The Dating Game

Chapter Forty-Six

Justin

February had already crept up upon us and it was time to perform for our Music project.

Nerves were already on edge for me; in fact, I was just this trembling ball of nerves, really. Juliet was incessantly convincing me that it would be alright – I was conflicted to whether that was a witty pun or she hadn't realised.

Congregating in Music class, Mrs Walker strolled on in with a bottle of water, a wad of paper and crimson cheeks. Then when I glanced out of the window, I saw why she had crimson cheeks: There was a mass traffic jam in the corridor and there were a few freshman students who were hurrying to weave in and out of the students.

"What do you think is causing it?" I asked, leaning in to Juliet. My guitar which I had brought into school today for this lesson was about to topple over because it was leaning against my body and I lent away. I held it firmly in place.

She shrugged. "Probably some fight," she offered.

After the final few stragglers had emerged into the room and from the crowd, the door was closed so all of the noise from the squabble outside from livid teenagers who were at a standstill and becoming increasingly tardy was silenced at once. Mrs Walker ambled round to her desk and sorted out the wad of paper into divisions across her desk as the last bit of chatter inside of the room died down.

"So, Mrs Walker began, sitting on the edge of her desk and facing everyone in our semi-circle, "Today is the day of performances, yes. We're hopefully going to go through everyone's today in this lesson so I don't want to waste too much time telling you everything. Instead, I'm just going to say that whilst you're performing, a have a sheet with both you and your partner's names on it to jot down notes because next lesson, that will be assessing it. Now, can we have a larger gap in the middle and bring out the instruments, please."

Shunting everything out of the way and getting all of the instruments ready to be brought forwards when required, we sat in a semi-circle again but more so to one side so the instruments were on the other near to the centre. Mrs Walker even sat in the middle of the semi-circle with her notes on her lap. She had to shuffle them frequently but she read the names off of the sheets in that order for the students to perform.

"First up, Hilary and Clinton," said Mrs Walker.

Nervous as hell – as they both appeared – both Hilary and Clinton nervously shuffled up and went to the instruments. Clinton sat down on the piano seat, and Hilary got her own saxophone out from the purple case. On the count of three, they began with a new, upbeat melody. Truth be told, both were talented musicians.

"Thank you, both," said Mrs Walker, jotting haphazardly down the last few notes, "next up..." she began, dragging out the last syllable as she pushed that sheet for the primary pair to the back and gazed at the names on the top of the subsequent sheet, "Juliet and Justin."

As Juliet and I ambled up, Juliet sat at her piano and I lingered back for a moment to extract my guitar from the case. I slung the strap over my shoulder and sat down on a chair next to the piano. Both of us getting comfortable, Juliet muttered, "3, 2,1," and then we began.

I had initially endeavoured to coax Juliet into at least singing the chorus with me each time, but she protested by saying, "My singing talent will never even reach half to your ability," so we left it at she would just play the piano, and I would play the guitar and sing. She seemed pretty adamant for that to happen anyway so she was more than content when I offered her that final conjecture.

"Across the ocean, across the sea, starting to forget the way you look at me now," I began to sing. "Over the mountains, across the sky, need to see your face, I need to look in your eyes. Through the storm and through the clouds, bumps on the road and upside down now. I know it's hard, babe, to sleep at night. Don't you worry, cause everything's gonna be alright, ai-ai-ai-aight. Be alright, ai-ai-ai-aight."