A Crooked Kind of Perfect

Zoe is 10 years old when the story begins, and she has naïve ideas about what perfection is and how it is achieved. She also holds perfection in high regard, believing it to be of the utmost importance. When Zoe imagines herself as a pianist playing at Carnegie Hall, the vision is filled with grandiosity and glamor. She imagines tiaras, hundreds of admirers, and a sophisticated Maestro who calls her his own. Zoe asks her parents for a piano, but because of her dad’s tendency to make impulsive purchases, she ends up with an organ instead. It is less than perfect, particularly for her, but she has to learn to accept and love it anyway, much like her own parents. Zoe’s life usually doesn’t give her the results that she wants, and she has learned to do without most of the things she hopes to do. The piano, however, is not something she is willing to give up, and she uses the organ to get to her actual goal. Zoe starts taking lessons, initially on a paper keyboard, which proves not to help her at all. When she starts taking lessons on the organ, she instantly expects to be called a prodigy by her teacher; instead, “[she] see[s]