The first thing I notice is her hoodie. Navy, with Sherlock Holmes - the latest one, the TV show - grinning from the front. Awesome. She has a long black scarf around her neck. She flips her clarinet around her wrist smartly and gets a clap from the horn behind her. I can't stop looking at her, but it doesn't matter because she doesn't notice me. She blows hard through the gleaming black and silver instrument and smiles. It's directed at the Asian girl sitting next to her, surrounded by crumpled sheets of music, but it still makes my stomach feel like it's full of snakes. She keeps smiling at her, seemingly all through the first half, until it starts to annoy me. Not her smile. The fact that that other girl is getting the full force.They talk during snippets of breaks in the music, as the conductor yells at the cellos to stop dragging the chain she gestures widely and the other girl howls. My stomach twists and takes flight at the same time.
It's not a pleasant feeling. Well. It sort of is.
We start playing 'March to the Scaffold'. Is the universe trying to tell me something?
Either way, I love this piece. The music pitches high and trembling, then falls in deep pulls and plucks of strings. Shimmeringly fast notes, towards the end. The steps and heartbeats of a man about to be executed.
Or a girl falling in love?
There's the high, thin clarinet solo towards the end, right before the trapdoor falls, then we - the violas, with the other strings - pluck the bounce of the body at the end of the rope. Sounds morbid but it's beautiful. The unaccompanied clarinet bit gives me an excuse to look over to her area. She's not playing it, the pro-looking blonde guy down the other end is, but her fingers punch the notes on her clarinet as if the wishes she was.
I keep willing her to look at me, but I know the minute she does I'll look away and I won't dare to look back.
While the conductor guy talks to the soloist I think of what I would say to her if I was braver. If I could dredge up the nerve.
All of my thoughts sound stupid even in my head.
And suddenly we're all silent again and the Trombone Concerto starts curling from the corners of the room.
After, a couple of mums wheel a table laden with food and drink from a back room and everyone makes a beeline for it. Including her.
I plunk down my viola, fingers aching, and slide my book from my bag - The Plains of Passage - and hunch up to read. I can't handle the crowds, and I don't want to leave my viola, my most precious possession. Some moron will stand on it, I just know it. I just want to get lost in a made up world.
Besides, I'm not hungry.
It's not working tonight, the real world keep demanding my attention, because that's where she is.
When the conductor - I think I like him - claps his hands, everyone slogs back, drinks in hand.
And when I look up…
Her eyes are on me.

It's during break that I clock her. I'm walking back from the food table, sidestepping music folders and the scrolls of violins sticking off the edges of chairs, hot chocolate in my hand and I catch sight of a shiny black boot on an empty chair, the person attached to it curled into a book.
She's new. She has to be.
The curve of her jaw makes my heart hammer, her leg graceful under plain black jeans.
I crane to see what she's reading, then Mike, our conductor and trumpet player extraordanaire claps his hands loud and heavy and everyone's moving. The girl jumps and closes her book. She sees me staring and smiles awkwardly. That smile.
She drops the book into her bag. One of the horns, the insanely tall guy with the afro nudges past me and I realise I am in everyone's way. I sit down, stick a reed in my mouth. She tucks the viola under her chin and plays a silvery A. I never realised before how amazing violas sound.
I realise my chocolate is growing cold in my hand and take a chug.
Talia whacks me on the shoulder as she collapses in her seat. As usual, I compare her skintight leopard print jeggings and silken tumble of curls to my grubby t shirt and camo pants and wonder how we are best friends. We met first day of clarinet class in Year 7 and got into the youth orchestra at the start of last year's intake.
I've never looked at her that way. She's not my type.
"What are you staring at? That viola girl?"
She gives me a knowing grin and pulls out the Humperdinck concerto.
The viola girl girl glances up at me and sees me still looking. A blush tinges her cheeks and I grin widely.
Talia rolls her eyes.
I snatch glances at her throughout the concerto and do a terrible job playing. Unfortunately the violas and the clarinets aren't resting at the same time much throughout.
Stupid Humperdinck.
Once she stops half a bar before I come in, and gazes at the music, biting her lip. Talia elbows me.
"Pay attention!"
I have trouble keeping a straight face as I come in with a high C. Which is unfortunate. A bum note squawks from my clarinet and Mike frowns.
The music swells and falls, and the tympani bulges out of the sides of the rhythm. Meredith, on the kettle drum is my ex. Sometimes it feels like my life begins and ends with youth orchestra. It's a variating duet, sometimes I play to the beat of the drum, or the beautiful girl on the beautiful second violin. Today I listen to the hue and cry of the understated viola. In our sixteen bar's silence I eye her across the singing seconds. She sways to the music. She doesn't know anything in this moment except the bow on the string and the next arpeggio run. Everyone in this room is the same, but in my eyes, she wears it the best.
In the next piece, the scherzo, we come in first. I can feel her eyes on me. I sit straight and still and play the sweetest I can. I feel every note.