Night Music

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  “I won’t.” I fell sitting beside her. “I think . . . I’m done for today.”

  “Good. I only run like that when I’m pissed off. And then I don’t know when to say when.” She pulled her hair from its ponytail, mussed it peevishly, put it back in. Then she turned to me. “So?”

  “So . . . what?” I winced. My lungs were stinging again.

  “What are you pissed about? Did something happen last night, besides what half the city got to witness?”

  I wiped my face, annoyed that she was bringing it up—even more annoyed that I’d given her a reason to. “I don’t know what that was. I think it’s already over.”

  “You do move fast.”

  “Not because of me. He . . . Oscar’s worried it’ll mess up the work he’s doing with my dad, which is fair enough.” I untied and retied my shoe for no reason. “This whole thing started and ended because he thinks I’m a Chertok, or whatever, like my family, and I get that, and I’m supposed to be finding a way out of that world, that’s what this summer was for, so . . . it was going to fizzle at some point anyway. It’s completely fine!”

  “Double back. Rewind.” Jules’s eyes narrowed. “You really think that’s why he’s into you? Because of musical ability? Or are you actually just talking about your last name?”

  “Both, but not on a conscious level.” I motioned vaguely in the air. “More a pull kind of thing.”

  “A star-fucker thing.” She winced. “Sorry, that was crass. Potty mouth.”

  “I am not a star. So.”

  “You’re a classical music princess.” She shrugged. “Still twinkly.”

  The word princess felt a million times crasser than what she’d said before. I stared at my lap, but she leaned her head way over so I would see her.

  “Maybe he just likes you, Ruby. Did you think of that?”

  “I . . . have considered the possibility?” I gripped my knees. “It’s just, it’s not something I’ve in any way earned. If somebody like Oscar is into me, it needs to be because I’ve achieved something. Preferably something incredible.”

  “Cool, cool. Yeah, I take it back, you are way too weird to be a princess. So. Freaking. Bizarre!”

  I laughed. “I am working hard to spin this conversation as a friendly one.”

  “Dude, I’m just trying to follow it!” She squinted at me. “You don’t think you deserve love unless you, like, cure cancer? Or are we still talking about playing an instrument really well, which is . . . I guess an achievement?”

  I let the jab about music slide. “It’s not about deserving. It’s about earning.”

  “You literally just gave me a synonym for deserving.”

  I knew I sounded ridiculous, but this felt important. I thought of Oscar—all that brilliance, all that work—and me, everything just there, at my feet.

  The very first memory I’d replayed this morning was that taxi bypassing Oscar. And me, blithely flagging the next one, painfully clueless.

  He deserved more. Better.

  Jules was still looking at me, exasperated. She was never going to accept that answer.

  “I don’t know what I think. I just know . . .” I heaved a cheerful sigh. “That I am not going to figure it out after running that far. My brain is mushy. Twinkly mushy.”

  “Fair enough, mine too.” She stood, offering me a hand up. “Listen, back to a conversation I can understand, that Oscar guy seems cool and God knows you two looked into each other, but there are plenty of guys out there who would fall all over themselves to be with you, okay? This is all I’m saying. It is not that complicated.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  “My guess is that he’s holding a boom box up to your window even as we speak, but on the off chance he isn’t . . . this isn’t exactly the best time for you to be in a relationship, right? So maybe keeping it platonic is—”

  “What?”

  She walked over to lean on the guardrail, peering out to the river. “You just broke up with your first love. You need to rebound before you can move on to something real.”

  I understood a beat too slowly. She meant the piano, of course. My first love. It wasn’t that overblown a metaphor, because when I thought about it—recognized it—my heart started to hurt in a way that had nothing to do with exercising.

  Jules was watching me with sympathetic eyes when a tangle of arms and legs flapped its way toward us so gracelessly that it took me a second to realize it was Sam.

  “This! Is! Not! Fun!” she screamed. “What is the matter with you two?”

