Wait a second . . . “La Bamba”?
That’s when I finally made the connection. Richie Valens, the guy who sang the original “La Bamba,” had died in a plane crash. So did Patsy Cline, who sang “Who’s Sorry Now?” And Jimmy Hendrix overdosed . . . Come to think of it, every song coming out of my mouth was sung by someone who died an unexpected, unpleasant death. But death was not the end for them, and now I knew there was a place where all tragically terminated musicians go . . . because I wasn’t just pulling in some random radio station—my cavity was so infinitely deep, it had become a wormhole to an alternate dimension!
“Just a little bit further . . .” said Lucretia, practically on top of me now, her knee on my chest, and her entire hand shoved in my appliance-stretched mouth down to the wrist.
“Para bailar la Bamba,” sang Richie Valens.
“We’re almost there—I can feel it,” said Lizzy.
“Para bailar la Bamba se necesita una poca de gracia . . .”
There was a whistling in the air now, like wind tearing through a forest, but neither of them heard it—Lizzy was too involved in her relentless drilling, and Lucretia was focused on holding down my jerking arms and legs. Soon the wind grew, drowning out the song, until it sounded like a freight train crashing through the room. Their pigtails were whipping in the wind—a wind that was funneling right into my mouth.
“Wait! Wait—I see something in there!” shouted Lizzy over the wind. “Oh my God! It’s . . . It’s—”
But she never finished because suddenly my tooth raged in pain, my mouth felt extremely full, and she was gone. Lizzy Von Suffrin, D.D.S., was sucked right into the wormhole.
Lucretia reacted with lightning reflexes, and grabbed onto the X-ray machine to keep from being drawn in as well. It was like a hole in an airplane at thirty-five thousand feet. In a rush of fluttering paper, crashing metal, and bouncing plastic, everything in the room, from the Atlantis poster, to the dental instruments, to the books and files on the shelves, were torn from the room, and right into the cavity. The “appliance” on my face crumbled like it was made of aluminum foil, tore loose from my mouth, and disappeared inside.
Lucretia held on to the arm of the X-ray machine for her life, her massive biceps straining for all she was worth, until the X-ray machine could no longer hold. It broke off, and she, along with the head of the X-ray machine, came flying toward me. I closed my eyes, bracing for impact, but felt only the throb of my tooth, and when I opened my eyes, she was gone, the wind had stopped, and the room was absolutely silent.
I looked around. There was nothing left in the room but me and the chair. All of that mass had sealed the wormhole.
The door to the room swung open, and I turned to see Roxy and Püshpa standing there, stunned.
“Ralphy!” said Püshpa. “What has happened here?”
Roxy looked at me, turning a little bit green. “Uh . . . Ralphy? There’s something hanging out of your mouth.”
My cheeks were still so numb that I hadn’t felt it there. I reached up to see what it was. It was a single dark braided pigtail hanging out of the corner of my mouth like it had no better place to be.
Püshpa’s eyes bulged so wide she began to resemble an anime character. “You ate them! You ate those nice fishmongers, you evil, evil Jell-O-mold!”
Püshpa turned and raced out that door screaming in a language that no longer existed (but might exist again in a few months), and we haven’t seen her since.
Roxy sighed. “Well, she lasted longer than most, didn’t she? How’s your tooth?”
“Better,” I told her. It was true. It no longer hurt. Roxie found a pair of scissors in the outer office and relieved me of the pigtail, which now hangs in my room next to various other trophies and ribbons.
Without Püshpa to drive, we walked home, but I didn’t mind. I felt better than I had in weeks. All in all, I suppose I can’t complain. The Von Suffrin sisters had performed a successful root canal, and in the end had filled my cavity. Literally.
As for Roxie’s science-fair project, she took first place, and she’s already planning her entry for next year.
That’s when I’ll be getting braces.
AN EAR FOR MUSIC
I have certain favorite pieces of classical music. There are several movements of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons I love to listen to over and over again. One movement features fiery violins. The thought of “fiery violins,” and the idea of music being able to influence environment, led to this story. My favorite part of the story is the identity of the old man.
AN EAR FOR MUSIC
For Lee Tran, music was all there was, and all there would ever be. Nothing mattered but his music—and he let that thought swell his head as he stepped onto the stage of the huge concert hall, to the sound of thunderous applause.
The old woman was there.
Although the lights shone on his face, he could see her in the private box seat—a place reserved for only the wealthiest patrons of the arts. He could see the pearls around her neck, and her gown, which must have once been elegant, as she herself must have once been. But now she was old. Her face was wrinkled, her teeth yellow, and her thin gray hair wound in a bun so tight, it seemed to lift her ears toward the tip of her skull.
Lee pretended not to notice her. He knew how very important she was, but he wouldn’t give her the pleasure of knowing that he cared.
The applause died down as he reached the front of the orchestra. With his bow in one hand and his violin firmly wedged beneath his chin, he waited for the conductor to signal the beginning of the concerto—a concerto Lee had written himself.
