Free Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord

stage.
    Today, that holiday party feels a world away. In the summer, it’s easy to forget how frozen the air can feel out here in winter, like the sky itself could crack from it. Sea foam freezes into long lines and swirls on theshore, and any boats still left in the water wear skirts of ice each morning.
    Aaron’ll feel all settled in with us by then , I hope. He plays a chord, and a shiver runs between my shoulders. His face is serious, his eyebrows down and his eyes looking just above the keys. He plays three notes, and then repeats them. I imagine words to the notes, “ Come a-long. Come a-long. ” Swaying gently side to side to the music, I watch the muscles in his forearms move as the song fills out, his right hand stretching up higher on the keys and his left hand crawling down lower. I wish I knew the real words — not that I would sing along, except in my head. “Where did you learn to play?”
    “My grandmother had a piano. She taught me. I never knew I was a musician until I went to live with her. Then Home Number One had a keyboard.”
    The way he calls the place by a number tugs at me. I don’t ever want to hear him call us Home Number Three.
    “I was glad to leave that foster home. I missed my grandma, and I couldn’t even get away from the other kids because I didn’t have my own room. The only way I could be alone was to plug the headphones into the keyboard and play. I was only there a year, butit was long enough.” He sets the music book on the piano’s music stand. “I think they wanted a younger kid anyway.”
    “Where’d you get your trumpet from?” I ask, then add quickly, “I mean who gave it to you?” hoping it didn’t sound like I thought he stole it.
    “When I was eight my caseworker at the time told me to write down what I wanted for Christmas. I wrote only ‘a real trumpet’ on my paper. I wanted an instrument I could play in the school band.” He lifts one shoulder. “I was surprised when I really got one. Most Christmases, I wrote what I wanted, but then when the present came, it totally wasn’t what I asked for — like one year I asked for a skateboard and I got a football instead. I don’t even like football.” Aaron starts a slow, bluesy piano melody. The low notes pound like waves rolling up and back on the rocks.
    “That’s really pretty music,” I say. “No one in my family plays any instruments.”
    “Grandma told me my mom played piano a long time ago. I’ve never heard her, though.”
    “Has your mom ever heard you play?” I ask.
    “No.” He flips open the book to one of the Post-it notes. “I don’t know ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag.’”
    My mom would never miss seeing me in a concert. She’d write it on the calendar and be there in time to get a good seat. I imagine what it must be like for Aaron: standing up at the end as the audience applauds, but she’s not there. Or unwrapping his trumpet that Christmas morning and not being able to hold it up and show her. Or seeing his birthday cake in front of him, and she’s not telling him to make a wish. But it’s all a big white blank in my imagination, because I can’t even pretend what it would feel like not to have my mom at those times. “Couldn’t she have just showed up at one of your school concerts?” I ask. “Even if it wasn’t technically allowed. I mean, it’s not like they check IDs at the door, right?”
    “She never knew when the concerts were. And I couldn’t tell her, because I didn’t know where she was.” He frowns. “Are you going to hum or not?”
    I sigh and hum the first verse. I think I sound like a human kazoo, but Aaron nods his head in time with me.
    “Have you written back to her?” I ask.
    He shakes his head. “Every time I try, it comes out wrong — like I’m mad or I don’t know what to say. I wish I could just talk to her.”
    “We could make your mom a video of the Fourth of July picnic,” I say. “Then she could hear you play andsee where you