When the Beat Drops

by Anna Hecker

  I take a deep breath. “What if I go with you?” I suggest. Maybe playing soccer will help refocus Britt on what matters: doing what she loves. Maybe it will help her confront Yelena’s death and convince her there’s more to life than partying.

  “Are you serious?” Britt’s laugh is broken and dry, not the usual peal of silver that climbs one note before descending the scale. “You hate sports.”

  “Yeah, but I love you.”

  Britt rolls her eyes. “Whatever, weirdo.”

  “Well, my shift is over.” I secede the front desk to Dad’s work-study, a college student determined to lose fifty pounds despite the fact that he never actually works out. “Let’s go kick some balls around.”

  Britt tries to protest but I’m already scrounging a soccer ball from the equipment closet. From the corner of my eye I see Dad watching me. We make eye contact and his face breaks into a smile of pure joy as I palm the ball. My gut twists. The only time I’ve seen him smile like that is when he watched Britt on the soccer field. I’ve never gotten quite that look from him, not even when I won the regional music competition and took home a trophy too big to fit in my bedroom.

  Britt doesn’t notice. She’s staring emptily into space, twisting a strand of the doll’s hair around her thumb. Seeing her like that makes me clutch the ball tighter. I want the old Britt back, even if it means I have to do sports to help her get there.

  “Can’t we just go home?” she complains as I drive us to the high school soccer field. “I’m really tired.”

  “I’ll bet,” I say. “You’ve been out a lot.”

  I expect her to argue, but she just nods and looks out the window. I pull into the parking lot, batting away thoughts of my three lousy years in this awful building and the one ahead. Our feet crunch on grass that’s gone brown with summer neglect as I lead the way to the soccer field, Britt trailing behind.

  “So I guess I’ll be goalie,” I say. “And you can work on your footwork or whatever.”

  Britt takes a long time getting ready, carefully arranging Yelena’s backpack on the bleachers. When she’s done it looks like the doll is watching us, and I shiver in spite of the July heat. Britt slowly returns to the field, the toes of her sneakers dragging behind her and kicking up clumps of dirt.

  “Do your thing,” I tell her, trying to find a good spot in the goal. I haven’t played soccer since middle school gym and I’d forgotten how big the net feels. “Get it past me—it shouldn’t be hard.”

  I roll the ball to Britt and she nicks it with her toe, sending it skittering. The blur of black and white seems to uncoil something inside her and she goes after it like a cat chasing a toy mouse, dribbling from foot to foot and then kicking it high into the air, bouncing it off her knees.

  I relax into the sight of Britt being Britt again, her limbs unspooling like a skein of silk. She flows down the field in the dying light, all the grace and poise I remember from her high school days finding itself in the way the ball meets her body, the magnetic pull as it returns to her every time. Britt’s back in control again: the rising star, the Alden Family MVP. Watching her I’m flooded with the same admiration and envy I felt all through high school, the sense that I could never be like that and the fleeting wish that sometimes, just to see what it was like, I could.

  Finally, Britt draws back her leg and sends the ball hurtling into the air. I stand transfixed in the goal, hypnotized as the black and white hexagons spiral closer and closer, growing larger until …

  “Duck!” Britt screams, a second too late.

  The ball connects with my face and pain explodes across my cheek. I stumble backward and watch my legs rise into the air and fall back to the earth. Through the ringing in my ears I hear Britt call my name. A moment later she’s crouched next to me, her face swimming in and out of focus. “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Ouch.” I sit up slowly, cupping my cheek. “I feel dizzy.”

  “I’m sorry.” Britt sits down hard next to me. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I rub my face. “Am I bleeding? Is there a bruise?”

  Britt looks at me, and her face collapses.

  “Fuck!” she screams at the sky. “Why do I fuck up everything I love?”

  She crumples to the ground, sobbing.

  “Whoa, hey, it’s okay.” I get to my knees and crawl over to her, my cheek still throbbing. “It’s not that bad. I’m fine.”

  “I hurt you,” Britt whimpers. Tears leak from between her fingers.

  “No you didn’t.” I pull my hand away. “See? No blood.”

