Strange Sweet Song Read Online Free Page B

all; her fingers were short and clumsy, and her bad posture—which her mother pointed out with sharp little prods to her lower back—made her wrists and shoulders hurt. When her parents were gone, the nannies couldn’t make her practice. Instead, they let her listen to records. The operas were her favorites.
    She never sang Angelique for her parents again. But she knows the words now. The real words, and the notes and the rhythms, the characters and the story, the emotions and the beauty. She knows them all by heart.
    Movement in her peripheral vision brings her back to the present. Her first full day at Dunhammond Conservatory. Her first moments alone on the sunny quad. Is someone already intruding?
    She looks back. Yep, that short girl is definitely coming over.
    Great, she made eye contact. Now the girl is waving and hurrying across the grass toward the iron bench on which Sing is sitting. Sing checks her watch—forty-five minutes until the official DC Welcome Gathering.
    She just wanted a moment alone with her favorite composer. Apparently that was too much to ask. She looks up at the bronze statue, gleaming in the slanted sunlight. Two sizable crows, each perched on a square shoulder, lend an air of menace to the imposing figure. But the subject himself seems benign enough, his left arm cradling a type of small, impractical harp he probably never set eyes on in life, his right hand holding a quill pen. His expression is wistful, eyes heavenward, one foot on an overturned milk pail. FRANÇOIS DURAND, 1811–1877, the plaque reads. FOUNDER, COMPOSER, TEACHER. SURVIVOR OF THE MASSACRE OF DUNHAMMOND, 1862.
    This really is his place, Sing thinks. The trees beyond the campus fence beckon her with thousands of leafy hands. Durand was not afraid of this forest. Why should I be?
    The short girl reaches the bench, a little winded. Her lungs must be no bigger than two large butterfly wings hung side by side. Sing folds her arms and pretends to study the statue’s stone base.
    “Hi!” The girl sits. “Mind if I interview you?”
    Sing raises her eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”
    The girl places a black clarinet case on the grass. “Jenny Eisley,” she says, rummaging through her backpack. “I’ve got a notebook in here somewhere. You’re Sing da Navelli, right?”
    “Yeah. You’re pretty direct.” Sing isn’t sure why she’s not walking swiftly away from Jenny Eisley right now. After her mother died, she became very good at ignoring people who wanted something from her.
    “I saw you get called for placements,” Jenny says. “Was keeping an eye out. I knew you were going to be here—people were like Ohmygod, famous offspring coming! Although, frankly, I was kind of hoping you’d be a guy. And hot.”
    “Sorry to disappoint on both counts,” Sing says. “Genetics, I guess.”
    Jenny laughs. “Oh, I don’t know. You’re pretty. Like one of those big-eyed, small-nosed cartoons.”
    “Uh, thanks?”
    “Anyway, I couldn’t really tell much by your name,” Jenny says. “It’s kind of a weird name for an Italian kid, to be quite honest. No offense.”
    “Half Italian.” Sing blinks. There is something likable about Jenny, the way she scrunches her nose and moves a little too quickly. The way she thinks “no offense” erases anything that came before it.
    Jenny flips open her notebook. “So can I write an article about you?”
    “Wait, an article? For what?”
    “ The Trumpeter ! DC’s student newspaper. I really want to get on their writing staff. This is my audition. I figured, hey! We’ve got a famous person in our class! I should totally talk to him!”
    “Her,” Sing says.
    “I know that now . So how about it? Right here, right now? Basking at the foot of our creator?”
    “Look, I’m really not supposed to do interviews without—”
    “Oh, give me a break .” Jenny pops her pen cap.
    Sing doesn’t know why, but she says, “Okay, I guess.”
    The questions are innocuous. Favorite color?