SAT Test Reading Writing and Language Tests Essay

She had not played seriously since college. Accompanying the theater troupe’s performances and
clowning around as her friend Parker picked out old Line Beatles songs on the piano didn’t count-that
wasn’t 5 real music, music that made you forget where you were, made you forget where your arms and
legs ended and a luscious sound began.
She had started playing the cello when she was nine, shortly after the move to Arizona. At the beginning
of 10 the school year in Akron, every child in fourth grade had been issued a pre-instrument called a
tonette so the teacher could determine who had an “aptitude” for music. Virginia had liked the neatness of
the tonette, its modest musical range and how it fit into her school 15 desk on the right side. Whenever she
covered a fingerhole, she felt the contour of its slightly raised lip and imagined she was playing with the
tentacle of an octopus.
She had chafed through months of scales and 20 simple songs, waiting for the moment when she would
walk across the auditorium stage and choose: kneel among the rows of somber black cases, undo the
metal clasps and fling open the lid to reveal her instrument, a flute or a clarinet, glowing softly, half buried
in deep 25 blue velvet.
But before she could make her choice, they moved to Arizona. There, the music instruments were stored
in a classroom trailer, and when she opened the flute case she nearly winced from the glare bouncing off
all that polished silver, those gloating caps and hinges
The clarinet was worse-it looked like an over-designed walking stick, sounded like a clown laughing, and
had reeds that needed to be softened in spit.
The music teacher shut the cases with a succession of curt clicks. “That leaves the strings,” she sighed,
leading the way back through the noonday blaze and into the main building, where the violins, violas,
cellos and double basses were housed. There, by virtue of its sonorous name, Virginia asked for the
violoncello- and was too intimidated by the teacher’s growing impatience to protest when what emerged