  Britt just cries harder.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” I reach over and rub her back in circles, the way Mom used to do when we were little. “You were amazing out there. Let’s just try again. This time I’ll duck.”

  “No!” The word pierces the air, teakettle-sharp. “Why doesn’t anyone get it? I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  My hand stops moving on her back.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “This.” Britt gestures at the ball, the net, the field. “Soccer. All of it.”

  “You don’t want to play soccer anymore?” Soccer is Britt’s whole world. I can’t imagine who she’d be without it; it would be like me without music, an outline of a person still waiting to be colored in.

  She shakes her head. “It’s just so fucking pointless. All this competition for no reason. To get a ball into a net? Why bother?”

  “Hey.” A piece of hair is sticking to her cheek. I brush it away. “I get it. You’re grieving. You probably feel like nothing has any point right now.”

  “You don’t get it.” She sits up and draws her knees to her chest, tucking herself into a ball. “I’ve felt this way for a long time.”

  “Since when?” I pluck a blade of grass by the root and run my finger along the edge.

  “I don’t know. Months? Years?” She nuzzles her chin into her knees. “Yelena was the only one who understood. She was, like, the only person in the world who didn’t care whether or not I was some soccer star.” Her eyes gloss over with tears. “She was the only one who liked me for me.”

  “That’s not true.” I run my finger harder along the blade of grass. “Everyone likes you for you. I like you for you.”

  “Then why are you making me do this?” she explodes, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  My stomach churns. All I wanted was to make things better for Britt, to bring her back to normal. Instead I’ve made everything worse. “I thought it would make you feel better,” I admit after a while. “Like, to do something you’re really good at. Like what writing music does for me.”

  “That’s the thing.” Britt sniffles loudly. “Everyone thinks soccer is the only thing I’m good at. Nobody sees past the trophies. Nobody sees me.”

  “Britt.” I take her hands and hold them tight. “You know you can stop after college. You don’t have to play soccer forever.”

  “Huh?” she says, wiping her eyes with the bottom of her shirt.

  “I mean, you still have to play now, for your scholarship,” I continue. “But if it’s not really what you want—like, there’s no law saying you have to be a professional soccer player when you grow up.”

  Britt blinks. “You didn’t know?”

  “Know what?” I yank a new piece of grass from the ground.

  She sighs. “I can’t believe Mom and Dad didn’t tell you. I lost my scholarship. I almost got kicked off the team.”

  “What?” Blood rushes to my ears, flooding the world with white noise.

  “I lost my scholarship,” Britt repeats. “Mom and Dad think I just wasn’t playing well, but it was more than that. The coach called it poor sportsmanship.”

  “Poor sportsmanship.” I roll the words over my tongue. Suddenly my parents’ obsession with getting Britt to train this summer makes sense. This whole time, I was the only person in our family who didn’t know. “What does that even mean?”

  She shrugs, not lookin
g at me. “Showing up late for practice. Not giving it a hundred and ten percent. Just generally … I don’t know, not caring enough?”

  A timeline starts to form in my head. Britt meeting Yelena. Britt taking molly. Britt losing her scholarship.

  “Because you were partying,” I say.

  “It wasn’t just that.” Britt sniffles and wipes her eyes. “I just … I don’t know. I stopped caring.”

  “So how are you paying for college?” The white noise grows stronger, drowning out the hum of a far-off airplane and Britt’s close, ragged breaths.

  “We took out a loan,” she says. “Which covered part of it. But a lot’s coming out of savings.”

  The rush in my ears is deafening, drowning me. Those savings were supposed to be for me. To help pay for Fulton. And to send me to camp.

  “So that’s why …” I start, and then stop. I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t want to believe it’s true.

  But there it is, big and ugly and loud. So that’s why our parents couldn’t afford to send me to camp this year. It wasn’t because business was worse than usual, wasn’t because the money just wasn’t there.

  It was because of Britt.

