Someday, Somewhere

by Lindsay Champion

  But none of that happens. Something worse does.

  Brighton Conservatory’s big glass front door opens and there he is. Violin Boy, with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and his violin case under his arm. He’s with a girl.

  She has smooth red hair that stops at her chin and curls under just slightly, like she spent an hour blow-drying it but wants to trick everyone into thinking it’s natural.

  She has pink pearl earrings and lavender manicured nails and she’s wearing a white-collared shirtdress with a thin leather belt at the waist and a pale-pink cardigan. She’s effortlessly, breezily, impossibly beautiful.

  And she’s holding his hand.

  * *

  They cross on the flashing red sign, so I run to catch up before the light changes. I need to find out if she’s his girlfriend. If she is, this whole thing is pointless. A woman wearing yoga pants and pushing a stroller, an older man with a hunched back, and a spiky-haired preschooler with his nanny are all crossing with me, so I try to blend in. They turn onto Central Park West, and I follow.

  We pass Sixty-Fifth Street, Sixty-Sixth Street, Sixty-Seventh, Sixty-Eighth, Sixty-Ninth. At some point Violin Boy and the breezy girl drop hands, but they’re still laughing. Her wrists are so thin and delicate. I bet she goes on ten-day detoxes where she eats nothing but room temperature vegetable broth. I bet she loves cucumber slices with hummus — not because they’re good for you but because she likes the taste. She probably eats 1,200 calories a day — no more, no less. She’s the complete epitome of everything I could never be.

  I glance down at my leggings, which are worn out at the knees. The hem around the right ankle is starting to unravel. They’re the best pair I own.

  Seventy-First Street, Seventy-Second, Seventy-Third. I’m trying to stay at least half a block behind them, but they keep slowing down. I’m starting to get that sick, twisty knot in my chest, and I know I should turn around and go back in the other direction. I’m not sure where the nearest subway station is, but I know I’m at least thirty blocks from the train I need to take home. And there’s no way I can afford a cab. But even though it’s killing me to see him hold hands with another girl, I can’t bring myself to leave. Standing outside his life and looking in is better than not being there at all. And I need to know who she is.

  The girl puts her hand on his back and they both laugh. I have to know the end of the story. Violin Boy moves the fingers of his left hand in a beautiful frenzy, grasping for strings that aren’t there. I wonder what song he’s playing. She gives him another nudge and tries to take his hand, but he’s too distracted. He’s too busy playing the stone wall that separates the street from the park.

  Then, I’m not sure why, he turns around.

  {6}

  Ben

  Claire keeps going on and on about her teacher Marie. Her last private lesson was crappy and she’s nervous Marie won’t push her enough to help her nail Kreutzer. Claire hasn’t had a standout moment at Brighton yet, and the rest of the faculty barely know who she is. So she’s wondering if Marie is the right teacher to get her noticed. I want to tell her she should have thought about that before spending ten years studying with Marie and following her here, but of course I don’t say that. I would never say that. Claire is panicking and we both know it. I wish she’d realize that every ounce of energy she wastes on worrying about the piece she could actually spend learning the piece. That’s the difference between people who succeed and people who fail — people who don’t make it get bogged down by logistics; the select few who succeed transcend it all.

  “How many hours a night are you practicing?” Claire asks as we walk toward the park. “I’m aiming for four after class and it’s just killing me. Last night I fell asleep on the keys.”

  I practice until the notes on the page become music. Time is meaningless. But I’ll sound like a complete asshole if I say that. Don’t say that. Don’t say that.

  “I don’t know — three hours a night or something,” I say instead.

  “Three, okay, I think I can handle three. I have to practice smarter. It’s just, after class all day, the only thing I want to do is eat takeout and fall asleep in front of the TV, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s all about balance,” I say, even though I don’t and it isn’t. But sometimes I think that thing astounding musicians have — the ability to take a two-dimensional page and make the notes bloom and roar — is something you can’t teach. Either it’s there or it isn’t. If she’s even thinking about the number of hours, I’m not sure there’s anything I can say to help her. Did Beethoven ever think about stuff like this? Great music can’t be quantified or measured. It’s infinite.