While other thirteen-year-olds played video games, Lee wrote music. It wasn’t his first concerto, but it was the first one that was actually being played by an orchestra. It was also the first time Lee would be the featured soloist in front of so many people. It would have terrified him if he weren’t so completely sure of himself.
The conductor brought down his baton, and the piece began with a thundering of brass and the pounding pulse of strings. In a moment the piece was mellowed by the smooth flow of woodwinds, and finally, above it all, rose a single violin, singing to the immense darkened hall.
It was Lee. While the fingers of his left hand flew back and forth across the strings and his right hand gently brushed the bow back and forth, he was creating sound so perfect even the conductor was in awe.
The piece was hard, filled with complex fingering and musical changes so grand, there were very few people in the world who could even play it. Lee was one of them. Although this was the first time he’d played with a major symphony, there had been rumors about him. Rumors that he was not only the greatest young composer of the century, but also the finest violinist known today. He was a fresh discovery in the world of music—and thinking about it made him play even better.
He became one with the violin, his passion flowing through him, flowing through the instrument . . . and as he played, the temperature in the concert hall began to rise.
First it rose a half degree, then a full degree, then two degrees at a time, until people began to feel uncomfortable. Why is it getting so warm?they were thinking. Is the air-conditioning broken? Are there too many people crammed into the hall?
These thoughts flitted through the dark hall, but they didn’t linger for long. For the music was so perfect, so brilliant, that there was no room left in anyone’s mind to think of anything else.
The piece grew to its fabulous finale, and Lee’s fingers began to move so fast that they became a blur. The audience sighed in ecstasy and gasped in joy . . . and then they screamed in terror as the carpet beneath them burst into flames.
The fire exploded all around Lee, but he couldn’t stop playing. Even as the emergency sprinklers began to gush icy water, and the entire audience raced toward the fire exits in panic, he continued to play. All the other musicians ran from the stage—all but Lee. He alone remained onstage until the piece was over, and when the last note
was played, the only ones left in the burning concert hall were his parents, who were onstage with him trying to drag him out, and the old woman, the one who had been sitting alone in her box seat. Yes, throughout the fire, she sat there, applauding as the sound of fire engines grew nearer, and the smoke and flames rose higher.
The woman came to Lee’s home the next day. She wore a molting fur coat that smelled of mothballs, and it also had a trace of smoke left over from the fire the night before. The moment Lee laid eyes on her, he recognized the woman. She even wore the same clothes she’d worn to the concert.
Although she looked terribly out of place in the small, dingy apartment, the woman stepped in as if she belonged. Tall and intimidating, this woman somehow had a sense of royalty about her that Lee could not explain.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked his mother, who stood next to Lee staring at the stately woman.
“Of course we do, Madame Magnus,” she answered. “How wonderful of you to come to visit Lee in his home.” She cleared her throat nervously. “How terrible last night was,” she began hesitantly, then didn’t quite know what to say.
“Nonsense,” said Madame Magnus. “The fire was put out, the concert hall was saved, and no one was hurt.”
“But the show was ruined,” said Lee’s mother.
Madame Magnus smiled. “Ah . . . but what we didhear—it was heaven!” She turned to Lee. “You play like an angel, young Master Tran,” she said. “More than an angel—a god.”
Lee liked the sound of that but decided not to let it show. He shrugged. “I just play,” he said simply.
Madame Magnus looked Lee over as if examining a horse. She touched his chin and lifted it, forcing him to look at her. Lee didn’t like the feel of her fingers. They were like old newspapers left out in the rain that had crinkled up and dried in the hot sun.
“Play something for me, Lee,” she said, as if it were a demand. “I would very much like to hear you again.”
Lee did not like being treated like a trained seal, performing on request. He was an artist, and artists had to be treated with some respect. Even thirteen-year-old artists.
Most people couldn’t understand what it meant to be a musician. Lee’s grandfather had, but he was long dead now. It was his grandfather who had given Lee his first violin when Lee was only four. While other kids were drooling at cartoons, Lee Tran had created music.
Now that his grandfather was gone, there was no one else in the family who cared for music the way Lee did. His father was a poor man who worked hard and saw little in such frivolous things. As for Lee’s mother, she had a tin ear and didn’t know rock from Rachmaninoff. But one thing she did know—Lee had an inborn talent. And, thanks to her, Lee got his music lessons, even if the family had to go without food to pay for them.
In time, Lee became inseparable from his violin. Playing it was as important to him as breathing.
“No,” he told Madame Magnus. “I don’t feel like playing now.”
Instantly his mother pulled Lee aside and whispered angrily into his ear. She spoke in her native Vietnamese so the old woman couldn’t understand, but Lee suspected that Madame Magnus knew the language, and perhaps many others.
“Lee,” his mother told him. “This woman, she is rich. She gives money to musicians, and the school she runs is the best.”
“I don’t care about her money,” Lee said.
“But you care about your music. Study with her, and you’ll become great.”
“I already am great,” answered Lee matter-of-factly. “And besides, what if she doesn’t choose me for this special school of hers?”
“She’ll choose you,” his mother said with a certainty that Lee could not deny. Turning from him, she went to the shelf and took down his violin. “Play, my son,” she pleaded. “Melt this woman with your music.”
