By Sophia Li

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This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit.

A boy who plays violin is nudged out of his shell.

Rin’s notebook was full of five-pointed stars. He usually drew the most in English class, because it was the only way to keep his eyes open. He angled his pen at a spot on the upper right corner of the page. In five quick strokes, he drew another star. 

Behind him, a student yawned. In the front of the room stood his teacher, explaining the requirements of their next project in painstaking detail.

“I want you to think about what makes you passionate, and incorporate that into your argument,” Mr. Edwards said. “Is it music? Dancing?”

“Good grades,” someone replied, and it was met with a laugh.

Rin looked at the star in his notebook. It was etched in a continuous line with a pen he now realized was almost out of ink. He shook the pen halfheartedly. Black smudged his fingertips.

“I want you to think about your partner – or groups, if you want,” Mr. Edwards said. “Rin, are you awake?”

Rin looked up. “Mhm.”

“Great. It’ll be due at the end of the month. That should give you plenty of time to work on it…”

Rin turned his head to the window, where, from his seventh-floor view, the city looked intricate and miniscule. Cars and buses crawled along the busy intersections, their headlights blinking red and orange. Bikers zipped through the lanes. Their backs were curved like pillbugs. A little further down the street, the railed-off Hudson river mixed with the gray sky. Rin wondered what it would feel like to float in the Hudson. He imagined drifting through the window, past the tall brick apartment complexes, pushing through the thin clouds and landing lightly in the water. Tracking the distance between Manhattan and New Jersey on the opposite shore or maybe even past that, closing his eyes and letting himself be carried by the freezing water, bit by bit, and then out of sight.

A woman in a brown jacket was walking her dog on the opposite side of the street. She always walked her dog when it was two minutes until the end of the period. Rin put his notebook in his bag and got ready to go.

“Rin,” Mr. Edwards said, when half the students were outside the classroom. “Do you have a partner in mind?” Up close, his voice was huskier. A deep baritone.

“Can I do this assignment alone?” Rin asked.

He looked at Rin carefully. “Do you need a partner?”

“No. I think I’ll be okay.” Rin focused on a spot over his shoulder: a taped pencil drawing of a bowl of fruits on the wall. It was probably a gift from a student.

“I’m afraid that’s not allowed for this project,” he said softly.

“That’s fine.” 

He was looking at Rin with this mixture of hesitance and pity, and a part of Rin wanted to tell him that he didn’t really care. That he’d find a partner eventually, and they’d do their work and there would probably be some hiccups but who really cared, and they’d turn it in and each get a ninety because who really cared.

Mostly, he just wanted to eat lunch, so he said, “I’ll find a partner.” Then he headed for the cafeteria.

The hallways were full of students, all of them moving and talking and being. Their faces blurred together like ink on an eroded tape. Rin took the stairs to the lunchroom, eyes trained on the floor, trying not to step on anyone’s shoes. 

They were serving green beans and rice today. He went to his usual spot near the trash can and balanced his tray on his lap as he finished his algebra homework. Then there was a podcast to listen to for world history. He rooted around for his earbuds and untangled them.

The cacophony of lunchroom noise was blotted out in an instant, and then it was just the drone of an unfamiliar woman talking about the wonders of the Mongol Empire.

He picked at his fingers as he listened. 

“They were especially good at keeping track of their military, and were able to communicate through specifically pitched whistles across the battlefield.”

The scab near his pinky finger had fallen off. He peeled the dry, flaking skin away from the nail on his thumb. 

He didn’t like the way his hands looked. They were too bony. Eczema scars criss crossed his knuckles and his nails shone an unhealthy shade of red around the edges. In middle school, during Halloween, his classmates had asked if his hands were part of his costume. Decaying, zombie-like hands.

Rin scraped the last of the rice from the paper tray and threw out his trash. When the podcast ended the noise of the Outside came creeping back again, and as he left the lunchroom it faded slightly, like a muted, ever-pulsating buzz.

He headed down the stairs toward the music room. There were no classrooms on the first floor, only a chorus room and a set of doors to a place Rin did not know. In the hallway, if he ignored the murmurs from the lobby, he could imagine he was the only person in the school. Reality felt altered here. Even the floor, which squeaked a little as he hurried past, was worn out, spattered with gum and paint from another time.

