Whoa. In his stupid jerk way, he’s actually kind of sticking up for me. Maybe because I told him off, he’s actually starting to respect me. About damn time.
I keep walking and don’t look back.
* *
When I walk into Spin Cycle, Mom has her calculator and a bunch of receipts on the counter. She’s looking down, and I don’t think she even notices me. My stomach lurches. I already know what she’s doing.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. Can you come over here and add up these numbers for me?”
I go up to the counter and enter each receipt into the calculator.
“Okay, now count the money in here.”
I wipe my hands on my jeans and count the bills in the blue zipper bag, knowing the cash is going to turn up $20 short.
“Uh, $560,” I say. “What did you get?”
“Same — $560. It’s supposed to be $580.”
“Could the bag have fallen? Maybe some money slipped between the wall and the counter?” I get down on my hands and knees and feel around on the floor, behind the dusty cords of the cash register. Of course nothing’s there.
“We need to get a better system. Something electronic, where we can put in our earnings every night so we don’t have this problem.”
“Okay, that sounds good,” I say. My face is burning and I’m afraid to get back up from under the counter. I know she’ll be able to tell I’m lying.
“From now on, every night before you leave, I want you to count the register and make sure we’re on track, and I’ll do the same thing before I close up.”
“Definitely.”
“Do you think you could have been making change for a fifty and two twenties were stuck together?”
“It’s possible.”
“What?”
“It’s possible,” I say a little louder.
“I can’t hear anything you’re saying. Can you come back up here?”
Shit. I wipe my eyes and edge out from under the table, hitting my head in the process.
“What did you say?” she asks again.
“I said that it’s possible.”
“Well, we need to make sure there’s no possibility of that happening. No margin of error. I don’t understand — we’ve only ever been a few pennies short before. How could we be missing a twenty?”
I didn’t realize she’d be so worked up about it. For some reason I thought she would assume we’d made a mistake, wonder what happened for a few minutes and then let it go. I know money is tight, but I didn’t realize $20 was so crucial. It’s so hard to watch her pacing the store, back and forth. I should never have done this. My throat feels full of cotton and I want to cry.
“Mom,” I say. My voice comes out all trembly, even though I’m mentally willing it not to. “I’m sorry. I think I did make change for a fifty the other day, and maybe two of the bills were stuck together like you said. I remember now. I’m so sorry.”
She stops pacing and her face softens. “It’s okay, baby. But you have to be more careful next time. We both will.”
She hugs me and I squeeze back, hard. I’m not sad or embarrassed — I’m mostly relieved that I wasn’t caught. I wonder what that says about me. Am I a terrible person?
I’m pretty sure I’m a terrible person.
* *
I call Cass on my way home.
“Hey,” I say. “Did I wake you up?”
“No, just watching The Red Shoes. You ever see that one?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, my gosh, you have to. It’s about this ballerina in London who —”
“Cass, I sent Ben my confession.”
“When?”
“At lunch.”
“And?”
“And he hasn’t responded yet.”
“Maybe he’s just busy.”
“Or maybe he decided he doesn’t like me after all.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. You told him the truth. There’s nothing braver and more beautiful than that.”
“Is that from a movie?”
“Nope, that’s just me.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too. Don’t stress, okay?”
“Okay.” Talking to Cass makes me feel a little better, and I can take a deep breath again. Ben’s probably just busy. He’s probably working on a school project or stuck late at rehearsal.
“Goodnight, babe.”
“Goodnight.”
{32}
Ben
The resonance is off. There’s this buzzing. Like a gnat in my ear whenever I press down on the E string. I’ve tried retuning, then restringing, then putting on a different string. Then another. Nothing helps. It’s like every phrase comes out sounding thin and shrill, like I’m listening to someone else. Someone with completely shitty tone quality who has no idea what he’s doing. Someone like Carter.
The phone rings in my ear. I tap my fingers on my desk, first in eighth notes, then sixteenths, then thirty-seconds. I hold my breath until I hear the click.
“Virtuoso.”
“Fred?”
“Hi again, Ben. What’s up?”
“What if I put in a silver-wound G?”
“You tried that a few years ago, remember? You didn’t like how bright it sounded.”
“I want to try it again.”
“Isn’t the problem the E?”
“Yeah, but now I’m wondering if it’s the discrepancy between the sound of the G and the sound of the E that’s bothering me. Maybe the E is bothering me because the G is off. Does that make sense?”
He sighs. “Have you already opened everything you bought yesterday? I can only do an exchange if the packages are sealed.”
“I’m just going to come by and get a few more. I want to swap them out and hear them against each other. Be there in fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll be here.”
I’m playing all the same notes, but nothing sounds like it should. There’s something whining and grating and piercing about the sound when I play, but I can’t figure out why. It has to be the strings. I take impeccable care of my instruments. When we bought my Mezzadri, Yaz made sure my parents had humidifiers installed in our house to keep everything at the optimum 30 percent humidity. My case has a small humidifier inside to keep the wood from warping. I just had the fingerboard replaced a few months ago. There’s no reason the sound should be so repulsive. It has to be the strings. There’s no other possible explanation.
