Luckily, Oliver had remembered exactly where he’d last left the violin: underneath the bed of the guest room. Much like the guitar, the case for the instrument was a hard shell, the cover of dust showing its lack of use. Cracking it open, I was hit with the scent of old wood and rosin. The reddish wood gently gleamed back at me, seemingly glad to be brought back into the world. It was smaller than a typical violin–fitting, if Oliver had played it in middle school, but more importantly, it fit me much better than a full sized violin would.

  I pulled my phone out of one of the pants pockets, finding a massive amount of notifications. Not ready to face the cascade of messages, I instead turned on an application for tuning. It had been a while since I needed it, but I was glad to have it at this moment. Finding the setting for violins, my gaze drifted back to the instrument.

  All of the strings were extremely loose, but luckily the knobs on the notes were still in good condition. I slowly and carefully twisted them, one by one, tuning the instrument methodically until each pluck and strum began to sound exactly how they should. Each string had a lovely tone to it. The way the sound would reverberate through the instrument was like a deep, powerful pulse to my hearts with every pluck of a string. The violin had fewer strings than most of my other instruments, but it also didn’t have frets. It would take muscle memory to know where each finger should be held to get the right note.

  My gaze flickered to the small alarm clock next to the bed. It was half past ten in the morning. Oliver said he would be home at around six in the evening. There should be plenty of time to work on the new project in my lap. It took a few more minutes, but once the violin was in tune and I had applied a new layer of rosin to the bow, I gave it one more look. There would be no better time or place to start than right now, in an empty house. Thinking of a simple, classical piece ingrained in my memory, I placed the bow to the string.

  The moment I began to move the bow, however, I instantly felt myself wince. Sure, I had expected to be inexperienced, but the shriek emanating from the violin sounded nothing short of terrible. It screamed out a horrible sound with a wispy gasp. I tried pressing my finger to the string, my reward an off-putting note akin to a pathetic whimper. This instrument was far different than any in my collection. Defined notes, straight forward ways to play them…this instrument would certainly be a challenge, but one I was ready to conquer.

  With the grooves I’d put into my claws, I tried playing with them instead. After that method failed, I used the pads of my fingers. It wasn’t the normal way I would play, but I figured it was worth a try. An attempt or two later, I stopped, holding the instrument in front of me for a moment, eyes looking at it from top to bottom. It was a beautiful instrument and I knew I could get it to play for me…all I had to do was figure out how it wanted me to play it.

  Scales…yeah, I should start with scales and work my way up from there.

  About an hour later, I finally started to feel the clumsiness beginning to dissipate. Though I still missed my marks every now and again, I was able to go up from strings G to E consistently when playing through the notes. The first and second positions were starting to feel natural, too. The violin was another instrument designed for fewer fingers than I had, so reaching halfway up through the second position was no issue. It was particularly useful when I wanted to switch to flats or sharps.

  ***

  With another hour passing, I was at last starting to truly feel comfortable with the violin. I played a few simple songs from memory: some from Beethoven and one from Mozart. As long as I practiced one segment at a time, I’d start feeling what the instrument wanted, and then I could start making small variations. The biggest obstacle for me was easily the bow. After enough time, I realized the specific angle the bow wanted in order to make the songs flow.

  I had to build the muscle memory to keep my right hand in the correct position, having it touch only one specific string. It took more effort than expected, namely due to a sort of ‘cone’ of acceptable places I could place my hand for each string. Even so, small variations in hand position, bow speed, tilting and even pressure on the string would change the feeling of each note immensely.

  Oliver had mentioned he didn’t like being able to only play one note at a time, but I felt like he hadn’t appreciated exactly how much control he could have over each individual note. Despite seeming as if it wanted to only play one note at a time, there were so many ways to vary each one…the whole instrument had far more depth than I ever could have imagined. My pace grew faster and I began varying up the tempo and adding notes in various places. Most of the time, the result was poor, but sometimes I found a combination which worked quite well.

  Starting with songs I knew, I would let my creativity guide me. The songs warped and adjusted to my own hearts, unrecognizable from their origin as I took an original song and brought it into a world all my own. These moments were what I loved most about music. I wasn’t playing an instrument anymore. I was letting the music inside me shine brightly into the world. All my thoughts vanished, my focus on all the feelings and emotions pouring out into the song.

