Near the end of the first year of the reign of terror, when the students in the accounting department were succumbing to senioritis and wondering what they could do with the "good person activities" budget, Alan barged into the leadership room with YouTube open.

"Check this out!" Alan commanded, and they watched as two twenty-somethings played the Moonlight Sonata on a giant floor piano, roughly the length of the walkway in front of the administrative offices, to a crowd of adoring fans. "Wouldn't this be fun? Imagine a bunch of Epsilons, one for every piano key, providing the entertainment for Open House. We have the money. I want this installed by Monday." Alan did not play the piano, but he claimed partial credit, being remarkably skilled at the violin despite his distaste for any and all classical music. When Alan imagined himself clad in a tuxedo dancing for the amusement of the guidance counselors, and them applauding and not snickering, he was far off reality. For one, they would be snickering when he tried playing Christmas carols the following week. His victims du jour, seeing this project as an easy way to get out of doing any work while having a fun story to tell their friends, saluted Alan sharply and promised they'd get right on it.

And they did: Frank arrived at school Monday earlier than usual, with no knowledge of the piano, and wondered what on God's green Earth that infernal noise was—while thankfully faint from outside the central courtyard, inside there was no mistaking that there was a concert with an audience of too many and performers clearly chosen unwillingly. The leadership students who had been tasked with installing the piano noticed that while it fit perfectly, this came at the expense of making it impossible to avoid playing something when entering or exiting the offices without making a desperate lunge for the lawn. On the positive side, as they also discovered, if people were to simultaneously exit all three office doors, they played an inverted C minor chord, so that was good enough.

It did not take too long for the student complaints to come in (the counselors, who had been given noise-canceling headphones long ago, couldn't have cared less, and spent one brunch period jumping through a Bach fugue): it turned out that the Epsilons doing janitorial work outside did not particularly enjoy their new background accompaniment, while the Alphas trying to eat lunch in quiet only approved of the noise when Alan was testing his Epsilon ensemble theory. Frank found the Epsilon ensemble amusing, even conducting them through some of his favorite tunes, but was forced to agree there was something flawed about the entire project.

His focus then became identifying who had approved this: it was unthinkable that something so novel would make it past the club's ever-watchful eyes, meaning someone was acting from within. It was easy enough to stow away the floor piano for another day without too much headache—Behrooz was handy with a screwdriver, and took some joy in taking on the endless renovations the school's budget increase demanded—but the chain of command had fallen somewhere, and Frank was going to find it.

"I swear on my honor, my parents' honor, the school's honor, I'm not asking you because you're going to be demoted. There's no consequences to saying yes if you're responsible. Did you or did you not install the floor piano?" Frank asked politely but firmly, growing a bit tired after ten minutes of increasingly convoluted interrogations.

"We were involved in behaviors relating to physical construction that resulted in the floor piano being present in front of the administrative offices," one of the gathered leadership students finally admitted.

"And were these 'behaviors relating to physical construction' your idea? Or, hmm, let me rephrase this: were these physical constructions also your ideological constructions? You know what, that makes no sense, but let's roll with it." After about thirty seconds of silence, another student piped up, on the verge of tears:

"It was Alan! Alan made us install the piano! He showed us this video on his phone of people playing Beethoven. I knew I should have asked you, but he sounded like he was going to be mad, and I didn't want to be punished!"

"Calm down, whatever your name is. It was good while it lasted, and we can roll out the black-and-white carpet again for Open House or something. Say, now that you mention it, this reminds me of that Tom Hanks movie from a while back. At FAO Schwartz, that big toy store up in New York, he and some other guy danced to 'Heart And Soul.' Wait—'Heart And Soul.' You and you, get this piano assembled once school ends, and be sure you can stick around for an hour or so—but be stealthy about it."

Juliet could only speculate why Frank had told her to meet him outside the front offices after school, but he had used a smiley face emoji, which either meant he had finally given up his inhibitions or had read a leadership book that said they made him look more relatable. She went to her locker after school to apply lipstick and perfume, something she never bothered with on normal days, but this day promised to be anything but that. Frank was sitting outside the office on his phone and didn't notice her arrival until she tapped him on the shoulder.

"So what's the surprise? It's so quiet—everyone's left already. Did you have something special you wanted to show me?" Juliet asked with an unusually genuine smile.

"Remember back at the lake, when I taught you that piano duet? Do you still remember it?"

"Of course I do. I even remember the lyrics."

"Well, shall we dance?" Frank asked, and he grandly gestured to the bass clef while he took his position.

"Always."

"I'm going to improvise a bit—jazz it up, you know. Actually get through the full song. You have a far better voice than I do if you want to try singing along."

"Still in C, or want to transpose it?"

"We can do C going to E flat, but since when did you actually know what keys were? Did I spend all that time asking you to count the gaps between them for nothing?"

"Well, I didn't know then, but I've been trying to teach myself a bit after that, just so I'd be prepared. We have a decent piano at home that my parents got a while back since they wanted me to learn, but since I wasn't interested they never made me. So we just had it sitting around. Now I can play 'Fur Elise.'"

"Want to try that after this?"

"Of course!"

Frank could not deny that he was having fun, and that despite Juliet's minor overconfidence, they sounded kind of good. Still, there was one thing that he couldn't quite explain:

"So, Juliet, what's up with the perfume? I don't think you ever wear it, except when we get meals outside of school—and why only then too? This isn't a special occasion or anything. I just had a fun idea and thought you'd be up to play around a bit."

"I'm always up for 'playing around a bit,' or 'improvising,' or whatever you want to call it. No, I just thought this was a special occasion, like any of those, but I guess I was wrong," Juliet said with a slight pout.

"No, don't take that the wrong way. It was just an innocent question. Maybe next time we can find a real piano and work on your fingering." Juliet broke into heavy laughter, and put her hand on Frank's shoulder as she caught her breath. Frank knew he had made yet another tactical mistake, the first of which was obviously asking someone desperate for any validation to come see him privately after school. Or maybe it was the smiley face emoji. It probably was.

"You're a riot. It's a shame we aren't playing the flute, or we could work some embouchure practice into it too. If we're really advanced, we could try tonguing," Juliet shot back with a grin.

"For someone so musical, these puns are on the verge of being tone-deaf. Want to try 'Heart and Soul' again?"

Mr. T wasn't quite sure what was going on by the offices, but a faint echo had reached into the school hallways, and after he packed up to leave, he stood by the door to the courtyard to listen in. Something something "lost control, the way a fool would do..." something something "never before were mine so strangely willing," something something "one embrace... got me loving you madly..." and Mr. T knew not to approach. He considered himself a good judge of character and appraiser of young hearts, and Frank and Juliet's demeanors the following day told him that they viewed that magic afternoon as no more special than any other. He didn't even dare to ask why they both quietly hummed the tune as they worked. But he knew that someday, they would play that song together, when they had had a few more years of retrospection, and appreciate what special sanctity that moment had. Few were lucky enough to have their own special song.

Discussion Questions:

In You Must Remember This, Frank and Juliet also sang "Heart And Soul" together (in Chapter 29)—do you think these two moments are romantic?

How has Frank and Juliet's relationship been portrayed differently in this sequel versus the first book?

What other instances have there been of wholesome moments resulting from the club's overreach?