5:30 ; d.h

0.04

"Piano lessons, Nova!" My mom reminded me for the fourth time this hour. "You should've left by now." I put my hair in a tight pony after giving myself a once-over in the mirror. If I was being even a little honest right now, I would say that I'm actually anticipating going to see Mr. Howell, or, learning the piano; but I will never give my mom the satisfaction of being even a little right. She would hold that against me for the rest of my life.

A few minutes later I was walking out the door with a quick, "Bye, mom!". On the ride there I thought about what would happen at today's practice, whether I would be learning beginner's notes or getting to know Mr. Howell better. I thought about whether I was more excited to see and hear him play the piano or actually learning more about the tall man. Probably the latter.

My car pulled into the a parking lot of the building my studies were held and stopped in a spot to the side. I shuffled into the property, quickly walking up to Delores.

"Here for piano practice?" The old lady smiled warmly at me, handing me the sign in clip board. I quickly filled the blanks like previously and set the clipboard back on the counter.

"Up the stairs and down the hallway, right?" I asked facetiously.

"That's right, young lady." Delores chuckled as I thanked her and I started to walk away. My feet tapped up the two flights of stairs swiftly (although I was nearly out of breathe when I reached the top) and I stepped down the long hallway. As I walked by some of the doors, I could here the loud sound of a beginner trumpet player and then the next door down a violinist played delicately. By now, I had forgotten which room was Mr. Howell's, as it had completely slipped my mind. But as I walked down to the end of the hallway, I knew which room felt most familiar to me. More beautiful piano music was spilling into the corridor.

I waited a minute, thinking whether it was polite or not to knock while he was playing. I stood there and listened, the music growing more quiet. It slightly struck me there, if I knocked after he finished wouldn't he know that I was totally listening in on him playing the piano? I quickly tapped on the door, the melody stopped. The scratch of a chair being pushed and a few footsteps came next.

Mr. Howell opened the door widely, a smile on his face. "Nova! It's good to see you. How was your week?" He asked with chipper. He warmly invited me into the room and slid the door closed.

"My week was okay, just a long one with school and all." I replied as I lay my coat on the chair on the side of the cozy room. "How was yours?"

"It was a week, I suppose. I just had a lot of sessions with kids who don't particularly care about learning the piano. I've been looking forward to our session, actually." Mr. Howell said as he sat on the piano bench. He's been looking forward to seeing me? Maybe he meant that he was looking forward to just genuinely teaching. However he meant it, I took the compliment and and pushed other connotations going through my mind away. He motioned me over to the bench, pointing at the roll-y chair to my right for me to bring it over.

"Today, we're going to go over the finger numbers and basic notes," He said. "First, I'll teach you the finger numbers, so hold out your hands in front of you." He gripped my hands lightly, positioning them in front of me, palm down. I blushed slightly at his touch, I never noticed how long and nimble his fingers were until now.

"So the numbering is pretty easy," He pinched the ends of my thumbs and said, "one." Then pinched the tips of my index fingers and said, "two." Then my middles fingers with a mute 'three'. He pointed at my ring finger and I said, "four" lightly. I was rewarded with a tiny smile on his face.

"Good! See, it's easy, and your pinkie finger would be five." Mr. Howell spoke. "One, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three, two, one." He went over quickly, moving each finger gently with each corresponding number.

"One thing that may be difficult is playing scale passages together. This can be tricky because you can get mixed up if you don't read from left to right, but we'll get to that later." He paused. "The next thing is the basic notes." He motioned me over to sit next to him on the small bench.

"Next on the agenda is notes. There's only 7 'named' white keys, which are 'A, B, C, D, E, F, G',"He paused again to play each note in the middle of the piano, I looked at his face and noticed how concentrated he already was. I watched his mouth move when he talked, his lips were delicately pink and they matched his rosy cheeks. Concentrate, Nova. "And they start at 'C' at the first key of the piano, and read left to right. Understand?"

"Um, yeah. Seems pretty simple?" I said as I brought my attention back to the piano. His large hands were resting on his thighs instead of on the keys and his back was straighter than usual. I tried to mimic him to make is seem as if I was listening.

"Okay, good. We're off to a good start. So, the black keys tell you where you are on the piano. Imagine if someone just told you to play the seventy-first and twenty-ninth and thirty-eighth key together. You wouldn't be able to because that is moronic and no one is going to memorize all eighty-eight piano keys." He explained. "Nova, can you tell me where middle-c is?" What? Did he tell me the answer when I wasn't paying attention? I shook my head no.

"That's why the black keys exist, well partially. To find middle-c, which is the most centrally used key, you locate the middle-most two-grouped black keys, and middle-c is the white key to the left of the left black key." He motioned through finding the black keys and then tapped on middle-c, a sound emitting quietly from the piano. "Make sense?" I nodded my head. "There are different c's all over the piano. If you want to find any of them, all you have to do is locate a two-grouped black keys and go one to the left of the left key in the pair." He quickly tapped all of the c's on the key board. "The same goes for other notes. 'A' for example is found by locating a three-grouped black keys and 'a' will be one to the right of the middle key."

The next 30 minutes consisted of going over the basic rules of the keyboard and how to find notes and him testing me on where the notes were, even if I did get distracted by him it was still pretty easy to figure out.

"Your thumb is probably the most awkward finger to play with, while fingers two and three are the easiest and four and five are the weakest. Think of it like this, how often do we use our fourth and fifth finger to like, open a bottle of orange juice. Probably close to never right? Exactly, so those will be the weakest and will require the most training-" Mr. Howell was cut off by the sound of his obnoxious phone alarm again. Damn that stupid alarm.

"Nova, time moves by so fast with you." He chuckled. "It doesn't even feel like it's been forty-five minutes. Same time next week?" He proposed with a smile.

"Sure! You make the piano way more interesting than I thought it was going to be, Mr. Howell." I said as I grabbed my coat and fit my arms through the holes. He walked over to the door and opened it for me.

"Thank you. I try my hardest." He laughed quietly. "I'll walk you down." We walked down the hallway, passed all the doors that had different sounds behind them, and down the stairs. I waved as we passed Delores and she said a quick "goodnight".

"See you next week, Mr. Howell." I said as we approached the glass doors.

"See ya, Nova." He said as he reached for the handle, holding the door open for me. I moved through it with a small wave and reached into my pocket for my car keys. As I sat in my car and began to pull away, I could see Mr. Howell starting to walk away from the see-through doors.