  Vibrating my finger across the string had been challenging at first. Most instruments I had played involved moving side to side across the instrument’s neck, but the violin wanted me to move my hand back and forward, causing my fingers to slightly roll across the string. Once I had unlocked the mystery, the violin truly began to sing to me…began to sing with me. I had drifted to my feet, moving and spinning as the music poured out of me, guided from my hearts into my hands.

  I bumped into the bed frame, jolting me out of my trance. Blinking, I looked at the clock again. It was now two in the afternoon. My stomach rumbled softly, reminding me to take a break for lunch.

  ***

  Back in the kitchen, I found some chicken noodle soup in the pantry, exactly the sort of thing I was craving. As I made lunch, I couldn’t help but marvel at the accessibility of the kitchen countertops once again. It was all too easy to grab anything I needed. There was no need for me to find a stool or try and grab something out of reach. The change was wonderful…welcoming, even.

  While the soup heated, I thought more about Oliver’s feelings towards the violin. He only ever liked the sound of the instrument in a group. It did make sense; the violin wasn’t like a guitar or a piano, where playing a chord created complex sounds. Though it was possible to play two notes at once on a violin, the strings were too close together in sound to make a proper harmony.

  Plopping down in a chair, I placed the soup to one side and the violin directly in front of me. Even in a short time, I found such a big appreciation of the instrument…but I also felt as if there were still plenty of mysteries to unlock with it. The strings went on a scale of ‘perfect fifths’: G, D, A, E. Given the limited set of strings, perhaps I could find a way to make each string further apart on the scale. I looked down at my hand.

  I could tune it to perfect sevenths I guess, but that wouldn’t be very useful for Oliver.

  If I was trying to adapt the instrument only for myself, it would work, but I needed to think of something more…universal. With the soup cooled enough, I began to eat, still mulling over my thoughts on how to make the ideal violin.

  If I double the distance between each string, I could tune it to tenths…then the player would have to use the first and second positions…

  The strings would be farther apart, but it also meant they would harmonize better if the bow pressed on two strings at once. Then again, the user would be forced to move their hand forward and back across the neck more. That exertion would become tiring after a while.

  I took a break from the half-finished soup, deciding to give my idea a test. I moved the G string down, but it quickly grew far too slack. The design was meant for this amount of tension–unlike a guitar, there wasn’t much room to change it.

  So much for that idea.

  Grabbing the soup, I resumed my lunch. All the while, I stared at the violin, trying to come up with some sort of solution.

  ***

  Think, Tess…

  With my soup finished a few minutes ago, I was now sitting on the couch. I’d taken a few pillows and placed them on the couch so I wouldn't sink into it, so once I’d settled into the modified seat, it felt fine. My fingers strummed across the strings, ears and mind listening to the violin sing to me.

  I need to separate out the strings, but I can’t change the tension much…or else it won’t work at all.

  Now plucking the strings individually, I looked down at the instrument, inspecting it again. I wanted to play strings separate from each other, but the curve of the bridge rendered that idea impossible. If I took the curvature out, I wouldn’t be able to isolate the strings with the bow. I plucked the G and A strings at the same time. The sound was interesting, and it did work fine if I was plucking strings, but if I were to simply pluck individual strings, why not just play a guitar?

  The bow was the defining feature…what made the violin unique. I wanted to use it, but there would be no way to hit both strings at the same time. Unless…

  Unless the D string wasn’t in the way.

  “Hmm...”

  I reached for the top of the violin, unwinding the D string. It slid and unthreaded from the violin with ease, leaving it looking far more naked. Picking up the violin once more, I played along the A string, then moved my bow hand to bring the other end of the bow onto the G string. The note sounded like a simple cord–different, but familiar. I kept playing the two strings together for a few minutes, trying different notes and feeling how they worked in unison.

  What I found most strange was the feeling of both strings through the bow at the same time, each one wanting to vibrate the bow separately. Normally the bow would vibrate itself with the string, but now it felt as if it were trying to fight it. Not bad, but again–different. I stopped playing, a wide smile on my face.

  It worked. Even if it was different, it worked, and I liked how it sounded. I couldn’t just play with two strings, though. The violin had been reborn with new capabilities, and yet it had lost so many more.

