September is undeniably beautiful. It's strange - Emmeline has always felt some kind of affinity to autumn, an unsourced sort of twin-ness. It's a transition, but entirely unlike what precedes and follows it. She loves waking up to amber skies, the first hints of sunrises. Orange feels like the colour of her soul. She often thinks she was supposed to be a fox rather than a human.

It's a Tuesday. The Tuesday following the funeral, which was a Wednesday. The term has only just begun but she's so far she's missed two of the three weeks, choosing instead to do her work in her room, usually starting it after four P.M. Something about the knowledge that the school day is over offers a kind of freedom, and suddenly the constricting ribs around her heart loosen. School never used to be such a big deal. She was an excellent student. Has been her entire life, even last year. She'd noticed that if she told her parents she was working or studying, they didn't bother her or ask her many questions, and the same went for her teachers, no matter how visibly exhausted and ... unwell she'd looked. Looks. It doesn't matter. Excuses always wash.

The audition is today, so an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday has turned into a looming creature that is now upon her. She hardly slept last night, although that's not particularly unusual. Her fingers are bitten, cold, altogether worse for wear. Pip is arriving to take her to the - what's the phrase? - red brick private college in too-few minutes. The waiting is probably worse than the doing will be, she knows, but the jittering in her knees and pulse means logic isn't at the forefront of her mind. It's been a while since she's been so nervous.

For reasons she can't quite fully put into words, she hadn't told her parents about the audition. It's for a place in a not-quite orchestra: it's somewhere between that and a band; an elite group that the school will endorse and write references for. The 'school' is a monstrous thing. A disarmingly lovely building, with one-too-many wealthy, over-privileged boys entirely unaware of the size of their egos inside it. Girls are technically able to enroll, she thinks, but there are as few of them as there are black students. Since Emmeline falls under both of those categories, she's either going to get in entirely on face value and tokenism, or she won't stand a chance. Maybe she's being cynical. (Maybe not.)

Her muscles jolt as the doorbell rings, leaving her with a fizzy, post-adrenaline surge rush. She can hardly feel her feet as she opens the door, revealing her grandmother in all her furiously colourful glory. She's managed to combine blue and orange in a way that hurts to look at. Emmeline loves her. Her heartbeat calms a little.

'Ready to go?' She never just says Hello.

'Hmm.'

'The enthusiasm is bowling me over. Get in the car, you're going to be wonderful. You might have to move Margaret.'

She's too close to being sick with anticipation that she doesn't manage to process this, so she is entirely unprepared for there to be a cat in the passenger seat. 'Why is there a cat in the passenger seat?'

'She didn't want to sit in the back.'

Emmeline does not have the capacity to respond to that with as much sarcasm as it deserves, so she just scoops up the almost balloon-shaped cat and puts her on her lap. The heat and weight give a misleading sense of safety. Comfort, she thinks. That's the word. She strokes - Margaret (no use pretending she doesn't know the name by now) - and Margaret purrs at a volume she didn't realise was possible.

Her grandmother laughs, climbing into the driver's seat. 'She likes you.'

Despite herself, she's pleased. No matter what happens today, at least she's earned the favour of an intensely pregnant cat.

The drive isn't long - only twenty minutes in weekday traffic, and they make it there with not enough/ too much time to spare. Just as Emmeline is about to say she's changed her mind, the radio is turned on and she's hit with a terrible pop song. She likes pop, generally, but this song gives her the urge to clap her hands to her ears, which she'd probably do if she wasn't currently occupied with smoothing the fur on Margaret's head.

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'Oh my-'

Pip cackles and grins at her. 'Worked, didn't it?'

'In what way did that work?'

'You didn't say whatever foolish thing you were thinking.'

Emmeline feels abruptly known far too well for comfort. 'No.'

'Or, alternatively, yes. Talk to me, don't just sit there driving yourself insane.'

'What if I'd prefer the second one?'

Her grandmother snorts and shakes her head. 'Suit yourself. But I'm putting that god-awful song back on.'

She does, and the one that follows is equally terrible, as is the one after that. Emmeline is so distracted by the cacophony (are her ears bleeding?) that she hardly notices the journey pass until they take an unexpected left turn and she realises they're only moments away. Her chest immediately fills with sand and she has to concentrate quite hard on not spiralling into panic. Why had she let Pip convince her? This is not a thing that she wants to be doing. This is not a reality she is prepared for.

'What if I'm sick?'

'You're not.'

'No - I mean, what if I throw up? Halfway through?'

'That would be hilarious.'

'Pip.'

'Emmeline. You're not going to throw up. You're going to go in and do the thing that you know you're good at and that you love and have spent at least three hours practising each day since you agreed to do this. You're going to be fine.'

'Okay, but what if -'

'Then apologise, clean it up, come back here and I'll drive you to go and get doughnuts. You won't be any worse off. You'll just have gained doughnuts.'

She thinks it might not be so simple; that maybe if this goes badly she'll dissolve into a cloud of moths and disappear through the floorboards. But she nods, fixes her hair in the mirror and folds down her soft blazer collar. Prepared or not, she hasn't come this far not to go in and bare her soul.

She focuses on her footsteps on the stone floor (this school is bleeding wealth, the kind where comfort isn't a priority - the luxury is in the height of the ceilings and the sharp echo of every sound and the air that feels too precious to breathe). To think ahead would be to persuade herself not to go in. She has to go in - she promised, to her grandmother and herself. So one footstep, then another. She breathes; feels wings against her ribs.

The space between her arrival and being called into the vastly oversized music room is huge, then over. She misplaces it: it is gone, and she is walking to the piano, putting the sheet music (though she knows the piece by heart, mind and soul) in front of her with out-of-focus hands. The edges of her blur and she sits.

Pleasant enough introductions are probably made, she thinks. She is vaguely aware of her voice saying something, and other voices responding - likely the voices of the four adults in a neat row to the piano's (her) right. Thunder sounds, but it isn't raining. Maybe it's her heartbeat. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something black move suddenly out in the courtyard.

'Emmeline?'

Her name is a shock, palms to toes to mind. 'Yes?' She realises she's turned to stare out of the window. Don't be crazy, she thinks. Or at least, don't let them see.

'You can begin whenever you're ready.'

Never, she thinks. I am never ready for this.

And yet her hands - those battered hands - start to move. She watches them, hears the music swell and scream and fall out of her. She doesn't quite know if she is sitting there on the chair or if she's in the piano; if it's using her lungs or if she's using its. Something opens - a channel? A cave? A chasm - and it spans all the hours spent laughing and crying in frustration and talking with Adelaide; spans all the endless hours since she was cut loose from her, spans all the moments she's wanted to be wherever Adelaide now is, spans all the moments she wanted not to be anything at all. All of it, a flock of feeling; a cathartic poem of sound. It tears out of her, bigger than she could've imagined. She sees - no, imagines - no, sees it take the form of a beak and claws and wings and then she blinks and there's a magpie on the edge of the piano and then she blinks again and the music calls her back to it and she gets the final crescendo exactly right and it feels like sunlight, a burst of it inside her.

Then it ends, and she gasps, and all the emotion floods back into her and it feels like surfacing from underwater. Her eyes stay closed (when did they stop being open?) for a second, two, ten. She breathes. Her blood rushes through her veins. She is alive.

This has been a day of poetry, she thinks.

She is right.