I pressed my knuckles to my perfectly made-up lips, mussing them, way too riveted to care.
“You’ve paid for the privilege of hearing this symphony played for the very first time.” He held his phone to his heart. “I am honored by that. Beyond words. I feel privileged to stand on this stage, alongside these truly incredible musicians . . .” He made a sweeping gesture to the orchestra and choir, met with a rapid wave of applause, my own claps the loudest. “And in front of a crowd like you. But I wrote this piece—this symphony—for everybody. For people who would love to be here but can’t afford the ticket price. For people who don’t get classical music but are willing to give it a try.”
His eyes darted to Jules. She gave a salute.
“For . . .”
He lifted his phone to show that it was dialing.
“My mom!” He pulled it to his ear. “Hey, Mom, I’m gonna put you . . . here.”
He positioned the phone on the podium, while the audience audibly melted.
“I wrote this for my buddies back at Farnwell Prep, my two brilliant sisters, my unbelievably loving and patient parents, my cousins in North Carolina, my new friends here in New York—um!—and for . . .” He turned, gesturing to me in the front row. “For my girlfriend.”
Joy shot through me, an electric shock.
“You get the gist.” He twirled his baton with a grin. “So everybody who’s up for it—let’s open this concert up to the rest of the world. If you know how to connect to a livestream, go for it, if not, take a video, post it for your friends when you get back home. Let’s share this with anybody who’s interested. Sound good?”
A few seconds of confusion, then someone started to clap and everybody followed suit, young and old, even Liz and Reinhardt lifting their phones excitedly.
“I am so streaming this,” Jules muttered, adjusting her framing while little smiley faces and hearts started to flutter up her screen.
I hesitated a moment—then set my own phone to silent, video-dialed Dad’s cell, and positioned it against my knee, praying he would answer. Whether Dad deserved it or not, Oscar would want his mentor to be here.
“Ah, one more thing.” Oscar spun back around. “As you well know, proceeds from tonight’s benefit concert will go toward Amberley’s diversity initiative.”
The audience’s applause started nervously, unsure, given my little speech, then grew, several people shouting their approval. Oscar nodded along, then added, loud enough for his voice to be heard over the cheers,
“Yes. It is so important. Make sure it happens. You’re Amberley’s donors—if your dollars matter, so do your voices. Hold them to their promises.”
Oscar’s hands were pressed together, bowing to the room, all graciousness, so his words came across as thankful rather than critical. But in the context of what I’d stood up and said, his real meaning couldn’t have been missed.
“Hear, hear!” shouted some old man in the back of the room.
Oscar grinned. And turned to face the orchestra, letting out a long, slow breath.
“Okay, then,” he said, lower.
He picked up his baton, with a mischievous wiggle of his fingers. The orchestra leaned forward, lifting their instruments.
“Let’s go.”
A swoosh. They were off, the room exploding into sound.
I had to brace myself to keep from swaying loose and flying away as I watched Oscar ignite, electric bolts shooting from his fingers, his eyes, his smile, his every movement music itself.
And the music was immense. That flirty first movement, the Latin-tinged second, worlds warring, flirting, sinking into one another. I knew it by heart, I’d heard it fleshed out in rehearsals, but never as confident as this, swirling like a hurricane. It felt concrete now, a daydream turned solid matter, a life in a song.
The third movement was familiar until the last few bars. And the last—allegro con brio—was a revelation.
Not Mozart. Not Ravel. Not Tchaikovsky or Handel or anybody else Oscar’s mimetic tricks had touched. It wasn’t even Chertok.
This was one hundred percent Bell.
I could recognize Oscar in every lilt, every strain, every unresolved chord . . . his humor, his heart, his pain, the way he split himself, the way he tried and blustered and suffered and hid it behind a smile—his courage. I heard all of him because I knew him but there was even more there than I’d ever imagined.
I stared up at his face in profile, slack with joy at the podium, and my heart swelled and broke and healed to break again, because oh my God, I knew him, this quickly, and he knew me, and there was still so much left to know, to be wrong about, surprised by, to marvel at, this separate person who somehow loved me.
Forty minutes passed—a summer, years, a lifetime. And all of it his now, in every sense, all rights reserved in perpetuity throughout the universe. I listened, silent, but inside I was singing along at the top of my lungs.
The orchestra played the final bars with the golden exhilaration of sunset burning over the city’s horizon. One more flourish of the baton—and silence fell.
My heart rested, but only for a second. Because then the world started to roar, a volcano erupting as everyone flew to their feet, cheering for Oscar. Not for what he might accomplish. For what he had.
He didn’t turn to face us yet. He nodded, set down the baton. A quick whisper into his phone before he pushed to hang up, and even then, he didn’t turn.
I scrambled to my feet, too overcome to clap. Oscar pivoted, numb, like he was in shock, and found my face in the crowd. I shot him a smiling nod, encouraging him to take his bow.
Instead, to the whoops of the audience, he hopped from the stage into the front row and headed straight for me.
I took his hand. It was trembling again.
He stepped closer, his mouth resting just past my ear. “I’m not staying for the meet and greet.”
I laughed. “I think that’s okay!”
Oscar leaned past me to slap hands with Reinhardt and whisper a heartfelt thank-you to Liz. Jules shot him a thumbs-up, mouthing Whoa, and he clutched his heart, grinning.
But before any of us could urge him back onstage, he took my hand.
I glanced at Jules.
“Go go go!” She winked. “I’ve got potential clients to gawk at. See you back on the block.”
With that, Oscar was in motion. He led me swiftly away, toward our closest fire exit, all the while motioning gratefully to the orchestra and giving a hasty wave to the shouting audience.