  “Let’s see…G and A work well together…” I mused. “D and E should work the same way…”

  Tilting my head slightly, I began thinking of this idea in a different way. If I decided to break the conventional rules, I could put the strings out of order. Changing the order to A, G, E, D would give me the interaction between A and G I had been playing, but I could also put E and D together, and also pair G and E together. What would it be like, I wondered, to pair the highest and lowest strings of a violin…

  Convinced, I got to work on restringing the instrument, placing the strings in what anyone else would consider a very wrong order. This idea could work, though. I was certain of it. Once everything was in place, I pulled the violin up to my chin, starting to play it again. As I expected, the first impression felt as if everything was off, jumping up and down through various sounds.

  Taking a breath, I started focusing on a single string, one at a time, playing the adjacent string next to it as if it were a whole note. Soon I was playing simple melodies on a string, letting the bow gently graze the strings next to it. The sound was interesting, but I could push beyond this limit. Playing a proper chord would be difficult with my hand positioned the way it was, but the neck of the violin was small enough for me to reach around the neck and hold the lower strings with my thumb.

  The result prevented me from playing anything complex, but I could move my hand up and down while the rest of my fingers played the melody. My thumb played a simplified complimentary version of whatever tune I decided to play. Still getting a feel for the new method, I noticed the combinations of G and E seemed to be the most comfortable, but with practice, I could drop other melodies into the main tune. By now, I had long stopped trying to play any song in particular. There weren’t any songs I knew made specifically for a violin tuned in this way, so instead, I played whatever felt right.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Suddenly the front door opened behind me, making me jump a little.

  “Hey, Tess!” I heard Oliver say over the soft creak of the door.

  My body relaxed again. “Hey, you.” I replied, sinking back into the pillows.

  “Was that you, playing that?” He asked, looking around as he closed the door behind himself, a pile of grocery bags on his lap.

  “Uh, yeah…you don’t mind, right?” I asked, giving a sheepish smile. “I wanted to give it a try and you were saying–”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” he interrupted, “I just thought you said you hadn’t played one before.”

  Oliver moved into the kitchen, starting to unload the food onto the counter.

  “How, um…how long were you listening before you came in?”

  He thought for a moment. “About…a minute or two? I was gathering everything from the car, but…yeah, I kind of waited outside the door for a little while before coming in. I didn’t want to interrupt or anything.”

  “Ah…”

  He continued to put groceries in their proper places as I sat there in thought. If Oliver had heard me playing with all the changes to the violin…

  “Did you…like it?”

  A cabinet squeaked shut. “Huh?”

  Clearing my throat, I asked again, more clearly. “Sorry, um…did you like it, what I was playing? Did it sound different?”

  “I guess so?” He responded. “It sounded like you were playing two violins at once, so I wasn’t sure if you were playing alongside a recording or something.”

  “Oh! You noticed!” I exclaimed, beaming as I hopped off the couch, joining him in the kitchen, violin in hand. “So, what you said about it–how it sounds dull by itself?”

  Oliver gave a soft nod, facing me as he took a break from putting things away.

  I held the violin in front of me. “See, I think it’s because it couldn’t harmonize with itself very well, but I changed it! Look!” I pushed it toward him.

  Reluctantly taking the instrument, he looked it over for a moment. His fingers carefully strummed across the strings, blinking as he gave his verdict.

  “The strings are in the wrong order.”

  I smiled, nodding. “I changed them around to make them harmonize better. It’s a bit trickier to play, but it works way differently now.”

  Proud of my accomplishment, I pulled one of the bags toward myself, starting to help put things away into the pantry.

  “H-Hey, it’s okay, I can take care of the food.” Oliver noted, extending the violin back to me.

  “It’s no problem, I can take care of it.” I responded, continuing to put things into the pantry. “So I tried a few ideas with the strings, it was really neat how it changed–”

  “I’ll take care of it, Tess.” He interjected.

  “It’s really no probl–”

  “I said, I’ve got it.” Oliver repeated, in a much sterner tone.

  I stopped, looking at him. He was still holding the violin for me to take. He sounded angry with me.

  “Sorry…I just…wanted to help with…”

  “Why don’t you just go back to playing with this, okay?” He said, the same tone still in his voice.

  In a matter of seconds, I felt crushed. It was as if all the life had been sucked out of the room. My breath felt short, hearts being loudly in my ears as I quietly took the violin and slowly left the room. I could feel him glaring at me for a moment, then he looked down at the floor.

  I walked to the couch, footsteps feeling like lead before I climbed onto the spot I had made.

