I realized two things then: that on some level I’d been waiting for a way to tell her about Juilliard, and also that maybe I would never be able to. “Of course. Sunny—you are a good person.”
“But maybe all this time I’ve been so focused on my own stuff and meanwhile Jason was like living his own nightmare, and I had no idea. Have you noticed all the new stuff he’s had lately?”
“What do you mean new stuff?”
“Like a bunch of new clothes, and he got an Apple Watch.”
“Did he?” I hadn’t noticed.
“And I’m pretty sure his phone is new too. And after that money his mom gave us—his parents must have gotten him all that, right? Or maybe his mom? And it makes me sick thinking about them just, like, buying him a bunch of shit. I think it just scares me because we’ve all worked so hard here and we’re going on to the next thing and I worry it’s like, I’ll poison the rest of my life because yeah, I was ‘successful’ ”—she put air quotes around it—“but then I had bad morals. So I think this will be good. It’s something we can all do for him and each other and I think that’s important, right? And I think I’m definitely a better person with you guys than, like, in ASB, so there’s that.”
“Right,” I said, and made myself smile like my stomach wasn’t in knots. “That’s the most important thing.”
I just wouldn’t think about Juilliard, I told myself. And it mostly worked, because I was so focused then on practicing the Mendelssohn solo feverishly for the BAYS audition, and something was happening: I was falling in love with the piece. I’d found recordings of it and was listening to them every night as I was studying for finals, trying each time to notice something new. I heard the surprise of the rising and falling, the marching sound of the call and echo, how inside those ominous, imperious chords there were little hints of uncertainty, notes that felt like, if you let them, they might take off in another direction altogether.
I wanted this solo. I wanted it to be mine.
Sunday night before the audition, I stayed up until three in the morning playing and replaying, willing my fingers to remember these patterns. It would be awful to look back and see all the mistakes or roughness I should have worked harder to smooth out. But I tried to tell myself that these many hours, all these practices leading up to this, had been worth it whether or not I got the solo. Music is a mirror: It waits quietly for you, and when you come to it, you appear temporarily inside of it, you insert yourself there and mold yourself and the piece to fit, and in the best times, you then go away with new insights about yourself.
But in all of it, all the practicing and the longing, all the work, I was uneasy with myself. Because what I was doing, when it came down to it, was plotting against Jason—planning on and working out ways I could see him fail.
* * *
The next day, everything was one long distraction from the afternoon. When auditions started, I was careful to keep my expression neutral and clap politely when each person had finished. It was strange listening to others playing a song I thought of now as mine. But it was difficult to concentrate on the other auditions anyway, because all I was doing was waiting for my own turn.
When Mr. Irving called on me, my pulse tingled in my fingertips. Next to me, Jason whispered, “Good luck,” and I smiled back, and I rose, and lifted my violin.
When I started playing, I felt immediately all those many hours that I’d spent practicing. Of all the metaphors we’d been given over the years, I had thought of music as many things: as an escape, as a mirror, as a voice, and even, when I was lonely, as a friend. I had never before thought of it as a magnet. But playing that day, everyone turned to listen to me, it was exactly that: The very sound pulled my arms into motion, set my body swaying gently, and drew to me every single person in that room.
And then, suddenly, it was as though no one else was even there. For the first time, I didn’t care what it sounded like to those around me. It was all so beautiful, so haunting and consuming, that I wondered if perhaps, this whole time, I’d had things wrong. Maybe the audience wasn’t my concern after all; maybe the reviews didn’t matter, or the applause, or even the long dissections afterward of what we had and hadn’t done well. And maybe whatever it was I managed to impart to the audience was unimportant. Maybe music, the very best music, was selfish, and maybe all of it—the practicing, the many many repetitions, those flashes of inspiration and this, this revelry—was for me.
I could have played for hours. I drew out the last note as long as I could, my arm taut, and I felt myself drift back into the room.
And then I stopped. In the stillness, in the way all those around me held themselves motionless so they didn’t break that silence I had created, I felt for the first time as though I understood what music really was: It was the work of sifting through all the long, tireless, tedious hours for these single moments of grace.
When I sat back down, my heart was pounding. I was too nervous to look at Mr. Irving. Jason whispered, “Beth,” and I turned. He rested a fist on his chair, so that only I could see it, and gave me a secret little thumbs-up and whispered, “Oh my God.”
And then it was his turn, and he stood and lifted his violin. I sat back and listened, my own violin stilled in my lap, and heard the piece I had just played take on new dimensions, twist and change until it was almost another thing altogether. When afterward I whispered, “That was amazing, Jason,” I had to force the words, and I wondered whether his own congratulations to me had come easily to him.
I watched Mr. Irving for signs—if he inclined his head toward me or toward Jason, or if he held eye contact with one of us a second longer—but he gave away nothing. Brandon always said Mr. Irving would be a poor poker player, the way he reddened when we kept making the same mistakes or couldn’t stop beaming when he was pleased with what he’d heard. But during auditions he was always like this: unreadable. “I’ll let you know my decision Wednesday.”