Rin peeked into the music room. He saw rows of empty chairs, sheet music crammed into bookshelves. A projector hung haphazardly from the low ceiling. In one corner was a grand piano with yellowed keys. A group of folding chairs was clustered around a shiny drum set.

Usually, there were one or two students either messing around with the piano or rifling through the sheet music. Yesterday someone played the melody to a popular TikTok song, their fingers bouncing shakily off of each key, not yet confident enough to string the notes together. The day before, someone else played thirty flawless seconds of Silent Night. 

Today, though, there was no one.

He sat down against the opposite wall and took out his language homework, and as he skimmed the worksheet he kept waiting for someone to go in and start playing. But five minutes turned into ten and he realized it was going to be one of those days. No one would come, and the day would be unbroken by a perpetually heavy silence. He plugged his earbuds back in.

Life would be better with a soundtrack behind it. When Rin had been in elementary school, life had been fresh, intriguing, like the beginning of Für Elise. In middle school, it had been like Mozart’s Serenade for strings in G major; low and steady. And the summer before high school, it had been like Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Bittersweet. 

“Hey, sorry, can I ask you something?”

Rin was staring at a pair of beat-up sneakers. He took out his earbuds and looked up at a boy whose most noticeable feature was a mop of dyed blond hair. His hands were shoved in the pockets of a muted red hoodie, and his backpack hung off one shoulder. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

“Have you seen a chemistry notebook near here?”

Rin considered this, then shook his head.

The boy cursed and ran a hand through his painfully bleached hair. “Mind if I go in?” he gestured to the music classroom.

Rin scooted out of the way and the student barreled inside, looking under chairs and skimming the teacher’s desk. He knocked over one of the folding chairs by the drum set and Rin’s hand twitched, suddenly feeling protective of the room. The boy caught the chair before it hit the ground, but still, Rin tracked his every move, inexplicably tense.

A few moments later he came back empty-handed. “I have a test today. Do you have Sungwoo for chem?”

Rin nodded. “I took his test first period.”

His eyes lit up. “Thank God. Can you quiz me? Or… are you busy?”

Rin was busy. He was busy doing his other homework and listening to his music and willing the time to go faster so he could get out of this building.

But Rin put his earbuds away and took out his chemistry folder.

“You’re a real one.” The boy, who was at least a good three inches taller than Rin, gave him a friendly smile. “I’m Haru.”

“Cool.” Rin rifled through his worksheets and picked out the most recent one, skimming the lesson aim. “How do you calculate molarity?”

“Huh?” Haru blinked.

“Molarity. How do you calculate it?”

“Oh.” Haru slid down the wall and sat cross-legged next to Rin. “Moles of solute over mass of solvent. Easy.”

“Why is a saturated solution always at equilibrium?” Rin read directly off his worksheet, his eyes never leaving the page. They went on like this for another five minutes, until the bell rang. Haru, for all his panicking, didn’t do bad at all.

“Thanks, man.” Haru got up, stretching. “Could I borrow your folder too?”

Rin paused. “For the test?”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“Joking.” Haru grinned. He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “I wish you were in my chem class. What’s your name?”

“Rin.”

Haru nodded. He seemed to be searching for someone familiar, someone who matched the name. People did that a lot with classmates in passing, but when it came to Rin their expressions always came up blank, because Rin was just There. Not good, not bad, just unmemorable. 

Rin was already turning to go, because he didn’t think they shared a class, and even if they did, Haru wouldn’t recognize him.

Rin couldn’t wait to go home. As the day continued, his hands itched for the bow, for the familiar four strings under his fingers. Something to pull him out of this walking slumber.

No more major assessments this week. He’d finish all his readings on the train and the textbook work before dinner. He could study for next week’s tests until nine, and play until ten.

When school ended, he walked to the train station as calmly as he could, jostling with the rest of the crowd. As he headed into the train car, he crashed into a girl who stepped back and glared at him. 

It was at times like this when Rin saw someone and they weren’t faceless: winged eyeliner, silver necklace, lips downturned in a frown. No blur. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

The girl dissolved as they both pushed forward, lost again in the crowd.

He slogged through his reading on the train, only falling asleep twice. Two stops away from his home station, Rin took out his phone. Then he laid it screen-down against his arm. Then he looked at it again. He opened his messaging app and hovered his finger over the contact at the top of his list, labeled Jia. 