  I’m probably being too hard on Claire. She got into Brighton; that’s a pretty big deal in itself. Thousands of pianists audition every year and she’s one of the ten who got in. But even at the best music school on earth you look around and realize that most people will never be extraordinary. They’re just human.

  Well, except one guy. This morning we rode the elevator with Isaac Nadelstein, one of the greatest violinists in the history of the world. He teaches workshops and master classes here when he isn’t touring. I held my breath the whole time, which was probably a good idea, because it kept me from talking.

  But now I regret not saying hello. He’s an alumnus of the school and he has his own music program here, so I’m sure I’ll run into him again, and I need to come up with the perfect thing to say. I’m here because of you? Too suck-uppy. You’re an inspiration to all of us? Too cheesy. I’m in awe of you and I want to name all my future kids after you, even the girls? Too over the top.

  I’ve completely stopped paying attention to Claire, but when I enter reality again, it turns out I haven’t missed much. She’s still talking about Marie, and whether I think she should say something to her. If it were me, would I say something to Yaz? I’m not sure, I tell her, I think it would depend on the situation. She keeps holding my hand and petting me and putting her arm on my shirt — all these weird things she doesn’t usually do, and to be honest, I’m not even sure why she’s doing them.

  Don’t get me wrong — I like it. I mean, what guy doesn’t like a hot girl touching his arms and everything? But there’s this weird thing with Claire where I can’t tell if she’s being nice to me because she wants something, or because she actually likes me. She’s never gotten a solo at school before. She’s auditioned, but the faculty didn’t think she was ready. So if she auditions with someone who’s played a solo at Carnegie Hall — me — I wonder if she’s thinking it will increase her chances of getting into the Sonata Showcase in the spring. Then Robertson and the rest of the faculty will finally notice her and she’ll be on track to get solos of her own and do competitions next semester. Maybe that’s why she’s been all over me recently. Or maybe she really does have a crush on me, like Jacob said. Either way, her attention makes me tingly and completely confused.

  We’re walking near Central Park, and I don’t know why, but I suddenly wish I was walking alone. She’s just going on and on. I don’t want to hold her hand anymore, so I drop it.

  I need to go home.

  Then I look behind me to see if I can hail an oncoming cab, and there she is. The girl from NYU with the curly hair and the loose shirt and the twisted tooth. My chest floods with that same calmness I felt the first time I saw her by the fountain.

  “Hey, A Train!” I yell, before I realize what I’m doing.

  At first she doesn’t do anything. She freezes, like I’ve caught her shoplifting. Then she turns and looks over her shoulder, like I couldn’t possibly be talking to her.

  Claire grabs my hand again.

  I don’t want A Train to leave.

  But she takes off running.

  Down the steps and into the park and gone.

  I’m left with nothing but Claire’s hand. A hand I never even meant to h
old.

  * *

  I put in my earbuds and turn up Kreutzer. It’s okay that I’m not practicing, because at least I’m listening. It’s good to take a night off and rest my hands once in a while. My left arm has been feeling a little out of whack the last few days, anyway. If my mom knew, she’d tell me I was exhausting myself. She doesn’t know my arm’s been bugging me, and she doesn’t know I haven’t been sleeping so great. Well, I took a long nap on Wednesday, but that’s only because I was seeing stars when I tried to play the first movement. When I woke up, I was invincible again.

  My cab driver blows through the light at Eighth Street, and I tell him he can stop right at Washington Square Park. NYU doesn’t have a campus, but the park is kind of like their quad. She’ll have to be coming or going from some class eventually. I wonder if her dorm is one of these buildings with all the kids hanging out in front of them, or if she lives way off campus. A bunch of slacker-looking guys are sitting out on the front steps, smoking in these bright hats and tank tops, even though it’s starting to get cold. God, what if she smokes? I hope she doesn’t smoke.

