The studio was a converted garage in Silver Lake, ten minutes from their house.
Diana had found it through a neighbour whose daughter had been going for two years. "She's wonderful," the neighbour had said. "Very patient. Very good with young ones who are just starting out."
Diana hadn't told Mrs. Holt anything specific about Ethan on the phone. Just that her son was almost four and had shown an interest in singing and she'd like to come in for a first lesson.
Which was accurate as far as it went.
Mrs. Patricia Holt met them at the side door — small, precise, reading glasses on a chain around her neck, the unhurried energy of someone who had been doing the same thing for a long time and had made peace with the pace of it.
She looked at Ethan with the standard assessment of someone meeting a new small student.
"You must be Ethan," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Your mum tells me you like to sing."
"Yes."
"Good." She stepped back to let them in. "That's the main requirement."
The studio was warm and slightly cluttered in a comfortable way.
Framed playbills on one wall — West End productions mostly, a few American ones, arranged with the quiet pride of someone who considered them a record. A music stand in the centre of the open floor space. Two chairs along the side wall for parents.
An upright piano against the far wall.
It had been good once. Now it was just reliably in tune, which Ethan privately considered the more important quality.
Diana took one of the chairs immediately and set her bag on the other one, which he suspected was not strictly necessary but was very Diana.
Mrs. Holt gestured to the open space in front of the piano.
"Stand there," she said. "And sing me something. Anything you know. I just need to hear what we're working with."
He walked to the centre of the room and turned to face her.
She had her notepad ready. Pen poised. The professional posture of someone who did this fifty times a week.
He thought for a moment. Not long. Just — what to lead with. The obvious choice was something simple, something that couldn't be accused of anything. But simple choices told you less. And he was curious, genuinely, what Mrs. Holt would make of what he actually was.
He sang the opening of Somewhere from West Side Story.
Just the first verse. No embellishment, nothing performed around the edges. Just the song, the way the song wanted to be sung — quietly, like it meant what it said, like the place it was describing might actually exist.
Mrs. Holt's pen stopped moving.
He finished and looked at her.
She had her glasses off. She was looking at him with an expression he couldn't immediately place — not the calibrating look he got from most adults, not surprise. Something else. Like she'd been expecting one kind of thing and had encountered something that didn't fit the category she'd brought.
The room was quiet.
"How old are you?" she said.
"Almost four."
She looked at him for another moment. Then she stood and went to the piano and sat down.
"I'm going to play some things," she said. "Just respond to what you hear. Don't think about it. Just respond."
She played a single note. He matched it.
She played three notes ascending. He sang them back.
She played a short phrase — eight notes, a melody he didn't recognise, something she'd likely composed for exactly this purpose. He sang it back without a single error, including the slight rhythmic hesitation she'd put in the fourth note.
She played a longer phrase. More complex, wider range, a jump of an octave in the middle that was designed to be difficult.
He sang it back cleanly.
Mrs. Holt took her hands off the keys.
She sat for a moment looking at the music stand above the piano.
Then she turned on the stool and looked at him properly.
"Have you had any lessons before today?"
"No."
"No lessons. No formal training of any kind."
"No."
"Who taught you to do that?"
He thought about it. "Nobody. I just hear things and they stay."
Mrs. Holt looked at Diana. Diana looked at Ethan. Ethan looked at the piano.
"Can I try?" he said.
A pause.
"Try what?" Mrs. Holt said.
He gestured at the piano.
She looked at him for a moment. Then she stood up and stepped aside.
He sat down on the stool — had to adjust it, his feet didn't reach the pedals, which was mildly annoying — and put his hands on the keys.
He played the melody of Somewhere that he'd just sung. Simple, right hand only. Every note exactly where it should be.
Then he added the left hand. Basic chord accompaniment, nothing showy. Just — the song, played properly.
He finished and looked up.
Mrs. Holt was standing very still.
Diana had her book closed in her lap.
