The Fake Boyfriend Experiment

“Good afternoon, Lily.” My piano teacher, who I’d dubbed Crusty on her most annoying days, strode into the private practice room before I could dive under the piano and hide.

Crusty was my current piano teacher, and had been for the last three years. The rest of the world called her Miss Jespersen. Not Ms. Not Mrs.
Miss
. As in, I’m like one hundred years old and still unmarried because I’m so evil that I suck the life out of any man who comes near me.

Today she was wearing a straight black pencil skirt, high laced black boots that looked like they’d belonged to her great grandmother, and a plain white blouse that made her already pale face look even more washed out. Make up? Not so much. She didn’t even wear lip gloss or mascara. Her only jewelry was a set of tiny gold studs in her ears and a silver watch with a brown leather band.

She reminded me of a vampire: walking around like she was alive, but in actuality? Dead and soulless. Just an empty body trying to suck the life out of anyone who crossed its path.

Crusty set her square purse on the floor beside the piano and carefully removed her white cardigan. “Well, Lily?”

I managed a smile. “Hi.”

She narrowed her eyes at my less-than-enthusiastic response, as if she could see the sparkly purple nail polish hidden under my sensible and completely unfashionable pianist-worthy shoes. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but I still caught a whiff of mothballs. Why would a human being always smell like mothballs? Seriously. Did she sleep in her attic with the bats or something?

Yeah, this was the way to spend my last day of summer vacation, hanging out with Miss Jespersen instead of at the pool with my friends, checking out guys, or even getting a second glimpse of the guy from the parking lot. Lucky me. According to my parents, being a piano prodigy was a gift. After three years of working with Crusty, it was a gift I was ready to give back.

“Well, I have news.” She waved a newspaper past my face, too quickly for me to see what it said. “You received a review from your recital in Rhode Island last weekend, along with a photo.”

“Really?” I snatched the clipping from her hand, then nearly gagged when I saw the picture. “Where did they get this?” The picture was from at least two years ago, before I managed to overrule Crusty’s strict dress code for recitals. I was wearing an ugly corduroy jumper with a white lace collar, and my nose looked enormous. My bun was total old lady style, carefully tucked in at the nape of my neck with that horrific velvet bow.

“I sent it in, of course. A photo always attracts more interest in the story.” She smiled fondly at the photo, her pale green eyes looking way too happy. “It makes you look so polished, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t look like me anymore.” Maybe no one would know it was me… Oh. My gut sank as I saw my name in the caption beneath the photo, spelled correctly and everything. They even got my hometown of Westway, Massachusetts correct. “What paper is this?” Maybe it was the newsletter from the nursing home I’d performed at. That wouldn’t be so bad…

“The Boston Globe.”

“The Globe?” I croaked, horror welling over me in cold lumps of misery. “As in, circulation, seventy gazillion? As in, delivered to the doorstep of every single house in the state the day before school starts?” What if my friends saw this photo? They would totally disown me!

“Yes, unfortunately.” Crusty sighed dramatically. “We finally get a review in the Globe, and it’s not good.”

“Not good?” Ugly picture and a bad review? Because the day wasn’t going well enough, right?

Miss Jespersen picked up the clipping and read from it. “Lily Gardner has some skill, and with more experience, she has the potential to develop several years down the road.” She set the paper down with a guilt-inducing sigh. “Lily, we’ve been working too hard for you to get lackluster reviews like this. A year ago, every review proclaimed you an immediate star. Now, you’re reduced to having
potential
.”

I bit my lower lip, feeling even less like playing piano than I had five minutes ago. “It’s not that bad of a review. They could have said I should give it all up and start collecting snakes instead.”

“Snakes? Really, Lily. This is not a joke.” Miss Jespersen set the clipping on the piano, so it could mock me for the whole lesson. It was just sitting there, that little piece of paper, right in my line of vision, taunting me with that humongous velvet bow. “Your audition is in three weeks, but your performance has been declining all summer.”

I felt myself tense up at the mention of the audition. According to Crusty, if I didn’t make it into the secondary school program at the NorthEast Seminary of Music, my piano career would be over. Forever. As would my life. This was my chance to ensure my future, and I was blowing it. If that photo hadn’t destroyed my life already, of course.

Personally, I was afraid that making it
into
the program would be the final blow to my life. Starting with the winter term, I’d have to spend four to six hours a day at NESM after school, and all day on the weekends. My social life was pathetic enough now, but if I made it into the NESM program, it would be over. There would simply be no time left for anything but piano and classes.

My stomach turned and loneliness welled up in my throat. I had no good friends in the music world. My friends were all at school, and I’d barely seen them all summer. All I wanted was to be back at school with them, back to a life of at least some level of normalcy. If I got into NESM, I’d never see them. I would lose them. Tears burned in my eyes, and I turned my head away from Crusty so she couldn’t see. The thought of never spending another minute with my friends outside of classes was making me sick, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

“Lily.” Miss Jespersen tapped the piano to get my attention. “There’s no passion in your music anymore and without it, you’ll fail at the audition. You don’t want that, do you?”

Maybe I did. I mean, no, I didn’t. What would I do if I didn’t play the piano? It was all I knew. It was who I was. But I didn’t want that to be all I was. I didn’t want to get sucked into this conservative, lonely world, like a black hole that would rip me from my life until my friends gave up on me.

I was already nervous about seeing them tomorrow. What if they’d changed over the summer? What if they didn’t know me? What if—

“Lily! Do you want to fail?”

“No!” I barely resisted the urge to cover my ears and block her out. “I’m not
trying
to fail,” I snapped. “I’m trying to play. I’m just so tired and—”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. A top performer doesn’t let something like that stop her.” Crusty turned the picture of freakazoid me, so I had to stare at my ugly mug shot in the cruelest form of torture. “If I don’t see some improvement in the next week, we’ll need to think about taking you out of classes until the audition so you can devote yourself to piano all day—”

“No!” Panic hammered at me, and my palms started to sweat. Take me out of school? The only thing keeping me going all summer had been the promise of going back to school and hanging with my friends. “I can handle school and piano, I promise.” I would go insane if she made me spend 24/7 trapped in a room with her for the next three weeks. “I swear, Miss Jespersen. I can do both. I promise.” A huge lump formed in my throat. “Please.”

“Perfect!” Crusty nodded approvingly. “That’s the kind of passion I like to see. Put it into your music and we won’t need to talk to your mom about school.”