Exposition: Autumn
"Yang Fenghuang, I don't want you running off again
this time do you hear me?" Chun Hwa scolded her.
"But I didn't go very far!" Fenghuang protested.
Just as Fenghuang had predicted, the photos of Ji Long
playing the piano and Fenghuang standing next to him in the middle of Cologne,
German, made it on the front page of the local newspapers.
"I don't care! This time we are going to California,
and Los Angeles is a huge city. I don't want you, or Ji Long to get lost or
hurt. Now promise me!"
Fenghuang looked down, shaking her head. Before her mom
could say anything else, she ran off, skipping steps as she ran up the stairs
to her room.
Sighing angrily, Chun Hwa held her head in her hands,
closing her eyes as she waited for the pain in her head to pass. As the
throbbing calmed down slightly, she stood up straight again, and sat back down
at the piano to practice. Still frustrated from her argument with Fenghuang,
she couldn't concentrate on the music. This new frustration brought back the
throbbing pain in her head, and then it happened, her left hand froze. She
couldn't move her fingers, no matter how hard she tried. The pain in her head
was excruciating, and the fingers on her left hand were no longer hers. It only
lasted for 5 seconds then her fingers began unfreezing and the pain in her head
died down to a dull throbbing. Her forehead rested against the headboard of the
piano, her right hand clutching her left, she cried silently. "I can't let
myself get excited like that again." she thought to herself as she
recalled the doctor's warning. "Any spike in your blood pressure, even
from walking too quickly, could cause the aneurism to erupt. In your case, the
location of the aneurism would cause almost instant death upon eruption."
Chun Hwa breathed deeply, regaining her calm, wiping away the tears on her
cheeks. She slowly placed her hands back on the keys and slowly played a simple
piece, testing out her left hand.
___
Fenghuang slammed the door to her room. Huffing and puffing
angrily. Ji Long was her only friend, and the only times she's able to see him
in the year, her mom wouldn't let them go out and play! Thinking of this point,
she stormed out of her room and downstairs to tell her mom this. As she reached
the middle of the staircase, she heard a quiet screaming. Stopping, she quietly
inched down a couple steps to look behind the wall into the music room. She saw
her mom, forehead leaning against the piano, clutching her left hand, quietly
screaming and panting. Not knowing what to do, Fenghuang couldn't move, she
could only watch as her mom slowly sat up again, kneading her left hand with
her right, and with a shaking hand, wipe her cheeks.
Fenghuang sat on her bed, thinking over what she had just
seen. This wasn't the first time she had seen this happen either. Fenghuang had
seen her mom have these spasms many times before. She never thought much of it,
but recently she had noticed it was happening more and more frequently. She had
asked her nanny about it, but all she would say was, "It's nothing to
worry about, your mother is just stressed about performing." Fenghuang
would willingly believe it, not wanting to think that there was something more
serious going on. But now, Fenghuang knew that something was not right, she
knew that it was more than just stress for performing.
____
"This is my friend that I met on tour last month."
Ji Long had brought Fenghuang to this beautiful mansion that was situated in
the expensive city of Beverly Hills. At the door stood a short, tough looking
boy about our age. He nodded at them as a greeting, and in a Taiwanese accent
said, "I'm Yang Wen Tai." He had an athletic build and walked with a
sway in his step. They walked through his amazing house and into the backyard
where a beautiful pool shimmered in the dark.
Despite it being autumn, the California nights were nice and
warm. The three splashed around in the pool and when they grew tired, they laid
out towels on the grass and looked up at the stars. "My dad is the
producer of tons of rock bands and groups and stuff." Yang Wen Tai told
Fenghuang about himself.
"That's how I met him actually." Ji Long
mentioned. "I was wandering around outside during one of my parents
concert, and I saw a sign saying something about a rock concert."
"I caught him trying to sneak in." Yang Wen Tai
laughed. "When I saw he could only really speak Chinese, I kind of made
the connection that he was with the pompous classical people that were performing
that weekend." That made Fenghuang laugh a little. It was true that many
of the classical musicians thought of themselves as much higher on the social
level than others simply for the type of music they appreciated.
"Yang Wen Tai
is going to talk to his dad about starting a group for us!" Ji Long had a
spark in his eyes. "Chang Dasun and Song Lin might be interested
too!" Turning to Fenghuang, he asked, "Xiao Huang, you have to join
too! You will won't you?" She had never seen him so excited before, and so
determined to do something. Even though she knew she wanted to follow in her
mom's footsteps and become a concert pianist, she still nodded and said, "Of
course!" I won't be the one to make Ji Long unhappy she thought.
"Well, now that we're a group, we need to each have a
symbol!" Yang Wen Tai ran inside his house and came out a few seconds
later with a sharpie in his hand. "Since we're not old enough to get
tattoos, this will have to do." He sat down on the grass and uncapped the
sharpie. He began drawing on his left
arm. "Since I'm the coolest one here, I get the coolest symbol." He
said. Ji Long protested, asserting that he was the coolest. When Yang Wen Tai
was done, they looked at the wolf he had drawn on his arm.
"Wow!" Fenghuang said, "It looks really good!
Where did you learn to draw like that?!" Yang Wen Tai laughed,
"My older brother's in the tattoo business. He teaches
me a thing or two. Your turn. What do you want?"
She thought about it for a while, not knowing what to say.
Then Ji Long said excitedly,
"I know! Draw her a dragon! And then draw a phoenix on
my arm!"
"Ohhh good idea!" Yang Wen Tai grabbed her left
arm and started drawing. The whole time
she was dumbfounded. Why would Ji Long want to do that? She thought. The meaning of his name meant
dragon, and hers meant phoenix, this much she knew. Like always, Ji Long read
her mind and answered her internal question,
"Your name means phoenix doesn't it? Well mine means
dragon! So if we have a drawing of the other on our arms, we'll never forget
each other right? That's what a good group is about, staying together." He
stood there, arms crossed, smiling, looking proud of his idea. Yang Wen Tai
finished, and she smiled down at the curving, fierce black dragon on her arm.
"Ji Long never wants to forget me." She thought. "I won't forget
you either." She made a promise to the dragon.
As soon as Fenghuang returned to her hotel room, she grabbed
a piece of paper and pen. She traced the drawing of the dragon on her arm that
Yang Wen Tai had drawn. She folded the paper and put it away. "This
way," she thought, "I'll still know what it looks like when it washes
off." Then she heard the front door open as her mom walked in and shouted,
"Fenghuang!! Where have you been?!" Uhoh, she
thought, she was in trouble...again.
____
Next Episode: 1-6-14
No comments:
Post a Comment