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In the dank of DC’s summer heat, cicadas scaled the heights of oak trees, vocal and untrained trapeze artists. But their shells, discarded and crumpled like candy wrappers, clogged drains and littered the sides of the road. The air was smeared with humidity, but as they drove through Rock Creek Park, a breeze lifted and Ellery, her face thrust out of the car window, waited for the wind to hopscotch across her cheeks.

“Stop.” Her mother tugged on Ellery’s elbow and Ellery lowered her face back into the interior of Ms. Anita’s car.

“Lo, she’s fine.” Her father turned around from the passenger seat. He frowned at her mother and winked at Ellery.

“All these damn bugs. Devils, I tell you,” Ms. Anita said. The wheels of her car crushed the dark masses again and again.

On the playground at Ellery’s school, a boy picked up one of the cracked bodies and threw it at the long, full ponytail of a girl. She tried to shake free of it, catching the Holy Ghost far from the aisles of any church, like the one Ellery’s mother dragged her to on Sundays. “Get it out! Get it off!” the girl yelled. The giggling bunch of boys ran, but Ellery, with her thumb and forefinger, pulled the bug remains out of the strands of hair.

“My science teacher says they wait underground until they’re ready to come out,” Ellery said. She tried to lean forward between the seats, but the seat belt pulled her back.

“Your dress,” her mother said. She brushed nonexistent bits of lint from the fabric, stiff from dry cleaning. Her mother had insisted that would make it look best for today. It didn’t smell like it had been cleaned, not like their clothes after they washed them at the laundromat. Their dryer at home had been broken since last summer. Their washing machine had stopped at Christmas.

“You go all this way for her to take piano?” Ms. Anita asked. “I bet there’s somebody right over in Northeast.”

“You’re probably right, Ms. Anita,” Mom answered back. She had to yell so her voice would land on the waiting ears of Ms. Anita instead of the wind taking it out to the trees.

“Too much money over here, you ask me,” Ms. Anita said.

“Appreciate this ride, especially today. All of these rides you’ve given us. We could have just taken the bus—”

“Probably have to take two different ones to get you this far west of the park.”

“Three,” her mother said, but this time she did not yell.

The kids in her neighborhood all hated being west of the park: Woodley Park or Friendship Heights or Ellery’s favorite neighborhood (the site of her piano lessons, the site of today’s excitement), the Gold Coast. Ellery had no name for the collection of streets around her home where she skinned knees and hands. The houses on the Gold Coast weren’t just in rows, obedient toy soldiers. These houses were like gathering up all the toys Ellery had ever owned, the Barbies, the stuffed animals, the building blocks. They had what her mother called turrets or Juliet balconies and front yards big enough for a good game of tag. Even the plain brick ones caused a tightness in Ellery’s belly. Some of them had ivy growing up the sides, angling for a way in.

“I don’t know how you’ve been making it without a car—”

“We’ve been making it fine,” her father said.

“Even to the Gold Coast?” Ms. Anita asked. Her father said that Ms. Anita wouldn’t believe you even if you said water was wet. When Ellery went over to use Ms. Anita’s piano to practice, she would always ask how long it’d be. “Just an hour, Ms. Anita,” her mother told her. “About the same time it would take me to do your hair.” And then, Ms. Anita, putting a hand to her gelled ponytail, would say, “Well, if it’s just an hour . . .”

“Mom, look,” Ellery said. “I bet it’s cool in there.” She reached out to grip her mother’s forearm without turning to see where her fingers would land. Ellery could feel drops of sweat down her back like her mother pouring water over her head in the kitchen sink when she got her hair washed, the towel on her neck already good and soaked. The wetness now the stickiness of salt, not the stickiness of conditioner.

“So, this a recital?” Ms. Anita asked. She watched for the answer in her rearview mirror, waiting for Ellery’s mother to respond.

“No, it’s a competition. Mrs. Hamilton says that’s like a recital with prizes,” Ellery answered before her mother could.

“Oh yeah? You gonna win?” Ms. Anita asked. She jutted an elbow out to Ellery’s father and smiled.

“Yes,” Ellery said. When she played the piano, Ellery could find no edges to the world, no start and stop. Not in the music or in the Italian words Mrs. Hamilton used to tell Ellery to slow down or play loudly. The world was there for her. She was just waiting to come out and see it.