  CHAPTER 31

  I’m stunned into silence. We sit there for a long time, Britt weeping quietly into her hands as I rip up more grass, first by the blade and then by the handful. Finally I can’t take it anymore. I stand and stalk to the car, my sneakers grinding angrily against the gravel. Britt follows slowly. The soccer ball stays on the field.

  I keep my eyes trained on the road as I drive home. If I even look at Britt I’ll explode, sending a hailstorm of curses echoing through the car. I can’t believe my own sister is the reason I’m not at camp this summer. I can’t believe our whole family has been lying to me. I can’t believe our parents put Britt first again: ahead of the gym, ahead of Windham, ahead of me. But most of all I can’t believe Britt kept partying, even after losing her scholarship.

  Not only that, but she dragged me into it with her.

  When we get home I don’t wait for her to get out of the car. I run upstairs and slam my door, pacing my tiny bedroom until it feels like a cage. Finally I grab my trumpet and start blasting scales, warming up my lungs as I attempt to cool down my heart.

  It’s not like this is the first time our parents have put Britt first. Britt always got more presents for her birthday: soccer balls and jerseys and trendy clothes and makeup. I know she was easier to shop for, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  I segue into an easy Scott Joplin rag. Our parents have more pictures of Britt on the walls. They closed the gym the day of the state soccer championship so the whole family could attend her game, even though Grandpa Lou was the one who went with me to all my music competitions, even the one where I took home the trophy that now lives in the garage. Grandpa always said he enjoyed it; he loved being around all that music and it took his mind off missing my Gram. But there was always the unspoken question: if he hadn’t been the one driving me around, who would have?

  I finish the rag and start in on a tricky Dizzy Gillespie riff that’s all speed and fingerwork. A muted thump comes from Britt’s room, throwing me off. I grit my teeth, set my metronome, and try again. But just as I hit the apex of the solo the thuds come louder, breaking what little concentration I have left. She’s listening to tech-house again; I can’t quite tell through the egg crate on my walls but I’m almost sure it’s that DJ Skizm set.

  The fury I’ve been struggling to tamp down bursts to the surface. She’s already ruined everything else for me, and now she’s ruining this too. Still clutching my trumpet I storm into the hall. If she had to take away summer camp and any money left to send me to college, the least she can do is turn her goddamn music down. I need to ace this audition now more than ever—if I don’t get a scholarship, I may as well not even get in.

  And if I do get a scholarship, I’m not going to blow it. Not like Britt.

  I barge into her room without knocking, my cheeks burning and a million accusations ready on my tongue. The music pulses around me, curt and angry: definitely DJ Skizm.

  Britt’s room is a mess. There are clothes everywhere, makeup smeared on her dresser, club and party flyers scattered on the floor. She’s curled on the bed, still wearing her clothes from before: bike shorts and a Gym Rat tank top and cleats that leave little clumps of dirt on her yellow comforter. She’s cradling Yelena’s backpack like it’s a child, with the doll’s head up against her cheek and a piece of its hair wrapped around her finger. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open, slack … asleep.

  I sag against her wall. Britt always kept her room immaculate. Now it’s clear she’s not even trying. She’s given up, our parents are completely oblivious, and I don’t know if I can keep doing this anymore. Since Yelena died I’ve gone out of my way to keep it a secret from Mom and Dad, to be there for Britt if she wants to talk, to try to help her grieve. I even played soccer for her. But the more I’ve tried, the less she has.

  Britt doesn’t want to get her life together, I realize as I look around her room, and our parents don’t want to see the truth. If they did, they’d notice that she can’t keep her hair or her room clean, that she can barely teach an easy cardio class and is carrying a creepy, grubby baby doll wherever she goes. But they’re still too blinded by the old Britt, the golden girl who could do no wrong. I bet if I tried to tell them that girl is gone, they wouldn’t even believe me.

  As I stomp across her room and turn off her music I tell myself I’m done with this family and all its lies. If Britt wants to throw her future away that’s fine, but I need to focus on my future: on Fulton, on getting in. And on paying for it.

  I return to my room and start sifting through my new tracks, the ones I’ve been setting aside for Electri-City. I play them loud enough to jiggle the egg-crate foam on my walls, not caring anymore whether I wake Britt or bother the neighbors. If my family isn’t going to help me pay for Fulton, I’ll just have to find ways to pay for it myself. DJing is as good a place as any to start.

