2020-10-17 - That One Time in the Band Room

Gracie Lee Peterson plays the recorder. Badly.

This is a fact of life that would not normally concern Ravn Abildgaard one bit except that Gracie Lee Peterson is the sixteen-year-old daughter in the household of which the foreign exchange student is temporarily part. The year is 2007 (at least to Ravn's perception, anyhow) and he's stuck with a wealthy Gray Harbor family that prides itself in a few remote Danish ancestors. And a teenage daughter who looks at him and sucks on her recorder like she wants to be sucking something else. Also, the Petersons are a highly religious family, and even if he was interested -- which he isn't, look at those buck teeth -- there'd be hell to pay if he was caught pants down with Gracie Lee. Not happening.

He hasn't unpacked his violin even once since arriving in Gray Harbor. Not going to give that girl any excuses. Definitely not going to put himself in a situation where anyone suggests he spends time with her. 'Playing'.

Screw that. Except, you know, not.

This is why he drifted into the high school band room, though. His fingers are itching to touch strings and the rest of him is itching for privacy. He's a solitary nature, used to spending most of his time alone. Being constantly surrounded by very attentive and very religious people hell bent on him having a good time is driving him nuts.

Ravn is not impressed with the quality of the instruments but also not surprised. A high school, rich or poor, will not invest a fortune in instruments that anyone can go toy with and make a mess off. He tests the strings of the nearest violin. It will do. He doesn't have any of his notesheets with him and the ones that lie scattered about the music room are -- beneath his level. He doesn't scoff; everyone has to start somewhere. He just pulls his left glove off so he can feel the fret properly -- a tingling sensation, like his fingertips being on fire, in the good way. He tunes the violin; it is not badly out of tune in the first place.

Then he touches the bow to the string and continues on the last piece he was practising back home, as if there never had been an Atlantic flight and a week of meeting new people. An Irish traditional it's not something that would impress his mother much. That, of course, is why Ravn Abildgaard has a deep fondness for folk music in the first place. It's not proper string music.

The door--a big clattery steel thing with a bar running its entire width in lieu of, like, a handle--pushes open, fast. The year is 1998 or maybe it's 1999 and Itzhak Rosencrantz slips through the smallest (quietest) opening he can get out of that door. It's not easy and is a trick that requires finesse, both to zip inside the bomb-blast-proof-door before it flings itself open on its hydraulics and to do it as quietly as possible. These doors announce everyone's coming and going. And it's announcing his, right now.

Rosencrantz is definitely the kind of kid who should be a bullied mess. Too tall, too skinny, too New York, nose way too big, he's in the chess club and he plays in youth orchestra and rumors are he's gay, that someone or other caught him making out with some guy or other. Never a girl, though. Itzhak should live his life skulking between classes, dodging the stronger kids, keeping his mouth shut and doing his best to survive the Darwinian hell of American high school.

He should be, but he isn't. Instead the fates have decreed that Itzhak Rosencrantz shall be a born tough guy, blessed with the appropriate temper and swagger for days. When God made him, He forgot to give him common sense enough to realize that he's a nerd. It's a good thing God is so funny, his people say, or we'd have to boo Him out.

So why's he slipping into the band room, an operation made more difficult by his own violin case, with an expression of tightened-down panic on his long beaky face?

And why, says that face a second later, is that weird new kid the source of the music in here? But he's got bigger problems, and hurries across the room, picking his way at speed among music stands and chairs. "I'm not here!" he hisses at Ravn, and ducks behind the rack of tubas.

The door opens again--kla-CLANK--and there is one of the Administration. She looks around.

Ravn pointedly keeps on playing, back turned upon the world. The only difference is, when the door opens the second time to admit the adult person -- teacher, staff, whatever they are, who cares -- he's hacking his way through the simpler parts of What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor. There is only one thing more discouraging to sticking around in this world than someone amateurishly hacking his way through a very simple piece on a violin: That thing is someone who does know what he's doing and pointedly trying to sound like he doesn't.

It's torture.

