Free When the Curtain Rises by Rachel Muller Page A

Chloe’s face. “Little steps. I won’t say another word.” Chloe and Nyssa worked their way through the storage room and two other rooms next to it, but they didn’t find the lock that went with Chloe’s tiny key.
    They were on their way downstairs shortly before suppertime when Nyssa came to a halt on the first-floor landing. “Lake’s still there,” she said as she peered at the painting of the carnival.
    Chloe stepped forward to look. “The lake hasn’t changed, but he’s moved.” She pointed at the snake charmer crouched beside a cage full of snakes. “And so has he,” she said, moving her finger to the magician seated on a crate beside the snake charmer. “Plus the fiery balls he was juggling are gone.”
    â€œAre you sure?” said Nyssa. “It looks the same to me. I didn’t memorize all the details.”
    Chloe shook her head in exasperation. “It’s different, really! Can’t you see that?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Nyssa. “Is it possible that you’re getting the details confused with something you dreamed about?”
    Chloe folded her arms across her chest. “I didn’t dream it, and I’m not making this up. I know what I saw.”
    â€œSorry, Chloe,” Nyssa said with a shrug. “When you said the lake was different, that’s all I really paid attention to. I promise I’ll check it more carefully next time. Tomorrow, okay?”
    Chloe made her way to the sitting room after dinner that evening. “This is for real,” she told herself as she closed the door firmly behind her and took a seat at the piano.
    She stretched her fingers and ran through her scales first. When she’d completed the scales, she played a passage from Debussy’s Clair de Lune from memory. She worked at the passage until she was satisfied that her wrists and fingers were limber, and then she turned to the sheet music she’d discovered earlier inside the piano bench. Most of the music had proven to be too simple to hold her interest, but there were a few pieces that stood out from the rest. There was a Chopin nocturne and a handwritten arrangement called The Ballad of Petticoat Joe that had a number of challenging passages.
    Chloe carefully arranged the pages of Petticoat Joe on the ledge in front of her. She tackled the piece in parts, playing first the right-hand part and then the left. Slowly, note by note, the piece began to take shape under her fingers. She tried playing it through with both hands, but it was a fast piece and the rhythm was tricky in a few sections. “It’ll come,” she told herself. She pushed a stray curl out of her eye and started again from the top.
    Lying awake in bed later that night, Chloe thought about the story her great-aunts had shared with her. “Am I obsessed too?” Chloe asked herself. Dante had wanted the whole world to recognize him; she just wanted enough confidence to appear in front of an audience without humiliating herself. That wasn’t so much to ask, was it?
    â€œYou’re a perfectionist,” her piano teacher had told her. “Aiming high is good, but don’t set the bar so high that you can never be satisfied with yourself.”
    In the dark and silent bedroom, Chloe grimaced. She wasn’t setting the bar very high this time. All she wanted was to get through the next recital without freezing up entirely. All she wanted was to survive it.
    Outside on the landing, the grandfather clock struck the first hour of midnight. Chloe’s thoughts turned to the painting of the carnival that hung beside the clock. “And what’s that about? she whispered. She’d sounded like an idiot in front of Nyssa that afternoon, but the painting had changed, no matter what her friend thought.
    Chloe felt a sudden overwhelming urge to check the painting before she fell asleep. She rose from her bed and crept