  But with every track, every measure, every note, comes a new set of fears: That I’ll never be able to afford Fulton. That I won’t get a scholarship. That Crow and Nicky will go to the conservatory of our dreams and I’ll be stuck in Coletown forever, folding towels and swiping membership cards and slowly rotting to death. All because Britt decided she didn’t want to play soccer anymore. All because our parents put her first.

  CHAPTER 32

  I can barely stand to go to work the next day. Everything about the gym—the ugly fluorescent lights, the sweaty stucco walls, the persistent stink of rubber, bleach, and feet—feels like a prison. I’m afraid that if I even look at my parents I’ll explode, my shell of rage falling open to reveal the raw, pulsing hurt beneath. I can’t lose my cool—not here, not now—so I bury my nose in my laptop and download more tracks for Electri-City, distracting myself with a fantasy where a wealthy benefactor catches my set and offers to pay my tuition at Fulton and buy me a set of CDJs and a Rane mixer too.

  At three o’clock, when afternoon ensembles let out, I FaceTime Nicky at camp. He’s in the lounge, and I catch the blurry outlines of Regina and Brian behind him, playing a card game and laughing.

  “Has your family ever lied to you?” I ask, glancing around the gym to make sure my parents are out of earshot. “Like, about something big?”

  “Um.” He turns his eyes skyward, thinking. “They pretended to be cool when I came out, even though I overheard my mom sobbing to my dad later about how I’d never give them grandchildren,” he says finally. “But at least they tried, you know?”

  I bite my lip. That’s not exactly what I’m talking about. If anything, it’s the opposite.

  “Who’re you talking to?” Crow comes up behind Nicky, peers into the screen, and sees me. “Oh,” she says, turning to go.

  “Crow, wait!” I call after her.

  She freezes. I count four agonizing beats of looking at the
back of her plaid vest before she turns.

  “Atta girl,” Nicky says, pulling her down next to him. “It’s about time you two talked.”

  Crow blinks behind her glasses. I take a deep breath.

  “Listen, about Visitors’ Weekend.” I pick at the edge of a fingernail. “I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have been so harsh about it. I was just having FOMO.”

  “Having what?” Crow cocks her head.

  “Fear of Missing Out,” I explain. My stomach twists; it was Yelena who taught me that word.

  “Oh!” Crow’s brow unfurrows. “I really like that.”

  “Am I forgiven?” I ask.

  Crow adjusts her fedora. “I guess,” she sighs. “Just don’t do it again.”

  “Thanks.” I melt a little at her crooked smile. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too, jerk,” she says affectionately. “Hey, did Nicky tell you about his new romance?”

  My eyes shoot to Nicky. His face is scarlet. “Tell me everything. Now.”

  They launch into a detailed account of flirtations in the dining hall, mushy duets in the practice rooms, and a first kiss down by the lake. By the time they’re through I’ve lost my desire to tell them about Britt. I don’t want to ruin their fairytale summer with my drama, and there’s nothing they can do to fix it anyway.

  “I wish you were here,” Nicky laments, still rhapsodizing about his boyfriend. “I told Sidney all about you. He would love you.”

  “I wish I was there too,” I sigh. FOMO balloons inside me, pulsing in my chest. As happy as I am for Nicky, it hurts not to be there for his first love.

  Then again, it’s not like he’s been here for mine.

  Suddenly, I want to see Derek more than anything. It’s been three days, and our endless text-message chain doesn’t feel like enough right now. I want the solidity of his body, the grainy warmth of his laugh. I want to remind myself that at least one thing in my life right now is genuinely good.

  When I text to see if he can hang out after work he says he’s visiting his mom in Westchester and can pick me up after. A month ago I would have been embarrassed to meet him in the sad shopping plaza where The Gym Rat is nestled between a Chinese takeout place and a Payless ShoeSource, but we’re beyond that now. What we have is too deep, too real, to be hampered by the lame reality of my hometown.