Animal Person by Alexander MacLeod

Author:Alexander MacLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Perhaps this had been a mistake. The crowd was bigger than he’d anticipated, and he hadn’t prepared himself for the costumes. Maybe the scene was too far out of the ordinary to be helpful. And, objectively, the children were not doing a good job. Except for the spider. He felt sure that even the MC was not impressed. She seemed to be rolling her eyes at the vocalists especially, but he could not disagree. When they sang, the kids closed their eyes and circled their hands in the air, aiming for notes they could not possibly hit. Around him, people visibly winced, and when it was over, they applauded the quiet and not what had come before.

He surveyed the program. Two left. “The Entertainer” and a fugue. He did not know what that was.

An adolescent boy in tight jeans and face paint took his half-step up onto the stage, about five feet away from them. He gave a slight bow and spread out his sheets, then positioned his fingers in the right spot. At first there was nothing, a long pause, then a little run down the keyboard from the right to the left, and just the beginning of the most famous part, then nothing again.

The boy took his hands off the keyboard and folded them in his lap and stared at them hard. He gave a long exhale and continued to sit still with his chin lowered so far it touched his chest. Then he seemed to shudder, and he glanced over his shoulder at the MC.

It went on too long. He thought: Either this is part of it, or it is not part of it. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference between what is a mistake and what is on purpose. He studied it more intensely, this scene unfolding in front of him. A motionless boy sitting at a piano making no sound. Every next second seemed more pressurized, slowed down and sped up at the same time, and he didn’t know exactly what was happening.

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