*  *  *  *  *

Ms. Anita’s car clunked into the circular driveway of the recital hall. It was really a kind of church, a synagogue, her father told them.

“Pretty slick, huh?” Dad said. But Ellery wouldn’t have called the building slick, not like the shine on the escalators in the Metro. The white building trimmed in the silver of its four large columns was more like the platter they used only for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. Ellery was never allowed to carry it to the table or even pick it up when she served herself turkey. Ms. Anita rounded the corners of the drive and braked her old car in front of the large wooden doors of the synagogue. The cicadas were quieter here.

“Ready?” her father asked. He craned around to smile at Ellery in the back seat. The armpits of his white shirt were already soaked through with sweat. Her mother rubbed her back and Ellery nodded.

“You sure you won’t come, Ms. Anita?” Mom asked.

“Got my book club,” Ms. Anita said. “But you call me and I’ll come back.”

Her father opened the car door and Ellery climbed out, trying to keep her legs together like her mother always said, but she couldn’t get out of the car like that. She jumped out and landed with a hop on the sidewalk. She made sure not to turn in case disapproval was on her mother’s face. Her father grabbed one of her hands, her mother the other, and they walked toward the building. Ms. Anita’s car creaked away behind them.

The four doors before them were the dark wood of the banister at Grandma’s house that Mom always told her was not meant for messing. Glass above the wood reflected their three bodies back to them, but it would have taken at least six Ellerys stacked on one another for her to reach the top. In the white stone above the glass, somebody had carved two candleholders and one picture of a book with round corners instead of pointy ones. It was better than any Gold Coast house she’d ever seen. Her father tugged at her hand to get her through one of the doors.

Inside, the ceilings stretched even higher than the glass. It would take even more Ellerys to reach the top. Her shoes echoed on the synagogue’s stone floor; each sole striking as if someone were bouncing a ball.

“Sure feels nice in here,” Dad said. He wiped his brow with his free hand.

The outstretched arms of smiling women with flowers pinned to the front of their clothes directed them to a red carpeted area in front of more doors. Now, Ellery’s shoes couldn’t be heard at all, as if she had vanished. There was just one door this time, wide and wooden. Her father grabbed a silver handle and opened it for Ellery to walk through. Her mother held her hand even tighter as if they were about to cross the street.

At the front of this new room, the one where she would perform, was the same rounded book, but bigger and lit up, maybe from a spotlight somewhere Ellery couldn’t see. Ellery and her mother belonged to a congregation that was small and, as her father said, too broke to worship anywhere better than a high school cafeteria. The sanctuary was a bunch of metal folding chairs and tables that sometimes had dried ketchup on them. It always smelled of newly opened cans of corn.

Here, the air was like right after her mother vacuumed the carpet. There were no worn-out tables, the ones at the front too beautiful for anybody to ever be allowed to get ketchup near them. Four steps led up to the stage, glowing from the light of the big book and from the gleam of polished wood. To the left side was all that mattered, a piano: grand, white, and gleaming. It was not the old upright at Ms. Anita’s or the kind at Mrs. Hamilton’s, smaller than this one and black.

Mrs. Hamilton descended from her place on the stage. Her long brown hair was piled on top of her head in a bun. Ellery’s mother wore her hair in a bun like that sometimes, but only when she didn’t care what her hair looked like. At the stove when she was cooking. When they carried laundry baskets full of clothes to the laundromat. Mrs. Hamilton wasn’t about to do laundry or cook a pot of spaghetti. Her hair was messy on purpose. And even though her dress sparkled, golden threads woven into the swirls of deep pink and white, Mrs. Hamilton didn’t look dressed up.

“And you’re here,” Mrs. Hamilton said. Even words that weren’t Italian Mrs. Hamilton said as though they were. She had lived in Europe, she told Ellery often. All over Europe. One place in Europe would have been plenty for Ellery, but that it was more than one seemed important to Mrs. Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton shook Mom’s and Dad’s hands, clasping their one hand with both of hers, ringed and nail polished. “The parents may sit anywhere they like. Closer is better of course to see the beautiful finger work Signorina Ellery will do.”

