Penny Brightwell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Penny was halfway to the door when she heard footsteps behind her. A man in a gray jacket stepped into her path, blocking the hallway. He held a clipboard against his chest and looked down at her with the kind of face adults made when they were about to say no. "Not so fast," he said. The woman in the suit appeared behind him, holding Penny's poster. "What's the problem?" she asked. The man gestured at the poster. "You're telling me we're changing our entire training program based on one child's drawings? I need to see this tested." He turned and walked toward a room at the end of the hall, pushing open double doors. Inside, a small wooden stage stood against the back wall, wrapped in vines with tiny lights woven through them like captured fireflies. Twenty adults sat in folding chairs, each holding a midnight blue guitar. They'd been waiting for someone else, but now they were all staring at Penny. The woman touched Penny's shoulder. "You don't have to do this," she said quietly. But Penny looked at the stage, then at the poster in the woman's hand—the one her father had kept because he understood. These people didn't understand yet. That was the whole point. She walked down the aisle between the chairs, climbed the three steps, and turned to face them. "Put the guitars down," she said. "You can't learn to see with your hands full." A few laughed. Most didn't. One woman with blonde curls and round sunglasses set her guitar on the floor. Then another person did. Then all of them. Penny asked for paper and markers. She drew a guitar as a voice trapped in wood, the strings as paths the voice could take to get out. She showed them how sheet music was really a map of high and low, not dots and lines. The man with the clipboard wrote notes, but he wasn't making that face. The blonde woman leaned forward, nodding. When Penny finished, the room stayed quiet for three full breaths. Then the woman in the suit said, "That's exactly what we needed to see." The man closed his clipboard. "I'll schedule the full staff training," he said. Penny had walked in as a test. She walked out as the teacher.