The Administrator isn't immune to the power of a badly played violin, and maybe--just maybe--Ravn's intent gives it a little oomph, a little pushback against the Hungry Ones. She makes a face like the face a cat would make if you were to aim a blow dryer at one, all offendedly squinching eyes and pursed lips. Well, Itzhak isn't in here, only this horrific violinist, and so the Administrator pulls back behind the door, letting it CLANK shut.

Itzhak still waits a long count of ten before his curly dark head peeks over the top of a tuba bell. "...that sounds awful," he says, genuinely impressed.

With a painful last screech Ravn turns around to offer a mocking soloist's bow at the other kid before putting down the violin. Just carrying right on with torturing it like a cat it is a tempting thought. It's obvious, though, that his usual method of encouraging others to just run away whenever he picks up his instrument didn't work on the other lanky kid present. Sucks.

Instead he just hitches a shoulder and glances at the door during which the woman fled while still in possession of her eardrums. "Who had pissed on her sugar sandwich?"

"That'd be me," Itzhak mutters, glancing at the door. He still looks spooked, but utterly absurdly, Ravn's determined mangling has kept him around rather than driven him off. Then he snorts half a laugh and ventures out from behind the brass. "Sugar sandwich? The fuck is a sugar sandwich? Is it like, a sandwich made out of sugar?"

"French bread with butter and sugar. It's something you give kids to shut up." The music mangling might be fake but the language mangling clearly isn't. It's almost adorable except that adorable is the wrong word to use for a tall, skinny kid in too tight jeans and an eyebrow piercing that probably still hurts; attitude says piss off, body language says kick me. No one who survived a week in high school would need a textbook in human social dynamics to figure out that a month from now, this kid is going to be spending most of his time alone because he's insufferable in the fashion of someone who screws up every attempt not to be, and hence has decided that he might as well just be an asshole.

Itzhak settles his violin case over his shoulder, eyeing Ravn. Eyeing him down, then up, in a way that's simultaneously belligerent and admiring. Like how dare Ravn come to his school and be beautiful? And adorable in that not-adorable, piss-off, kick-me way. Itzhak isn't always any great shakes at reading body language, but Ravn makes it easy for him: I'm like this because I can't figure out any other way to be.

Itzhak can relate.

He jerks his chin at the violin Ravn was using. "You can really play that thing. I heard you. You gonna join the youth orchestra?" Definitely belligerent there.

"I don't play for others," the Danish kid says flatly. "You heard wrong."

Whatever his issue is, that tone of voice manages to convey something along the lines of and this is the hill I will die on. Ravn puts the violin down and returns it to the case that's still sitting on the table. He handles it like it might bite. The touch of an amateur who fears that the strings might break, or the fragile instrument might somehow come apart in his hands, or even worse, start screaming at him again. A beginner's touch.

Over-acting a little, maybe. Or making a point.

"What is your problem? Don't you have enough to hide for already?" Ravn doesn't sneer. He just takes condescending to new exciting lows. Maybe he does want to die on that hill after all.

"Yeah, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. You oughta remember that one, it's real important in English." Ravn isn't the only one who can condescend around here. Itzhak, however, does sneer, lip curling. Watching Ravn handle the violin like someone who just brought one home for the first time visibly ticks him off.

He's about to say something else, like why are you fucking faking or he's not exactly sure only that words are boiling up out of his throat when...

...well, when Ravn says that. About him hiding.

One step into Ravn's space and Itzhak, beet red with fury, pops him in the nose. Pow! It makes a shockingly loud sound in the empty band room, a sound like slapping meat.

It's just a little love tap. On the sliding scale of boop, you're it to suckerpunched by Mohammad Ali it's somewhere around minus two on the Richter scale. It should sting a bit and maybe leave a bit of redness but we're hardly talking sprays of blood and dramatic tumbles here. In terms of cinematic drama, there wasn't even a chair involved. So why does the Danish kid drop the violin case with a loud noise and stagger backwards, one gloved hand covering his face like he just had his entire cranial structure rearranged by an iron-shod horse with a bad temper?

He manages to reach behind himself with the other hand and steady himself against a table. For a moment blue-grey eyes are shut tightly and you might almost think the kid is going to cry. Then they open, and the expression of hatred in them is -- rather more than the situation warrants. For a moment, that kid wants to set Itzhak on fire and dance around the flames while he burns.

