The Music In My Life: Part VIII

She calls me after-hours: “What the hell is going on with you? You need to get down here RIGHT NOW.”

When I arrive, she is livid. The dean has somehow found out about the post-concert suicide pact. My assigned counselor and I had already been through similar scenarios with the dean and promised that such situations would no longer occur. “It is a public-relations nightmare -- not to mention the effect it would have on other students.”

I do what is right -- I lie. “Yes-mam’s and No-mam’s” tumble out of my mouth automatically without thought. After finding out what she sent me “home” to after my last forced “time off,” the dean's reluctance and remorse trickle slightly outward. I'd forgotten the risk she had taken when allowing me back. Most students either hate or fear our dean. I hated her also at one point ... but now I am filled with respect and awe at the steel demeanor of her exterior since I know she is secretly kind inside.

That evening, in the dimly lit auditorium, the final concert seems flawless and leaves me, for a moment, not with the heaviness I had dreaded, but with a familiar tingle down my spine. I later run back to my dorm, secretly vomit in the empty restrooms, and dive into bed. Visions of the dean standing on the bridge barge through my mind as I debate what to do with myself. Damp palms and a cramping stomach cause me to succumb to fetal position. I recall David Helfgott. I slip into a depression and sleep throughout most of the next week. I have to figure out a way to keep my music as MY music -- not something that can be taken away again.