  “I sort of agree,” I said.

  “Come on,” Jules said, linking arms with both of us. “Let’s undo this run with some doughnuts.”

  I was laughing when the three of us got back to our block, sugar glaze sticky on my lips. Sam was trying to catch us up on five seasons of this show Triplecross, playing every role in quick time, oblivious to all the pedestrians glancing back at her as we walked by.

  “And then Chase Hernandez came out in real life? And they made his character bi to boost the ratings? And it was awesome because it turned out he’d been screwing the douchebag guy the whole time and they were the masterminds behind like everything from season one on. It’s a terrible show.”

  Jules slowed down, pointing at my house, and whispered, “What did I tell you.”

  Oscar was sitting on the stoop. Spotting us, he stood, and I was so paralyzed that it took me a second to see that he was holding a bouquet of multicolored carnations.

  “Awwww,” Jules cooed under her breath. “How tacky!”

  I kicked backward at her. Accidentally got Sam.

  Jules patted my butt as they passed me. “We’ll leave you to it.” Then turned around to mouth, “I’m psychic.”

  Oscar stepped into the middle of the sidewalk, owning it as always, pedestrians parting instinctively around him.

  “I heard a rumor you thought flowers were a nice gesture?” He held the bouquet out.

  I took it, examining each petal closely. “Don’t let Win find out. He’ll mock you forever. Not that this is a first date. I . . . yeah.”

  “No. Right.” Oscar stuck his hands in the pockets of his navy-blue shorts. “This is more of an apology bouquet.”

  “Carnations, yes, the universal symbol for—”

  “Acting like an asshole.” He grimaced. “I’ve ruined the flowers.”

  “No!” I laughed, too loud. “They’re great. I’m going to put them in some water.”

  “Hey, before you do that . . .” He cleared his throat. “Or . . . after I guess—there’s this thing I have to be back for later, but I have the morning off while your dad’s notating the Mahler . . .”

  Oh, right, I remembered dimly. He’s guest conducting in London next week.

  “And I was wondering if you’d mind helping me fill it. The morning, not the Mahler, although I’m supposed to work on that at some point too.”

  I froze on the bottom step. He means it platonically. “Sure, great! What do you feel like doing? We could hit the park, go downtown, grab dim sum . . . ?”

  “I’d like to talk, actually. If that’s okay.”

  “Of course.”

  “Could we go someplace, um . . . quiet?”

  Instead of an inner debate, I felt a still, calm certainty. Of all people, he would understand why I loved it so much. Even just as friends, I was ready to share it.

  I smiled. “I know someplace very quiet.”

  14.

  oscar didn’t ask where we were going. We rounded the corner onto a side street full of antiques shops and low-rise office buildings. Walking by the mid-point at a New York pace, you’d think the buildings were connected via a narrow alley, nothing of note. But if you really looked, you’d see mosaic tiles and, a few feet in, a wider space beyond.

  I led Oscar into t
hat space.

  My courtyard. I had no legal claim on it, but it was mine all the same, sweet and simple, framed by low buildings with overflowing window boxes and one rusting fire escape. The far building housed three apartments by the looks of it, but I’d never seen another soul here, inside or out. That wasn’t what made it so special, though.

  I watched Oscar’s face to see when it would hit him.

  When we stepped in, the city buzz hummed around us. The next step, wind swooshed without so much as rustling our hair. Then one more, to the center of the courtyard, and—

  “It’s silent.” Oscar touched his ear. Let it go.

  “I can’t explain it.” I whispered, not wanting to spoil the effect. “I come here when the city gets to be too much. This place and the Ramble are where I go to feel alone.”

  “Is it . . . public?”

  “I doubt it.” I glanced up at the empty windows surrounding us. “But nobody’s ever kicked me out.” And I’ve never brought anyone else here. Just you.

  “How did you find it?” He sat cross-legged on the center of the spiral of courtyard tiles.