After rehearsal, Brandon had tutoring and Sunny had a group project, and Grace’s family always ate dinner early. In the parking lot, after they had all gone, Jason turned to me.
“You want to go get coffee or something?” he asked. He was tapping his fingers on his case, like he was jittery. “I feel like I’ve got all this adrenaline.”
I laughed, but it made me kind of sad, too. “Coffee will help?”
“Dinner, maybe?”
“That sounds great.” I was still trying not to spend money, and also I was supposed to go home for dinner, but this felt more important than either of those things. I texted my mom to tell her I’d be home later and then turned off my phone before she could call and ask a hundred questions about where I’d be. Jason patted his pockets and made a face. “I think I left my wallet at home. You mind if we swing by real quick?”
He opened the car door for me, and I tried to look nonchalant as I buckled my seat belt. It had been a long time since Jason and I had done anything alone together like this—something that could, if you squinted, look like a date. But it wasn’t, was it? It was a dinner between friends; it was last-minute, not something Jason had planned for.
Except I kept feeling it again, that rush of heat when he’d touched me at my house, that moment of electricity before he’d pulled away.
When he got into the car and closed the door behind him, the sounds from outside cutting off abruptly, the air going past my ears was warm and close and we could’ve been the only two people in the world. He turned on the car and backed out of the parking space, his arm draped over my seat. I sat very still.
“Does knowing all this is the last time make you wish it would be different next year?” I said. The piece had made me even more wistful than usual about what we’d be leaving behind. “Even just a little bit?”
“I never said I didn’t wish it would be different.”
“What do you mean?”
He considered that. “Well—it was always supposed to just be a hobby. Make me well-rounded, all that. My mom
pushed for it. But then I wasn’t awful at it, and now it’s probably the thing in my life I’m best at. And I guess it’s where I feel most like myself. It’s just—it’s hard to give that up.”
“That’s why you wanted to apply to Juilliard?”
He didn’t answer right away. “I wanted to do it with you,” he said finally. When he said things like that—how was I supposed to take it? It was the matter-of-factness that always threw me, how dispassionate it all seemed, as though whatever was between us was already settled somehow. “And also—”
He hesitated. I said, “And also what?”
“It’s—kind of my one big rebellion. You know.”
I didn’t. “What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t supposed to fuck around with music programs at all. I mean, it’s violin. I wasn’t supposed to actually, you know, care about it. And I really wasn’t supposed to want to do it forever.” He smiled, an unhappy smile. “You want to know something stupid? I used to want to be a famous violinist when I was a kid. I always thought I’d be so happy if that was the thing I got to do every day of my life.”
“That’s not stupid.”
“Maybe for someone else it wouldn’t be. I just—I guess when you’re a kid it takes you a little while to learn what you can have and what you can’t. You think if you want something, that means it’s possible. Sometimes I kind of miss that. I think my whole life I’ve just—it’s stupid, but I think I’ve always let myself pretend maybe it wasn’t really going to be over. I guess this way I could keep pretending for a little while longer.”
I had played violin with—and often right next to—Jason for six years. And yet that was the first time I understood that it wasn’t about proving something to himself after all. I had been so wrong about what it meant to him.
“Maybe you still could, though,” I said. “I mean, I’m sure you’ll get invited to audition, and even if your—” I had been going to say even if your father. “Even if you aren’t supposed to. You’d be out of the house, so—”
“So—what, exactly? I couldn’t pay for it, for one thing. Plus it just—it just wouldn’t be worth it.”
“It’s your life, though.”
He smiled. He didn’t answer. I waited, and eventually I realized that had been his answer, that for all I wanted to push harder, for all the possibilities this could’ve opened up, there was a finality to it. There was a growing ache in my chest. Finally, I said, “So what will you do?”
“I’ll do what I’m supposed to. I’ll go to Berkeley if I get in and do, like, bio or something. Then I’ll go to med school.”
“Do you think you’ll be happy?”
“Probably not, no.”
“Jason—that’s horrible.”
I wanted to say so much more than that. I wanted to say that he deserved better, that he deserved the world, that I was so sorry about everything. That I would do anything for him. That I loved him.
I didn’t say it, though. And he shrugged.
“It’s life,” he said. “It is what it is.” Then he said, abruptly, “Sometimes when I think about the future—”
When he didn’t finish, I said, “When you think about the future, what?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. People have it much worse.”
We were on his street now, and as we approached his house I wondered if he was thinking what I was—that it was the first time I’d been back here since Brandon’s birthday. I was pretty sure it was the first time any of us had been back.
When we pulled into his driveway, he shifted his gears and idled the car and turned to me. “I’ll just be a second,” he said, his voice flat and very polite. “You’re okay just waiting out here?”
“Definitely,” I said, also politely, though it wasn’t, of course, a question.
“I’ll leave the heat on.” He got out, and I watched him jog up to the front door and disappear inside.