As the train moved further into the tunnel, the bars in the corner of his phone blinked out, and Rin pressed the power button, swallowing hard around the knot in his throat.

She’s busy anyway.

Outside the train station, the wind, not quite yet decided between autumn and winter chill, whipped against his ears and nose. Rin sunk his hands in his pockets and picked up the pace. September meant that by the time he got to Queens, the sky was already a drizzly shade of gray. He passed the McDonald’s and the Dunkin’ Donuts and the eyeglass store, and after a while his surroundings faded into residential houses, along with the occasional tree. 

He lived in a townhouse on a corner street, the one with the jasmine plant near the front door and graying caulk between its cracks. When Rin unlocked the door, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window. 

He yanked the door open, and his reflection was flung off the glass.

He took off his sneakers and set his bag down by the entrance. Evening light filtered through the window in the living room. A Chinese newspaper lay crookedly on the old desk that served as a coffee table. 

“You’re back, Rin?” The voice of his grandmother came from the kitchen. Rin stepped deeper into the house, and he saw her sitting at the table, a single figure in front of the fridge. She was peeling walnuts with her bare hands. Brown shells were scattered across the tabletop and stuck onto the sleeves of her lemon-yellow sweater. Beside her, steam wafted from a mug of warm water.

“Yeah.” Even after years of living with his grandmother, the Mandarin still felt unfamiliar on his tongue.

“Was it cold today?” Her face was marked by scars of old age, creases across her forehead and mottled skin on her cheek and neck. They formed something like a map: countless lines and divots that told the story of a woman with decades of wisdom in one body. 

Rin thought it made his grandmother beautiful. He wished he had the words to ask her more about her life. But words were his weak point, and he always found that even if he had sentiments to think about, he had nothing to say.

“It… no,” Rin got out. “The weather was fine.”

“Make sure to be warm.” She popped a peeled walnut into her mouth.

“Yeah. I will.”

Rin went upstairs.

His room was bare, but somehow messy at the same time. When Jia moved away, she’d taken almost everything, and now there were spaces where the room felt empty; pockets of missing things. There was a ring of dust around where her nightstand used to be, and her bedframe was replaced by a stack of test prep books. The indie pop albums she so loved no longer occupied the wall next to the window. Jia had always told Rin he should hang something on the wall, maybe some vinyl or a poster, but he couldn’t think of anything he liked. 

He sat down at his desk and took out his phone, swiping on Jia’s name again and again. Was she busy? Would she be annoyed if he texted her now? He’d finished his homework early; would she be worried if he called an hour before he usually did?

In the end, he spent the next hour finishing his algebra homework and studying for French. 

The moment he wrote the last adjective on his worksheet, Rin dropped his pen and spun his chair around. The violin case at the foot of his bed was worn-out, rough canvas, but Rin kneeled in front of it and slid it slowly, carefully into the open. He picked off some dust hanging on the edges of the case. Then he unzipped it and took out the violin.

He rested his chin on the shoulder piece, fastening his fingers around the fingerboard. The violin gleamed like a jewel in the dullness of his room. Sunset-colored, fiery hazel and sepia and orange and smelling like turpentine. He drew out the bow and placed it on the strings. It was long, thin, and versatile. It felt like home in his hands.

He pulled the bow across the strings, listening for the correct notes, then twisted the pegs. He didn’t have perfect pitch – he wasn’t anywhere near that level – but he knew how to tune the instrument so that the music didn’t sound terrible. He glanced at the mirror by the door and made sure his posture was okay. Yes, this was how Jia used to play.

What should he practice today? Lately he’d been playing minute-long snippets from songs he enjoyed, but today he wanted to practice an entire musical number, Jia’s favorite classic. The Lark Ascending. He’d perfect every note, make sure his form was flawless, and he’d show it to her when she came back from college.

Rin listened carefully as he went up the scale, first G, then D, then A. Soon he was enveloped in the routine reassurance that welcomed him every time he tuned this violin. That the music, when played right, wouldn’t change.

He knew his bow pressure was probably off, and it probably needed rosining, and there was probably something fundamentally flawed about the way he was holding the violin that could only really be corrected with actual classes, but here, in his room, it didn’t matter all that much. He could play whatever he wanted.

He let his bow drop below his wrist as he searched for the sheet music online. He positioned his decrepit laptop on top of his textbook, faced the notes, and played.

