She walked down the hallway, clutching her books to her chest. Around her, the air vibrated with whispers.

“So you can do it, right? Great!”

“Of course you get top score…”

“Really? YOU made a mistake?”

She pushed the doors to the choir room open, stepping into a class that was about to start. Nodding to the choir teachers, she walked to the back and opened one of the piano room doors. Gently placing the books on the floor, she shut the door, blocking out the world, the expectations, and the obligations.

As she sat down and lifted the cover off the keys of the piano, her mind drifted to the whispers that haunted her life. All the expectations people had of her, all the obligations she struggled to fulfill. Things people assumed she could do, and feelings people assumed she felt. The world was one tight cell that threatened to cage her.

As her hands played a sad, haunting melody on the lower notes, she thought about how lonely it was to be so trapped and misunderstood, to have no one who could understand. Even her best friends constantly fell into the lure of the world.

Her fingers jabbed the wrong chord, sending a piercing wail into the air. The girl froze, then smiled. Here, there was no one to criticize or gasp at the mistake. There was no one to judge and say she had come up short, no one to wonder how she could have possibly made a mistake.

Now she allowed her fingers to fly across the keys, to let the music fall and rise, run and leap. The music that flew from her hands knew no bounds; it was an entity on its own. It could sing, cry, rage, even fail, and still it was beautiful.

For the forty minutes the girl stayed and played, there were no expectations, no obligations, no comments, praises and criticisms. There were only the music leading the way, and she following. There were only the throbbing of the music and her own thoughts and feelings; the infinite stretches of the song and her own wants, needs, and abilities.

The music soared, reaching an intensity and height the world could not contain, beating its freed wings to keep from having to land.

For those forty minutes, the girl was free.