I was chilly waiting, even with the heat still running, and I wrapped my arms around myself. I knew he’d come back out, that nothing bad was going to happen. But still, it felt like a long time that I was waiting there for him, watching the minutes go by on his clock. There weren’t many, four or five, but still I was relieved when the door opened again and he stepped out.
“Sorry about that,” he said, getting back in. “I guess I was driving all day without my license, too.”
“Wow,” I said, mildly. “Good thing you didn’t get pulled over.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Good thing.”
He pulled out of his driveway, looking over his shoulder, and while he was still twisted away from me like that I cleared my throat.
“Jason,” I said, “are things any better at home?”
We were so infrequently alone together. With the others there, Jason could have ignored my question completely, been silent and trusted that someone else would pick up the conversation so that I wouldn’t feel as brushed aside and didn’t have to bear the weight of his silence. But if I asked now and he said nothing, it would be worse, and more hurtful, and I knew he wouldn’t do that to me. Still, my heart was racing. I knew, too, that maybe it wasn’t quite fair of me to pick that moment to ask.
He turned back, facing forward, and pulled onto the street. I waited. He pulled up to the stop sign at the end of his street and braked carefully, looked both ways, and then continued on, both hands firmly on the wheel. I waited still, my palms damp. Jason stopped again at the light on Arroyo, flicked on his blinker, and stared straight ahead. I pretended to watch as the cross traffic went by. When the light changed, he pulled forward, his foot light on the gas so that we crossed the street slowly.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Not really, actually,” he said.
“Jason, I’m sorry. Is there anything we can—”
“Look, Beth,” he said, “I’d rather not talk about it. Okay?”
It wasn’t fair to be stung. If anything, he’d spoken gently. But I sat back, quietly, and thought how he could have at least taken his eyes off the road a moment, just turned once to look at me.
* * *
Mr. Irving called me the next night at home. I was in my room because my mother was irritated I’d been out and hadn’t answered her call—“Something could’ve been wrong, Beth, and I would’ve had no way to get ahold of you!”—and when I picked up the phone and heard his voice on the other line, I knew.
“Beth,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. I felt like something floppy and deflatable, a balloon maybe: All the air whooshed from my lungs at once. “Congratulations. I’m giving it to you.”
As soon as he hung up, I wanted to call one of my friends. Sunny had been messaging me all night to see if I’d heard anything yet. But I knew she’d have a barrage of questions—it was how she reacted to news, wanting to know everything all at once—and I wasn’t ready for that yet. And Grace was so effusive with her celebration that it could feel like an unprincipled happiness. I so rarely heard her allow for possible unpleasant outcomes, or to focus on the worst parts of a thing, and because of that sometimes it was hard to take her happiness seriously, or to let it mean very much to you—if I called her now, she’d be excited and breathless, she’d shriek congratulations, and she wouldn’t want to talk about what this meant for Jason. And Brandon—Brandon would know exactly what it meant for Jason, so I couldn’t expect him to be happy for me.
I tried to imagine Mr. Irving making the announcement tomorrow: to have everyone turn and look at me, to have them all know, in unison, that I’d been not just good, but the best. I felt like someone else altogether.
I went downstairs to get a drink, and my mother, who was washing dishes, looked up when I came into the kitchen. Sometimes when she saw me she slumped a little in relief, like maybe she hadn’t quite expected me to be there after all, and when she did it I tensed involuntarily in response, the two of us an inverse equation.
“Who was that on the phone, Beth?”
“Sunny,” I lied. I tur
ned quickly, so that my hair ducked in front of my face. It seemed mean that I’d lied about it; my mother would be overjoyed to hear about the solo.
Would it be worse, I wondered, to pretend it didn’t mean that much to me, to try not to gloat in front of Jason, or would it be worse to make it clear how much I’d wanted this? I thought back to the way I’d felt—weightless almost, my whole body light and buoyant—just before that last note, and how that feeling had stayed with me long after.
But all night I thought of Jason pretending not to care, making himself congratulate me. I thought of him going home to live with the loss.
When Mr. Irving answered his phone later that night, his tone was clipped. It was after ten, perhaps too late to call someone his age.
“It’s Beth again,” I said. I tried to steady my voice. “I’ve just been thinking, and I think that Jason should have the solo instead of me.”
I was a little dizzy, and I was suddenly overcome with a terror of my mother overhearing. I looked up to make sure my door was closed, and Mr. Irving said, “Excuse me?”
“I don’t think I should play the solo,” I said. “I think you should give it to Jason.”
Mr. Irving cleared his throat. It was always horrible being on the phone like this, where you couldn’t pause and think about your answers, where you were so exposed.
“You know, Beth,” he said, a little sharply, “this audition was for you. I always give the solo to the first chair, but I did it differently this year because, frankly, I thought you’d play it better, and you did.”
I closed my eyes, took steady breaths. I couldn’t cry. “It’s just that I know how much this means to Jason,” I said, “and I think he needs it more.”
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