  What…was that…?

  Without even realizing, I was softly plucking the violin strings again. Not knowing what I should do, I just pretended to tune the instrument. It was already in tune, I knew…but I didn’t want to make anything worse. After a moment, I could hear Oliver putting the last of the groceries in the pantry.

  Was it something I said? Did I…do something wrong? I’ve barely been here for a day…how could I have already messed this up?

  All I could do was wait for something to happen. The entire day working on the violin felt as if it was over in a flash, but the few minutes I waited on the couch dragged on for what seemed like eons. Oliver’s attitude had changed so quickly, like the flip of a switch. The sound of crumpling bags caught my attention. He must have finished putting everything away.

  Continuing to strum random notes, I pretended not to notice. I wasn’t sure what I should do. After a moment, I heard Oliver sigh, followed by the wheels of his wheelchair moving from the kitchen into the living room. Not wanting to do anything else wrong, I continued to stare at the violin as he moved to the window. I chanced a look at him. He was gazing out at the backyard…looking tense…or probably just uncomfortable, like I was.

  Thankfully, he chose to speak first.

  “...it was a horse riding accident.” He said softly, still looking out the window.

  “What?” My voice came out just as quietly.

  Oliver sighed. “The reason I’m paralyzed. I was riding a horse. He got startled and threw me off. I landed on my back, onto a rock. There wasn’t much I could have done about it…no one to blame. Just dumb luck, I guess.”

  “Oh…” I said simply, unsure how to reply.

  “I was a teenager at the time and I didn’t really understand how much it would change my life. At first, I thought it’d get better, but after a few months, it was pretty clear…this was just how things would be from now on. I was angry…looked for any reason I could just to lash out at anyone around me.” He paused. “I wasn’t…the nicest person to be around. Whatever friends I had, I lost. I was so bitter and angry…and nothing would set me off more than when I felt like someone was treating me like a baby, doing things for me and going out of their way to help when I could have taken care of it myself. I hated it…hated people for doing it. It just…felt like people saw me as a wheelchair instead of a person. The looks people gave me, the polite smiles they’d give me when I’d catch them staring…I despised it.”

  Oliver turned. His eyes were a little red and puffy. “I’m…sorry I snapped at you like that, Tess. It wasn’t fair to you, and I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

  “...I-I’m-” I stammered out, but he gently stopped me.

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

  He sounded sincere. After a moment, he moved toward me again, looking at the violin in my hands.

  “So, tell me about this modification again?”

  The tension in the room melted away as the warmth returned to my body. I started telling him everything from the beginning: playing it, what it felt like to play, how I considered why he didn’t like it, how I changed the instrument to match my ideas.

  “It’s about adapting it to yourself, right?” I asked, playing a few notes and chores while describing them. “Sometimes rules should be less like rules and more like guidelines. They’re a starting point, but you can change and adapt the rules to fit your individual needs and preferences. Just because something is supposed to be done a certain way doesn’t mean it has to be. The important thing is to understand what the rules are first, then you can adapt them. It’s not changing it, it’s expanding upon it.”

  He nodded as I gently tapped the wood of the instrument, continuing.

  “In your case, the violin didn’t work because of how you wanted to play it, but the answer was sitting right there. All it took was a little thinking outside of the normal conventions, and after that realization, I found the harmony I was looking for. It was hiding in plain sight, behind a bunch of rules. Once I decided not to follow them, the solution was pretty easy.”

  I started playing again. Oliver smiled, listening quietly as I played some of my favorite tunes I’d invented during the day. After a few minutes I stopped, handing the violin to him. He took it, simply staring at the instrument.

  “It’s funny. I haven’t seen this thing in so long. It’s been sitting up there for ages.”

  “Why was it under the bed, though?” I asked.

  “Oh, that used to be my bedroom before…well…” He finished with a gesture to his legs.

  I frowned. “Ah…”

  “I ended up moving downstairs, but my mom never bothered using the room for anything else, so it just went unused. With only the two of us living here, we really didn’t need that room. She offered to put a climbing chair on the stairs, but I didn’t want to do that. Having all the ramps everywhere in the downstairs of the house was already a lot, you know?”

  I could certainly imagine, nodding as I looked at one of the ramps.

  “I still don’t really like to talk about it, honestly.” He mused, gently placing the violin on the couch, right next to me.

