The second period bell rang shrilly in my ears. My history teacher yelled something about homework at our retreating backs as we hurried out of his classroom. I headed towards the large classroom where Miss Whitley taught second period choir. The rest of the girls who had chosen the choir elective moved in a surging crowd ahead of me, chattering and laughing. The place started to sound like the bird exhibit at the zoo. The boys went on to whatever class they had next—only trebles practiced second period, and the boys practiced fifth. This was easy to do in a small middle school like ours, and only about thirty girls had chosen the choir elective anyways. Besides, I doubted the teachers or rest of the students missed us much.

“Backpacks over on the table, get in your places, eyes over here please!” called Miss Whitley. “Mia, you’re in the wrong spot. You’re singing alto, remember? Move over there next to Jessica…” Our director rattled off the usual stream of remarks and demands, all aimed at kids other than me.

“I want to be next to Ashley!” wailed Mia.

“That’s nice but you need to stay with your voice group. Sit next to Jessica please.”

The regular wave of squawking bird exhibit rose into the air.

“So unfair!”

“Totally mean!”

I shrugged my backpack off my shoulders and slung it on top of the unorderly pile on the table. I liked Miss Whitley and her classroom ever since I transitioned here two months ago. On the same wall as the door, she had a big poster of all the notes of the chromatic scale stretching large, floor to ceiling hand motions, notes, letters. The wall adjacent to it had shelves where all the binders, old sheet music, and pencils lay stacked up neatly. Across from the door were the risers, like long, low benches of three different levels stacked above and a little behind, like bleachers, where the choir sat and sang, or pretended to sing. Some people sang, some did the pretending. The other wall had the backpack table, some more posters, a clock, and not much else. The center of the room held a piano, large, beautiful, curving, and worshipped by all other furniture, posters, and objects.

Miss Whitley had finally gotten the class to their right places. I sang first soprano, and wedged my way quietly into the back of the tweeting, chirping group. Our teacher waited until the twitters subsided and the flock quieted. I liked that about her. She didn’t yell at us to quit talking. She just waited, and then the aviary exhibit calmed down because that was the way Mrs. Whitley was.

I used to love going to the zoo, before we moved. I loved the piano, too, but we sold it before we left.

Our teacher moved to the piano and played five downward consecutive notes. “On ‘Ah’, ladies.” She gave us the downbeat, and another choir rehearsal had begun.

I suppose I should tell you something about myself. My name is Katie Fischer. I am thirteen and seven eighths years old approximately. Of course, by the time you have learned about me I may have already graduated to thirteen and fifteen sixteenths years old, but no matter. At this time, I am thirteen and seven eighths years old, approximately. I do not like the color pink. I do like the colors red, black, and blue. Most of my shirts are this color according to the above stated facts. My backpack is purple, which is way to dangerously close to pink for my standards, but that is because we got it at a thrift shop and that was the only color they had and my mom says to please just be quiet because she has a headache and Dad needs all the money we have right now because we are giving it to the doctors who will make Dad in the hospital better and it will cost a lot of money but Dad will get better. And then she smiles a smile that’s way to shiny and happy to be meant for the idea of Dad in the hospital and I wonder.

My thoughts had carried me far away. Now Miss Whitley had stopped warming the choir up and was selecting some pieces of music off the top of the piano. She walked over to us and passed it out. “I have a very important announcement,” she said, smiling. “This very choir has been chosen to perform at the Neighborhood Outdoor Event!” I smiled too, a little bit. The Neighborhood Outdoor Event was where lots of people gathered on a parking lot and had refreshments and just talked. And the choir was performing! “This is such a great honor for a little school like ours. I’m so proud of us all!” She finished passing out the copies and I started to put them in my binder. “As you can see, we have three very beautiful pieces, with melodies by Bach, Mendelssohn and Telemann.” I almost smiled again. What a surprise! What an opportunity!

“That’s, like, so corny!” said one of the girls in the front. I saw that it was Mia. “Like, you never let us sing any interesting stuff.”

Miss Whitley’s smile faded. “Mia, I hope that after we sing these through, you will have a different opinion. Let’s open to the first piece.” She held it up for us to see. I turned to it. But it turns out that these three pieces are harder, a lot harder, than I thought. I wasn’t ashamed of how I messed up because I was leaning, and I wasn’t even that surprised at how hard the pieces were. When the period ended and we picked up our stuff, I said, half to myself, “We have a lot to do.” But I was happy. I didn’t realize that Mia was right there listening to me. I would have never spoken to her by myself.

“Like, you were really out of tune. And you kept messing up.” She sighed, like she was tired of me. “You’re never goanna learn to really sing.” And she walked away with her friends following her.

I felt shocked. Stunned. This was the first time anybody had ever said something like this to me. It struck deep. I wondered if she was right. At home, when I was alone, I had plenty of time to think about it.

I banged my backpack down on the kitchen counter. “I’m home!”

“Hi, how was school?” asked my mother as she came into the kitchen.

“Fine.” There was no way I was going to tell her about Mia.

“Well, something funny happened today.” My mom was a cash register at a grocery store. “This kid got in line and he wanted to buy this action figure that was really expensive. So the tax runs it up a little higher than he thought, and he says he’s goanna go ask his mom for another buck.” She stretched and plopped into our old armchair. “And the next thing I know, this lady in high heels is yelling at the kid for buying an action figure, which, I guess, she told him not to buy with his money.”

I took out my homework and sat at the kitchen table. “What did you do?”

“What could I do? I cancelled the purchase and helped the next lady in line ring up her two hundred dollars of cat food.” She shook her head. “The organic, one-hundred-percent meat with the included cat stickers. The things people do for their cats these days!”

“Mom,” I reminded her, “Dad loves cats.”

“Yeah, well.” She got up and walked out of the room.

Read part two of this story here.