The stress that was picking at Alice only minutes before was quickly washing away as she progressed through the song at a slower pace than what was originally written for it. She carefully went over each note in her head as her fingers moved easily along the wooden keys. Like most of the music she played, Alice didn’t need to refer to sheet music. Many years of being instructed to play the same song over and over had ingrained all the notes to memory. She even grew an appreciation for what she once called “horrible classical music” as a child.
The music slowed even more as she shook her head back to shakes away the few strands of hair that fell back into her face. It was at that length where one couldn’t really do anything with it but let it do what it wanted. Taking a deep breath in and exhaling slowly, Alice continued the song at a slow tempo, enjoying each verse of the song as she did so. It was easy for her to ignore whatever thoughts that would normally be bugging her as she let herself get lost in the music.
Hearing an unexpected and unfamiliar voice from behind her, quickly pulled Alice from her trance and the music came to a jerking halt. The cover for the keys than instantly fell back over them with a loud slam as she brought her hands down to tops of her legs. “I’m, sorry. I didn’t realize there was someone else in the room,” she spoke softly, her voice only slightly above a whisper. Her eyes were focused on the ground below and her fingers twisted into each other as she listened to the man that spoke before her.
She let her gaze move up so that their eyes locked for a second, but they quickly found their way back to the ground when she realized who the man was. He was the one she remembered seeing occupying the music room the last few times she tried to stop in. Other than that, she hadn’t seen him at all during school hours and from the way he talked and carried himself, she guessed that he was probably an instructor. “Am I interrupting you from playing?” She asked a little shyly.