Excerpt From Edelweiss Pirates

The lights were shining, bright as ever, as Natalie caught Abby’s eye and inhaled sharply. Abby watched her, anticipating her movement, both of them feeling the identical pulsing in their veins before suddenly, simultaneously attacking their strings.

                The piece was building, the erratic, syncopated rhythm slowly speeding, and the frantic chromatic notes, repeating over and over, growing shorter and tenser. Finally, the group and the music exploded into the final joyous refrain of the song, and Abby felt as if she were flying. Flying on the music, flying like her bow flew across her strings. The feeling continued until the piece ended, and then Abby’s heart landed back on the Earth.

                She panted, exhilarated, and saw Natalie and the others doing the same. It was always like that when they finished a piece: as if they had run a mile, or woken from a nightmare. But playing was no nightmare. It was a dream, the best of dreams, no matter how many times they did it.

                The applause thundered around them.  Still watching each other, the way they had done for years now, the group stood up together, rising swiftly from their seats, instruments still in hand. Abby shook her head out, trying to reorient herself. Her hair danced around her face as she shook her head, and Abby ran her hand through her hair, trying to get it off her face.

                Josh was looking around at them, ready to lead them in their bow. Abby blushed a little as she realized that she was the last one to meet his eyes, and that the whole group had been waiting on her, if only for two seconds. Following Josh, they all bowed swiftly towards the audience. Some of them were standing up, and they were all clapping.

                “Whew,” she heard Chris say next to her, wiping his brown on his sleeve. “It’s hot under these lights.”

                Abby nodded, still breathless from performing. She looked over at Chris, whose curly red hair was even larger than usual. “How’d it go, then?”

                Chris shrugged. “Not bad – although did you see my bow? I broke off a good chunk of hair tonight! Got a little overzealous on that sforzando, I guess. You?”

                “Great. I remembered to cue Natalie at measure 59.” Then Chris and Abby picked up their cellos and followed the rest of the group off the stage, ducking through a door to the backstage that was hidden behind a curtain. All around her, her best friends were rolling their necks, cracking their backs, stretching their arms, packing up their instruments, drinking chocolate milk from an absurdly large mug – all the thing that they always did after a performance. 

                The entire group, as always, was keeping one eye on Natalie. She was their leader. It wasn’t official or anything – she had never been elected or formally declared the leader of the group. She just was. Natalie had an air about her that made other people listen, and she had the natural inclination to take charge. She was also by far the most organized of the group, so she was the most likely to know what was going on at any given time. And so the group watched her as they packed up their instruments. After she had locked her violin up, Natalie called their attention.

                “Hey guys!” she called, as if they weren’t all already listening to her. “That was a good one; we did well. I think they really liked the Vivaldi number – that was a good call, Chris.” She nodded in the direction of Abby’s frizzy-haired stand partner. “So yeah, good job, guys.”

                “What’s the plan for the rest of the night?” called Kayley from Abby’s left.

                Natalie’s eyes rolled back; they usually did when Natalie was thinking or trying to remember something. “We don’t have anything going on for the rest-“ But she cut herself off, turning towards the man who had just come backstage. “Hey, Clark,” she greeted him, “What do we have going on now?”

                Clark looked around at the group, a slight smile on his face barely detectable. Clark was their manager; he had been with them for almost two years now, and in those two years, Abby had only ever seen him in his uniform of baggy cargo pants and Hawaiian shirt save two occasions, one of which had been at his brother’s wedding, where he had gotten the Edelweiss Pirates to break out some of their more classical repertoire.

                “Yeah, you’re free for the night,” Clark announced. “But we leave for Seattle at 9:00 tomorrow morning, so don’t have fun tonight. We’ll meet in the lobby of the hotel at quarter to nine. Also, Listen is doing a feature for the tour, and they want your responses to a survey for it-”

                He was cut off by several groans, the loudest from Randall, who turned from putting his violin away to give Clark a “you’ve got to be kidding me” look. “Seriously? Clark, c’mon, we’ve already-”

                “No, you don’t have a choice, it won’t be that long, and if you put anything scandalous down, I will personally strangle you.” Clark shot a pointed look at Chris, whose guilty smile made the rest of the Pirates laugh. “Alright, go have fun.”

                Kayley let out a little squeak of excitement, but those were so common from Kayley that no one bothered to ask why she was squeaking. Natalie called a “thank you” after Clark, who grunted and waved as he wandered off, probably to find the backstage food supply.

Abby opened her bright red cello case and gently slipped Archie inside it.