A Thousand Perfect Notes

Chocolate is a substance worth existing for

You are worth more than a thousand perfect notes.

Music is nothing unless it fills your soul with colour and passion and dreams

Cheerfulness is irritating, but it suits some people. Some people are born for sunlight and orange peel smiles and running on the beach and wild flowers in their hair. Other people are born for nonexistence.

Sharing music is personal because music speaks, it feels, it breathes. And it always says something about you.

If he were a piano, all his strings would have snapped

I'll write you an entire symphony if you ask.

He can't care about anything else. He can't. The music in his head is his pocket of relief, the only thing he passionately cares about.

He wouldn't be kissable. He's piano keys and crumpled music trapped in his soul. Not kissable. Kickable.

He hates how innocent her face is, how her lps are twisted in a quiet smile, how her breath puffs in globes of cold white. He hates it because she is hope and tomorrow and he is goodbye and the end.

He leaves the butterflies bleeding over their wings and descends back to the pits of volcanoes and terror. He plays like it's his last moment on earth. He plays so he feels like crying. And then it's done. Silence.

The world is a broken mirror, each shard reflecting his terrified face.

He wants to be invisible. An invisible boy with an invisible song in his head.

No, he likes her because there is sunshine in her eyes and she knows the secrets to smiling.

Beck closes his eyes. Forgets. Zones out so far he reaches the place deep inside where his own music lies. Little notes clamouring to be free. His own notes. His own creations. His fingers tap a tattoo against his other clammy palm. If people cut him open, they'd never accuse him of being empty. He's not a shell of a pianist - he's a composer. Cut his chest and see his heart beat with a song all his own.

He floods the house with music that shook the world a hundred years ago. His fingers knot over complicated patterns and his thumbs fail when he needs them most. But, the Maestro's wrath aside, he owes it to the music to find perfection.

It’s like being beaten – but with hope instead of fists.

He doesn’t look back. But he hopes her smile returns when he’s gone, because it’s a cruel person who steals smiles.

But the notes inside him roil and break and press so hard against his skin they'll rip the seams and he'll burst and - maybe they'll call him empty after all. Maybe no one can see his music, his own music, but him.

If he smiles, they might think he’s friendly, and then what?

If he stretches to care about something else – like what the Maestro thinks of him or how he fails at school or what he really wants to do with his life – he’ll be pulled too thin. His skin will part like old paper and the world will see how his skeleton is made of dark wishes and macabre dreams. They’ll know his heart thumps to the beat of the Maestro’s metronome because it’s too scared to do otherwise. But worst? They’ll see the emptiness inside him.

She's going to see how bare the house is. How bleak. They don't own much, just useful furniture and filing cabinets of music. No decorations. His family collects bruises and German insults instead of crockery and photo frames.