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On rare days after school when there is nothing else to do and their brother is away for track-and-field practice, they elect to follow Noelle to her house instead of turning where the road bends home.
They lag behind in silent steps so she doesn't notice. Then, just when she is about to turn the lock, they tap her shoulder. She yelps. The keys go flying. Some great relief floods their senses because the moment she sees them her eyes lighten with recognition or satisfaction or something tender that they cannot name, and she starts to laugh.
"You scared me, Kris," she says. "I fell for it again."
They smile and she sees it.
Then they go inside and there is the piano, shining white like quartz smoothened by centuries of a lapping surf. Mom sold their keyboard last winter. The following spring Noelle whispered to them in class that Mrs. Holiday had bought a grand one for when Dess comes back. They fill the empty noise in the meanwhile. They stopped playing at the hospital because the nurse always listened too closely and they had nothing else to play with. Now they play with a gift meant for a child who cannot have it.
Always after school. Before either of Noelle's parents come home from work, the house breathing its leaden sigh in their absence, and she sits afar on the kitchen tiles to watch.
How long she stays there or if she gets up or moves elsewhere while they play, they cannot see nor hear. They close their eyes when they play the piano. Small and scrawny hands with stretched fingers traipsing along the keys like little footsoldiers. They are drowning the world. The nightmares, the grainy humming of one derelict red structure in a forest clearing; hovering over their dad's sleeping figure on the couch in the dead of night staring; studying each overdue bill stacked on the dining room table like the artificial skeins of blood spewed in an M-rated horror movie. Stares and whispers that curdle in the overheated walls of a classroom. Asriel's bags packed at the foot of his bed. All gone to sound. Notes cascading one to the next in a hypnotic rhythm.
By the time their wrists strain and the cloud-grey sunlight pulls away from the windows, they open their eyes, and she hasn't left.
"Why'd you stop?" she asks but a car can be heard rumbling in the driveway. You don't have to go, but they do. They keep their head hung low as they tug on their tattered ugly sneakers and they sling on the one strap of their backpack that hasn't snapped off. Noelle is hovering behind them. Her breath nasally and always to a light tremble.
"You can stay longer."
They shake their head.
"My mom and dad like to hear you play, but you never stay long enough so they can listen."
A car door slams from outside. They nurse their sore wrist around the bag and hesitate, before turning to stare at her through outgrown bangs. Dirt tracks on clean floors where they shuffle around. The house is always cold.
"Is it because you only want me to hear you play?"
She asks scarcely and looks away in shame. The question is surface-level with an answer she already knows because they have done this so many times before, so there is a secret she is confessing. They don't know what it is. They stare confusedly. Then the front door clicks opens, frightening them both, and the first thing Mrs. Holiday sees are tracks on her floors. Her wintry eyes follow the dirt to their sunken face.
"Kris. Good to see you."
They nod stiffly and think of sliding past her, except they cannot will themself to move. The cold locks their joints in place. The noise and the grain flooding back all at once.
"How are you? Your mother is doing well?"
They nod.
"Good. You're welcome to stay, if you'd like to play longer. You can join us for dinner."
She waits for any sort of response but they only stare at her, beady and deadened eyes peering through their hair like a rat sticking its nose out of a sewer grate. Both Holidays are looking at them expectantly.
Mrs. Holiday has little patience and seems unsurprised. She bids them goodbye.
In their bedroom they stuff garbage beneath Asriel's blankets so when he gets home he'll see and have to ask them what's wrong. Instead of answering they'll ask to play games with him, so he'll bring them downstairs, throw out the trash, and turn on the TV. Afterwards he'll put them to bed even though they're almost eleven now, too old for brothers to tuck in younger siblings, and he'll read them his boring homework until they fall asleep.
He stays downstairs with Mom instead. Late into the night. The two talk in murmurs but anyone can hear if sitting on the stairwell at the right angle. They lean their head against the wall, chew on a hangnail.
"He cannot come. I am sorry."
"You told him not to, didn't you? It's not like he has anything else going on except, except sitting in the store all day."
"I said nothing."
"Really."
"Do you believe I told him not to come?"
"No."
"You are upset."
"I'm not upset. It's fine."
"There is nothing we can do about it. He told me he will be too busy that day."
"With what?"
"You know."
"You told me he dropped it. I thought he dropped it."
"It is fun to decorate the bottom of your cap. We did that in our graduation year. If you want to try it, I think your old craft supplies are still in the garage."
"He's not coming."
"No, my child."
"Even though it's my graduation."
"I am sorry."
"It's not your fault."
Some time passed where they waited to hear anymore bleeding words, but there were only sniffles, and then he was storming up the stairs past them. What? is all he said, pausing at the steps when spotting them. The bedroom door swung open upstairs. Minutes later he stormed back down and threw the trash at the floor, eyes red, yelling at them, and they tucked their head between their knees.
"Why would you put garbage in my bed? Who does that?"
If they squeeze their eyes shut and press them hard enough against their pants, stars begin to form in the dark. Twisting into ugly shapes. Bladed neons, spewing in kaleidoscopic directions, splotching and then fading away. Some other world where everything here is only garbage noise.
"What is wrong with you?"
"Asriel, stop."
"We're too old to share a bedroom."
"Asriel."
At night they clamber into Noelle's window. She rouses startled, but they have done this before, so she is quick to lift the hatch and pull them inside. The house is cold. They bundle together in her blankets, and she hugs them close, fur warming their cold skin.
"I like being the only one to hear you play."
Soft breaths. When they close their eyes, they sleep dreamlessly because they know she can still see them from far away.