Then the fire is gone and he just shields his very much not broken face behind one gloved hand, sneering. "Are you done?"

Why? Because he's a pussy, obviously. Right? Itzhak actually flinches, though, glancing at his knuckles to see if they're covered in the other kid's blood. He's punched a fair amount of people at this point and he meant to shock him, not--not, whatever just happened there.

No blood. He didn't misjudge the power he put behind that punch. Just...something happened. I'm sorry almost slips out of Itzhak's mouth. Almost. It's close. There's something too familiar about this. About the way Ravn way, way overreacted and it wasn't faked. "I--I'm..."

Then Ravn is staring at him like he'd just absolutely love it if Itzhak died on the spot. This is much more familiar territory. Easy to respond to. Nothing confusing about that hatred and Itzhak knows just what to do.

"You helped me and that's the reason you're still standing up, you understand me?" In that grating, acidic New York accent, everything sounds like a veiled threat or an insult or both. "You don't. Fucking. TALK. To people like that."

"You are probably a great and dangerous warrior," the taller boy says in a voice drier than sanding paper, and while the cultural reference is lost in translation, the tone isn't: I bet you feel great about yourself now. Very danger, much wow. Maybe for your next stunt you can push a little old lady off a bus or terrorise someone's gerbil into pissing itself, you very dangerous person, you.

He straightens up and lowers his hand from his face (which is indeed very much not broken). It's probably not too unfamiliar a look. The kind of defiant stare that resides in the face of someone who knows he's about to get his ass kicked sideways into Sunday. Someone who's not going to sink to your level. You can break his bones but you can't break his dignity.

"You just do it. I do not care." Because you're just one more pain in my ass out of a very long line and you don't matter one bit at all.

Kid's pretty eloquent for someone who doesn't actually speak the language very well. English is not his forte but body language is.

The message comes through loud and clear. Itzhak was raised on sarcasm. You can't say much in Yiddish that isn't sarcastic.

"Oh yeah? You don't care, tough guy?" Itzhak comes at Ravn, fists raised. He lashes out, fast, big bony fist on the end of a long skinny sinewy arm--

and doesn't connect. On purpose. His fist swishes harmlessly through the air in front of Ravn's face.

The Danish flinches visibly. He clearly expected that punch to connect. He clearly expected it to hurt.

Not so tough after all, then. Didn't even raise his hands to defend himself.

"Now just look to get it over with. I'm already bored." Ravn half-turns and bends down to pick up the violin case he dropped, inadvertedly giving the other kid half a dozen openings for the perfect punch or kick. He's not just defending himself -- he's almost aggressively making it easy. Or maybe this whole situation is just so far beneath him that he's not even going to waste time trying to argue or reason or fight. Just getting on with his day in case something that actually matters might happen. Hey, maybe there's an interesting wall of paint drying somewhere nearby.

"Yeah huh. That's what I fuckin' thought." Smirking, Itzhak steps back. The strap of his violin case is still over his shoulder. Maybe he's got a lot of practice in punching people while carrying his violin? He just lets Ravn go ahead and show him several ways he could lay into him and doesn't take a single opportunity.

He jerks his chin at the instrument case Ravn picks up. "You're pretty good. But I'm first chair." First desk, they say in every other country. "You want it, you better be better than me."

"Is that what it's all about? I only play for myself. You can just blast everything you bother if it gives you something on the stupid I have in my own." The indifference in Ravn's tone is a lot clearer than the miserable pile of jumbled words he tries to pass off as English. You do you. I don't care.

He puts the violin case on the table where he found it; it's clearly school property, not his own, and then hitches a shoulder. "I don't bother anyway. It is a miserable amateur instrument."

Itzhak's taken aback, by the way he stares at Ravn. An adult bitterness sours his face. He turns away--out of everything, it's the suggestion that being first chair could not possibly be considered important that makes him retreat. "How fuckin' nice for you, that you get to play only for yourself," is his savage mutter.