  “I was lost. Which is probably how most people find things.” I sat next to him, silence settling around us like a tent. “I was out with my mom and dad getting lunch. I’m . . . not sure what happened.” They were arguing. They forgot me. “They were hailing a taxi one minute and the next I was alone.”

  Oscar let his wrist rest against mine. “When was this?”

  “I don’t remember. I was eight, maybe?” Five. “Anyway, some delivery guy with a cart—he was probably nice, I was just freaked out—he tried to stop me so he could call my parents, and my stranger-danger alarm went off and I started running and ducked in here to hide. And the sound thing . . .”

  I beamed slowly, peering up and all around.

  “I had this The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe pop-up book and . . . I literally thought I’d slipped into another world. I was so happy. It made sense, why I felt the way I did in that other world. Out there.” I motioned to the street. “Anyway, it started getting dark, and I came out and all the noise hit me again and a cop found me and . . . I guess half the city had been looking. So that was something. And my mom made me hot chocolate and we sang together.”

  Oscar smiled.

  “It was winter,” I added. “Forgot to mention that.”

  His knuckles had been idly dancing against mine. They stopped.

  “How winter?”

  “January winter.”

  “You could have frozen.”

  “It was cold. I remember that. But so was Narnia, right?”

  Oscar turned and started rubbing my hands.

  I laughed. “What are you—?”

  “Warming you up.” He breathed onto our balled fingers. “You poor Dickensian urchin.”

  “It’s July!” I swatted him away, feeling seven kinds of hot. “And if I were in Dickens, I’d be someone awful. Estella Havisham.”

  “Wow, now that you mention it.” He tucked his hands back into his lap, scrutinizing me with a grin.

  I slo-mo punched his shoulder. “Only I can make that joke.”

  “Exactly what Estella would say. You’re not helping your case.”

  “So.” I leaned in and away, a subject change. “Did you want to talk about something specific? I’m the one blathering on—”

  “Yes.” Oscar’s shoulders shrunk in. “I mean, yes, I do, not yes, you’ve been blathering on. Now I’m blathering. This is how blathering, I think, is defined . . .”

  I smiled, waiting as his face relaxed.

  “Talking.” He drew a breath. “Okay. Here goes. I like you. As evidenced by the four hundred times I’ve told you I like you. Among other things.”

  Say something funny. But my brain was too stuck on the other things.

  “But here is where I’m at.” He spread his arms wide. “This is . . . mind-blowing. All of this, coming here, studying at Amberley, with your dad. It’s like some fairy tale. I can’t believe my luck. But . . .” He faltered, searching for words. “No, that’s it. I can’t believe my luck, so I’m concerned about, ah, messing with it. By pushing it.”

  I recrossed my legs to face him. “How would you be pushing your luck?”

  “I didn’t expect to meet you this summer.” Oscar’s eyes met mine. “I mean, I expected to meet Ruby Chertok, Martin Chertok’s daughter. I . . . didn’t expect to meet someone like you.”

  Someone like me.

  “Well. Likewise.”

  “Exactly! And you have things to do that I’m distracting you from, right? You have a whole life here.”

  Half a life. The start of one—a weird blend of exercise and D-list clubs and high-couture high-mindedness—but he wasn’t wrong.

  “And, if I’m being honest, which is the purpose of this exercise . . .” Oscar sighed. “Okay, so back home, I’m this anomaly, right? I make my music, everybody kind of stares at me, ‘there goes Oscar again with his composition thing,’ and it’s this neat trick I do. No big deal. But here, it matters. And at the same time, I’m not that unusual, you know? I’m sitting in class with literal geniuses, most of whom worked a hell of a lot harder than I did to get here. But I’m still an anomaly.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was my place to prompt him. He seemed to want me to. “Because you’re black.”

  “Listen, I knew there wouldn’t be many black kids at Amberley. I didn’t realize there would be zero.” He made an O with his fingers.

  “There are a few in the university programs. But I totally get it.”