  Silence flowed through the room for the next few minutes. I understood why Oliver didn’t want to talk about it. Anything so life-changing could definitely be a sore subject with a lot of baggage. Truthfully, I was unsure what to say, and Oliver seemed to feel similarly, so we sat together, thinking about everything for a while. He was completely still as I tapped my hands against each other.

  After everything he had just told me, I felt a bit guilty. I hadn’t wanted to force any bad memories to the surface, but I almost felt as if I’d forced him to tell me when I didn’t listen after he’d asked me to stop helping with the food. I took a long, deep breath, looking at him. Oliver looked back.

  “My house burned down. I…I watched John die…and I didn’t know what to do.”

  I told Oliver my story as he sat down on the couch. I started from the night we’d last spoken, when I was in my treehouse. It seemed silly now, for me to have no idea I was different. I told him about the encounter I had, the conversation with Emily, and everything John told me about how he found me.

  I told him about the two people who showed up, how they somehow knew who I was and how they had been searching for me. Oliver sat in silence as I just spilled out everything about the last few weeks of my life. It was hard…far harder than I had expected. I had to take breaks during certain subjects, trying to talk through the tears. Still, Oliver waited patiently.

  I told him everything I could think of, even as he held my hand. He nodded along and only interrupted to clarify a few details. Finally, after I finished my story, he craned his head to the ceiling as the two of us sat in the quiet. With nothing else to say, and quite a bit of my energy sapped, I looked at the floor.

  “That’s…quite a lot, Tess.”

  Unable to respond, I simply nodded.

  “...can I see those things you brought?”

  The question brought me out of my stupor, as I looked up at him, thinking for a moment. He must have been talking about the objects John had given me. I nodded again, heading up the stairs. Once my bag was in my hands, I returned to Oliver, moving the coffee table from the other side of the living room until it was in front of him. Standing across from him, I unzipped the pocket, pulling out the items: the shimmering cloth, the broken wheel, and the necklace.

  Oliver took the patch first, turning it over once in his hand.

  “I thought you said it had all these colors in it…” He said, raising an eyebrow curiously.

  “It does!” I said, pointing at it.

  The colors were shimmering as they had every other time I’d seen it, emanating from the fabric in their unnatural way.

  “...it just looks white to me.” Squinting, Oliver pulled it closer to his face, as if he wasn’t looking closely enough.

  “But…it’s like…a screen, you know? Where it’s got really bright spots of specific spots of colors?” I paused, now wondering if I was explaining myself correctly. “...do you not see that?”

  “I don’t think so?” He didn’t sound too sure of himself, either, but surely he wasn’t lying…why would he?

  Unconvinced, I pulled out my phone, opening up a page with a white background.

  “Like this: how it’s bright and supposed to be white, but you can see it’s just red, blue, and green shining really bright with no colors in between. Sort of like a fake white.”

  Gaze shifting to me, then the phone, then back to me, Oliver slowly responded. “It…just looks white to me.”

  “Hmm…I don’t know how to explain it, then…it’s different.” Now I was looking at it again. “I’m not sure why you don’t see it, but it’s different. I don’t really know how else to describe it.”

  Nodding, Oliver picked up the wheel with the big wedge just into the side of it.

  “Now that…I have no idea what that is.” I admitted. “Does it mean something? Maybe it’s some kind of clue? I’ve looked at it over and over, but I don’t know what it’s supposed to be.”

  Oliver rotated it around in his hands, looking at it from every angle. “It looks like a really big skateboard wheel, honestly.”

  I reached out and Oliver handed it to me. Turning it around in my hands like I had so many times, I looked up, seeing him lift the necklace and look at it curiously. The wheel was heavy, but it wouldn’t be much good as a wheel with a huge wedge cut into the side of it. Oliver kept inspecting the necklace, rotating it under the light as he held it close to his face.

  “Honestly, I just don’t know where to go from here.” I said, placing the wheel back onto the coffee table.

  Oliver kept looking at the crystal. His demeanor changed as he looked at me, then back to the crystal.

  “It’s pretty, right?” I asked, half making conversation, half wanting him to reply.

  While still looking through the crystal, Oliver spoke. “Well, it’s hard to say what you’re supposed to do with all of these things, but I think I know where we should start.” He leaned forward, holding the crystal for me to see.

  I blinked, confused. “What-”

  “We should start by figuring out what’s on this hard drive.”