Her father scanned the half-filled cushioned movie theater seats. “Space right there.” He grabbed Ellery’s shoulder and shook it. “You’ll do great.”

“It’ll be beautiful. I already know,” her mother said. She fished for a comb in her purse and fussed over the front of Ellery’s hair. She leaned back to check her work and smiled. Baby powder peeked out from the neckline of her mother’s black dress. If Ellery touched it, the whiteness would only spread.

Her father jingled the change in his pocket. “Come on, we don’t want to lose those seats.”

Her mother stroked Ellery’s hair again. Dad put a hand on her back and led her away.

“Shall we meet your competition?” Mrs. Hamilton said.

The other students, some boys, mostly girls, were seated in the first row. A few of them only nodded at her as Mrs. Hamilton went down the line naming those she knew and prompting others to introduce themselves. “Have a seat here.” Mrs. Hamilton gestured to an empty seat between two girls, both in cropped, colorful sweaters and spring dresses. Both had stud earrings, and one, when she touched a hand to her tortoiseshell headband, revealed a silver bracelet with a tiny silver tag hanging from it. They sat with their ankles crossed and their hands picking at starched sundress collars. These girls got out of cars with their legs together and their shoes unscuffed.

“I’m Cara,” the girl without the bracelet said when Ellery sat down. She wasn’t nearly as pretty as the other girl. Mrs. Hamilton clicked away from them in her high heels.

“I’m Ellery,” she said. She turned to smile at the other girl too, the one with the bracelet, even though she hadn’t yet given her name.

“I like your hair,” the girl said. She pulled on her blond ponytail, resting it on her shoulder.

Ellery’s hair had been pressed that morning. She had begged her mother for months to let her cut it. She would be in junior high soon, she told her, couldn’t she be just a little grown now? Her mother finally cut it when she knew Ellery would be in the competition. Ellery felt the ends of her hair and smiled at her.

“I wish my hair were fuller like that. Mine is so fine and lays so flat, but you’ve got that kind of poof at your roots.” The girl widened her eyes when she said poof.

Ellery nodded. She felt an ache somewhere her arms were too short to reach.

“Lori!” Cara whisper-shouted before she let escape a small laugh. Her voice snapped to pity when Ellery’s hand went to the front of her hair. “She’s just like that,” Cara assured her.

Lori probably cheated at war and ate all the red Now and Laters in the pack. Lori might have lived in one of those houses that Ellery loved, but she wouldn’t last one minute with an alley-glass-skinned knee. She’d have gone home crying to her mother. She wouldn’t have gotten right back on her bike and kept riding.

One of the other white women besides Mrs. Hamilton quieted the crowd. Her fingers pressed down on the air as if she were playing all the keys of the piano at once.

Ellery turned to search for the faces of her parents, but she could no longer tell, even in the swarm of white bodies, which bodies she belonged to. She thought she saw her mother’s hair between the gelled heads of two suited white men, but when she leaned her head back to make sure, Lori hissed at her.

“Your teacher’s looking at you. You better pay attention,” Lori said. Ellery tilted forward, sitting straighter in her seat so she wouldn’t disappoint Mrs. Hamilton. When she glanced Mrs. Hamilton’s way though, she wasn’t watching Ellery, only the stage. “Maybe she was looking somewhere else,” Lori said. She shrugged her shoulders.

Ellery placed her folded hands in her lap just like Lori and tried to hold her knees together through the songs of the youngest kids, all of the tunes short, in four-four time, and played allegro, joyful and fast.

Finally, Ellery’s age group began to play. Each pianist (Mrs. Hamilton said Ellery should call herself that) in their turn going up to the stage, having their piece announced, and then setting off, waiting for their fingers to remember all the movements that had been drilled into them for weeks. Some of them had played in competitions before, Mrs. Hamilton told her at her lessons. But it didn’t mean they were any better than her and even those who had won had no advantage: “Winning once doesn’t mean you will win again,” Mrs. Hamilton said.

