Just big enough to grow into.
Chapter Two
The Rec Room Piano
After school, Darius took the long way home, the way he always did on days his chest felt too full for his ribs β past the corner store, up the cracked front steps of the Eastside Community Center.
The center was an old brick building that had been a school, then a warehouse, then, finally, what it was now: a place that kept its doors open. Inside it smelled like floor wax and old radiators and somebody's eternal pot of coffee. The front desk lady, Ms. Rosa, waved him through without looking up from her crossword.
"The rec room's free till four," she said. "Your man's in the back with the boiler."
Darius's heart lifted. "Thanks, Ms. Rosa."
The rec room was drafty and dim β windows that rattled in the wind, a ping-pong table with a net held together by hope. And in the corner, under dust covers that had long ago given up, stood the piano.
It was an upright, ancient, the color of strong tea. Two keys were chipped. The middle C stuck on humid days. Somebody had carved the initials J.T. into the side, probably in 1974, and the whole instrument leaned half an inch left, like it was tired.
Darius loved it more than almost anything in the world.
He shrugged off his backpack, folded back the cover, and sat. For a moment he just rested his hands on the keys without pressing them, feeling the cool ivory under his fingertips. Then he began to play.
He started with scales, the way Mr. Banks had taught him β slow, even, each note given its full weight. The old piano answered in its familiar voice: warm in the middle, a little wheezy at the top, thunderous down low when you asked it to be. Darius ran through an old hymn his grandmother used to hum, then a blues progression, and then, without deciding to, he drifted into the song.
His song. The one he'd been carrying around inside him for months.
It had started the winter Nana June died. Darius had been sitting at this very piano, not really playing, just letting his fingers wander the way sad people do, when a melody surfaced from the keys like something rising from deep water. Simple. A little lullaby, a little hymn, with a low rolling figure underneath like a train on far tracks β because Nana June had loved trains. He'd played it for weeks before he realized he was writing it. He'd named it for her.
Song for June.
He played it the way he always did when alone: softly at first, letting the melody find its footing, then letting it bloom. Somewhere down the hall, the boiler clanked. Darius didn't hear it. There was only the music, and the memory of his grandmother's hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm, and the way she'd said, "Play it again, baby," every single time, like the first time.
"You rushing the middle again."
Darius jumped. Mr. Theodore Banks stood in the doorway, arms crossed, a wrench in one hand and a frown that didn't fool anybody.
"Mr. Banks! I didn't hear you."
"You never hear me. That's because you go somewhere else when you play." Banks crossed the room, slow the way he always was now, and lowered himself onto the bench beside Darius with a grunt. He was sixty-eight, tall and thin as a clarinet, with close-cropped gray hair and hands that looked carved from dark wood. "Play the middle again. The part where it turns."
Darius played the middle passage. Banks listened with his eyes closed.
"There," he said, tapping Darius's wrist lightly. "Right there. You're hurrying past the good part because you're scared of it. Don't be scared of the pretty part, son. The pretty part is the whole point."
Darius tried again, slower this time, and Banks nodded.
"Better. Your grandmother would've boxed your ears for rushing, then hugged you for the rest."
Darius smiled. "She did both, usually. In that order."
Banks chuckled, then coughed β the dry, rattling cough he'd carried all winter. Darius watched, worry flickering.
"You okay?"
"Boiler's older than me and twice as stubborn," Banks said, which wasn't an answer. "Don't you fret about me. Now β you ready for tonight?"
Darius's fingers stilled on the keys. "I don't want to go."
"Big fancy gala. Chandeliers. Folks in clothes that cost more than my first car."
"Borrowed blazer," Darius muttered. "From Mr. Abernathy. It's huge."
Banks studied him. "You remember the first day I met you?"
"Everybody remembers that story, Mr. Banks. You tell it every month."
"I'm old. I get to repeat myself. You were nine, sweeping this floor with a broom taller than you, stopping to pick out tunes on this piano with one finger. Drove me half crazy. I finally said, 'Boy, you gonna sweep or you gonna play?' And you said β "
"'I can do both,'" Darius finished, laughing.
"And you were right. So I said, 'Then sit down, and let's see what those fingers know.' Three years now. Best decision this old building ever made." Banks's voice went softer. "You were scared that day too. You sat down anyway."
Darius looked at the chipped keys. "This is different. Tonight's β those people. They'll know I don't belong."
"Belonging," Banks said, "ain't something they hand you at the door like a coat check ticket. You carry it in here." He tapped Darius's chest, right over his heart. "And in here." He tapped his own temple, then pointed at the piano. "And right there, when you need it."
He stood, joints protesting, and picked up his wrench.
"That song of yours," he said at the door. "Song for June. It's the truest thing in this building. Don't you ever let anybody make you feel small for carrying it."