The incessant buzzing of the fluorescent lights was easy to ignore. Even Tesla knew that people would eventually tune out the droning buzz. Looking like a freshman in high school made the few students in the hall look on in apt curiosity. A few girls in cheer leading outfits were obvious with their 'not impressed' jealousy. Their class-skipping jock boyfriends had other thoughts on their minds, but were also staring.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. These are the people who have reached their societal peak. They will never improve beyond this point. But when you are here, living it, it feels as quite the opposite. That the plastics, and the Jocks will go on, never face any hardship, and have red carpets laid out for them into perpetuity. Oh how their world crashes down around them in a few short months.
I take my hair down, and pick up my brush, giving my scalp a short reprieve from the tight bun I have kept my hair in for my past three lifetimes. Perhaps the ballet style doesn't suit lithe girls like myself anymore. The cheer leaders all wore folded ponytails, so I gave a few quick brush strokes, and deftly put my hair into the, much easier to mimic, style.
This got a few of them to scoff, and slap their boyfriends. They should just be glad that that type of guy is so far beneath me that they don't have a dodo's chance in a fight. The guidance councelor's door open, and Leah comes out. All of my paperwork lists me as her niece, so my surname in this life will be Cooper as well.
"Miss Cooper, can you come in please." The man says somewhat quietly. One of The cheerleaders sees Leah, and seems to recognize her. The door closes behind me, and the man guestures for me to sit down.
"I have to be honest at this point. I dont think our school is the right fit for Taylor." He says as he sits down. "Other than history, she got nearly perfect marks for the state's graduation exams. Her mathematical aptitude is in the 97th percentile of the county, and her understanding of Euclidean mathematics is astounding."
"So what seems to be the problem?" Leah asks the question I had.
"If she took the ACTs and SATs right now, she could easily enroll in one of the Ivy Leauge schools this fall, her poorest subject, history, can be overlooked with how high even those scores are." He sighed. "If she was a dance, or cheer, student we could probably hide her in elective courses next year, and get her a full ride to almost any university in the states before her sweet sixteen."
All of my paperwork says that I turned fourteen the day I awoke. So two years from now being in university, sounds nice. But I did that method in my last life. And there were a lot of social things I missed because of that.
"Sir, what about those Dance classes?" I ask. "I am also familiar with a few instruments, so I should be able to play in your school's orchestra."
"Well, that would require a tryout for which instrument you wanted to play. And Our dance program is fiercely competitive. I think we can arrange for tryouts today. Do you think you could fall back on Choir if that doesn't work out?"
"Can we talk about that if it happens?" Leah asks. He nods, then picks up his phone and calls a couple of teachers, then motions for us to leave ahead of him.
"Our first step is the band room, they have a program coming up, so I think you will be hard pressed to get in, so I figured we would try this one first." I nod at his reasoning.
Once in the room, disonant chords slowly die off as the students see me come in. Only one girl, paying more attention to her sheet music than the others, played an entire measure before stopping.
"You must be Taylor," the short man behind the podium said. "I am Mr. Holland. Which insturment would you like to try out with?"
"A Violin." I said plainly, to which several students laughed.
"She can try with mine." The girl who I noticed on my way in stood and handed me her beautifully crafted instrument.
"Are you sure? These things are a bit temperamental." I asked her. To which she nodded. I checked the tune, and noticed her E string was slightly flat, and quickly fixed it. "What piece are you playing?"
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"Paganinni's Caprice 17." Mr. Holland announced.
"Ah, that would explain the violin section's expressions when I came in." I adjusted my hands, and tightened the bow by a sixteenth of a turn, then began playing with my eyes closed. This piece was quite famous around the time this insturment was invented, and the caprices challenged even the best artisans of the violin, apparently, writing a piece of music considered impossible to play, for a specific instrument will get you noticed; especially when you play it during an intermission without permission of the conductor. I, sadly, missed that event, but I heard about it for years.
