Starry-Eyed Read Online Free Page A

again?”
    â€œ Kreisleriana .”
    â€œKrice-leer-ee-ana,” he says slowly, trying to get it right and succeeding. “Is it hard?”
    â€œIt’s the hardest thing I’ve ever played.”
    â€œReally?” Henry walks around the piano to stand next to me. “Why?”
    I’m overly conscious of Henry, standing inches from my arm, which makes it difficult to answer his question.
    â€œTechnically it’s incredibly challenging. Can you read music?” I ask. Henry shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Just look at it.” I flip through the pages of the manuscript and show him an ocean of black notes surging over the paper. He leans down next to me and a soft curl of black hair brushes my cheek. I swallow hard. “The rhythms, the speed, the contrasts. It took me a really long time to get it down.”
    Henry is shaking his head again. “Why don’t you ever play for anyone? You should be giving whole concerts by yourself, not just sitting under the stage spoon-feeding the unmusical our notes.”
    He noticed the spoon-feeding? Although, truth be told, Henry doesn’t need much.
    â€œI like accompanying. It’s a collaboration.”
    â€œYou like accompanying, but you love Kreisleriana . Don’t deny it. Nobody plays music like that when they don’t care about it.”
    I cross my arms in front of my chest. “I’m not denying anything. I freely admit I love classical music. I just don’t like performing it.”
    â€œBullshit. You’re hiding your light under a bushel.”
    â€œWhat are you, my grandmother? And why do you care anyway?”
    I scrutinize Henry’s face. He looks really upset.
    â€œLet’s just say I’ve reached a point in my life where I’ve lost patience with people who pretend to be something they’re not.”
    â€œIs this about Chloe?”
    â€œChloe?” he says, surprised. “Not at all. Chloe is a perfect example of someone who’s exactly what she seems. Shallow, self-centered—”
    â€œAnd hugely talented.”
    â€œAnd hugely talented,” he agrees. “No, I was talking about myself.”
    â€œ You ?”
    Henry DeRuyter who always plays Henry DeRuyter is telling me he’s not Henry DeRuyter.
    â€œDid you know I’ve got a brother?” I didn’t. “James. He’s nine years old and incredibly annoying. Anyway, a few weeks ago, James was bugging me about looking at his stamp collection, which is a lot less weird than the soda can pull-top collection that he’s amassing to donate to the Shriners or his deep knowledge of monkdom across the centuries.
    â€œAnyway, James wants me to look at his stamps, and I’m asking him why I have to deal with his hobbies, and suddenly it occurs to me that I’ve got no hobbies of my own. None. I haven’t got one single personal interest. I read books I have to read for school; I see whatever movies happen to be out. Football is boring. I don’t care about cars. You’re going to say, what about theater? It’s true, I like doing theater, but I don’t like theater people, and this is probably going to be the last show I ever do. I keep asking myself how I made it to senior year of high school this way.”
    While he’s been talking, Henry has been pacing back and forth, and while he was pacing, he loosened his tie and then unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Now he’s rubbing the back of his neck. He stops and points at me.
    â€œBut you ,” he says, “you’ve got this thing that you love, this thing you’re amazing at, and you keep it a secret from the entire world.”
    I’m a tree falling in the forest.
    â€œPlay for me.”
    â€œHenry, I don’t want to.”
    â€œYou’ve got an unbelievable talent. I’ve just confessed to you that I’ve got nothing. I want to know what it feels like to be