Lori went up to play and Ellery let her knees go limp and her ankles uncross. A woman announced the title of Lori’s piece and before she sat at the bench, Lori raised a shoulder and a smile for the audience, who complimented this preperformance with louder applause than the girl before her had received at the end of her song. From head to toe, Lori was a new Mary Jane shoe fresh out of the box, buffed to a shine so you could see your own reflection in it, but all lopsided and weird. The squeeze and hurt of it. Still, Ellery also longed for pretty things. She clapped, but with her hands still in her lap.

The Italian words resounded in Lori’s playing. Forte when it should be. Piano when it was best. Lori might really know those words, maybe she had been all over Europe like Mrs. Hamilton. Lori’s finger positioning was precise, her hands arched as if tennis balls rested under her palms. It was the way Mrs. Hamilton wanted Ellery to play, but Ellery’s hands sometimes fell a little flat, perched too low.

“Hey,” Cara said, poking Ellery’s still-folded hands. From the side of the stage, this time Mrs. Hamilton was looking at her and motioning with both hands for Ellery to come. Standing, Ellery would have the best chance to see her parents, but looking behind her might mean tripping over something. She walked toward Mrs. Hamilton, never turning around and with her hands clasped in front of her.

“Go up and wait.” Mrs. Hamilton gently pushed at Ellery’s back. She walked up the three steps to the stage, concealed from the audience by velvet curtains. Ellery could focus on Lori’s face now, the way she couldn’t sitting right next to her. Her nose was smaller than Ellery’s. Her cheeks the pink of watermelon candy, a color that would have been muted on Ellery’s dark skin. Lori’s ponytail flounced as she played, as excited to be there with her as the rest of the audience was. She was pretty good, but maybe church just made music better.

Sometimes on Sundays, Ellery’s mother would raise a hand and wave it during a song. Once after service, Ellery asked her why she did that. All her mother would say is that she felt full. Ellery thought of the discomfort of too many hamburgers or one scoop too many of ice cream, but her mother’s full—a hand at her heart and the dots of tears at the corners of her eyes—was different. “All I feel just comes out,” she told Ellery.

Lori finished, and when she rose from the bench and bowed, the audience clapped happily. Three people in the front wrote on sheets of paper, the judges, she now remembered Mrs. Hamilton whispering to her on the walk to her seat. A row of well-dressed white people stood up, clapping louder than the rest. Lori exited the stage and came toward Ellery. Lori looked like she might speak, but only poked her lips out at Ellery and pulled her wandering ponytail back to its place on her shoulder.

The woman announced Ellery’s piece and extended her hand to invite Ellery to start playing. Ellery moved out of the shadows of the curtains and stood before the audience. She started to bow, but she did it slowly hoping during her bending she would finally see her parents, but she couldn’t find them. She wasn’t even sure where her own seat was anymore. The distance from her to the piano grew, but Ellery imagined this was Ms. Anita’s house, the same shaky wooden bench, the same smell of bleach and Vaseline, her mother just starting on Ms. Anita’s hair.

Ellery sat at the keys and placed the tips of her fingers on the ivories. She lightly stroked them. Then, she finally pressed down and played the opening chord. She loved the way it sounded. Her fingers raced across the keys to the next chord. Too fast, she heard Mrs. Hamilton say in her head as she would in practice. Ellery slowed and pressed each note so every one would be heard. She chanted Italian words, whispering them to herself. Most had nothing to do with her song, but the melody of them made her want to do her best. The notes played well together, and those notes led to new notes, which led to other notes. Ellery didn’t know if this piano was better or if this church, this synagogue, where music played that made people feel full, was doing the same for her music, but she felt it. She felt full. Or maybe she felt just out of the dirt, out from underground and into the summer sun. She touched the last of the notes, her fingers light on them, piano, and then off of them and back into her lap.

She heard the clapping before she stood up all the way, before she turned around and took her bow. And then she saw them, her parents standing up like Lori’s had. Her father yelling and calling out her name. Her mother wasn’t clapping, but she had a hand to her heart. Cara was waiting to play and could only stare at Ellery. At the bottom of the three stairs, Mrs. Hamilton leaned toward Ellery and touched the side of her face. “Beautiful,” she told her. Ellery smiled. Some people were still clapping, some people who weren’t even her parents. Ellery walked back to her seat. Lori didn’t say anything, didn’t even give her a smile. Ellery sat and Cara played, but even though the room was filled with as much sound as before, Ellery heard nothing over the thump of her heartbeat.

