Read 13 - Piano Lessons Can Be Murder for Free Online Page B

but I
couldn’t make out what they were saying.
    I stood up and walked to the window. It had started to snow, very large
flakes coming down really hard. The snow was already starting to stick.
    Staring into the back yard, I wondered if there were any good hills to sled
on in New Goshen. And I wondered if my sled had been unpacked.
    I cried out when the piano suddenly started to play.
    Loud, jangling noise. Like someone pounding furiously on the keys with heavy
fists.
    Pound. Pound. Pound.
    “Jerry—stop it!” Mom shouted from the living room.
    “I’m not doing it!” I cried.

 
 
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    Dr. Frye’s office wasn’t the way I pictured a psychiatrist’s office. It was
small and bright. The walls were yellow, and there were colorful pictures of
parrots and toucans and other birds hanging all around.
    He didn’t have a black leather couch like psychiatrists always have on TV and
in the movies. Instead, he had two soft-looking, green armchairs. He didn’t even
have a desk. Just the two chairs.
    I sat in one, and he sat in the other.
    He was a lot younger than I thought he’d be. He looked younger than my dad.
He had wavy red hair, slicked down with some kind of gel or something, I think.
And he had a face full of freckles.
    He just didn’t look like a psychiatrist at all.
    “Tell me about your new house,” he said. He had his legs crossed. He rested his long notepad on them as he studied me.
    “It’s a big, old house,” I told him. “That’s about it.”
    He asked me to describe my room, so I did.
    Then we talked about the house we moved from and my old room. Then we talked
about my friends back home. Then we talked about my new school.
    I felt nervous when we started. But he seemed okay. He listened carefully to
everything I said. And he didn’t give me funny looks, like I was crazy or
something.
    Even when I told him about the ghost.
    He scribbled down a few notes when I told him about the piano playing late at
night. He stopped writing when I told him how I’d seen the ghost, and how her
hair fell off and then her face, and how she had screamed at me to stay away.
    “My parents didn’t believe me,” I said, squeezing the soft arms of the chair.
My hands were sweating.
    “It’s a pretty weird story,” Dr. Frye replied. “If you were your mom or dad,
and your kid told you that story, would you believe it?”
    “Sure,” I said. “If it was true.”
    He chewed on his pencil eraser and stared at me.
    “Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked.
    He lowered his notepad. He didn’t smile at the question. “No. I don’t think
you’re crazy, Jerry. But the human mind can be really strange sometimes.”
    Then he launched into this long lecture about how sometimes we’re afraid of
something, but we don’t admit to ourselves that we’re afraid. So our mind does
all kinds of things to show that we’re afraid, even though we keep telling
ourselves that we’re not afraid.
    In other words, he didn’t believe me, either.
    “Moving to a new house creates all kinds of stress,” he said. “It is possible
to start imagining that we see things, that we hear things—just so we don’t
admit to ourselves what we’re really afraid of.”
    “I didn’t imagine the piano music,” I said. “I can hum the melody for you.
And I didn’t imagine the ghost. I can tell you just what she looked like.”
    “Let’s talk about it next week,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Our time is
up. But until next time, I just want to assure you that your mind is perfectly
normal. You’re not crazy, Jerry. You shouldn’t think that for a second.”
    He shook my hand. “You’ll see,” he said, opening the door for me. “You’ll be
amazed at what we figure out is behind that ghost of yours.”
    I muttered thanks and walked out of his office.
    I made my way through the empty waiting room and stepped into the hallway.
    And then I felt the ghost’s icy grip tighten around my neck.

 
 
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