It started slow, but soon he had to draw his bow back and forth with increasing speed. He let his middle finger quiver, stretching out the longer notes, giving that breathy fragility to the music – the sound of a fluttering bird.

Fifteen seconds in, he fell behind the recorded song and dragged the bow too far down. He winced as the violin made an ugly sound and took the instrument off his chin. He was usually a quitter – never one to accomplish anything, really – but The Lark Ascending was Jia’s favorite piece, and since she never got to finish playing it, he’d learn it for her, even if it made his fingertips ache and his wrists go stiff.

Play the first bit faster, he thought to himself as he scrolled through the sheet music. Keep your wrist locked when you do this part… this song has a lot of finger-quivers. What were they called? Vibratos. Practice those.

It was hard keeping time during the first five seconds of the song. There was a gap where the woodwinds came in, and then the violinist was supposed to enter with a cadenza that had the bow dancing close to the fingerboard. It was an orchestral song, but Rin also knew it was mainly a violin concerto. 

He’d get it down by the time Jia came back. 

Before he knew it, half an hour had passed, and when his grandmother called him for dinner, he put the violin and bow back in their case. 

“Was that Jia’s xiaotiqin?” His grandmother asked as he dug into his rice. The kitchen was illuminated by a single light, but it cast a warm glow over the chipped table and old porcelain that his family had brought from China. The small bowls in the center of the table shone with spinach and stir-fried vegetables. 

Rin paused. “Xiao… ti qin?”

His grandmother mimed the movement of a bow on a string.

“Oh.” Violin. Rin nodded.

“You like music?” 

Rin nodded again. In his bowl he used his chopsticks to split a boiled egg in half.

“It sounds kind of like the songs I used to hear when I was a little girl,” she said. 

Rin looked up. “Really?”

“Mhm.” She nodded serenely.

“Which part?”

“When you made it go fast and played a bunch of notes one after the other. It sounded like that… ruan.”

“Ruan?” he repeated. He felt slow. Jia had always been the one to carry endless conversations with their grandmother. Meanwhile he barely understood half the words she was saying.

“It’s a string instrument too, from Shanghai. Not the same, but it reminds me of it.”

Rin spent a good ten seconds trying to think of a response. He ended up saying, lamely, “Sorry if I disturbed you.”

She put a chunk of bok choy into his bowl. “You didn’t sound half bad.”

Rin’s chemistry teacher posted another assignment while he was eating dinner, so he spent the next hour doing more homework. Soon it was 9 PM, and he could finally open his laptop. He waited for a bubble to pop up, telling him there was an incoming call. He accepted it and adjusted his camera, running a hand through his hair. It looked neat enough. His eye bags were barely noticeable in this light.

The screen loaded, and then suddenly a college girl in a gray sweatshirt was looking back at Rin. He saw the three freckles spattered across her nose, the dip of her chin and the inquisitive quirk of her eyebrows and everything that would’ve been blurred, lost in translation through the screen, but he could see it still, always, clear as day. The most noticeable thing about her was her hair – jet black, bangs over her forehead, and tumbling down her shoulders. Rin swore that every time they saw each other her hair got longer. 

Her eyes lit up, and dimples carved themselves into her cheek.

“Hey, little brother.” Her voice was crisp and bright.

Rin smiled. “Hi, Jia.”

The wall behind his sister was crammed with records, banners, and posters. Jia’s normally straight hair was slightly frizzy – too much coffee, maybe? She adjusted her camera and moved her bangs out of her eyes with two quick swipes of her hand. The familiar gesture made Rin want to reach in through the screen. Instead he pressed his hands flat against the keyboard. “How’s it been? A week has passed, just like that.”

“It’s the same as always.” If Rin were honest, he couldn’t remember anything that had happened last week. Things meshed together, every day bleeding into the next until they became one insufferable slog. Calls with his sister were the only things that kept his head up until the seventh day.

“You look tired,” Jia observed. Rin closed his eyes briefly. Evidently not smooth enough to hide his eye bags. “Any tests coming up?”

“I took a chemistry test today.”

“What unit?”

“Equlibirum.”

“Oh.” Jia made a sympathetic noise. “I remember how hard that was.”

“It was okay,” Rin said quickly. “What about you?”

Jia sighed. “College is college.” She looked off to the side and reached out to adjust something Rin could not see. “I’m gonna have to wake up early tomorrow for computer science. But after class I’m getting lunch with friends.” Her gaze fell on Rin. “What have you been up to? Any plans for the school year?”

