Bellweather Rhapsody Read Online Free PDF

folding chairs and stepping over cello posts. There is one empty seat in the second row of woodwinds—his seat, since he is the last to arrive, of course. He takes it and looks around. He was so concerned with sneaking in as quickly and quietly as possible that only now does he notice how loud the auditorium is, full of the din of musicians warming up. Piccolos spike, basses saw lazily. The trombones, who all seem to know one another, occasionally break into “Louie Louie.” And in a flush of relief and confusion, Rabbit realizes he is not the last to arrive after all.
    The bassoonist on his right, a chubby girl with fat yellow curls, smiles at him. “No one knows where he is,” she whispers. “They’re all running around like crazy trying to find him. Like, how hard is it to show up on time?” She bobs her head. “Sorry. Didn’t mean you. But you’re not the conductor.”
    Rabbit smiles weakly. Talkative seatmates make him uneasy.
    “I’m Kimmy,” she continues. “You must be Bertram Hatmaker. That’s an incredible name. Like something out of
Masterpiece Theatre.
” She points at the top of his music stand, where he notices two parallel pieces of tape wrapped over the edge. “We all have our names taped to the top of the stands, facing out. I hear it’s because Brodie likes to get personal when he yells at people.”
    “Brodie?”
    “Yeah, the conductor? Fisher Brodie? He’s totally crazy. I’ve never been in a group he’s conducted before, but my friend Joe goes to Westing and has him for a few ensembles and says he’s
majorly
disturbed.”
    Small-town Ruby Falls naturally insulates Rabbit from the gossip of the larger student musician community, and he is fine with that. Alice, however, has made it her business to know everything about everyone, and now Rabbit remembers his sister gasping when she learned who would be conducting the orchestra. He should have paid attention, but Alice gasps so often, it’s impossible to tell when it might be for a good reason.
    A bang comes from out in the auditorium, barely audible over the cacophony. Rabbit cranes his neck, but his view is blocked by the oboist in front of him, or rather, by the oboist’s hair, which is twice as wide as it ought to be. There is another bang, louder than the first, and then someone barks, clear over the noise, “OI!”
    And Fisher Brodie is suddenly
there,
like he’s bounded the length of the auditorium and up the conductor’s podium in one enormous stride. Rabbit’s first impression of Brodie is of a human spider, a wide-eyed daddy longlegs, and when Brodie props his spindly arms on the stand at his podium and barks “OI!” again, just as loud but so much closer, Rabbit wishes he were anywhere in the universe but here.
    Everyone stops playing, transfixed by the strange new creature in their midst, this wiry man who has yet to blink in their presence. He stands up straight and says, “Now tha yuhv had yer coodly warmoop, whyn’ we spill sum blud?”
    Rabbit has never heard a Scottish accent in person before, and it enters his brain on a two-second delay.
Blood?
he thinks, but Brodie has already moved on. “Haggerty!” Brodie shouts at a lanky girl hunched over the timpani. “Set some eighths on a C!” Haggerty flinches but complies. “Schwenk! Sixteenths on B-flat!” is hurled at a boy cradling his tuba like a life preserver. Brodie flings instructions like knives, and the musicians, trained to respond without a thought, spew forth a horrifying sound, a deep and dreadful noise. It goes on for too long, it lurches and growls. It seems that Brodie calls upon everyone. Everyone except Rabbit. And just when Rabbit thinks he has escaped forced participation in this aural nightmare, Brodie looks straight at him and shouts, “Hatmaker! Give me—”
    Brodie stops, then crosses and thrusts his arms to the side. The orchestral beast he has created slumps over in a jumble of honks and bleats.
    “Bloody hell kind of name