"Has he played before?" Mrs. Holt asked Diana.
"We don't have a piano," Diana said. Her voice was doing something careful.
"A keyboard? Anything?"
"Nothing," Diana said.
Mrs. Holt looked at the piano. Then at Ethan. Then at the piano again, like she was checking whether it had somehow changed.
"Ethan," she said slowly. "How did you know how to do that?"
He thought about this.
"I hear the music in my head," he said. "And my hands just know where to go."
This was true. It was also the most he could explain without explaining things he couldn't explain.
Mrs. Holt sat down in one of the observer chairs — not the piano stool, the chairs along the wall, Diana's chairs, which she clearly hadn't intended to sit in. She sat down anyway and looked at her notepad, which had exactly one line on it.
Then she closed it.
"Mrs. Cross," she said. "I want to be honest with you."
"Please," Diana said.
"I've been teaching for twenty-two years. I'm good at it. I know what I'm looking at when a talented child comes through that door. I know what developing ability looks like, what exceptional developing ability looks like." She paused. "I don't have a category for this. Perfect pitch is one thing. The phrasing, the breath control, the instinctive harmonisation — those are things adult singers spend years developing. But he also just sat down at a piano he's never touched, with hands that can barely span an octave, and played a song he'd sung once." She looked at Ethan. "That's not talent. That's something I don't have a word for."
The room was quiet.
"What would you recommend?" Diana said.
"Lessons still. Structure matters even when the raw gift is exceptional — maybe more so. Without structure, exceptional gifts become undisciplined, and undisciplined gifts plateau." Mrs. Holt picked up her notepad and set it back down. "And there's a children's production this spring. Community arts programme. Oliver! Open auditions." She looked at Diana directly. "I think you should take him. I think you should put him in front of a proper audience and see what happens."
Diana looked at Ethan.
Ethan looked back at his mother with the calm open expression he deployed when he wanted to communicate that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about.
Diana clearly did not find this as reassuring as intended.
"Can I ask you something?" Diana said to Mrs. Holt.
"Of course."
"Is this — is this something I should be worried about?"
Mrs. Holt considered this genuinely.
"No," she said. "I don't think so." She glanced at Ethan again. "I think you should be paying attention. Which is different."
The drive home was quiet for about five minutes.
Ethan watched Silver Lake go past the window.
"You played the piano," Diana said.
"Yes," he said.
"You've never played the piano."
"First time," he said.
"And you just knew."
"Apparently," he said.
Diana gripped the steering wheel.
"Ethan."
"Yeah."
"Is there anything — anything at all — that you can't do?"
He thought about this genuinely. It was actually a good question.
"Plenty of things," he said. "I can't reach the pedals."
Diana stared at the road ahead.
Then she laughed. The real one. Long and helpless, the kind that took over her whole face.
She was still laughing slightly when she pulled into the driveway and put the car in park.
She sat there for a moment.
"I'm calling Rachel," she said.
"Okay," he said.
"She's going to be very pleased with herself."
"Probably," he said.
"I'm going to have to listen to it."
"Yes," he said sympathetically.
Diana took a breath. Got out of the car.
He followed her in and went to his room and sat on the bed next to Captain Buttons and listened to the sound of his mother on the phone in the hallway, her voice doing the thing it did when she was trying to be calm about something that didn't feel calm.
He looked at Captain Buttons.
Captain Buttons had no opinions about any of this, as usual.
"Thursday," Ethan told him. Not about anything specific. Just — Thursday felt like the right thing to say.
He lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling.
This is going to be interesting, he thought.
He meant it in the best possible way.
Chapter 6 — Mrs Holt lesson
≪ SYSTEM UPDATE ≫Music Fans: 2 / 1,000,000Acting Fans: 0 / 1,000,000
Mrs. Patricia Holt — Fan #2.
He opened one eye and looked at the numbers.
Closed it again.
Fine, he thought. We'll get there.