*  *  *  *  *

They announced the winners for the younger kids first, the third prize and the second. The first-prize winner, a boy with blue pants, a pinstriped shirt, and a bowtie, ran up when they called his name. His parents took pictures, and he smiled and posed until they said he could stop. The woman who had introduced all of them stepped back to the microphone after the little boy finally left the stage. She thanked everyone for coming and then began to thank a long list of other people.

“You were really good,” Cara whispered to Ellery. Ellery smiled, but didn’t thank her, wary of daggers of giggles that might follow.

“Any thing can make noise,” Lori said.

“You were really good, like really good,” Cara said again without a giggle or a smile to diminish her words.

“For our nine-to-twelve age group, we had some excellent competitors representing many parts of the city. Our judges had a difficult task, but we chose three pianists we think excelled today.”

She paused, and Ellery didn’t want to hope too hard that her name would come out of her mouth. “In third place and winning one hundred dollars, Bobby McMillan.”

From the other side of the crowd, a boy Ellery hadn’t even remembered playing went up. He shook the woman’s hand up and down and up and down until she took her hand away to give him two stiff pieces of paper, a certificate and a check.

“And, in second place, with a piece that showed real technique by a pianist who exhibited great poise—that’s the importance of this competition too, not just playing music, but turning these kids into true ladies and gentlemen.”

Ellery didn’t know if she had been ladylike enough for this woman or if she had “great poise.”

“Our second-place prize of two hundred fifty dollars goes to Lori Hansen.”

“See,” Lori breathed out before she went forward to claim her trophy and check. She curtsied for the audience and they clapped harder.

Lori came back to Ellery’s side and hissed, “Can’t imagine you’ll be able to top that.”

“And our first-prize winner in our nine-to-twelve age group is someone who really surprised the judges . . .” The woman stopped, building urgency, and Ellery knew her mother was in the audience saying to her father, “Why don’t she get on with it?” Ellery wanted her to, but then she didn’t because she might not have won and then she would have to turn to this girl next to her and say something about her winning, not because she really wanted to, but because she would want her to know her parents had taught her well.

Ellery took in a deep breath to either help her say “Thank you” to the judges or “Congratulations” to Lori.

“The winner is Ellery Cook.”

Ellery heard a squeal from the audience. She walked up the steps of the stage and to the waiting woman. The fullness of playing multiplied, winning all the marbles in a game of jacks, seeing a tree full of cicadas where it seemed at first there was just one. The trophy was just a note, a musical note, mounted on a stone stand, but on that stand were the words First Place. But what Ellery really wanted was the $500 check.

The woman smiled and handed it to her. “Congratulations.”

Ellery didn’t shake her hand like the boy had and she didn’t curtsy. Her smile and thank-you were so small, they ended up being only for herself. She descended the stairs of the stage to more congratulations and compliments on her playing. Everyone was standing up, kids finding their parents and parents finding their joyous or disappointed child.

Lori and Cara were just past the last step. Ellery fingered her first-place trophy and Lori fingered the careful pleats of her dress.

“Winning is just for fun,” Lori said.

“It was fun,” Ellery said. “How I won.”

The watermelon candy at Lori’s cheeks darkened.

Out of the clusters of people, Ellery’s parents emerged. Her father whooping and letting loose emphatic one-word sentences. “Yes.” “Right.” “Winner.” Ellery could see from her mother’s swollen eyes that she had been crying.

“This one,” Mrs. Hamilton said, floating toward them and pointing at Ellery, “did magnificently well.”

“We thought so too,” Dad said. He patted Ellery’s head, mussing her hair until she allowed a smile to escape.

“It was so beautiful. The song,” her mother said. “I’ve heard her play it, but—”

“She played it better today than she ever has,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “You like your prize?”

Ellery nodded, renewing her grip on the trophy. She moved away from her parents so she could present the check. She wanted to do it just like the lady on the lottery drawing. “Here. It’s for the car. We won’t have to take the bus,” Ellery said. She unfolded her arm and let the peach-colored paper dangle from her fingertips.