Unslinging the violin case, which is nothing fancy, only black nylon covering a stiffer body, he sets it on the table and opens it up. His violin is nothing fancy, to match the case; just a modest instrument, well-made, the kind that's often described as 'intermediate quality'. "They're miserable," he says, about the school's violins, "people don't respect 'em and they were shit to begin with. So play mine." He turns back to Ravn with bow and instrument in hand, a ferocious look of bright challenge on his face.

"Why? You want to be the best. So be the best." Ravn crosses his arms across his chest instead and looks the dark-haired kid up and down, almost as if he's appraising him, evaluating him with a hooded look. It's hard to tell from his tone and posture if he's trying to be offensive -- but given their exchange so far, it's not all that unlikely. "Play something. Then I'll probably tell you if you're better."

"It ain't about being the best!" Itzhak's voice drops to a furious hiss. "Not if it don't help!"

...Help what? But Itzhak flips the violin to his shoulder, tucking it under his chin. He's glaring so hotly at Ravn that he should be about to punch him again, not play something.

But then he takes in a long quiet breath through his magnificent nose. He shuffles in place, correcting his posture; his fingers work on the frog of the bow, positioning and repositioning. That he has quite a lot of practice is obvious. That he's nervous is also obvious. He brings down his bow across the strings and a sweet, instantly-recognizable melody rises; 'Amazing Grace.' Itzhak plays it with a country flair, double-stopping, bringing its tempo up, but still letting the spirit of the original song soak through.

Amaaaaz-ing Grace, how sweeeet the sound-- Itzhak's eyes drift closed, the better to focus on the sound. Swaying along with his bowing in a habit none of his instructors have been able to break him of, he lends the old classic a sweet sprightliness with the light, sure strokes of his bow.

Ravn listens, arms still folded across his chest -- but the expression on his face softens from sullen defiance, turning into curiosity and then, eventually, admiration. He's only vaguely familiar with the piece -- the National Anthem of the US, isn't it? -- but it is a very beautiful piece of music regardless. One that lends itself very well to a choir -- or indeed, to a skilled violinist. It rises and falls through a range of emotion that, let's be honest here, few national anthems ever quite manage.

Only when the last notes float away and silence reclaims the music room does he comment. "You are the best. I'm classically trained, I can't do it as well. Congratulations, you won." Oddly enough, there's no resentment in that statement -- the Danish kid seems to consider this a simple fact.

Itzhak's eyebrows really get into the act, too, telegraphing up- and downbows. The whole thing gives him an air of honest passion, sunk into music and the physicality of sound and his violin. I oooonce was loooost - but now I'm found - I was bliiiind - but now...I seeeee...

He lets instrument and bow drop, tucks the fiddle under his arm in rest position. And, shrugging, mutters, "I'm classically trained too. Just, not that many years. You're probably better at Bach or whatevah."

Then he stands there, coltishly awkward, bow hanging from one oversized hand. He doesn't know where to look. Not at Ravn, is probably the best bet. Time for a weird silence? Time for a weird silence. If he's not punching somebody, showing off, or playing, what exactly should he do?

"I'm hell to, okay?" Ravn's blue-grey eyes narrow. "There is no one to sit and play spectators and tell me how good I am. I play for my own sake. Not for anyone else's. After all, if anyone asks, you can tell them that I sound like someone is cutting the guts out of a cat."

It's not clear what his issue is (nor for that matter what he's trying to say). But whatever that issue indeed happens to be, he clearly feels very strongly about it. The kid who refused to fight back actually looks for a moment like he's giving serious thought to shoving Itzhak up against a wall and forcing him to swear silence.

Then he straightens up and restores his calm facade, before turning to head for the not-quiet door with the overcomplicated locking mechanism. "Have fun."

Familiar territory again--Itzhak looks at Ravn, eyes sharp. The violin and bow get set in the case, quick-like, in the event things come to blows again. Itzhak would like them to. He'd quite like them to. Ravn looks like he wants to shove him? Itzhak is all too happy to shove back.

But then the snooty, awful kid from some European hellhole takes his leave with a bitchy remark, leaving Itzhak hanging.

"Fuck you," he growls after him. "You don't know shit."