As I pulled the bow down for the last few notes, I opened my eyes and noticed everyone following along in their sheet music. I put the insturment at rest in front of me, and looked toward the teacher. His eyes wide, I barely heard him whisper 'splended' under his breath. I handed the insturment back to the girl.
"Your E-key is a little loose, a luthier probably should check it, it started going flat too soon."
"You noticed that?" She asked.
"Yeah, whoever made that did a superb job. You should get your next one from the same luthier. Who made it, I'd like to request one."
"My great-grandfather carved this for me. He passed away last year." My eyes went wide.
"You brought something like that here; and you let a complete stranger touch it? Girl, that instrument should be in a temperature and humidity controlled shadowbox. I havent heard one that beautiful since the last time I played a Strattavari." I wish I had been kidding, her instrument was beautiful.
"You've been allowed to play a Strattavari?" Mr. Holland asks.
"Yes, although it's been a while; I was able to play it during a showing of Beethoven's 5th." The significance of that insturment was lost on us at the time, but I still remember the feel of that instrument, and how it voiced the entire room.
"Young lady, if you sign up for any of my classes, you will be first chair."
"I thank you, however I have other tryouts scheduled today, would you mind if I get back to you?"
"By all means, what other tryouts do you have?"
"Show Choir, Dance, and Cheer." The counselor announces.
"Quite the gambit, well, Welcome to Boston." Mr. Holland says to me, "And Marcy, put your insturment away, and use one of the school's loaners, I agree that that heirloom is too precious to be used here. Practice with it at home, or use it for our program, but please no more in class." She nodded, and put the instrument away.
Choir and Dance ended up the same way, but Cheer was a bit out there, and since it was a student vote to decide wether or not you made it: Jealousy won out, and I was even told pretty much that by the girl who sat in the captain's chair as i changed out of the spare uniform. For once I am glad I 'failed'.
Leah had this surprised look on her face during dance, as it only took me watching one dancer perform, and I was able to perform the piece as she did. And Show Choir is so easy when, at one point, these songs were the only entertainment in the state.
Of course in those days, just going to a theater was dangerous. Of course, we didn't realize at the time that oil line fittings inside the walls could potentially result in the theater being burnt down. But it was fun singing those songs again.
As I was leaving the locker room from the Cheer tryouts, Will came up to me.
"How'd it go?" He seemed really anxious
"As I expected; even got the customary 'stay away from my boyfriend' speech from the girl who was sitting behind the captain's sign."
"Yeah, I wasn't sure how you'd handle that."
"Miss Cooper," the Councelor called out, "it's time we discussed your schedule; are you ready for this?"
"Sure. But can I get at least one class with my cousin here?"
"I might be able to arrange that. Mr. Cooper, would that be alright with you?"
"Its fine, there is only a month and a half until finals, it might be good for her if she could vent to me once in a while."
The school intercom sounded, and requested a student to come to the office, followed shortly by the class bell, whereby the halls became exceptionally crowded.
"Shall we go to your office?" I ask, the Councelor nods, and begins to push his way through the throng, while I walked along in his wake, one of the few problems with a lithe body, is situations like this, where others are less apt to move out of the way.
The rest of the day was deciding what classes I would need to take, and which ones my aptitude scores pushed me out of. Apparently living for seven thousand years, and having a fourteen year old body, makes people think of me as a prodigious genius. I had to take a foreign language, so I took French, another walk in the park for me; but there are modern idioms and metaphores that didn't exist when I lived there.
And the class I had with Will: Current Events. Apparently the class is required to watch an evening news program once a week, choose a story, research it further, as well as find an article on the same story, but an opposing view, then class time was a discussion of what they learned, with five to six students presenting a new event each week.
After the next class bell, I was lead to each of the classrooms that I would have classes, and introduced to the instructors. When I heard how much violins were these days, I immediately decided on taking Show Choir. I was not about to pay over two weeks of a full time job's wages for a student violin, nor was I going to ask someone to do it for me, to include the Society.