Page 4 of Monster

I had spent four summers in my teens working full time to save up for it and finally purchased it at the start of my senior year in high school.

It was one of my proudest achievements then, next to being accepted to Juilliard and receiving scholarships, covering about eighty percent of my tuition.

The rest would have been doable for my parents, and if not, I could have gotten a job while in school.

For a moment, it had been a wonderful fantasy I had revisited almost each night since receiving the news.

Then it was all shattered, everything taken away from me—almost in a blink of an eye—and I didn’t know what to do with myself after.

I didn’t know how to pick myself back up, and it was a miracle I was even where I was today.

I looked down at my hands, at the slight tremors that always wracked me, at the thought of playing the keyboard.

I didn’t even know why I took the piano keyboard with me to California. I should have left it in storage in Nevada—or, hell, perhaps sold it.

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to part with something I had worked so hard for, so now I had it on display in a corner, like a fucking memorial.

I stood up and slowly walked over to it, sitting down on the leather bench and looking down at the eighty-eight keys I had familiarized myself with since I was four, the same way I had familiarized myself with the back of my own hands.

I looked down at my hands.

Riddled with scars from all the broken skin and bones and a tedious thirteen-hour extensive surgery that hadn’t been able to restore my ability to play like I used to.

Everyone had called me gifted.

My dream had been to play in Carnegie Hall.

I could still play.

With the help of physical therapy, bullheaded stubbornness, and sheer determination to prove everyone wrong, I could still play.

But not as fast, not for as long, and certainly not as well as I used to.

Not well enough to make a career out of it.

Not well enough to be the scholarship recipient for Julliard.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I had sat down in front of a piano and lost myself to the music.

I pressed down on the A minor a few times before taking my hands away.

Taking in a deep breath, I slowly let my fingers drift along the keys before I hit the notes to “Moonlight Sonata,” starting with the first movement, which I could play somewhat well.

By the start of the second movement, though, I could feel a slight twinge in my hands.

I forged on, sweat gathering on my forehead as I finished the second movement and transitioned into the third.

I hadn’t been able to complete the third movement since the accident.

The notes were meant to be played faster.

The twinge I was experiencing before turned into more of an ache that was getting impossible to ignore until—

A sharp pain shot up from the wrist of my left hand and straight into the middle of my palm. I hit the wrong note.

I pulled my hands back. The silence that suddenly filled the space was hard to ignore.

I was breathing hard. The slight tremors in my hands weren’t tremors, but shakes.

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