Tempo Change Read Online Free PDF

room.
    Mr. Carmichael started playing “Fire and Rain,” an old James Taylor song, and I just jumped right in since I knew it. At first I wasn’t sure what that beautiful sound was, that elegant tone and tight vibrato. I looked all over the room and it sounded like it was coming from me, which I knew was impossible. Then I realized it was coming from right next to me.
    Viv Wyler had a beautiful voice.
    Mr. Carmichael stopped playing piano and looked straight at me.
    “Blanche, aren’t you singing the alto part?”
    “What?”
    “You’re singing with the altos.”
    “Oh.”
    “So step up a level.”
    I did. The Chelseas made room for me. But I couldn’t stop staring at Viv. She saw me staring at her and I looked away. Madison raised her hand and said, “Mr. Carmichael, can we sing something else? This is like a hundred years old.”
    “We’re singing James Taylor,” the beleaguered Mr. Carmichael said, wiping his brow.
    I said out loud for all to hear, “You know this song is about a friend of his who died in an airplane crash.”
    “No way,” the girls crooned.
    “Really. Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.”
    The girls started mumbling. Mr. Carmichael gave me an appreciative smile.
    “From the top,” he said, and we stumbled our way through it.
    When the class was over, Mr. Carmichael made an announcement.
    “School talent competition is a month away. I’m accepting applications now. Please list the song you’ll be performing, all participants, and all instrumentation.”
    Everyone stared at him.
    It wasn’t that kind of school.
    The bell rang and we filed out. I couldn’t help catching up to Viv.
    “Hey,” I said. “You have a great voice.”
    She looked at me. “So?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I’d tell you that.”
    “What good will it do me? Is it going to get me into college?”
    “Maybe.”
    “This is an easy A. That’s all it is to me.”
    “But you could actually be a singer or something.”
    She slowed down her soccer player’s lope and stared at me. “I read your column. I know you care a lot about music. What I can’t figure out is why.”
    “Because it’s … I’m … What else is there?”
    “Soccer,” she said. “And trying to keep my head abovewater to make my parents happy. That’s all I can handle right now. But thanks for the compliment.”
    She hurried down the carpeted hallway to her next class. I could feel an idea forming in my brain like a storm cloud. Like a crack of light under the door.
    Sometimes a little light is worse than none at all.

Peace Pizza
    W ORK . T HAT’S WHAT I DID AFTER SCHOOL AND ON THE WEEKENDS . While the other girls from LaHa were hanging out at the Promenade or the Pier or Amoeba Records in Hollywood or the Abercrombie at the Grove or the Arclight Theaters. Working in their spare time was something poor kids did.
    I worked at Peace Pizza. Only in Santa Monica would a pizza restaurant name itself that with no irony whatsoever. The owner, Toby Myerson, was a burnout from the seventies who had never gotten over Amnesty International and Greenpeace. The place was full of signs that said things like “Love Is All You Need” and “Be Good to Your Mother—Earth.” Toby rode a bike and wore hemp clothing and meditated a lot. He only showed up at the store late in the evenings, usually stoned. So the whole place was basically run by a bunch of teenage surfer dudes. The oldest guythere, the assistant manager, was Jeff, a lanky nerd who ran track and jumped over stuff at Pali High, a public school in the Palisades. He was a junior and he was smart, I could tell, because he was always hitting his books between customers and I knew the colleges he was applying to—Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern. I’d heard he wanted to be an engineer but I didn’t know what kind.
    Jeff was always wrangling the younger guys, the Seans and the Bos and the Tylers, trying to get them to do something other than yak