Shy (2 page)

How I'm able to play for judges in competitions and recitals, I don't know. I get nervous when I play for friends and even for family. But somehow, in competitions and recitals, I can psych myself up to the point that I can usually pull a good—and sometimes excellent—performance out of my metaphorical hat. But oh, the torments I endure before recitals and competitions. Icy hands, for which I have to go to the bathroom again and again and run warm water over them. Running to the bathroom to pee, at least a million times. My nerves create all kinds of annoying bodily situations. But I persevere, and usually I do well.

Usually.

But playing for friends and family, enjoying my music in a different context from what's necessary to pursue a career goal? Freaks me out every time. I can play for friends and family to a point, but so often, I feel stiff and nervous and on the spot, and sadly, I tend to mess up quite a bit, making it look like I don't have nearly as much skill on the piano as I actually do. It's damnably frustrating.

I would like nothing more in life than to be like Nikesha Sloane. Like Chopin and Beethoven, she's another of my favorite people to ever walk the earth, but unlike those two old masters, she's alive. She's a young master. Older than me, but still very young. Twenty-six. I've read all about her online. She's an incredible pianist and singer-songwriter who hit it big a couple of years ago. She already has two albums out with a major label, and she wows me. She's like a beautiful elfen maiden who not only plays and sings the most incredible, gorgeous, luminous, powerful, affecting music I've ever heard from a modern day person, but she also becomes the music. Her music is so powerful to listen to that it's as if it already exists in some other realm, and she somehow has the ability to connect with it, bring it into the mundane realm, and make it real and audible for us mere mortals.

But I'm not Nikesha. Kind of cool that her last name, Sloane, is my middle name, though. I'm Francesca Sloane Forsythe, but nobody ever calls me Francesca or Sloane. I'm Frannie. And while Frannie might be talented at music, smart overall, and maybe attractive by some people's measure, Frannie is always and forever, above all and over all...

SHY
.

And
SHY
screws everything else up.

Mom said, before my high school graduation, “You've got brains, talent, and beauty. If you had a better personality, you'd be perfect.”

Perhaps she meant well, but I don't think she has yet realized how much that hurt me.

At any rate, it's time to go home and face the music. No, not something quite so pleasant as music. It's time to face my perennially disappointed mom.

I finish up the Chopin Étude and stand up. I really don't want to leave this practice room. It feels safe and comforting here, with just me and the upright piano. The piano is nothing special. It's kind of old and has probably been in this room for decades, but it's my friend. I made friends with it more readily than I've made friends with anybody I've met at college so far.

But I have to go.

Taking a deep breath, I open the practice room door and head out, just about bumping into a guy I've seen here in the halls fairly regularly. I don't know his name. He's pretty tall, though not as tall as Jake. He has a tightly muscled, wiry build, where Jake is rangier. I don't know if this guy is a student here or not. I'm guessing he is, though he looks a bit older than me. He's very friendly with my piano professor, Dr. Rosetti.

He smiles at me. “Wow, I heard you in there. You're an amazing pianist.” He has a rather cultured way of speaking, a Southern accent like most of us here in Knoxville, but different somehow, more crisp and articulated. He has brown hair that's wavy and kind of messy, and eyes that are a fascinating shade of greenish brown,
hazel
I guess the word would be. He's handsome, in a more conventional way than Jake, but there's something about him that, like Jake, suggests something of a rebellious streak all the same. He's smiled at me in the hall before, but this is the first time he's spoken to me.

I mumble something I hope sounds like
Thanks
.

His gaze softens as he peers at me more closely. “You're one of Ron's students, aren't you?”

By Ron, he must mean Dr. Rosetti. I nod.

“You play Chopin beautifully,” he says. “I'm very impressed. It's not everyone who can play Chopin with your combination of feeling, interpretation, and technical excellence.”

Wow. I don't know what to say. This guy expresses himself well. And he doesn't have a shy bone in his body. Lucky him.

He holds out his hand to me. “I'm Granville Watts. And you're...”