Unless it’s me.
No. I stick the old strings in my closet and go into the living room. I put on my shoes and yank the laces, tying them tight. Tighter, tighter, tighter, until my feet feel like shrink-wrapped sausages. I imagine walking with my sausage feet all the way to the music store, then loosen the laces a bit. I tear out of the lobby and make the familiar trip to Virtuoso — the same one I made yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
* *
I’m back in my room, restringing, when Milo comes in. Not just the E and the G. I’ve decided I need to try several different brands and types of strings and listen to the tone of each setup back-to-back.
“Can’t you even knock?” I say, not looking up.
“I’ve been knocking for like three minutes. You didn’t hear me?”
“What?”
“Do you want lunch or something?”
“No.”
“It’s four-thirty. Mom asked me to come in. She wants to know if you want a sandwich. Cucumber and hummus with peppers. She told me to make it sound really delicious.”
“If Mom wants me to eat lunch, she should ask me herself.”
Before I can realize what’s happening, Milo grabs my arms — each nerve ending on my skin is a shorting-out wire, alive and flashing.
I wince and try to pull away, but he doesn’t let go.
“Why are you so mean to us?”
He yells right in my face. Like I’m a toddler. Like I’m five years old.
“Why won’t you just leave me the fuck alone?” I yell back.
“Is that what you want? You just want all of us to ignore you, like you’re some brilliant composer here in his private wing and we’re just your servants, bringing you food and making sure you’ve slept and tending to you like you’re the goddamn king of the world?”
“That’s not fair. I’m …”
“You’re what?”
“I’m …”
The groaning of the room is so loud I can’t hear myself finish the sentence. The ceiling shifts and it’s a high E. An ambulance siren blares through the open window, a whining tritone. Milo’s feet shuffling on the carpet become syncopated eighth notes. The sounds are all whirling together, picking up more and more speed in my mind until I begin to see the notes in my vision, too. Jumbled sixteenth notes fly in through the window and hover over the bed for a minute before raining down onto my comforter.
“Ben? Are you okay? Do you want me to get Mom?”
I put my hands on his shoulders. Wet, gripping. “Please, please leave me alone.”
“Okay,” he says softly. He pulls away and shuts the door with a D-flat thud.
My room is quiet and still again. The notes disappear.
I’m better when I’m alone. Milo and my mom think they know what’s good for me, but they’re only making things worse. They’re just two more obstacles holding me back from who I could really be. I can’t let them stand in my way anymore.
Back to the strings. None of these sound right. Not the gold-plated Olives, not the Gold Label E, not the synthetic Obligatos, not anything. Could it be the violin itself? Maybe the air went off in the apartment one day when no one was home and it got too warm and something warped. Maybe I’m not noticing a crack in the body. Maybe the sound post moved. Or maybe it’s the bow. I’ve been playing with a Hill bow for the last five years, just like Isaac Nadelstein. I peel off my sweat-drenched T-shirt and put on a clean one, first inside out and backward, then the right way. Maybe I should try playing a Gagliano or a Guadagnini or a Guarneri, or maybe I should just go down to Brighton’s rare-instruments room and play them all, every single one of them until I find the one that has the most perfect tone. Or just fucking buy a Stradivarius and stay in debt for the rest of my life.
I run to Virtuoso, ignoring Don’t Walk signs, shrieking tires, screaming horns. Nothing else in the world matters.
* *
Just as the sun starts to set behind the Empire State Building, my mind sputters and shorts. Slowly, then all at once, like stumbling off a jagged cliff into nothing. My brain tries to fight it. Not yet, not yet — I have so much to do, don’t you understand? But a deeper part of me knows I could never go on like this. It always ends.
Somehow I get home.
I crawl to the safe cocoon of my room.
Sleep comes for me.
I am nowhere.
{33}
Dominique
He has to respond today. It’s been forty-eight hours. He can’t give me the silent treatment forever.
The day trudges on. Classes wash over me. I fold clothes at Spin Cycle: One sleeve, then the next, then up the center, then into the pile. I sleep in my clothes. I startle awake and run into the living room to check my e-mail, breath caught in my throat … then barreling into my stomach when I see that he still hasn’t responded. I repeat it all the next day and the next. But nothing.
Nothing matters if Ben has given up on me.
{34}
Ben
I can’t move my leg. It’s twisted around something wet, and I’m both cold and hot at the same time. I look up and see I’m caught in the bedsheet, which is pinning me to the mattress like the world’s least practical toga. I’m not sure how my clothes came off. I must have ripped them off in my sleep.
My tongue is made of dog fur. My nose is packed with sand. My eyelids have splinters. It’s too bright to blink — shutting them is easier.
