Playing with Confidence

The diary locks. It’s a small lock; it has a tiny key. Janie keeps the key in her jewelry box next to the silver rhinestone pin her grandmother gave her. There has only been one occasion that was important enough for her to wear the pin: the piano recital three months ago. She remembers her mother fastening the pin at the top of her pink satin dress, but she has no recollection of how she played. It's all still a blur except for the moment she became aware of her feelings for Steven. He was younger, only ten. But he played with confidence. Janie wished she could play like he did, but it was more than that. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, even at the party after the recital. She complimented him, and he smiled at her so angelically that she felt blessed.

She has written many sentences about Steven in the diary, words about his dark hair, his hands, his sweet face; descriptions of her feelings. She’s a grade ahead of him; she might know things he doesn’t know yet, about math and spelling and religion, but that doesn’t matter, or that she is a little bit taller. He talks to her when she asks him something, but he never starts a conversation. She doesn’t see him at school, except during the morning prayers and pledge of allegiance to the flag, before everyone goes to separate classrooms. She only talks to him during Music Theory Club. It’s a thing her piano teacher hosts once a month, and Janie is very glad of it.

Janie’s brother Malcolm is in Steven’s grade, and has been informing her of Steven’s activities, for which Janie pays him ten cents a week. Most of these reports are of Steven’s diligence at any task given to his class. He is never the first to complete anything, says Malcolm, but he pays attention and does the work. Malcolm has expressed the opinion that Steven is a sissy because he won’t blow spitballs through a straw or knock pencils off desks. Steven is simply more mature than the others, Janie says.

Malcolm has some idea what’s motivating his sister, though he hasn’t been given a reason for his spying task, only payment. He has to speculate for himself, and when he does, he thinks, Yuck! To be liked by a girl is not a pleasant prospect; it might mean having to do things you don’t want to do, or to not-do things you want to do. The dynamic seems similar to how their parents act around each other. Janie used to be his friend and they’d ride bicycles together. She never used to act like a girl. Now he wouldn’t be caught dead riding his bike with her.

He’d like proof, though. It isn’t hard to find the little key. (Malcolm has his own box of treasures, though it’s in the shape of a pirate’s chest.) When he opens Janie’s diary, he notices that she has underlined quite a few passages. “His eyelashes make me want to faint,” is one of them. Then, written yesterday, there is: “Malcolm had better not be lying to me.” But Malcolm has lied to her. He told her Steven had been sent to the principal’s office for an unknown reason. (It was actually he who had been called to the principal’s office for trying to trip up another student, but he’d gotten tired of Steven’s good behavior and wanted to change the plot.)

Malcolm puts the diary back on Janie’s nightstand, but he forgets to lock it. He even puts the tiny key back in the jewelry box. The diary’s being unlocked is the first clue Janie has that all is not as it should be in her private world.

— Macoff