Oh, he's incredibly handsome. In his way, every bit as handsome as Jake. But oh, how different the two of them are in their attitudes, personalities, and expressions. I can tell that already. I clear my throat and accept his hand. He grips mine gently and gives it an emphatic but warm shake.

“I'm Frannie Forsythe,” I say. I feel like I need to clear my throat again, but I keep myself from it. When I'm nervous, it feels like my throat is less a throat than a river of phlegm. I don't know why that happens. It happens to Dad, too, though, so I'm in good company.

“Are you majoring in music?” he asks, his voice warm and friendly like his expression.

I nod.

“I'm not surprised,” he says easily. “You're very talented. I've heard you play in here before. You have a unique style, and I like it very much.”

I don't know what to say. I feel myself flushing at his compliments. I've never known how to take a compliment. I appreciate them—they feel wonderful and warm like the sun touching a starved little shriveled seed—but something down deep inside me doesn't think I deserve them. And to be the focus of attention, especially the attention of someone I hardly know, feels overwhelming. I'm not sure how I overcome that when I play for competitions and recitals as a piano student. I guess I just feel like I have to, like it's a matter of survival. After all, since I'm so shy, my ability to compete in classical piano is my only route to any possible success in life.

I won't get there on my personality, that's for sure.

“Well, it's great to meet you, Frannie,” Granville says. “I'm sure we'll see each other again. I hang around here quite a lot.”

I nod again. My neck feels thick and my throat feels like I'll strangle on my phlegm. I resolve to clear my throat just as soon as I'm far enough away from him so he won't hear it. Damn it, I wish I weren't so shy. I'd like to know if he's a graduate student of Dr. Rosetti's, if he's a performance major or some other kind of music major. He seems so nice. He really wanted to draw me out, and he tried.

But drawing me out is a damnably hard thing to do.

Nikesha Sloane wouldn't act like this.

But I'm not Nikesha. I'm just Frannie Fuckup Forsythe.

I walk away and feel Granville's gaze on me as I head toward the stairs that lead down to the ground floor. I hope he talks to me again soon. Maybe then, I can say more than just my name.

Mom will know something's up the minute I walk into the house. As a college freshman, I live in the dorm during the week, but I tend to go home on weekends to see Mom and Dad, and often to go to Jake's shows when he's performing. I've only been at UT for a couple of weeks, though, so I haven't gotten into a rhythm or a schedule that's set in stone, but Mom isn't expecting me home this weekend. She thinks I'm rushing Alpha Delta Pi and going to the parties, starting tonight.

Nothing doing. Sororities are fine for more social girls, I guess, but sorority life isn't for me. Regardless of my shyness, I need lots of time to myself. I don't want every day and every hour mapped out for me with a relentless social life and constant social obligations. It's not me, and it will make college harder on me than it needs to be. I'm actually liking college better than high school so far, and I'd like to keep it that way. Mom is a very social person. Not like Dad and me. She has to understand that I'm not her younger clone, and I'll never be. Her dreams aren't mine, and it isn't right of her to try to pressure me into fulfilling her lost dreams. My own dreams make me feel inadequate enough, let alone trying to fulfill hers. She'll have to understand. As Jake said, it's my life.

When I walk in, I slowly let out my breath only to suck it back in, hard and sharp, when I hear Mom. “Frannie? Is that you?” Anxiety edges her voice. And worse. My stomach knots. She sounds like she's been drinking.

I've known since my junior year of high school that Mom sometimes drinks a little bit too much, especially when she and Dad are at odds, which has been more and more often as Simon, my brother, and I have grown older and ready to fly out of the nest. Simon is a junior in high school this year, putting him two years behind me. He's a great guy, laid back and extroverted. He has a lot of friends so he's not home very much, and that's good, because from what I can tell, day-to-day life with Mom has gotten tougher. She isn't as hard on Simon, though, as she is on me, especially when it comes to her demands and her obsession with me being a super achiever. Maybe it's because I'm her daughter and she's more inclined to try to live vicariously through me than through a son.

