Free A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban

Carnegie Hall people stood in the cold all night because they wanted to see Horowitz play.
    Which is a lot of pressure to put on a guy.
    And on the day of the concert, Horowitz showed up six minutes before he was supposed to go onstage and that made everyone nervous and he was nervous and when he finally did get onstage the audience cheered and then he sat down and it was totally quiet.
    Nobody said a word.
    They didn't even breathe.
    They waited.
    They waited.
    Then he started playing.
    And then he made a mistake. Actually, he made a couple of mistakes.
    "There," said my mom, "and there."
    I wouldn't have even known they were mistakes if my mom hadn't told me. But she did. And then she said those mistakes didn't matter because it was Horowitz. And Horowitz was not about perfection. He was about joy and art and music and life. And those things have mistakes in them.
    "I make mistakes, too," I said.
    "And when you are as good as Horowitz," said my mom, "yours won't matter, either."

The Birch Valley Hotel and Conference Center
    We're in the lobby of the Birch Valley Hotel and Conference Center and my dad can't move.
    He was moving fine a minute ago. He was cha-cha-ing through the parking lot singing about how he didn't get us lost once and Wheeler should have put the
Birch Valley Sentinel
on his speed dial because this is frontpage news.
    Then we walked into the lobby.
    Then Dad froze.
    The lobby of the Birch Valley Hotel and Conference Center has cathedral ceilings and marble-looking floors and every sound you make in it echoes.
    Phones ringing.
    Elevator bells pinging.
    Wheelie carts thumping.
    There are kids pulling suitcases and kids riding suitcases and kids unzipping suitcases and trying to shove other kids inside them. There are kids with balloons and kids yelling that they want balloons and kids getting yelled at for popping other kids' balloons.
    And there are teenagers standing around in circles
and whispering and squealing and then looking around and whispering again.
    There are parents, too. Parents in the registration line. Parents in the RESTROOM line. Parents pulling kids out of suitcases.
    People walk fast around us and between us, saying every year it is the same thing and can't anybody figure out a better system for getting these packets distributed and there's no way that Lindsey girl is only nine years old and Peter has moved on to his own private instructor now and where 's the john and I swear if you pull on that ficus tree again you will not go swimming in the hotel pool tonight, do you hear me, mister?
    And there are lights, too. Rows and rows of bulbs in the ceiling and chandeliers at the registration desk. There are yellow Christmas lights in all the ficus trees and lit-up signs for restroom and ELEVATOR and EXIT .
    Worst of all, there are two enormous blue searchlights sweeping the room. Every few seconds they flash in Dad's face.
    And Dad can't move.
    "Dad, you okay?" I ask.
    He says nothing. He is watching the searchlights as they reach their destination: a red carpeted platform and the biggest organ I've ever seen.
    "The M-80," says a man in a suit.
    "Huh?" says Dad.
    "Impressive, isn't it? Top of the Perfectone line. A real firecracker!"
    "Dad," I say. "Dad, we have to go register."
    Dad looks at the man. He has a button pinned to his suit. ASK ME ABOUT AN UPGRADE !! it says.
    Dad obeys the button. "What's an upgrade?" he asks.
    The man smiles. "Follow me."
    Dad follows.
    I follow Dad.
    The Upgrade man takes us past the spotlight to the Perfectone M-80 platform, which is surrounded by red velvet ropes.
    "I'm really not supposed to do this," he says, looking around. "The Perfectone M-80 is too powerful an instrument for a little space like this lobby. If we're not careful we could shatter all the lightbulbs in the place—and then where would we be?"
    "In the dark," I say.
    "Heh-heh, you're a pip, kid," he says. Then he turns his back to me and asks Dad what model organ I have now.
    Dad looks over