ACT I

SCENE I

ALL THAT BOY MEETS GIRL CRAP

Let's get to the real reason you're here. The boy meets girl saga. (Because let's be honest, who in their right mind would want to listen to me blabbering on about my piano for three chapters straight, right?) Nevertheless, my boy meets girl story starts in New York, with a school trip to a famous music hall, to watch the New York Symphony perform. It starts with a tour of the hall, the guide running around the place like a madwoman, and the art school down the road's group joining ours for a rudimentary music lesson. In that crowd stood fourteen-year-old Rosemarié Darlings, my girl. And opposite her, in the music group, stood I, Harold Sinclair, in all my awkward, acne-filled, glory. We don't talk until the tour is over, and I'm half falling asleep on the way back. We take the subway home, since apparently we lived pretty close to one another, she sits with her huge French boyfriend, and I try not to lean my shoulder on the unsuspecting pregnant lady next to me.

"You go to that music academy, right?" She asked, halfway through the ride, looking at me with those Atlantic Ocean blue eyes. Her boyfriend stiffened, and gave me a glare, like DO NOT EVEN THINK OF ANSWERING.

I was feeling confident, so I flipped him the mental bird, and answered with a simple, "uh, yeah?"

"What did you think of the performance?" She asked, her eyes shining in the grimy subway light. The boyfriend looked as if he were about to literally gouge my eyeballs out. I sent him a look that said please don't I need these to play piano!

"It was amazing." I said in one breath, I always loved watching orchestras perform, "I loved every second of it, especially when they played the Rose Adagio."

"Tchaikovsky fan, much?" She asked, this beautifully sardonic smirk plastered onto her face. As you may have noticed, I was already head over heels in love with my girl and I didn't even know her name yet. All I knew was that she knew Tchaikovsky, and had these absolutely magnificent eyes.

"Slightly." I answered, blush lining my cheeks.

"Do you play?" She asked, peering over, leaning her hands on her knees. All of her attention was directed toward me. Boyfriend had moved onto a look that said TOUCH HER AND I WILL CHOP OFF YOUR HAND.

"Yeah, a little." Understatement of the year. I played five instruments at that point. The piano, acoustic guitar, violin, cello, oboe, and the viola but then again, that was only a fifth lower than the violin.

"Oh," her face lit up again, "which instrument? Personally I love the violin, but sometimes I have an ear for the piano too."

"Both." I answered quickly, leaving out the others. People always got slightly intimidated whenever I mentioned the whole five instruments thing. A bunch of nonsensical chatter passed by me in quick little snippets, I just remembered her asking for my name, and saying we should hang out to chat about Charles Dickens or someone. (At this point, boyfriend was fuming. He probably hadn't the faintest idea who Charles Dickens was.)

"Adrien," she said eventually, "stop. We're just talking." He mumbled something in French I didn't quite catch, and then looked away, "I'm Rose, by the way." She said, gazing back to me.

"Harry." I said quickly, and everything went downhill from there. Now, if you're wondering, yes, Rose and I did get together to talk about Charles Dickens, but it turned out she just made a bunch of dick jokes, at which we giggled uncontrollably. Here comes that mushy, boy meets girl stuff you've been waiting for. Our love blossomed over the summer of my fourteenth, while I was still living with my uncle, and we were harbouring my older brother in his basement like a fugitive. It's all very romantic comedy, the going out for tea, coming over and lying beneath my piano while I practiced for some or other competition my piano teacher had entered me into. Our love blossomed over Chopin, and Beethoven, and Bach, like something out of a movie, beneath my uncle's ratty Yamaha. We went through all those awkward teen years together, tried the whole party scene, attempted to get thoroughly drunk and fall in love. It all kind of fell apart when I turned seventeen, and this girl from London showed up. She was an oboist, played like a dream, something you wouldn't expect her to because she looked the type to claw her eyes out. Her name was Emma Ashbury, and at this point you're clawing your eyes out because you've heard it all before. I fall for the crazy girl, and end up marrying her, having four kids, all that jazz. Except I don't, because Emma Ashbury doesn't last until senior year. Not because I'm a terrible boyfriend and can't emotionally commit to anything (that's Insley, sorry.) but because she was a schizophrenic, and destined to die. Now at this point I should mention that I too was a schizophrenic, thanks to the almighty S.V Sinclair who passed the genetic mutation onto me, but mine wasn't nearly as bad as Emma's. I took my meds, stayed on course like a normal teenager would, but Emma's schizophrenia combined with a case of impulse control disorder made her a nightmare dressed like a daydream. I loved her though, loved her with all of her eccentricities, the more Emma showed up, the less I saw of Rose, and eventually I became so engrossed in Emma that I didn't even hear Adrien had broken up with Rose and that she wouldn't be coming to see me perform in this giant music hall in front of a thousand people or something. Emma was there though, happy as can be – a rare sight – cheering me on like a good girlfriend should have, while I glided through my set piece. Here comes the sad part, by the way, if you want to cop out now, you can. Just press the little X button, or close the book, whatever, I'm going to keep going. Here it comes, the big "why did Emma Ashbury die?" Well, friends, she died because of me, and I'm not just saying that because I blame myself – because I do – but because it's actually my fault. On my seventeenth birthday, some of Rose's college friends took me to a frat party, and got me completely drunk. I ended up with some really tall girl in a dimly lit room, high off her expensive perfume, and of course her. I woke up the next day feeling like a truck had hit me, and when I got to Emma's house to walk her to school, she smacked me upside the head, and told me to walk to school myself. At this point I'd realised that she'd found up, and ran to a nearby flower stand, spent practically all my lunch money on this bouquet of giant pink tulips and ran like the wind. I found her right before first period, the whole hallway became engulfed in stagnation as I got down on my knees, and begged her to forgive me. She took the tulips, and kissed me on the cheek before disappearing into her class. I never saw her again after that, I mean, apart from the funeral. Seeing her dead wasn't the same as seeing her alive, obviously. I got a call from her overly polite father the next day, and I was worried sick, so I answered the phone like a worried mother.

"Emma?" My voice echoed over the line and I heard the static on the other side, along with a deep intake of breath.

"Hello, Harry." Said Mr Ashbury, and I exhaled this time, "Emma's... not coming to school today."

"Oh?" I asked, all innocent, "why not?" At this point I heard Mrs Ashbury crying in the background and when he answered me his voice wavered.

"I'm sorry, Harry. But Emma... she committed suicide last night." Mr Ashbury said and my phone broke that day. I let it fall down onto the hard concrete, and watched as some or other kid picked it up and handed it back to me. I could hear Mr Ashbury's worried voice over the speaker.

"Harry?" His voice went, in that accent they all had, "are you there?" He asked, sincerely. I loved the Ashbury's, they always cared for me like my parents had, specifically because I made Emma happy. I negated to mention that the reason Emma committed suicide in the first place was my fault.

"I'm here." I finally got the words out, struggling to breathe. Mr Ashbury's monologue flew past me, it went in the one ear and out the other. At that point the only thing occupying my mind was the fact that Emma was dead, and it was my fault. I cried like a baby at her funeral, and her parents took me out for ice cream, we had a little pity party together in the ice cream shop. They moved back to London shortly after, apologizing profusely, and then leaving me on the airport. I loved the Ashbury's just as much as I loved Emma, so when they left, I dived into my awkward uncle's arms, and hugged him with all my might, even though anyone could see he was ridiculously uncomfortable with the whole affair.