Page 64 of The Keeper

I held my breath. She knew the piece inside and out. I wasn’t worried about that, but I was a little worried about Evie’s stage fright. She’d never let me or Carina watch while she practiced. If she wasn’t comfortable playing in front of us, how would she fare in a hall filled with strangers?

“You got this, E,” Carina whispered under her breath. Her nerves were palpable. It was the genuine concern of someone who actually cared and wasn’t here just for a paycheck.

My throat constricted. I wasn’t used to people who were as invested in Evie’s life as I was, and it made me feel like I could finally exhale. Like I wasn’t so alone. It was a strange sensation.

Then Evie started playing, and everything else retreated into the background.

It started great. She nailed the first two sections of the Beethoven piece, and I could see her physically relaxing as the performance went on.

Then someone in the audience sneezed so loudly it caused a wave of titters around them. They sneezed again, and the titters became laughter.

Evie’s head jerked up. A discordant note rang out as her hand slipped.

My stomach sank, and Carina tensed beside me.

It’s fine. Play through it. You got this.

Evie’s eyes darted back and forth. The hall was unbearably quiet as everyone waited for her to continue playing.

Pink splotches bloomed across her face the way they always did when she was upset. Fuck. Barbed wire dug into my chest and smothered me in dread. I wanted to run onstage and whisk her away from any hurt or embarrassment, but I couldn’t. I had to let her see this through on her own.

After another beat of deafening silence, Evie took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and refocused on the piano with a determined expression.

I let out a long, slow breath. This was going to be okay.

She started playing again. And then…

Disaster.

CHAPTER 25

CARINA

“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay. It wasn’t that bad.” I held a sobbing Evie in my arms, my heart aching. “It was just a little bit at the end. No one will remember it in a week.”

The recital had ended an hour ago. We’d whisked Evie straight to the nearest ice cream shop, but even a sundae with all the toppings and extra fudge couldn’t make her feel better.

“Yes, they will.” Her face was red and blotchy. “That was so em—embarrassing. I’ll nev—never be able to show my—my face at school again!” She burst into fresh tears.

I exchanged a helpless look with Noah over Evie’s head.

I’d never admit it out loud, but it’d been pretty bad. After the audience’s laughs threw her off, the rest of Evie’s recital had devolved into a string of stumbles and missed notes. She’d forgotten the last section entirely and sat there, frozen, until the emcee hastily ushered her off the stage to half-hearted applause. Noah and I had cheered the loudest. That should’ve been the end of it, but Evie had been so flustered that she’d tripped and knocked over a decorative pot of flowers on her way backstage.

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t the end of the world. But for an eleven-year-old girl, embarrassing herself in public was. Downplaying it wouldn’t change what happened or make her feel better.

“I’m going to tell you a story, but you have to promise not to laugh,” I said.

Evie lifted her head. She was still crying, but a spark of curiosity gleamed beneath her tears.

“When I was a teenager, I had a huge crush on this boy in my class. His name was Danny. He was so cute, and I was thrilled when we were paired up for a group project,” I said. “I was convinced he liked me because he was so nice to me, and he’d always have my favorite snacks ready when I went over to his house to work on the project. I kept waiting for him to make a move, but he never did. So I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

Evie’s eyes rounded. Her sobs slowed to hiccups. “What did you do?”

“I asked him to our end-of-year school dance. Except I did it in a really public way. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was so confident…Anyway, he was with his friends in the hall. I walked right up to him and asked him out on the spot, so sure he’d say yes. I even made him a little heart-shaped card. I thought it was cute at the time, but he looked horrified. He just stood there like a deer in headlights while his friends laughed. It turned out he had a girlfriend at another school, and he’d been nice to me because he was a nice person. That’s it. Someone recorded the whole thing, and it spread throughout the entire school. I ended up skipping the dance altogether because I was so humiliated. But you know what?”

“What?” Evie appeared transfixed.

“People forgot about it in a week. Someone vandalized the staff room, and everyone moved on.” My voice gentled. “These things can feel overwhelming in the moment. I get it. But take it from someone who’s experienced a lot of embarrassing moments in life. They pass. You survive. And after a while, those moments become stories you tell your friends, just like the story I told you.”