Lee opened the violin case. The instrument lay there in its velvet-lined case, a small silent creature, beautiful and powerful. But before he could play, Lee had to have the answer to a single question. He looked up at his mother and asked: “What caused the fire last night?”
His mother shrugged. “Electrical wiring?” she suggested. “Or someone smoking where they should not have been?”
Her guesses were logical, but Lee had his own idea about it, though he didn’t dare say it out loud. The fact was, he had never played as well as he had last night, and although sometimes when he played he felt the room around him change, he had never seen his music produce a fire. So far he had noticed the lights dim or grow brighter when he played. Once he felt the air chill, and another time he had felt it grow warm. It always depended on the piece he was playing. But what he had felt last night was like nothing he had ever felt before. Did this Madame Magnus understand that?
“Play for her, Lee,” his mother begged.
Finally Lee fit the violin into the nape of his neck and began one of his original melodies. It was dark and filled with solemn tones, and as he had done the night before, Lee forced his soul into the music, letting the sounds resonate through every bone in his body.
When he was done, and his musical trance cleared, Lee saw his mother and the old woman gaping at him. Outside, the sudden pitter-patter of rain was hitting the windows and rattling down the drainpipe from a sky that had been clear only five minutes ago.
The old woman smiled. “Will you come study with me at my school?” she asked.
Lee hesitated. Seeing the power he had in the moment, he milked it and held that power like a long musical note. Then he asked, “How good am I . . . really?”
“You are a master, young man,” whispered the old woman. “You are among the best.”
This was a good answer for Lee. Perhaps he would become famous. Perhaps he would become rich. He liked the idea of both. And if one of the steps along the way was studying with this ruined old woman, then he would take that step.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll come to your school.”
Madame Magnus clapped her hands together in joy. “We shall leave immediately,” she said. “I pay all my students’ expenses, and help support each of their families. Your parents shall receive five hundred dollars a week while you attend my school.”
Lee’s mother grabbed her heart. “You are far too generous, Madame Magnus,” she said, her breath taken away.
But the old woman only smiled through her ancient stained teeth. “Oh, but he’s worth much, much more.”
The Magnus Conservatory of Music was on an estate in northern Vermont. It was a three-story mansion, completely hidden by the dense woods around it and far from the troubles of the big city. As he and his new teacher stepped out of Madame Magnus’s limousine, Lee took a good look at the sprawling stately structure. It seemed odd to Lee that something so huge and so finely crafted could be so far from civilization.
“The upper floor is where I live,” explained Madame Magnus. “The rest of it is filled with classrooms and lodgings for my students.” She smiled at her new pupil. “I have chosen forty-nine students to work with. Youare the fiftieth.”
Another boy, perhaps a year or two older than Lee, with small, round glasses, came down the front steps to meet them.
“This is Wilhelm,” said Madame Magnus. “He is your room-mate. He is a star cellist who came all the way from Germany to study with me.”
Before heading into the conservatory, Lee turned to look through a patch of woods, where he saw another building hidden deep within the tall trees. “What’s out there?” he asked, pointing to the small wooden structure.
“The guesthouse,” replied Madame Magnus. She said nothing more about it, but at its mention, Lee could see Wilhelm, who was already quite pale, grow even paler.
The work at the conservatory was grueling—the hours long, the classes hard. Madame Magnus taught all the musical classes herself, and for the “lesser subjects,” as Madame Magnus called everything else, she had hired the finest instructors.
“Do you feel honored to be in my school?” she
asked Lee after his first week.
Lee smiled slyly. “That depends,” he said. “Do you feel honored to have mehere?”
The old woman smiled back. It was a fine thing for Lee to finally have a teacher who thought the way he did—who knew music the way he did. Now he knew that Madame Magnus was the greatest music teacher that ever was. Only she could show him that path to greatness he so desired.
Yes, Madame Magnus knew her music. In fact, she could teach every instrument and knew exactly what to say to her young musicians and composers to inspire them all to greatness. But her course of instruction for Lee was strange indeed. She would not let Lee play any of the pieces he knew, nor let him play anything he wrote himself. Instead, she set him to work on dull exercises—scales and fingering practice—terribly mundane exercises that he had outgrown the first week he’d picked up a violin.
Next she had him play musical pieces that seemed specifically designed to be emotionless. Lee was confused. She spoke to him of passionate music, and of achieving flawless control of his instrument, yet she specifically kept him from playing pieces that would inspire him. Lee complied with her wishes, and if he had been flawless before, these awful exercises made him beyond perfect.
Still, she kept his great musical abilities a secret from everyone else in the school, keeping him apart from the other students as if he were some kind of secret. Curious, Lee wondered what other secrets she kept.
Like the secret guesthouse.
More than once Lee had seen her personal butler go out there, and Lee began to feel a sort of kinship for the lonely little house kept separate from the rest of the school. For in a way, the guesthouse was like him, wasn’t it? Everything inside it was kept hidden and locked up by Madame Magnus, the same way his talents were kept locked and hidden by her firm rule.