  The second movement begins in my ears, and like a reflex, I sit down on a bench and play it in my mind. Listening is as important as actually practicing, I remind myself, and try to ignore my guilt. I’m seventeen. I deserve to have some semblance of a life. Isaac Nadelstein somehow has time to be one of the greatest violinists in the world, teach, tour and have five kids. If he can do that, I can sit on a bench for twenty minutes and look for A Train without feeling like a total waste of life.

  But that nagging feeling keeps coming, so I turn up Kreutzer until it’s too loud to focus on anything else. I practice my fingering to keep that other noise out of my brain.

  Twenty minutes turns into thirty, and the sun sets and it’s dark, and even the smoking kids decide to go inside, probably to the dining hall to stuff their faces with fries and self-serve frozen yogurt. I wonder what their nights are like. I doubt they have much homework, or if anyone even cares whether they show up to their humanities lectures or whatever. Sometimes I get jealous when I think about how much freedom normal kids have. I wonder if I could be happy with a life like that. They’re probably going in to catch up on some TV show they’re obsessed with, or sit around and drink smuggled-in beer and play Kings Cup. We tried to play it at Jun-Yi’s place one time when her parents were gone, and the whole game ended up with us arguing about the first movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral. I think it’s one of the lamest, most predictable movements in all classical music, and Jun-Yi and Claire think it’s pretty. Ugh.

  Now, in the darkness, there’s only a man walking a dog, and an older woman dozing on a bench across the park.

  And me.

  And no curly-haired girl.

  I check my phone and there are fourteen texts from Mom.

  * *

  “All I ask is that you call me,” Mom says, in the middle of a rant before I even open the front door. “Keep me in the loop, let me know where you’re going. That’s really the only rule I have, Ben. You can go to concerts and shows and art exhibits with your friends whenever you want, you don’t have a curfew … You have it a lot better than most kids, you realize that?”

  “You’re right,” I say, knowing I’ll never win this one. “I lost track of time. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re always losing track of time. Milo is three years younger than you. How does he manage to get home on time? Why are you the one I’m always having to worry about?”

  When Mom gets upset, the first thing she does is compare her kids. Biggest parenting mistake in the book, but she does it every time. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeat, trying to look pitiful, until she has no choice but to stop. The central air kicks in. She glances up at the vent and sighs. I give her a kiss on the cheek and say it one more time: “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I’d like to be inside your mind for a day, just to see what it’s like,” she says. She sounds sad and far away, like she’s already lost me. I give her a hug and try to infuse some reassurance and love into it, but I don’t think it works.

  “Don’t make me worry,” she says.

  And then she tries to force a bunch of food on me. I take some toast and a glass of orange juice to my room to make her happy. She’s always trying to get me to eat these huge, heavy meals, but all I can handle are snacks right now. I get too slow, too tired when I eat too much, and you can hear it when I play.

  I set my violin case on my bed and head right for the computer. I go to the NYU website and find a roster of incoming students. There are 5,867 freshmen — 2,986 female — and they’re all listed alphabetically. I type the first name on the list, Veronica Aarons, into Google Images. Up comes a red-haired girl with straight teeth and freckles. Shelby Aisel has shiny black hair and thick eyebrows. Frederica Alberts has glasses and short, spiky hair.

  By 8:26 a.m. I’ve gotten to Melody Marsinco. She doesn’t have curly hair and a twisted tooth, and neither do any of the other 1,507 female students I’ve searched.

  What if I never find her? I can’t remember the last time I felt relaxed talking about music with someone. She made me remember why I fell in love with it, actually. She’s unassuming and surprising and unapologetic and real and perfectly imperfect — and that’s what makes her so extraordinary.

