"A cello?" Zazu asked, eyeing the massive black case as they descended the narrow, concrete stairs to the library basement. "You're bringing a cello to a secret meeting with the school's most terrifying librarian?"
"It's not a meeting, Zazu. It's an audition," Leya whispered. "Mrs. Mulenga doesn't talk to anyone who doesn't 'contribute to the cultural preservation' of the school. If we show up empty-handed, she'll think we're just another pair of students looking for a place to make out in the stacks."
Zazu stiffened, his gaze momentarily snagging on the line of her throat before he looked away. "Right. Cultural preservation. Noted."
The basement smelled of damp stone and the vanilla-scented rot of old paper. Mrs. Mulenga was exactly as the rumors described: a woman who looked like she had been carved out of a single piece of dried mahogany. She was hunched over a desk at the back of the archives, meticulously repairing a map of the 1964 Copperbelt.
"The archives are closed for the mid-term audit," she said without looking up. "Go back to the sunlight, children. The past doesn't want to be disturbed today."
"I'm not here for the past, Mrs. Mulenga," Leya said, her British accent ringing out clearly in the cramped space. "I'm here to practice. The acoustics in the Music Block are too... modern. I heard the archives were built with the original stone from the old mission."
Mrs. Mulenga finally looked up. Her eyes, magnified behind thick spectacles, scanned Leya with a brutal efficiency. Then they drifted to Zazu. "And the Tembo boy? Is he your page-turner?"
"I'm his witness," Zazu said, stepping forward. "And I'm here to remind you that my mother always said you were the only person in this school who knew where the skeletons were buried."
The librarian's expression didn't soften, but she laid her pen down. "Your mother had a loud mouth and a brilliant mind. Both are dangerous. Why are you really here?"
Leya didn't answer with words. She sat on a wooden crate, unlatched the case, and pulled out the cello. She didn't play a song. She played a single, haunting scale in a minor key—a dark, resonant sound that seemed to pull the very air out of the room.
The music hung in the dust motes. Mrs. Mulenga's gaze shifted. For a moment, she wasn't a librarian; she was a woman remembering a different Zambia.
"The Heritage Society," Leya said, the note still vibrating in the wood of the instrument. "The charter states that it cannot be dissolved as long as there is a 'living performance of the culture' on school grounds. I'm the performance. Zazu is the record-keeper."
Zazu stepped into the light, pulling the blue notebook—not the Ledger, but a decoy sketchbook—from his bag. "We want to reactivate the Society, Mrs. Mulenga. Under the 1992 bylaws. We need a faculty sponsor who remembers what the Kapiri and Tembo names meant before the 2012 audit."
The mention of the date made Mrs. Mulenga's hands tremble, just slightly. She looked at the cello, then at the two teenagers standing in the shadows of their parents' choices.
"If I sign that charter," she whispered, "the Board will come for me. They like their history sanitized, like a hotel lobby. They don't want the smell of the mines and the sound of the struggle in their hallways."
"Then let them come," Leya said, her jaw set. "I've already lost everything. I'm not afraid of a board meeting."
"And I," Zazu added, looking directly at Leya, "am tired of being a statue in a lobby."
Mrs. Mulenga let out a long, shaky breath. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a heavy, velvet-bound ledger. She opened it to a page that had been blank for over a decade.
"The Heritage Society," she murmured, her fountain pen scratching against the paper. "Reactivated. Chair: Leya Kapiri. Secretary: Zazu Tembo."
She looked at them both, her eyes fierce. "Now, keep playing that cello, Miss Kapiri. If anyone asks, you're practicing for the Founders' Day. But if you're going to start a fire, make sure it's big enough that they can't put it out with a water hose."
As they climbed back up the stairs, the cello case felt lighter on Leya's shoulder. In the narrow stairwell, Zazu stopped, forcing her to pause a step above him.
"We did it," he whispered.
"We started it," she corrected.
The proximity in the cramped space was suffocating. She could see the gold flecks in his eyes and the way his pulse was jumpy at the base of his neck.
"Friday is in two days," Zazu said, his voice dropping an octave. "Until then, we have to be perfect. No fighting. No secret rehearsals. Just the Society."
"And the music?"
Zazu reached out, his thumb grazing the wood of the cello case, dangerously close to her hand. "The music is the only thing they can't take away from us."
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