“I’m aiming for good grades. Above 90.”

“Ever the scholar.” But something in Jia’s eyes grew sad. “What about clubs? I remember you were into making music.”

Rin gave her a look. “Clubs take too much time. It’ll be a distraction to my studies.”
“But you’ll meet friends.”

Friends?

“Dad says they’re a distraction, too.”

Jia frowned, but said nothing.

“I’m okay,” Rin said, because Jia had a tendency to worry. He scanned the wall behind her. “Is that another poster?”

“Oh, this?” Jia turned around and pointed to a bright red poster with a white electrical logo. “It was from my robotics competition freshman year. Were you there? I don’t remember.”

Rin had been in middle school. “I saw the videos.” His sister had been golden.

“Yup, well, I moved the poster here. Reminds me of when things were simpler.”

When things were simpler, Jia was the one playing the violin instead of Rin. But as an already exceptional student she kept going, pushing further in science and math and robotics, so when she moved out for college she never took her instrument with her. Maybe she’d forgotten.

“How’s Grandma?” Jia asked. She took a sip from a plastic water bottle and put it away in a corner the screen couldn’t reach.

“I don’t know. I think she’s happy.”

Jia smiled fondly. “She’s always happy.”

“When you’re around. I never know what to say, Jia.”

“You don’t have to say anything. She’s our grandmother. She knows you.”

Rin doubted there was anything in him worth knowing. “She misses you.” Why else would she be talking to Rin at all, if not to fill that gap?

Jia tossed her hair. “Who wouldn’t?” 

Rin snorted, then instantly schooled his expression.

“Are you laughing at me? Are you laughing at me, little brother?”

“No! I would never.”

“I’m gonna get you once I come back, Rin.”

Then Jia proceeded to tell Rin about her day: how a squirrel stole her granola when she was taking a walk in the park, how the rain a couple of days ago left a puddle in the shape of a star by the campus entrance, how the buildings lit up at night, how the new drink tasted in the local coffee store. He listened to the cadence of her voice, letting the words sink in. She made even the most mundane things sound entertaining. Profound. When she moved, the family lost its voice. The student as bright as the sun, their eldest daughter, left only the youngest son to fill in the cracks.

“I can’t wait for the holidays,” Jia sighed. “I want to see you so bad.”

Rin’s gut twisted. “Take your time.” He didn’t want to seem like he was urging her back, playing the role of a needy little brother. These video chats were more than enough.

“Oh, I’m taking my time, all right. These exams aren’t going anywhere.” But her eyes were soft. “Have you been doing anything fun lately? Doesn’t have to be for school. Any new hobbies?”

“I’ve been… picking up your violin.” Rin decided it wouldn’t hurt, as long as she didn’t know what he was practicing. He still wanted to surprise her when he learned the whole song.

“Oh, that old thing!” Jia laughed, and her smile lit up his whole screen. “Those were the days. Where is it now? Can you play a couple of measures?”

Rin took it from its case and held it against his chin, resting his cheek against the wood. He was about to drag the bow across a string when he heard the front door open downstairs. The murmurs of his grandmother and father drifted in and out of his room. Then there was the buzz of a cell phone.

“Rin?” Jia was leaning forward. “Did your audio cut off?”

“Dad’s taking a call right now.” Rin dropped the bow and set the violin down. “I’m not that good yet, anyway.” 

“That’s alright.” Jia didn’t seem to keep the disappointment from her voice. Then she tilted her head. “The violin suits you, though. The way you hold it…” 

Rin smiled, slightly exasperated. Count on his sister to feed his ego. She of all people knew what true talent was, but she insisted on seeing something in him.

From Jia’s screen, a shadow moved. Then a voice; “are you thinking of getting started on our CS presentation? It’s not that late. We can bang something out.”

Jia’s eyes flicked up to a space above Rin. “Sure, just give me a minute.” She looked back at him.

“I’m feeling tired,” Rin said quickly. He was intruding on her college time. “School night tomorrow for both of us…”

“Oh. Alright then – have a good week, little brother.”

“You too, big sister.”

“Good night.”

Process

This is a first chapter from the novel I’ve been working on throughout the GWN program! I’ve learned a lot from this process, as my mentor has helped me improve my imagery and emotion. I hope my efforts come across in this piece.