Finally a moment to myself, the weight of my decision began to wear on me. I may have a harp I can play, but that didn’t make it any easier to transport it. Stairs were the first obstacle. Then there would be hills on the way home, not to mention bumps in the pavement. If only I could drive and had a car! Perhaps I should have stuck with the viola. But then those Bodyguards would have been adding viola jokes to their downgrading comments.
Oh well, at least Nami bought me some time to get more familiar with my instrument. After all, no matter how cool of an arrangement I made up, they would have laughed if I played “Twinkle, Twinkle” for them. Now I’d be able to work on some other song and really knock their socks off when the time came.
After maneuvering my harp down the stairs, I took a shortcut along the school grounds. Grass probably wasn’t my best choice of routes, but I just wanted to get home as quick as possible. People were staring at me and my difficulty with my instrument and it was embarrassing, so the grassy short cut with less people sounded very appealing.
I pulled and dragged and yanked, until my feet tripped over something. That’s what I get for walking backwards, right? I cringed as the harp case fell on its side and prayed that it wasn’t damaged inside.
I then realized I could hear faint snoring and noticed what I had tripped on were the legs of a sleeping first year music student. The boy had a young, pretty face and blond hair with soft curls. My fall did not seem to disturb his slumber, so I wondered if he was comatose.
“Hey, hey? Are you all right?”
The boy woke up and rubbed his eyes. He was just sleeping after all. He still seemed asleep with his slow speech and drowsy indifference to the situation. He gathered his music and walked off. I hefted my harp back onto its wheels.
By the time I arrived home, my arms were sore. I needed to lay down with a heat pad. A lot of good I’d do playing if I had to carry my harp anywhere first. Then there was the fact of how I was going to explain my new instrument to my family when they got home. Maybe if I just explained to them that I was asked to play so the school was letting me borrow it, after all that pretty much was the truth minus the mention of a fairy.
I gave one final shove to get my harp into my room, between my bed and sliding mirror closet doors. I fell on top of my waterbed and stared at my purple ceiling. My head bent towards my harp case, but I ended up focusing more on the mirror’s reflection of the four-way yin-yang I had painted on the opposing wall. The turquoise, purple, and rose colors were soothing to look at.
My whole room was covered in these colors. When my mother bought the paint for me to redo my room, she was expecting me to have an off-white layer with the other colors brushed across to match my bedding. She didn’t expect me to go solid with the colors. She didn’t like it because she said dark colors make a room look smaller, but it didn’t bother me.
I recalled how sore my arms were after the two days of painting my room, trying to think if they felt any worse after that than they did this moment. It was difficult to imagine feeling worse than the present pressing issues, but the heat of my waterbed soothed my shoulders a bit as I recovered from the extreme exercise.
My eyes wandered over my CD collection. CD’s were relatively new, so at the time I only had a few cartoon movie soundtracks and a disc of oldies. I searched for a song to match my current suffering, but started humming a hymn that had a more victorious and conquering feel to it.
My one foot tapped the air as they lyrics seem to give me strength. My foot movement reminded me how shocked I was that a harp had foot pedals for playing. I looked back over at the harp and thought I should try it out, after all the work it took to get it here, it would be pointless to not play. So I took it out and positioned it so I could sit on the edge of my bed and see myself.
Like when I played for Lili, my arms rose to position and started playing the notes I wanted to hear. It was interesting to hear the fanfare that usually comes from an organ to be plucked out, but I was able to do it! The marching beat of the base line I played on the lower strings gave me strength. As a whole, the music invigorated me and I forgot my aching soldiers.
After two verses of the hymn, I transitioned into a folk song. The song I had figured out how to play on my trombone before by ear, but this moment felt cooler than then because I could play multiple notes and rhythms at the same time.
I continued with a medley of songs from movies until I finished with a great finale. I felt like I could play anything and everything. My options were limitless! I plopped back onto my bed, giggling with joy.