  I totally get it could have gone on our list of Things White People Say. I only understood how he felt on an intellectual level.

  He still looked relieved. “Like I said—I am used to being the odd one out. This is just a special kind of odd.”

  “You don’t seem odd to me.” I squinted. “You’re so . . . confident.”

  “See, but that’s the thing, you get really good at that over a lifetime of ‘what’s up with that kid.’”

  “At school?”

  “Not so much school. Everybody’s good-weird at my school.” He scratched his face. “I mean . . . at home? My dad—super supportive, same as Mom—but he doesn’t really get composition. He’s always teasing me about classics versus classical, like it’s some debate we’re gonna settle. Classics being Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Billy Stewart, Etta James . . .”

  I smiled. “That’s what he listens to?”

  “We fight over the car stereo. Mom likes nineties R&B, Bri’s all Disney Channel pop, Etta hates music—”

  “Hates music.”

  “She’s lying, it’s her little rebellion.” His smile sank a little as his eyes drifted. “We’ve got this big family on my dad’s side, three aunts, two uncles, I don’t even know how many cousins. They all live, like, forty-five minutes away, so we do a lot of Sunday dinners, and . . .” He laughed. “Mom grew up in Carmel, California, and you know her health hang-ups. She always turns up with escarole cranberry salad. Quinoa burgers. One time my cousins called me Carlton.”

  I grimaced.

  “It’s all good—like I said, I’m used to it. But this? A world-class conservatory program? ‘Odd one out’ here means . . . it means a whole lot more attention. Higher stakes. Implications that stretch and stretch and . . . yeah. I don’t know. This is new.”

  I wanted to link my arm through his, but I stayed put. His eyes shifted to meet mine and he smiled, slumping a little.

  “So here’s where I’m concerned. Not concerned, like worried, just contemplating. What does it look like . . . out there”—he motioned past the courtyard—“for . . . let’s say the ‘new kid on the classical music scene’ to immediately hook up with a Chertok?”

  I flinched at the sound of my last name.

  “It looks deliberate, does
n’t it? And it isn’t. I promise, this is accidental.”

  The way he looked at me when he said accidental made the air shimmer.

  “They . . . ask about you, you know. The Amberley students. They’re curious.”

  I pulled at a snag in my hair. “What do they ask?”

  “What you’re like.” He nudged me. “When you’re debuting.”

  I let out a mirthless laugh. “Right.”

  “I don’t tell them anything.”

  “It’s fine, tell them whatever. But I get what you’re saying. I’m, like, this added thing. So . . . people would talk.” I very nearly rallied with a rousing “Who cares what they think?” before stopping myself.

  He cared. And whatever his reasons, they mattered.

  “So. All that on the one hand. And on the other . . .” Oscar stared at his open palm, then up at me. “You’re what I think about.”

  “When?”

  “At all times.”

  I drew a slow breath.

  “I’m done, I promise. Sorry to unload. This is not something I do much of. I don’t have anybody I can talk to about this stuff without seeming . . . I don’t know. Ungrateful. That’s a big thing with my parents, practicing gratitude—”

  “You can talk to me about anything. I’m here to listen. Whatever we are.” I drew a slow breath to keep from wincing.

  Oscar stared at me for a second, then he smiled like he’d made a decision. Instead of telling me what it was, he took my hand and uncurled my fingers, one after another, and pressed his palm to mine. I watched him as our fingers slipped together and folded shut. It was so quiet, I swore I could hear his pulse catching up to mine as we sat together, perfectly still.

  This was limbo, but here in the courtyard, I didn’t mind it. We’d fall one way or the other, but for now we were both friends holding hands and . . . not. The nicest imaginable version of Schrödinger’s cat.

  I lost all sense of time until his thumb crept up to nudge the watch on my wrist, Mom’s birthday gift to me from two years ago. I wore it every day and never looked at it. But Oscar’s eyes were sharpening, his face falling.

  “It’s one? How is it one?”