Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra

I was still staring at Shane. I couldn't help it. That music? That beautiful music? That had been coming from Shane ?

"Make certain," Professor Le Blanc said, resting his hands on Shane's pudgy shoulders, "that this young man understands how rare a talent like his is. He insists that his mother made him come to Wawasee this summer. That in fact he'd have much preferred to attend baseball camp instead."

" Football camp," Shane burst out bitterly. "I don't want to play the flute. Girls play the flute." He glared at me very fiercely as he said this, as if daring me to contradict him.

I did not. I could not. I was still transfixed. All I could think was Shane? Shane played the flute ? I mean, he'd said he played the skin flute. I didn't know he'd been telling the truth … well, partially, anyway.

But an actual flute? Shane had been the one making that gorgeous—no, not just gorgeous— magnificent music on my instrument of choice? Shane? My Shane?

Professor Le Blanc was shaking his head. "Don't be ridiculous," he said to Shane. "Most of the greatest flutists in the world have been men. And with talent like yours, young man, you might one day be amongst them—"

"Not if I get recruited by the Bears," Shane pointed out.

"Well," Professor Le Blanc said, looking a little taken aback. "Er, maybe not then …"

"Is my lesson over?" Shane demanded, craning his neck to get a look at the professor's face.

"Er," Professor Le Blanc said. "Yes, actually, it is."

"Good," Shane said, tucking his flute case beneath his arm. "Then I'm outta here."

And with that, he stalked away.

Professor Le Blanc and I stared after him for a minute or two. Then the instructor seemed to shake himself, and, holding open the door to the practice room for me, said with forced jocularity, "Well, now, let's see what you can do, then, Jessica. Why don't you play something for me?" Professor Le Blanc went to the piano that stood in one corner of the walk-in-closet-sized room, sat down on the bench, and picked up a Palm Pilot. "Anything you like," he said, punching the buttons of the Palm Pilot. "I like to assess my pupil's skill level before I begin teaching."

I opened my flute case and began assembling my instrument, but my mind wasn't on what I was doing. I just couldn't get what I'd heard out of my head. It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense that Shane could play like that. It just didn't seem possible. The kid had played beautifully, movingly, as if he'd been swept away by the notes, each one of which had rung out with angelic—almost aching—purity. The same Shane who had stuck an entire hamburger in his mouth at lunch—I'd sat there and watched him do it—bun and all, then swallowed it, practically whole, just because Arthur had dared him to. That same Shane. That Shane could play like that .

And he didn't even care. He'd wanted to go to football camp.

He'd been lying. He cared. No one could play like that and not care. No one.

I put my own flute to my lips, and began to play. Nothing special. Green Day. "Time of Our Lives." I jazzed it up a little, since it's a relatively simple little song. But all I could think about was Shane. There had to be depths, wells of untapped emotion in that boy, to make him capable of producing such music.

And all he wanted to do was play football.

Professor Le Blanc looked up from his Palm Pilot at some point during my recital. When I was through, he said, "Play something else, please."

I launched into an old standby. "Fascinating Rhythm." Always a crowd-pleaser. At least it pleased my dad, when I was practicing at home. I usually played it at double time, to get it over with. I did so now.

The question was, how could a kid who could play like that be such a total and complete pain in the butt? I mean, how was it possible that the person who'd played such hauntingly beautiful music, and the person who this morning had told Lionel he'd dipped his toothbrush in the toilet—after, of course, Lionel had started using it—be one and the same individual?

Professor Le Blanc was rooting through his briefcase, which he'd left on top of the piano.

"Here," he said. "Now this." He dropped a book of sheet music onto the stand in front of my chair.

Brahms. Symphony Number 1. What was he trying to do, put me to sleep? It was an insult. We'd played that my freshman year, for God's sake. My fingers flew over the key holes. Open, of course. My instrument was practically an antique, handed down from some obscure member of the Mastriani clan who'd gotten it under questionable circumstances. Yeah, okay, so my flute was probably hot.

The thing I couldn't figure out was what was God—and I'm not saying I'm so all-fired sure there is one, but for argument's sake, let's say there is—thinking, giving a kid like Shane talent like that? Seriously. Why had he been given this incredible gift of music, when clearly, he'd have been happier tearing down a field with a ball in his arms?

I tell you, if that's not proof there is a God, and that he or she has one heck of a wacked-out sense of humor, I don't know what is.

"Stop." Professor Le Blanc took the Brahms away and put another music book in front of me.

Beethoven. Symphony Number 3.

I don't know how long I sat there looking at it. Maybe a full minute before I was able to rouse myself from my Shane-induced stupor and go, "Um, Professor? Yeah, look, I don't know this piece."

Professor Le Blanc was still sitting on the piano bench, his arms folded across his chest. He had put away the Palm Pilot, and was now watching me intently. The fact that he was, in fact, a bit of a hottie, did not make this any pleasanter than it sounds. He looked a little like a hawk, one of those hawks you see all the time, wheeling in tighter and tighter circles above something in a cornfield, making you wonder what the stupid bird is looking at down there. Is it a field mouse, or the decomposing body of a coed?

Professor Le Blanc said, enunciating carefully, "I know you don't know this piece, Jess. I want to see if you can play it."

I just stared at it.

"Well," I said after a while. "I probably could. If you would maybe just hum my part first?"

He didn't look surprised by my request. He shook his head so that his kind of longish, curly brown hair—definitely longer than mine, anyway—swung around.

"No," he said. "I do not hum. Begin, please."

I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. "It's just," I explained, "usually, back home, my orchestra teacher, he kind of hums the whole thing out for us first, and I really—"

"Aha!"

Professor Le Blanc yelled so loud, I almost dropped my flute. He pointed a long, accusing finger at me.

" You ," he said, in tones of mingled triumph and horror, " cannot read music ."

I felt my own ears turning as pink as Karen Sue's had out in the atrium. Only not just pink. Red. My ears were burning. My face was burning. It was air-conditioned enough in that practice room that you practically needed a winter parka, but me, I was on fire.

"That isn't true," I said, trying to appear casual. Yeah, real easy to do with a face that was turning fire-engine red. "That note right there, for instance." I pointed at the music. "That's an eighth note. And over here, that's a whole note."

"But what note," Professor Le Blanc demanded, "is it?"

My shoulders slumped. I was so busted.

"Look," I said. "I don't need to read music. I just have to hear the piece once, and I—"

"—and you know how to play it. Yes, yes, I know. I know all about you people. You I-hear-it-once-and-I-know-it people." He shook his head disgustedly at me. "Does Dr. Alistair know about this?"