  I think about stopping by Washington Square Park again on Saturday morning, but I have a private lesson with Yaz at ten and there’s no way I can get there and back in time. Well, maybe if I take cabs both ways and only stay for a couple of minutes. Or maybe if the A is running express and I run as fast as I can to the park.

  Milo’s standing in my bedroom doorway, staring. I have no idea how long he’s been there. I look up at him — I don’t care that I’m still wearing my clothes from the night before, but I can tell he does. “What’s up?”

  “Mom wants to know if you’re eating breakfast with us. I told her probably not, but she wants me to ask you, anyway.”

  “Yeah, I’ll come.”

  We’re having eggs that run out everywhere when you break them up with toast — Milo and I used to call them “goo eggs” when we were kids. And grapefruit juice and cantaloupe slices. Mom puts two eggs on my plate on purpose, even though I never have an appetite in the morning.

  Dad’s there in his robe, shoveling soggy toast bits up with his fork, and I realize I haven’t seen him in a few days. He mostly leaves me alone when I’m in my room, so if I’m working, he’ll come home, watch TV and go to bed without saying goodnight. I think he knows why spending time alone is so important for me. I think it’s important for him, too. We have an understanding about stuff like that.

  My head is fighting itself all through breakfast. There’s the opening of Kreutzer thrashing around. And there’s A Train and her wild hair, sweetly entering at the end of each phrase. I only have room for a few bites of egg. I get up while everyone’s still eating — I can’t be late — but my mom groans and presses her fist against the table, and before I realize what’s happening, we’re fighting again.

  “That’s it, Ben,” Mom snaps. “I’m not playing this game anymore.”

  My dad is a man of few words, so I know he’s upset when he decides to use them.

  “Mom is right,” Dad says. “You have to start taking better care of yourself. If you keep up this pace, you’re going to burn out, and then what?”

  “Like last December,” Milo says.

  My parents freeze, forks in midair.

  “Milo,” my mom says quietly.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  I know I’m making them all miserable and worried. But I can’t help it. I don’t know what else to do. If I’m not the best violinist at Brighton, I’ll be nobody. But I don’t know how to explain that to them, so I force down the rest of my eggs, shrug and go back to my room to get ready.

  {
7}

  Dominique

  Third-period chemistry has gone through a phase change. Like, you know when stuff goes from a liquid to a gas? Well, since my life turned upside down, my moderate interest in science has completely evaporated. Who the hell needs to know about moles and uranium and the periodic table? Unless you want to be a scientist or something, how could any of that stuff possibly be useful? Suddenly none of this seems important.

  So instead of paying attention to what will be covered on the test next Tuesday, I pick at my split ends and think about Violin Boy. Of course he has a girlfriend. Why wouldn’t he? How could a brilliant, hilarious, smart, hot guy like that not have a girlfriend? They probably go to concerts and movie screenings and nice restaurants together all the time. I bet the girl with the red hair is some sort of musical genius, just like him, so they get to keep New York City all to themselves.

  “Dominique, will you go up to the board and answer question seven, please?”

  I can feel Mr. Valdez and the rest of the class staring at me. I’m still looking down, picking at my hair. There’s not even anything on my desk.

  “I left my book at home.”

  “And you forgot to do the homework?”

  “My homework was in my book.”

  “Well, that’s convenient.”

  Anton yells from the back of the class, “She left it in my bedroom!”

  The whole class erupts into “oohs” and shrieking laughter. My ears burn. I pull my hair over them, protecting myself from the noise and the shame.

  “Anton. Principal — now.”

  Mr. Valdez is way better at controlling his class than Jenkins is. Anton packs up and everyone’s quiet after a few seconds. Valdez forgets about making me go to the board, so I guess Anton did me a favor in some twisted way.

  I resume my split-end picking until the bell rings.

  * *

  Cass is sitting at our usual lunch table with a tray of cheese fries.