Page 16 of Crescendo

I laughed. “Ah… Eliza. Girl from Liverpool who puts on an accent pretending to be posh. She’s got a lackey and everything. They’re a charming little duo.”

Once I finished catching Melinda up on everything and said goodnight, promising to let her know how the weekend was going, I lay there in bed with the phone at my side, and I stared up at the dark ceiling for a while before—moving carefully and quietly, like I was afraid of being caught—I slipped my headphones from the desk and plugged them into my phone, listening to Ella’s application piece again.

It wasn’t very good this time, either. But I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed listening. And I couldn’t get it out of my head.

∞∞∞

The pub was packed full when we all arrived the next morning, the whole gaggle of us pushing in together after we’d met up at the Crescendo building and headed to a spot just down the road, a little pub place that apparently redesigned themselves every time Crescendo was having a cohort come through because of how popular it was among the students. It was a warm, dark space, a cozy feeling despite the grand, opulent feelings around the rest of the area, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the low light and find Olivia waving me and Ella towards a table close to the bar, but I didn’t really need Olivia to help find it, given Eliza’s voice standing out from a mile away.

“Lydia Howard Fox herself joins us,” Eliza said as I slotted into the seat across from her—Olivia Gould and her group, conversation already loud and laughter flowing as I sat down.

“You’ll have to get used to my presence,” I said. “I am a student here.”

Ella smiled sweetly next to me. “Don’t be too starstruck, if you can help it, Lizzy.”

Gone was the closed-off, emotionally-exhausted Ella of late last night. She had a brightness in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in general, probably exhausted yesterday and, hopefully, picking up a bit more today. Here instead of the tired, distant-stare Ella was the one who prickled at Eliza by joining in calling herLizzy,but this time Eliza let it slide, rolling her eyes. “I’m not starstruck. Good morning, everyone. I take it we’ve all been practicing hard already?”

“Not really,” I said. “I ate pie and slept.”

Eliza laughed lightly. “You’re not very competitive, are you, Lydia?”

“She doesn’t need to be,” Bansi laughed. “She’sLydia Howard Fox.She’s the one to compete with.”

Clara smiled lightly across the table at us. “And Ella the dark horse…”

Ella put a hand up. “Please, don’t try competing with me. I’ll be a disappointment. I’m rather… new to all this.”

I nudged her side. “Ella wants to keep the dark horse label. Keep underestimating her.”

“Lydia,” Ella pleaded, half laughing and half embarrassed.

“We’ve all been new once,” Eliza said. “What matters is what you do from there. I think we’d best set some… aspirations for the months ahead. You can’t get anywhere without good, solid goals, after all.”

Hannah nodded. “Yeah, you’ve gotta have goals.”

New day, no new thoughts for Miss Hannah Carter. Bansi, the most earnest and eager person alive, launched right in with, “I want to get half as good as Lydia Howard Fox.”

“Bansi, my friend,” I said, “you’re going to have to stop full-naming me.”

“Forget that,” Eliza scoffed, leaning past Hannah to give Bansi a shove on the shoulder. “You’ve got to set your sights higher than being like a washed-up has-been.”

“Eliza,” Olivia said with a polite smile that I knew was British forI’m going to cut you but I’m too upper-crusty to say that in public.“Let’s try to at least get to noon today before we go picking fights with people, shall we?”

Hannah cut in with what might have been her first independent thought, even if it was just a riff on Eliza’s. “You can’t go making someone else your goal,” she said. “You can’tgo trying to be Lydia, you know? You and Lydia are different people. You gotta be Bansi.”

“Hey, cheers to that,” I said, picking up the glass of water the table had been set with before we arrived, the waitstaff still a little overwhelmed with all of us tumbling in at the same time. “You’ll have to show me your work, Bansi. I’m unbearably nosy.”

“She is,” Ella laughed, meeting my glass with hers before everyone else did. “She grilled me relentlessly about my work, as if I know the first thing what I’m doing and have any place to go talking toherabout music.”

“How is she?” Eliza said, and Ella answered for her.

“Bad enough she immediately went to give me piano lessons,” she laughed, and the table laughed with her, Clara rolling her eyes with some playful comment about mebeing helpful.I let it slide, because I was magnanimous.

“It’s lovely,” I said. “The kind of piece where you know the person making it justlovesmusic.”

Ella blushed, ducking her head a little, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “So, literally the description of an amateur.”

“Miss Ella Hendrickson, do you want me to insult you?” I said, giving her a playful shove on the arm as the table rippled with laughter around us, a harried waitress making her way up to the table. “Are you going to keep asking until I’ve insulted you? Because I’m famously quite stubborn!”

---