The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

Author:Sara Zarr
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
Published: 2013-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

She’d just come out of the kitchen with the leftover half of her sandwich and some pie when Gus and her dad finally got home. The sensitive brother who’d placed a cool cloth over her eyes that mop;er hrning had been possessed by the annoying ten-year-old-boy Gus. Who she didn’t like as much as she had last night. He tried to re-enact a fight scene from the movie by pretending to roundhouse kick her in the side and karate chop her neck.

“Stop it.” She pushed him away, harder than she needed to. “You’re going to make me drop my pie.”

Her dad had his phone to his ear – listening to messages, it looked like. Gus still danced around her, quoting some dumb thing she could only assume was also from the movie.

“You should practise, Gus,” she said on her way up the first flight of stairs. She only meant it as a way to get him to leave her alone, but hearing herself made her wince. It was exactly what she told her mom she wouldn’t do. “Or not,” she said, and turned to look down at the landing where Gus stood, touching the banister and staring up at her.

“I will,” he said, defensive.

“Never mind, you don’t have to.”

“Lucy’s right.” Her dad pocketed his phone. “Try to get in an hour or so, yes? To stay on track. The showcase is—”

“—in three weeks,” Gus said. “I know.”

“Another day off won’t be the end of the world, Dad,” Lucy said. “Overpreparing is as bad as underpreparing.”

“You’re the one who just told him to practise!”

Gus looked at him, then at her, and then stomped off to the piano room.

Lucy leaned over the banister, feeling a little bit sorry for her dad. By his own admission, he didn’t get what it meant to be a competitive musician trying to master a piece, not on the inside.

“Dad.”

He looked up.

“Go sit with him while he plays.”

“Really?”

“I mean, don’t stare at him or anything. Take a book. Or your laptop or whatever. Just…be there. It’s lonely sometimes.” Going over and over and over the music. Imagining an audience and a critique. Losing all perspective, not being sure if it was getting better or worse. “Trust me.”

He nodded. “I do.”

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