* *
Something cold and wet presses into my forehead. I open my eyes and see Mom sitting beside me, holding a washcloth on my forehead. I’m wearing pajamas and the blankets are pulled up around my neck.
“You’re burning up,” Mom says. “Do you think you have the flu?”
I nod — not because I think I do but because words are too hard.
“How about staying home?”
I nod.
“I’ll call Yaz and tell him you’re not feeling well.”
I shut my eyes.
Her footsteps fade into the hallway and the door clicks. Then there’s nothing again.
* *
Mom is sitting on my bed with a bowl of pasta. Immediately I know it’s from Upland — my favorite restaurant in the city.
All at once I’m painfully hungry, like all the missed meals from the last few weeks have hollowed out my stomach and now it’s just an insatiable black hole. I can’t cram pasta into my mouth fast enough. I can’t even taste it. I’m just swallowing as fast as I can force it in. Mom pats my leg, makes a little hiccupy sighing sound, then turns away to wipe her eyes.
The bowl is empty, so I roll over. A few minutes later Mom leaves with the empty dishes. I briefly think about reaching over and grabbing my phone off the nightstand. I’m sure I have a million texts and e-mails. I’m sure everyone at school is worried. Or maybe no one cares. Maybe no one even noticed I was gone. Claire and Carter are probably at her house, running the second movement right now. And then I remember Dominique. Would she even want to talk to me if I didn’t go to Brighton?
I shut my eyes. It aches too much to do anything else.
{35}
Dominique
I can’t take it anymore. I skip chemistry and peek into the window of Cass’s English class. Thankfully Ms. Arrojo’s back is to me, so I wave wildly and hope Cass notices. When he does, I motion for him to meet me outside.
He opens the door and walks out with the bathroom pass, looking annoyed.
“We’re about to have a pop quiz,” he tells me. “I had to pretend I was going to pee my pants. This better be good.”
“I can’t take this anymore. I need to see Ben. If he hates me, I need him to tell me to my face. I can’t just keep wondering. This is going to drive me insane.”
“Okay, so tomorrow after school you can —”
“I can’t wait until tomorrow. I need to talk to him now. There’s a twelve-fifteen train. Maybe I can catch him when he’s switching classes. He has music theory on Wednesdays and then he has to go uptown to get to his private lesson.”
“Dom, you know I support you in everything you do.”
“Yeah.”
“But I’m not getting good vibes from Ben right now. I think you should just leave him alone until he cools off. If he wants to call you, he can. The ball is in his court. Just try to distract yourself,” he says.
“I can’t.” I feel the tears dripping down my cheeks and onto my neck. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can’t think about anything else. If he treats me like I don’t exist, it’s like I’m not even here.” I can barely put words to the emptiness.
“Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Wait an hour. And if you still feel like you’re going to explode, then go for it. Here.” He hands me a twenty from his wallet. “Baby-sat my cousins last week.”
I grab him as tight as I can. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whisper into his shoulder.
“Just don’t get caught. You know which door to use?”
“Yeah.”
Anton and I used to do it all the time. Wait until the late bell, when all the classroom doors are closed. Walk around the back way, past the cafeteria and d
own to the dead end where the utility closets are. Leave out the door marked “Emergency Exit: Warning — alarm will sound.” (This is a lie. There’s not even an alarm connected to the door.)
I open the door and a high-pitched siren squeals.
Shit. Maybe the alarm got fixed.
Running is the only thing I can think to do. So I run. I run like a freaking track star. I run like an Olympic gold medalist. I run until my legs are numb and rubbery and my lungs are filled with a thousand needles. I don’t stop running until I reach the train platform. Trenton to New York City.
* *
It’s freezing outside, so the fountain is empty today. I watch students with instrument cases scurry back and forth across the stone tiles of the plaza at Lincoln Center — guess they’re too cold to walk at a normal pace. I wish I had a heavier jacket.
Darkness creeps in and the lights outside Alice Tully Hall switch on. I walk down the steps and into the frenzy of rush hour. He’s not here.
* *
It takes me a while to find his apartment building. I know he lives on Ninety-Sixth Street, but I can’t remember if he’s at Madison or Park or Lexington. Why do those avenues have to be so confusing? Why couldn’t they stay a part of the number system like the streets?
I wander up Lexington and finally spot his building, with the green awning and the marble lobby. When I find it, I can’t believe I ever even forgot where it was. A force larger than I am is drawing me there. I take a deep breath and push open the glass door.
“Hello,” the doorman says cheerfully.
“Hi,” I say.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Ben Tristan.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“No.”
“May I have your name?”
“Dominique.”
“Your last name, Dominique?”
“Dominique Hall.”
“Just a moment, Ms. Hall.”
He has a faint, familiar-sounding accent. I have the urge to ask if he’s from Ecuador. But I don’t.
He picks up an old-school phone, presses a few buttons, then speaks into the receiver: “A young lady named Dominique Hall is here to see Mr. Ben.”
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