if you come to Musicall on Monday, I’ll teach you a lot more!” She started the kids on an especially challenging clapping pattern, drawing on African rhythms to drive the music into their lungs, their bones, their brains.

The school bell rang just as the room settled into its final, exultant silence. “Excellent!” Sam called out. “Pick up a flyer for Musicall on your way out of the room!” She stepped back as the teachers began shouting their own instructions, reminding the kids to pick up their books, to leave the room quietly, to make sure they had all their homework assignments.
 

The end of the school day had a rhythm all its own, one that Sam remembered from a dozen different schools. That had been one constant, as her family moved from base to base, from country to country: children loved to break free at the end of the day. As the kids cascaded out of the auditorium, the volume of their chatter rose.
 

But out of all that jumble, a single dark shape made its way
down
the aisle, away from the door, from the corridor, from the boisterous joy from the end of the school day. Sam was collecting the left-over flyers, tapping them together into a single neat stack. Intent on keeping the corners from turning under, she barely looked up as the child came to stand before her.

“Miss Samantha?”

The voice was so small that she took an involuntary step forward. That was when she looked up, when she actually realized that the child in front of her was Daniel Thomas. She called out his name in pleased surprise.

“Miss Samantha, can I take music instead of math class?”

The boy was so serious, she had to fight not to laugh. “I’m sorry, Daniel. Musicall is an after-school activity.”

“But we learned about it during social studies, today.”

“Today was special. We’ll meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons for the next month.”

“But I can miss Mondays and Wednesdays, right?”

“No, Daniel. If you make a commitment to the program, you have to commit to being there all the time.” Each lesson built on the one before; kids would be lost if they skipped meetings. Besides, dedication was important. That sort of obligation had given Sam’s life structure when she’d first discovered music. The precise day of her lessons had changed from home to home, but once the commitments were written on her mother’s master calendar, they’d been carved in stone. Music lessons had become the skeleton that Sam had relied on, the framework that had brought logic and order to the rest of her chaotic life.

The boy’s lower lip started to tremble. “All right,” he whispered. “Thank you, Miss Samantha.”

“Daniel!” She had to say something. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t see him dash away a tear from his cheek with the back of his hand. “What is it?”

“I have baseball practice on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

Baseball practice
. The two words were simple enough, but they were filled with emotions—dread and hatred and despair.

Sam shook her head and guided the boy toward a chair. “What’s wrong with baseball practice?”

Daniel shrugged.