The violin case I carried onto the night bus

Dear Delyara, I am seventeen, and tonight I left the music school without telling my teacher I will not return. My mother lost her cleaning job, my younger brothers need food, and the restaurant near our apartment offered me full-time kitchen work. I carried my violin onto the night bus because I could not bear to leave it in the practice room for someone to find. The case rested on my knees while factory workers slept around me. At each turn, the instrument shifted gently inside, and I kept one hand over the lid as though calming a child. My teacher says my hands are rare. My mother says rent is due on Monday. Neither of them is wrong. At home, I placed the violin beneath my bed and told my brothers school had finished early. Tomorrow, I will begin chopping onions, washing pans, and returning after midnight with my clothes smelling of oil. I keep imagining my violin in the dark, the strings tightening and loosening with the heat from the radiator, waiting for the hands everyone said were meant for it. I have not decided that music is over. I have only accepted a job. Still, I know how quietly a temporary decision can begin wearing the clothes of an entire life.