Mom and Dad are pretty incompatible, what with the differences in their personalities. Dad's like me. He'd rather stay home, be quiet, play his guitar, and work on the projects he loves. Mom would rather be out, doing things with people. They've never been good at meeting in the middle, at least not since I've been on the earth, though I've seen pictures that suggest they had music in common when they met. Mom played the piano as a young woman, but she hasn't touched it in a long time. The only pianist in the house for years has been me.

I wonder where Dad is? He's probably in the study working on something related to his computer job.

“Frannie?” she says, louder, and I hear her footsteps in the hall, coming closer. I go into the living room to meet her, dread tying my guts into knots and pulling tighter until I think they'll rip me apart. I have to stand up to her. I've got no choice. She has to know the truth. I won't be rushing Alpha Delta Pi, and I don't want to be in any sorority at all.

“I'm here.” My voice feels half-stuck in my throat, the words hanging out and flailing helplessly. I hate feeling like this.

“But tonight's the rush party.” She comes into the hall. Yes, I'm pretty sure she's had something to drink. She isn't wobbly or anything, but she looks more annoyed than usual, which doesn't bode well for me having to deliver news she doesn't want to hear.

I open my mouth and shove out the words. “Mom, I've decided not to rush. I don't want to be in a sorority.”

“What?” She moves closer to me.

“I don't want to be in a sorority.”

“What are you telling me?”

I sigh. She's resisting the truth—well,
my
truth—with all her might, as usual. “Mom, I'm not rushing. I have to be honest with you. I've never wanted to be in Alpha Delta Pi or any other sorority. I didn't want to say anything because I know you want it for me so badly. I even thought about trying to go through with rush anyway, since I kind of doubted they'd take me. But what if they did? When I thought about that possibility, I saw very clearly it just isn't what I want.”

“Oh, no.” Her voice shakes with bitterness, disappointment, and hostility, and the disgust on her face feels like a bowling ball that she has hurled into my gut. “You're making a huge mistake.”

My mouth has gone dust dry and I can't speak. Maybe I should have rushed after all. At least I could have come home later and told her about the party, even if I would have had to make a tremendous effort to sound enthusiastic about it.

But no. I can never please Mom even when I try, so there's no point in doing this for her sake. I still wouldn't measure up, and I would be miserable in a sorority. I'm so shy I can't even interact well with my roommate and her friends. They're nice, but I just can't relax with them. When I'm with most people, I feel stiff and frozen up. My face feels like a mask, with the real me hopelessly buried under thick layers of
shy
.

Oh, those hated words!
Shy, withdrawn
. And lumpish. One person called me lumpish, in high school. Also Miss Woodenhead. None of those descriptions are even close to the real me, but when I feel overwhelmed by people, by the demands of socializing, the real me retreats even further into the layers. It does no good for me to try to throw myself into social situations. I was so anxious during college orientation that I had constant painful gas bubbles in my chest, and if I had been older, I probably would have thought I was having a heart attack.

Somehow, though, even given all this, Mom thinks I should spend my college years with wall-to-wall social activity, which would become the case if I joined a sorority. She thinks it'll cure me of my shyness. Little does she understand about shyness. I couldn't do it. It would overwhelm me. Even if I weren't shy, I'm introverted. I need regular time alone to recharge and to simply
be
. Not to
be social
.

If Mom had wanted an outgoing daughter so badly, then why the hell did she marry Dad, a shy and introverted man?

She's still waiting for me to speak. “I know what I'm doing,” I tell her. “I wouldn't be happy in a sorority. They party every weekend, and from what I've heard, they're expected to spend pretty much all their time together, every day, when they're not studying. It would drive me crazy. I'm just not wired like that, to want to be around people all the time–”

“Damn it, Frannie, you're too young to know what you're talking about,” Mom interrupts. “You don't understand that there's no conceivable way you can ever compete and succeed in this world the way you are, so pathologically withdrawn and shy and not knowing how to deal with people. You simply must learn how to get along better and make friends. You couldn't possibly have a better opportunity than joining that sorority. The connections you would form in a sorority would be an important key to you being able to succeed in life. And Alpha Delta Pi is one of the best sororities you could join. Do you want to be a fucking failure, Frannie? Is that really what you want, god damn it? Because that's where you're headed, with your poor, short-sighted choices.”