The Chair · The Long Way Down to Morning · Pulse Beat
Mira got the chair. She came to find Anika at once, flushed and half-laughing and half in tears, ready to be ashamed, and stopped when she saw the other girl's face. "I didn't want it like this,"…
Mira got the chair.
She came to find Anika at once, flushed and half-laughing and half in tears, ready to be ashamed, and stopped when she saw the other girl's face.
"I didn't want it like this," said Mira.
"I know."
"You'd have got it if..." Mira stopped. "Anika, tell me the truth. Please. Not the polite one."
Anika looked at her old friend, who had slid notes under her door for eight weeks, and could not find a single word that was not a lie or a knife. She said, "I'm glad it's you."
It was nearly true. What was entirely true was that she went back to her room, closed the door, and sat on the floor with her back against it, and that for the first time in fourteen years of practising she did not take the violin out of its case.
Over the next two weeks she did not leave the student house. In the kitchen, on the table, Mira left a tray every night. Some nights it was touched. Some nights it was not.