As soon as we were through the doors and out of sight, we ran—fleeing together through the back rooms of Lilly Hall, like we’d pulled off a heist, me in pristine silver shoes, his glossy ones squeaking with every stride, laughter bubbling, then bursting out of us, wild.
We hit the stage door and erupted into the humid night. Oscar swung us left, away from the press, past the side of the plaza where limo drivers stood smoking, then down a flight of steps and into the wild, steaming clamor of the city.
Where were we heading? Oscar seemed to know. He had a full tank and a map in his body, and we drew closer with every step until we were jogging clumsily with hands clinging, fingers locked together tight.
He turned us onto West Sixty-seventh—and only then did I know.
In the hazy streetlight, the optical illusion between buildings was even harder to spot, but Oscar wasn’t fooled. He pulled us into the courtyard.
The apartments around it were all lit up. White fairy lights glittered along the top of the fire escape. I’d never seen this place animated by night before, people washing dishes, laughing at dinner tables, flipping on televisions.
But the courtyard itself was as mystifyingly quiet as ever.
He pulled me slowly in until my cheek rested against his warm chest, my hands traveling around his back to pull him even closer.
I closed my eyes and listened—to our gasps. Our heartbeats. A percussive two-voice melody.
“You asked me to pick one song to listen to for the rest of my life,” Oscar whispered.
I smiled at the memory. “You couldn’t choose.”
“How about this one?”
I peered up at him, every cell jumping, dancing, jittering, terrified. Happy.
“That’s quite a promise.”
He leaned back, eyes burning into mine. “It’s quite a song.”
I lifted my chin and kissed him, listening hard to the rich, full silence, marveling at the change in this place. In the person I was here.
Any mental picture I could form of my life—two, five, ten years from now—was as unclear as it had been at the beginning of this summer. But ambiguity no longer felt like a failing. Just a natural law. A space where wonders could occur, sparks and surprises and things I never thought I could do and people I never thought could be real.
There were things flittering in the back of my mind even now. Facts.
He would go back to Bethesda in two days, reunited with his family, missing me desperately. I would plan a visit and meet the Bells. We would call, text, video chat in honest conversations, raw with longing. We would compare college application notes. His fame would skyrocket from tonight, my own path would form in unexpected directions, and then . . . I didn’t know.
I only knew that our future wasn’t blank. It was a crisp, clean composition page, waiting to be written on.
Oscar kissed me and I kissed him, every touch a note, while just past the silence, the city kept time to the heartbeats of eight million extraordinary lives.
Acknowledgments
Writing Night Music was a bit of an odyssey, both mentally and geographically, since I relocated from Florida to England while working on it! There is no way I could have steered this book home without the help of an incredible crew of brilliant minds and enormous hearts helping me along the way.
First, I want to thank my heroically tireless editor, Jessica Dandino Garrison, whose brainstorming and fine-tuning and pushing for depth and spark and fullness of story filled this book with life. Your faith in my writing and dedication to these characters invigorated me even on days when it was hard to return to the page. I am a happier writer for having embarked on this journey with you.
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Katelyn Detweiler. At a school visit once, I was asked to name my favorite part of being an author, and on the spur of the moment, I said, “My agent.” And it’s true! You unfailingly make me feel that I truly belong in this industry, that my words matter and my stories are important. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you as my champion and friend. Thank you also to the whole JGLM team, especially Cheryl Pientka and Denise St. Pierre, whose cheerleading and thoughtful notes have always been incredible boons.
And speaking of invaluable mood-boosters, thank you so much to all my beautiful, spectacular, gifted, honest, inspiring author friends, who read and commented and encouraged and distracted and laughed and commiserated through all my many drafts. Extra love to Virginia Boecker, Lee Kelly, Candice Montgomery, Amber Hart, Jay Coles, Lauren Gibaldi, Kim Liggett, and Mackenzi Lee—you mean the world to me.
My endless gratitude to the team at Dial Books and Penguin Young Readers Group, especially Ellen Cormier and Lauri Hornik for their keen support and insightful feedback, and Regina Castillo for her dazzling eagle eye. Thank you to Dana Li and Theresa Evangelista for their endurance and creative thinking in creating an utterly delightful cover, and to Cerise Steel for her elegant and industrious work on the design of the interiors. I’m especially indebted to all those who provided incredibly helpful thoughts along the way, particularly Amber Nicole Salik, Christina Colangelo, Bridget Hartzler, Elora Sullivan, Kara Brammer, Courtney McAuslan, and Lizzie Goodell. Extra-jumbo thanks to the brilliant Felicity Vallence for her encouragement, expertise, and boundless ingenuity. And an enormous, heartfelt, so-long-it’s-awkward hug to the lovely Lindsay Boggs, who is basically my fairy godmother. A million thanks for the magic you weave every day.
Thank you to my family, especially my dad for consistently steering me toward the career I was meant for, even when I really didn’t want to hear it. Oliver and Henry, my brilliant boys, I love you “infinity”—thank you for being patient with me when my mind was wandering and I had to leave LEGOs to go write something down real quick. Rob, you’re a marvel. Your faith and love and logistical wrangling are what make my writing possible. I will forever be grateful for all you’ve done to make my dream real.
And one final shout-out to everyone who creates music. Whether you’re playing on an elite stage, studying at a conservatory, doing eight p.m. sets at a dive bar, working through your first song in your neighbor’s garage, struggling to master the pennywhistle you bought at a roadside stand, singing badly and loudly along with your car radio—the world is far better for having you in it.
About the Author
Jenn Marie Thorne graduated from NYU-Tisch with a BFA in drama and realized she was having more fun writing plays than performing in them. What followed were her acclaimed YA novels, The Wrong Side of Right and The Inside of Out. Jenn lives and writes as an American expat in Gloucestershire, England. Connect with her on Twitter @juniperjenny.
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Night Music Page 34