The Song He Tried to Steal

By the next morning, half the choir knew something had happened.

No one knew exactly what.

Rumors moved faster than facts at Westbridge School, especially when a rehearsal was canceled without explanation. By registration, one student had told Amara the concert might be postponed because she had accused Mr. Vance of stealing “some notes.” By lunch, another had heard that her mother had threatened to sue the school.

Neither was true.

That did not make them less popular.

Amara carried her tray to the far end of the cafeteria and sat beside Priya Shah, the choir’s soloist.

Priya did not begin with a question.

She slid a carton of orange juice across the table.

“You look like you forgot breakfast.”

“I had toast.”

“You had one bite of toast in form room.”

“You’re disturbingly observant.”

“I’m a soprano. We survive by noticing who is breathing badly.”

Amara almost smiled.

Priya leaned closer.

“Do you want me to ask what’s happening?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Also yes.”

“That’s usually how secrets work.”

Amara glanced around the room.

“I showed Mr. Vance a song I wrote. He said it wasn’t ready. Then he arranged it for the choir and put his name on the program as composer and lyricist.”

Priya went completely still.

“Lyricist too?”

“Yes.”

“But the lyrics are the same?”

“Almost word for word.”

Priya sat back.

“That’s why the rehearsal stopped.”

“The headteacher is reviewing it.”

Priya looked down at her sandwich.

“People are going to be awful.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean people who don’t even care about Mr. Vance. They’ll be awful because they’re scared about the concert.”

Amara pushed peas around her plate.

“I know that too.”

Priya’s voice softened.

“Are you sure?”

Amara looked at her.

The question did not sound accusing. That made it harder.

“Yes.”

“Then show me.”

Amara hesitated.

“Not because I don’t believe you,” Priya added. “Because if people ask me what I think, I don’t want to repeat rumors.”

Amara opened the oldest recording.

They shared one earbud each.

Through the phone, the sound of Amara’s kitchen returned: the hum of the refrigerator, the clink of a spoon against a mug, Denise’s tired voice in the background asking whether homework was finished.

Then the melody.

Priya listened all the way through.

When it ended, she removed the earbud slowly.

“That’s the song.”

Amara swallowed.

“I know.”

“No. I mean it’s not a similar idea. It’s the song. The alto entrance is different in the arrangement, and the bridge isn’t there, but everything else…”

She stopped.

Amara waited.

Priya looked angry now.

“He told us he wrote it over the summer.”

The cafeteria noise seemed to pull away.

“What?”

“First rehearsal. He said he’d been working on a new piece over the summer and wanted the choir to premiere it.”

Amara stared at her.

“When?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“I gave him the music two weeks ago.”

Priya blinked.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“No.”

Unless he had been preparing the story before he even took her song.

That thought stayed with Amara through the afternoon.

At four, Headteacher Ellis called her back to his office. This time Denise could not attend until her shift started at six, so Amara went alone.

The deputy head, Mrs. Carver, sat beside Ellis with a laptop open.

Mr. Vance was not there.

Ellis gestured to the chair.

Amara sat immediately.

“We received Daniel’s files,” he said.

“And?”

Mrs. Carver turned the laptop so Amara could see a list of documents.

“There are three notation files associated with the piece. The earliest is dated August twenty-seventh.”

Amara’s stomach dropped.

“That’s before I sent it to him.”

“Yes.”

For one horrible second, she wondered whether she had somehow remembered wrong. Whether she had heard a melody at school and unconsciously copied it. Whether Mr. Vance really had written something first.

Then Mrs. Carver said, “The date is in the file name, not the creation metadata.”

Amara frowned.

“The actual file was created October eleventh.”

Two days after she sent him her music.

Mrs. Carver clicked another tab.

“The earliest recoverable version includes your first verse and chorus exactly as they appear in your October fourth recording.”

Relief came so quickly it almost made Amara dizzy.

“Then that proves it.”

“It proves a great deal,” Ellis said. “But we’re still reviewing the full record.”

“Why?”

He looked uncomfortable.

“Because Daniel says you gave him permission to develop the song as a departmental work.”

“I didn’t.”

“He says the conversation occurred verbally.”

“It didn’t.”

“I believe you understand why we have to document both statements.”

Amara leaned back.

This was the part she had not imagined. Truth was not a door that opened once you found the right key. It was a corridor full of smaller doors, each requiring another explanation.

“Can I see what he submitted?”

Mrs. Carver glanced at Ellis.

He nodded.

She opened a scanned page.

It was Amara’s handwritten sheet music.

Across the top, in Mr. Vance’s blue ink, were the words:

Promising. Needs structural development. Discussed collaborative arrangement with student 10/10.

Amara stared.

“He wrote that after I gave it to him.”

“Yes.”

“He never discussed collaboration with me.”

“Do you have any message from that date?”

Amara opened her phone.

October tenth.

There was one message from Mr. Vance.

Thank you, Amara. I’ll make notes before Friday.

Nothing else.

She handed the phone over.

Mrs. Carver took a screenshot for the review file.

“What happens now?” Amara asked.

Ellis folded his hands.

“We have asked Daniel not to contact you directly while the review is active.”

“Will the choir perform the song?”

“We haven’t decided.”

“If you take it out, everyone will blame me.”

“That cannot determine authorship.”

“I didn’t say it should.”

He paused.

“What do you want, Amara?”

The question surprised her.

She had been prepared to defend what happened. She had not prepared a list of what would make it right.

“My name on my song,” she said finally.

“Only that?”

She thought of the lie about summer. The altered file name. The note claiming a conversation that never happened.

“No.”

Ellis waited.

“I want the choir to know what happened. Not rumors. Not that there was a disagreement. I want them to know he took it.”

Mrs. Carver’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

“And I want to perform it.”

“You?”

“With the choir. If they still want to.”

Ellis nodded slowly.

“That may be possible.”

At six fifteen, Amara met her mother in the auditorium corridor.

Denise was wiping fingerprints from the glass display case.

“Well?”

Amara told her everything.

When she reached the false August date, Denise stopped cleaning.

“He planned the lie.”

“It looks like it.”

Denise set the cloth down.

“Then this isn’t about misunderstanding credit.”

“No.”

They stood in silence.

From inside the auditorium came scattered piano notes. Not a rehearsal. Someone was practicing scales.

Amara leaned against the wall.

“I keep thinking if I hadn’t shown him the song, none of this would have happened.”

Denise turned to her.

“If you hadn’t trusted your teacher, he wouldn’t have had the chance to betray that trust.”

“That’s basically what I said.”

“No. You’re blaming the trusting part.”

Amara looked away.

Her mother picked up the cloth again, then stopped.

“When I was twenty-two, I worked in a hotel kitchen. My supervisor used to change the timecards. Fifteen minutes here, half an hour there. Everybody knew. Nobody complained because we needed the jobs.”

“You never told me that.”

“I never thought it mattered to your life.”

“What happened?”

“Eventually someone complained.”

“You?”

Denise gave a tired smile.

“No. I wish I could tell you it was. A woman named Carol did. She got called difficult for six months. Then the company had to repay all of us.”

Amara absorbed that.

“Did people thank her?”

“Some. Some were angry because the investigation cut our overtime while they checked records.”

“That’s unfair.”

“It is.”