Someday, Somewhere

by Lindsay Champion

  It’s 7:52.

  Where is she?

  Maybe none of the e-mails were really her. Not even that one e-mail I was absolutely, positively sure of.

  My skin burns. Maybe the flyers were a stupid idea. Most of them have already been ripped down, probably by cops or street cleaners, but there are still a few up near Lincoln Center. I saw some on Sixty-Third Street, tattered and wind whipped, but you could still read them. I consider running out of Lincoln Center and up and down every street, destroying all the flyers in a burst of torn-up confetti. And then I think: If this isn’t her, then maybe I should keep them up, just in case she does see them. Even if it means I get three thousand more e-mails.

  It’s 7:54.

  She isn’t coming. I can feel it.

  I’ve checked my watch at least five hundred times in the last fifteen minutes. My mom would be so proud.

  Then 7:55. Then 7:56. Then 7:57. Nothing.

  I try to think about anything else but her. Seinfeld reruns. Those guys on the subway who sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in doo-wop harmony. The first movement of Kreutzer, which I still can’t seem to master even though I’ve practiced it thousands of times.

  Then 7:58.

  Then 7:59.

  And there she is, walking up the stone steps with her wild hair and kind eyes and a green backpack slung over one shoulder. She’s walking with a tall black guy wearing the biggest sweatshirt I’ve ever seen. He has a diamond (or what looks like a diamond) stud in one ear and he’s exuding so much flat-out cool that it makes me feel like the world’s biggest nerd. I look down at the jeans my mom bought me from

  J. Crew, my stupid button-down. Why did I wear this? I lean my elbows back against the stone ledge of the fountain to try to look more relaxed and less totally freaking awkward.

  Here she is with this guy and I’m expecting she’s going to want to hang out with me? Right. She’s here to say she’s flattered but no, thanks, and this is her new boyfriend she met at orientation week, and they’re going out to drink mimosas at brunch tomorrow morning, so bye.

  Instead the sweatshirt guy stops on the steps, and A Train keeps walking to the fountain, to me. Her. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, all curls and curves, but she’s not smiling.

  I knew it.

  But then she walks up next to me and puts her palm and all its warm, silky softness on top of my hand.

  I’m not sure whether she wants to shake my hand or hold it, so I’m stuck doing some sort of weird tense-fingered hand thing on her wrist that neither of us wants me to be doing.

  She takes her hand back and this time tries resting her palm on my elbow. She’s smiling.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “I’m Ben,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “I found you,” I tell her.

  “So when we met, you felt —”

  “I can’t stop thinking about you. All week it was like —”

  “Like nothing else mattered.”

  “Like sparklers in the dark.”

  “Like stars.”

  “What’s your name? I don’t want to lose you again.”

  “Dominique.”

  Dominique. Dominique. Dominique. It washes over me like rain.

  “The flyers,” I say. “You didn’t think it was —”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “They were perfect.”

  Her eyes are gray, with the tiniest of gold flecks. I didn’t notice that before.

  “This is my school,” I say, pointing to the glass building across campus.

  “Brighton.”

  “Yeah, you know it?”

  “Isn’t it, like, the best school in the world for musicians?”

  I wonder if that matters to her. If that scores me any bonus points. I brush her compliment off, like Brighton’s no big deal.

  “I guess, yeah. For classical. I play the violin. Been playing since I was little.”

  “You guess.” She nudges me with her elbow. “You guess? You’re practically famous.”

  “No, there are, like, fifty other violinists. It’s not as big a deal as it seems.” My arm tingles where she nudged me. I wish she’d do it again. “What’s your major at NYU?” I ask.

  “Oh. Dance.”

  “So if I say something you don’t like, you could high-kick me in the face right now?”

  “Most definitely,” she says, with a little smile like she just might. This girl is the best.

  “Is it a conservatory program?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Like, do you only take dance and performance classes, or do you have to take normal courses, like English and all that, too?”

  “Normal courses. Like English and organic history and everything.”

  “So, is that your security detail?” I ask, pointing at the dude on the steps. He’s deeply engrossed in his phone, playing a game or doing some serious texting.

  “Him?”

  She laughs, and all I want for the rest of my life is to hear that sound.

  “That’s just Cass. He’s my best friend. And yeah, he’s pretty much here in case you turn out to be a wacko.”

  “Well, you’re in luck, A Train. You can let Cass know I’m only 25 percent whacked, thank you very much.”

  “Is that the part of you that hangs up flyers all over the city to search for a girl you just met?”

  “And the part that wants to ask that beautiful girl out on a date.” And the part that wants to kiss her. But I don’t say that part.

  That sly smile again. “Where would we go?”

  I know exactly the place. I’ve been thinking about it all day. “The Village Vanguard. It’s this amazing little jazz club in the West Village, right near NYU. They play all the standards we were talking about, all the old musical ones. And they can play anything. So if there’s a song you love and you’d want to hear live, we could request it. I could pick you up at your dorm and we could —”

  “No. No, I’ll meet you there.”