Her mother glanced at Mrs. Hamilton and then squatted down in front of Ellery. She placed her hand under one curled side of Ellery’s hair. “Honey, it’s a savings bond.”

The bond was stiffer than cash or a check, but Ellery didn’t know why that made a difference. She searched her father’s face for the answer.

“See, baby, that number it has? That five hundred? Well, it’s worth something it’s not really worth yet. But by the time you go to college, by then, what it says it’s worth, it’ll be worth,” her father said.

“Don’t you worry about a car. This is yours,” her mother said. She pushed Ellery’s hair behind her ear, only to pull it back out again. Grooming her even though her moment was over.

“Oh.” Ellery dropped the hand with the bond down to her side.

“You kind of have to believe it’ll get to be worth that in time,” her father said. He put a hand on Mom’s back and she straightened back to her height. Ellery looked no one in the eye.

“You won, remember?” Mrs. Hamilton said, her voice in a sharp key. “Smile.”

*  *  *  *  *

They waited in the circular driveway for Ms. Anita to come. From the trees, the cicadas were deafening the street, before they would be gone for seventeen more years. By then, Ellery would be grown and the $500 savings bond would finally be worth its face value. Her parents chattered along with the cicadas. They told her how proud they were and how beautiful her playing was. Mom couldn’t wait to tell the other members of the choir, and Dad couldn’t wait to tell everybody he knew.

Lori and her family came out through the dark, wooden doors. Ellery tightened her grip on the trophy and savings bond. The people who had stood up and cheered for Lori surrounded her now. Two men in suits and two ladies in grown-up versions of the dress Lori had on. The group walked around Ellery’s family, but Lori came closer than the others, brushing past Ellery’s mother, her pink cashmere cardigan nudging the polyester of her mother’s dress. Her mother turned toward Lori and her family.

“Congratulations,” Lori said. The family members nodded their approval of Lori’s word.

“Say thank you, Ellery,” her mother said. Ellery squeezed her mother’s hand, but did not speak. Her mother smiled at Lori and found the faces of the adults. “Your daughter. She was wonderful.”

“Yes, thank you.” The woman had Lori’s face, but no watermelon candy at her cheeks. Hair that might once have been pulled into a coveted ponytail lay on her shoulders, straightened and brightly blond. On one wrist was a bracelet with the same small tag that Lori’s had and a ring with a stone so far from her finger it seemed suspended in midair. Her dress looked as if it had been drycleaned. No sweat ringed her underarms. There was no baby powder to be found.

“That dress is very pretty,” her mother said. She always knew how much things cost without looking at price tags. “Slow down,” she would tell Ellery, “don’t splash water on that lady,” she might say, “that dress cost her good money.” “Don’t kick that dirt up around that man, his suit is more than I make in a week.”

“Thank you.” The woman took Lori’s hand and turned away from Ellery’s mother.

They walked to a car nearby, silver like the synagogue’s columns. The car’s horn beeped and one of the men opened the front door for the woman holding Lori’s hand. The man opened the door for Lori next. Lori turned back and smiled. Her teeth were so straight, white fence posts lined up and freshly painted. She smoothed out the back of her skirt and sat down. The man closed the door behind her and all Ellery could see of Lori through the window was the pink of her face and the blond of her ponytail.

“Now, that’s a beautiful thing right there. Never seen that model in that color,” her father said. He leaned down and said very near Ellery’s ear, “One day soon, we’ll be riding in that.”

Other car doors closed, slammed. The cicadas only got louder.

Lori’s car started to take off, going around the circular driveway of the synagogue. Ellery dropped her mother’s hand and walked toward the departing car, quickening her steps when the wheels began to spin faster. When her legs couldn’t keep up, she bent down and picked up the shells of the cicadas, pushed to the side in gutters and broken under indifferent wheels. She hurled the black bodies at the windows of the car. She ran now, her Mary Janes pinching. She picked up more cicada shells, throwing two or three at a time and then three or four more. She threw all the shells she could find, even when the car pulled out of the driveway. She was breathing fast by the time she stopped running at the end of the drive, still holding a couple of cicada shells in her hand. She walked back toward the synagogue, turning around as she went to see how far away the car was.

“Did you see?” Ellery asked her parents. Ellery breathed out and smiled. “Did you?”