SSAT Practice Test 9

The Tuner

¹Mr. Szabo arrived at nine with a canvas bag that clanked like a toolbox at the bottom of a lake, and Priya, who had been told to "make herself useful," held the front door open longer than necessary. He nodded at her, then at the piano, as though the two of them had already been introduced and found wanting.

²The piano had belonged to Priya's great-aunt, and for three years it had been out of tune in a way the family had stopped noticing. Middle C still sounded more or less like middle C. It was the chords that gave the piano away: they shimmered unpleasantly, like heat rising off a parking lot in August.

³"You have a tuning app," Mr. Szabo said. It was not a question. Priya held up her phone. The screen showed a needle trembling just left of center. "Good," he said. "Put it in your pocket."

⁴He struck two keys together, an octave apart, and told her to listen not to the notes but to what happened between them. At first she heard nothing but sound. Then, underneath it, she caught a faint throb — wah, wah, wah — like a ceiling fan with one bent blade. "That," he said, "is the piano arguing with itself."

⁵He fitted his lever over a tuning pin and turned it so slightly that Priya was not sure he had moved at all. The throb slowed. Wah . . . wah . . . He turned again. The throb stretched out until it was no longer a pulse but a long, drowsy swell, and then it was simply gone, and the two notes sat together like one wide note.

⁶Priya realized she had been holding her breath. Mr. Szabo was already moving to the next pin. "Now you," he said, and held out the lever, handle first.