  That works. “Really? You’ll go?” I take a huge gulp of air and realize I’ve been holding my breath this whole time. But I’m not nervous or stressed. More like too excited to remember how my body operates.

  “Yeah, I’ll totally go,” she says. “When?”

  “As soon as possible. What about right now?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Next Monday?”

  She takes a decades-long pause and then says, “I could do Monday.”

  The four most beautiful words in the English language.

  “Let’s do Monday,” I say, trying not to let on how incredibly freaking excited I am.

  Monday. Next Monday. I want to run around the fountain fifty-two times — no, I want to do cartwheels all around it. Honestly, I’m not even sure I can do a cartwheel. But I’ll learn how just for this very moment. I don’t care if anyone sees me. I don’t even care if I trip and fall into the fountain.

  And then she looks at her watch.

  “Shoot, I have to go,” she says.

  “Wait. Can I have your number?”

  She takes out her phone, I take out mine and we swap. Her phone screen is shattered.

  “Whoa, what happened?”

  “Dropped it.”

  “We could go get it fixed. The Apple store’s right —”

  “I really have to go,” she says, taking her phone back.

  Dominique waves at her friend and he stands. I can’t believe it’s over already.

  She slings her backpack over her shoulder and smiles. I feel it in my toes.

  “See you Monday,” she says. Then she walks down the steps.

  Her friend shows her something on his phone screen and they both smile.

  I wa
tch as they go down the sidewalk and down the subway stairs. My phone is still in my hand, her name glowing blue in the darkness.

  Dominique.

  Second Movement

  Andante con variazioni

  {11}

  Dominique

  “God, that was so mortifying.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “That was the most mortifying moment of my entire life.”

  “It was fine.”

  “Do you remember that time the button popped off my jeans in algebra and hit Mark Rodriguez in the forehead?”

  “That was bad.”

  “If that happened every day for the rest of my life, it still wouldn’t be as mortifying as tonight.”

  “I mean, at some point you’d run out of buttons.”

  “You could tell he thought I was the biggest dork that ever existed.”

  “Why, because of the —”

  Ugh. I was so nervous and shaky and sweaty I was afraid I’d throw up all over him if I said too much, and he was … perfect, with messy hair and beautiful dark eyes and the clearest skin. The fountain is more unbelievably beautiful at night, if that’s even possible. It lights up, and as the streams of water shoot into the air, it creates this sort of glowing liquid sculpture. Grand concert halls surrounded us on all sides. Tall buildings with glass fronts and golden light spilling through every window. To think he’s probably played music inside every one of them …

  I can’t believe we even went in the first place. We were only there for what, twenty minutes, before we had to leave to make the 9:25 train back to Trenton. I should have just stayed home and helped my mom. I bet Ben regrets putting up all those flyers anyway.

  “Dom, it wasn’t that bad. Trust me.”

  Cass hands our return tickets to the train conductor as she passes by. She uses a little metal punch to put a hole in each one, then wedges both into a slot at the top of the seat.

  “Cass. He asked me what class I have tomorrow morning and I said organic history.”

  “But —”

  “Organic. History. What the hell is that — the history of lettuce?”

  “You were just nervous.”

  “And when he introduced himself, I said, ‘I know.’ Like I’m some stalker who’s been collecting pieces of his dead skin in a mason jar for the last few weeks. I know? I know? Either I’m a psychic or a psycho. Those are the only two possible answers.”

  “So you were a little nervous, but you were great. He has your phone number. That’s all that matters.”

  “He’s probably deleting it as we speak.”

  Cass wraps his arms around me, trapping me in a tight bear hug that I try (but fail) to squirm my way out of.

  “It’s all going to be fine,” he says. “He’ll text.”

  “And that’s when he’ll find out that I don’t actually go to NYU and I’ve been completely wasting his time. Unless my mom finds out first, in which case I’ll never be allowed out of my apartment again, anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Dom! You and Ben Tristan are hanging out next week. Forget the rest and enjoy it.”

  I’m trying so hard to be happy. But instead I just feel like I’ve made a giant, irreversible mistake. Ben Tristan doesn’t have a crush on me. He has a crush on Dominique the NYU student who lives by Washington Square Park and studies dance and apparently minors in the history of vegetables. The first thing Cass and I did when we got to the train station was deactivate my Facebook account, just in case. Thank goodness no other information about me comes up when you Google my name. At least, I don’t think so. What if something was posted since the last time we checked?

  “Wait, Cass, Google me one more time.”

  “You’re all clear. Just some Dominique Hall in Hawaii who’s apparently won a lot of horseback riding competitions. You never had a Twitter account, did you?”

  “No. But what if something pops up later, in like a few weeks? Like the school honor roll or something?”

  “Relax. I’ve looked through the first ten pages and nothing’s come up that’s actually you.”

  “Best-case scenario, how long could this possibly go on before he finds out? Two weeks, three?”

  “Dom, are you kidding me? Relax, every good movie relationship from the last one hundred years has been based on lies. This is so Roman Holiday. If you squint, Ben sorta looks like a young, shaggy-haired Gregory Peck, doesn’t he?”

