Ash

Ash glared as his phone beeped out a notification. It was probably from his sister. She’d been messaging him all morning about a possible music teacher and when he could meet and yada yada. He would prefer to not deal with this, but his grandmother had made a request, and he’d never hear the end of it if he didn’t at least try. Not even his parents could keep the old woman’s nagging from reaching his ears.

all set

thnx. when n whr? Ash responded, staring at his screen. He knew Syl would reply sooner rather than later, and right now there was little likelihood he’d be able to focus on anything. At least, not while knowing that she’d text him soon.

mns @ 9, she started, not caring to use proper punctuation or even full words. He knew what she meant, though. 2nite, rm 154, 1 hr, brng trmp

Ash sighed. His sister had a habit of leaving out vowels when texting, or even parts of words. He’d learned the hard way, especially after the “hs cld pk mp” means “he’s cold, pick me up” incident. That had been far too much of an adventure for both of them. thnx agn.

The stack of textbooks and extra credit homework on his desk made Ash scowl even more. He didn’t want to do any of the work, but he needed to if he wanted to get back to being the top of his class. He had graduated high school as Valedictorian and had no plans of graduating from college as anything less than that. But that meant surpassing Kai, or Mr. Know-it-all as Ash stubbornly decided to think of him.

He sighed again, loosing the scowl in favor of a want to simply lay down and nap until his apparent music lesson. But he had too much to do and not nearly enough time. Between attending classes, doing extra credit, and studying ahead, adding in even an hour every week would mean cutting back on his sleep schedule.

At least my new “teacher” is on campus, he thought a little reluctantly. He was grateful that someone was willing to work with his schedule and wasn’t so far out of the way that he’d have to travel to his lesson, but at the same time he didn’t know very many, if absolutely any music majors. He mostly stuck to Elliot, though group projects had forced him to meet other business and/or science majors. But music majors? Nope. He couldn’t think of one. Not even a music minor.

Something else he already knew would be a problem was the pay. Apparently, his new teacher charged their “students” based on “situation”, which meant that he’d probably wind up paying 2 or 3 times the usual rate. That was why he had done some research so he wasn’t swindled out of his money too badly. He’d go over, after all they were willing to meet this late in the evening, but he wouldn’t be taken as a fool.

With his favorite forest green pen in hand, Ash reluctantly began on his studies, taking care to not only do the work and memorize the essentials, but also to actually learn the material. That was where most people tended to go wrong. Those he tutored never actually understood what they were “learning”, just memorized words, terms, and formulas. He wondered just how much Mr. Emo Know-it-all actually knew versus how much he simply had memorized. Did he get such high scores because he had so much advanced material memorized, or did he actually know they material like Ash tried to do?

An alarm startled Ash out of his concentrated haze. Trumpet Lesson flashed on the bright screen, letting him know that it was time for his very first attempt at learning something that had no value to actual life. Why should he be forced to learn something that he won’t keep up with throughout life? It made no sense to him, but family is hard to get away from and easier to deal with by simply attempting appeasement than purposefully provoking.

He shut off his alarm and closed his textbook. He was only halfway through his third of five classes and really did not want to go. But, his sister had probably gone through a lot of connecting and favors in order to get this set up, so he might as well at least try one lesson. If it wasn’t worth it, he could always call it off later.

A scowl formed once more as the textbooks refused to stack neatly. Why couldn’t all textbooks have the same dimensions? It was ridiculous and made the stack of books look terribly messy. His phone started buzzing again, warning him that if he didn’t leave soon, he’d likely be late for his lesson. Turning off the little demon of a device, he took a moment to simply glare at the case hiding the shiny instrument sitting at the foot of his bed. He nearly decided to crawl into bed and pretend he couldn’t see the blasted thing. After all, no instrument, no lesson.

Groaning, Ash picked up the hard case, shoving his phone in his pocket. He left the dorm room, locking it behind him. He didn’t need any students going into his room trying to find any extra cash he had laying about. Not that he was stupid enough to do that, but some people didn’t seem to understand that what doesn’t belong to them still doesn’t belong to them, even if they take it.

The walk to the music building was a good 15 minutes as it was halfway across campus. Despite his irritation at forgetting a jacket while fall was getting into full swing, he was more annoyed at the fact that he could be spending his time on something more important, like studying or sleep. Yeah, sleep would be nice. Besides, it wasn’t like learning to play an instrument would provide any sort of usefulness to him. Unless…

Could that possibly be Mr. Know-it-all’s secret? Ash’s classmates raved about how musically talented he was as well as academically. Could his ability as a saxophonist – saxophonian? – be the key to his success? But how? How could being able to play an instrument help him with his ability to learn? It had to be something else. There was something else giving him the edge over Ash, and Ash had to figure it out.

Ash stopped just outside of the doors to the music building. It had been named after some rich family whose child was a prodigy here or something. It didn’t matter much to Ash, though, as he was too close to the building to see the name in bold letters on the outside wall.

A flutter went through Ash, squeezing his insides and making him feel nauseous for a moment. It almost felt like he was… “No way,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head, “I am not nervous. There’s nothing to even be nervous about. I probably just need more sleep.”