Chapter 2 - Not Eligible
Malik found Ms. Reed waiting outside the auditorium after auditions.
Most students had left, though voices still echoed from the hallway.
“Your mother picking you up?” she asked.
“She works until nine.”
“You walking?”
“Bus.”
Her eyes moved toward the keyboard under his arm.
“Malik, wait.”
Something in her voice made him stop.
Ms. Reed showed him the audition sheet.
He read the red words.
NOT ELIGIBLE.
His expression hardly changed.
That worried her more than anger would have.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
“You're the teacher.”
“And I didn't write it.”
Malik laughed once, humorless.
“Guess my keyboard really is too old.”
“This isn't funny.”
“I know.”
He handed the paper back.
Ms. Reed explained that the school talent show was tied to Jefferson's Regional Young Artists nomination. Two students would be recommended for a prestigious summer conservatory program in New York, including tuition, housing, coaching, and a twenty-five-thousand-dollar college scholarship for one national finalist.
Malik stared.
“Nobody told me that.”
“It was on the audition packet.”
“I filled out the packet.”
“Exactly.”
He remembered turning it in three weeks earlier.
Jordan had been standing beside the music-office door that afternoon.
Brianna had been helping student council organize applications.
At the time, neither detail had mattered.
Now Malik wasn't sure.
“What makes somebody ineligible?”
“Attendance, disciplinary status, missing forms. None apply to you.”
“Money?”
“No application fee.”
He almost seemed disappointed that the explanation wasn't simple.
Poor people became accustomed to doors with prices on them.
A door without a visible price could be more dangerous.
Ms. Reed lowered her voice.
“Until I know what happened, don't confront Jordan.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
“Malik.”
“What?”
“You looked at him.”
“He was laughing at me ten minutes ago. Looking is free.”
Despite herself, she smiled.
Then she became serious again.
“Your performance was exceptional.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. Don't let what happened before it become the story you tell yourself about what happened during it.”
Malik nodded.
But on the city bus thirty minutes later, he discovered the story had already escaped him.
His phone vibrated repeatedly.
A classmate had posted Jordan's insult.
TALENT SHOW, NOT DONATION DRIVE.
The video showed Malik standing beneath the lights while students laughed.
It ended before he played.
Thirty thousand views.
Comments multiplied.
Some mocked his clothes.
Some mocked the keyboard.
Others argued that Jordan had gone too far.
Malik closed the app.
Another notification appeared.
A second video had been uploaded.
This one began with the first chord.
The caption read:
Y'ALL LAUGHED TOO EARLY.
Fifty-two thousand views.
Then sixty thousand.
Malik watched three seconds before locking his phone.
He hated both videos.
One turned him into a joke.
The other turned him into a surprise.
Neither showed a seventeen-year-old boy who had practiced until his wrists hurt for six years.
At home, his mother, Renee Turner, was standing in their small kitchen wearing pale-blue scrubs.
She was thirty-nine, exhausted, and still had another overnight home-care shift beginning at ten.
“You eat?”
“I'll make something.”
Her eyes landed on the keyboard.
“How'd it go?”
Malik opened the refrigerator.
“Weird.”
“That good weird or hospital-bill weird?”
He smiled despite himself.
“People liked it.”
Renee's face brightened.
“I told you.”
“After they laughed.”
The brightness disappeared.
“At what?”
“My clothes. Keyboard.”
Renee looked at the duct-taped key.
The same key they had repaired together.
“Who?”
“Doesn't matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Malik took out leftover chicken.
“Mom.”
She studied him.
Then his phone buzzed on the counter.
She glanced at the screen.
The performance video had passed one hundred thousand views.
Renee picked up the phone.
“Malik.”
“Please don't make it a thing.”
“You sound like that?”
He laughed.
“You've heard me.”
“Through a bedroom wall while I'm trying to sleep. That's different.”
She watched.
Her eyes filled before the first chorus ended.
Malik looked away.
Renee placed the phone down carefully.
“Your grandmother would've lost her mind.”
“She thought everything I did was genius.”
“She thought microwaved noodles were cuisine. Her standards were flexible.”
They laughed.
Then Malik remembered the paper.
His smile faded.
“Ms. Reed says somebody marked me ineligible.”
Renee slowly removed her coat.
“For what?”
“She doesn't know.”
“Then she better find out.”
Across town, in a house large enough to have its own music room, Jordan Banks replayed the same viral video.
His father, Victor Banks, stood behind him.
Victor wore a tailored suit and the expression of a man accustomed to having problems solved before they reached him.
“That him?” Victor asked.
Jordan paused the video.
“Yes.”
“The Turner boy?”
Jordan looked up sharply.
“You know him?”
Victor's face remained unreadable.
“I know the name.”
Jordan glanced toward his laptop.
A folder was open on the screen.
Inside were three audio files.
One was titled:
MALIK_TURNER_ORIGINAL_DEMO.
Victor noticed it.
“What is that?”
Jordan shut the laptop.
“Nothing.”
Victor looked at his son for a long moment.
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Then said quietly:
“Make sure it stays nothing.”