  Cass kisses me on the cheek, then lays his head on my shoulder as the train rumbles through darkness dotted with streetlights: New Jersey at night.

  Ben Tristan. Ben Tristan wants to take me out on a date next week. My whole hand is trembling, my nerve endings alive and dancing after touching his skin even just for a second. I take a deep breath.

  “Cass?”

  “What’s up, buttercup?”

  “You’re the best.”

  “I am pretty great, aren’t I?”

  “Don’t get cocky.”

  * *

  It’s not until I get home and I see Mom sitting on the couch, hunched over the coffee table with a pile of papers and her ratty budget notebook, that the panic sets in. My skin gets cold and my heart feels like it’s going to spontaneously combust. I can’t breathe. Act normal. Act normal.

  She looks up when I open the door and sighs. She knows something’s up. She has to.

  “Baby, you’re late.”

  “Sorry, I know. The movie went longer than we thought.”

  She knows we’d never watch a movie at Cass’s house. His mom’s always passed out on the couch and he shares his room with his three little brothers. So we told her we were going to Kandice’s — my mom has always liked her because she gets straight As. Kandice can make her voice sound a lot like her mom’s on the phone and she doesn’t mind covering for us, so most of the time when Cass and I are somewhere we’re not supposed to be, we say we’re at Kandice’s.

  “What did you watch?”

  “Roman Holiday.”

  “Again? Haven’t you guys seen that one already?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mom sighs again, and I know that’s the universal sign for “I have way too much to do.” It’s my week to sleep in the bed, so I haul my backpack into the bedroom and root around for a clean pair of PJ pants.

  It’s not until I turn out the lights, yell goodnight to my mom and pull up the covers that the magnitude of tonight, the great enormity of what I’ve done, really hits me. It was real. Everything actually happened. And for the first time all night I let my worries and insecurities fade away. He makes me feel like a different person, the person I want to be. Like I’m the sophisticated star of my own movie musical about New York City. Everything else stops when I’m standing next to him, and it’s just the two of us, preserved on film.

  When I shut my eyes, he’s all I can see. Dark hair falling in his dark eyes, framed by dark eyelashes. A spray of freckles dotting his nose, freckles I hadn’t noticed before. His smile: straight teeth, probably from braces, and white with smooth edges. His skin, as white as his teeth, with just a few blue and purple veins peeking through around his eyes. I remember touching his shoulder, I think — or was it his elbow? Just thinking about it tickles my palm and radiates heat through my fingertips.

  My eyes snap open.

  There’s no way he’ll find out who I really am, is there? He doesn’t even know my last name. There are probably tens of thousands of kids at NYU. A hundred Dominiques, at least. There’s no reason he wouldn’t trust me.

  Well, except for the small fact that I’m lying about everything.

  {12}

  Ben

  I’m running late, but as I tear through the front lobby, I realize something is different. I think I’m starting to become “avoid eye contact” famous at school. Word must be spreading about the Carnegie Ha
ll concert. As I run by, I see them carefully trying to sneak glances at me. Like a museum exhibit. Too rare to be touched. No one but Claire witnessed the Kreutzer rehearsal disaster, so it’s not too late. Everyone knows I’m still the best second-year violinist. I can feel it.

  And I bask in it, soak, revel — not going to lie. Seas of students part for me as I run down the hallway. Jamie, this girl I’ve always suspected has a crush on me, shakes her head and blushes when I get on the elevator with her.

  And then.

  And then it happens.

  A white cane stops the elevator from closing. The door shoots back open and there’s my hero, dressed in a striped button-down and a sport coat. My idol. Isaac Nadelstein. The man I dare not breathe near. I spend my nights awake, rewinding and replaying his performances until my ears are numb and the notes have been seared into my brain cells. He’s here. His powerful fingers are here; his violin is here in its case. He has everything he needs to play the Kreutzer Sonata, just as he played it on that life-changing recording. Everything is right here, with me, inside a six-foot-wide box in the sky.

  He can’t see me. Well, he can’t see anyone, ever — he’s blind. They say that’s what makes him such a brilliant violinist. No distractions, just the music. They say he can play any piece in the world just by listening to it once. And he plays everything from memory, even Ravel’s Tzigane. One of the most legendary violinists in history — a classical music god — and here he is, standing three inches from me.

  So I don’t even think. I just do it.

  “Mr. Nadelstein,” I blurt out. Jamie looks at the floor.

  Nadelstein looks up, opens his mouth, says nothing, closes it again, then clasps his fingers together, all in three seconds.

  “You’ve saved my life in so many ways,” I tell him, not sure where I’m going with this. “It’s just — at first I was the type of player who just sawed through the notes, I thought the notes were the important part, but now I understand it’s the panic, it’s the pain, it’s the joy. Every emotion I feel gets stored away in some dark corner and gets saved and condensed, uh, and it all goes into my music now. Or I try, at least. Trying is the first step. Thanks to you. So thank you. Thank you, sir.” I do this weird bow, like he’s the king and I’m a mere servant, and maybe I am, because the only thing I want is to see him smile.