A few months after my dad pa.s.sed away. I tried to keep up with music. I kept going to my lessons but anyone could see I wasn't enjoying it. My playing was off and my general enthusiasm fell to the deepest parts of my mind. Unable to be pulled out by anyone.

"Come on…" My mum said to me as she opened the curtains inviting the blinding sun into my room. "It's a nice day, why not go out?"

"I have nowhere to go…" I said covering my eyes with my duvet.

"Why not go to the park?" she said. "You can see if anyone is using the public piano?"

"No one uses it anymore… There is no point. That thing's probably out of tune anyway."

Just like I said there was no point in going, there was also no point in arguing. My mum forced me out of bed and locked me out until I went to the park.

Although the sun was s.h.i.+ning and kids were out with their families enjoying the heat, it wasn't fun for me. I didn't want to be out in the heat, I wasn't even dressed for it. I'd rather spend it all inside and just not do anything. I knew that I would be starting Secondary school in about a year or 2 but that didn't matter to me. I didn't even care that I looked homeless with my dishevelled hair and rumbled clothes.

When I arrived at the park, I went over to the piano to find a crowd of people circling it. I could hear the faint sounds of the piano playing but couldn't tell what they were playing. As I got closer the sound became clearer, I didn't know the name but I noticed it almost immediately. It was the piece that I had been singing over in my head since the exam. The player was nostalgic to me. It sounded like my dad was playing, the performances were as good as I remember. Never missing a note. It was the piece the boy played during his exam.

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Curiosity got the better of me because I wanted to listen to more of it. I wanted to see what the boy looked like, I wanted to know what the piece was called and know more about the person behind the piano. I stood in the crowd, listening whilst hidden behind all the parents. By the time the piece finished the boy said he wasn't going to play anymore. The crowd was disappointed and dispersed but he stayed at the piano collecting his sheet music.

"U-um… excuse me?" I managed to say to the boy who seemed familiar to me.

"H-hi… what's up?" He said as if it was his first time talking to a girl his age. Even then he seemed rather cute.

"W-what was the name of the piece?"

"The piece?" He said as if no one had asked him. "It's Serenade by Schubert, but this is the Liszt arrangement."

He spoke about the piece using the names of the musicians as if he knew I'd recognise them. I knew what he was talking about when he continued to talk about it. His understanding of music and music theory was something I hadn't seen before. He seemed happy when he was playing but he seemed brighter when he was talking about them.

"Wh-what's your name?" I asked.

"Name? It's Owen… What about you?"

When he said his name it all clicked in my head. The piece in the music school, the piece in the music exam and the piece he was playing now. It was all played by the same person. This was the boy in the music exam.

"I-I'm Ruby…" I said hoping he wasn't finding me awkward.

"Nice to meet you," He said. "Do you play any instruments?"

"I do!" I said pa.s.sionately wanting to continue our conversation.

Several months went by and I continued to stop by the piano to talk to Owen. We spoke endlessly about music and we even played a bit together. I learnt the violin part of the piece he played in the exam and we played together. We met during the hottest days and the coldest days, throughout the extreme weather, we met up and he even taught me how to play the piano. Even after they decided to remove the public piano we still met and talked, but eventually, we stopped meeting.

To blame him for it is incorrect, the only person to blame for this was myself.

My mum was talking to someone, my new stepdad. I wasn't happy with it all. It came out of nowhere and it caused arguments. It made me question if she truly loved my dad. He wasn't a nice man. He was the opposite of my dad. My dad spoke about music with such joy where this man spoke about it as if it was an afterthought. He told me that I should give up on playing the violin and stop singing. I told him that I would like to play the piano but he didn't care. Even my mum was against the idea of me playing the piano. She said it reminded her of her late husband. Which looking back was a stupid excuse.

I stopped going to the park and gave up on music. I only listened to it, moving on from the violin and singing, hoping that it would help me move on. The months continued to go past and I never saw Owen again. I always thought about if he was waiting by where the piano was.

I thought that I would give up and try to forget about it all going into Secondary school. My violin collected dust in the corner of my room and my dad's piano was never touched.

With that, I started Secondary school. I arrived on the first day and looked around at the cla.s.s, sitting on his own, at the front, was the one I left in the park. Owen. He started to wear gla.s.ses but he looked the same. I could tell it was him. He didn't look at me and I didn't look at him. I a.s.sumed he just forgot about me.