When the Beat Drops

by Anna Hecker

  But I can’t stop. “How could you?” I gasp, words and tears tumbling out of me in one big, messy rush. “After what happened to Yelena? After what happened last night?”

  “Mira …” Mom starts to step forward, but Dad puts an arm across her chest, blocking her. Waiting to hear what Britt has to say.

  Britt’s lips tremble. Her eyes go liquid. “I just wanted to see her again,” she whispers.

  “See who again?” Mom demands.

  I remember what Britt said in the car last night: It’s like she’s with me sometimes. Like she’s holding my hand.

  “Yelena,” I answer for her.

  Britt doesn’t say anything. She kneads the hospital blanket where it bunches at her knees.

  “You know you can’t bring her back, right?” I say softly. “No matter how many pills you take.”

  Britt’s head drops. Tears gather at the corner of her eyes.

  “Britt.” Dad’s voice is quiet and gentle, like he’s talking to a scared kitten. “Are you in the hospital because you took drugs?”

  Britt blinks hard. She looks at the ceiling and the humming machine and the blue curtain on the door. “Maybe,” she says. The tears threaten to fall.

  “Well that just takes the cake!” Mom slams her hand down on the edge of a table, making a plastic tray jump. “You had everything going for you! A full scholarship and awesome grades and … and you threw it away to do drugs?”

  Britt’s shoulders start to shake. “It was just too much,” she whispers.

  Dad leans close to her. “What was too much?”

  “Just … you guys.” A tear snakes down her cheek. She doesn’t try to wipe it away.

  “Us?” Mom steps back, her hand to her chest.

  “Just like—pushing me. You were always pushing me.” Another tear falls, and then a third.

  “We only pushed you because you could handle it,” Mom says.

  Dad nods. “We just wanted you to do what made you happy.”

  Tears stream down Britt’s face, too fast for me to count. “Sure: as long as I was happy the way you wanted.” Her voice goes thick. “Like playing soccer and winning all the time. You were never that way about her.”

  Her eyes are on me.

  “Mira?” Dad asks.

  “Yes, Mira!” Her voice trembles. “She could just do her own thing and like be this jazz weirdo and you’d leave her alone. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “That’s not—” Mom starts.

  “Mira didn’t have to be perfect!” Britt cuts her off, sobbing. “Just me. All the pressure was on me.”

  “Oh, honey.” Mom reaches down and takes her hand. “We never meant for you to feel that way.”

  “But I did,” Britt weeps. “I always did.”

  Dad heaves a shuddering sigh and launches into a speech about how all they ever wanted from Britt was for her to be herself and do her best, but I’m only half listening. Instead I’m playing my sister’s words over in my head, listening and pausing and hitting Repeat.

  She could just do her own thing and you’d leave her alone, Britt said. That’s all I ever wanted.

  I look at my sister huddled in a hospital bed, her face caked with tears and snot and vomit. I’ve spent my entire life envying Britt. It never occurred to me that this whole time, she could be jealous of me too.

  CHAPTER 41

  The three of us stay in Britt’s hospital room for hours, finally having the conversation we should have had months ago: the one about Britt’s scholarship and her drug use, about parties and Yelena. About lies and evasions, our savings account and Pepperdine and Windham and Fulton, and how our parents always treated Britt versus how they always treated me.

  The one where I finally tell them how much it hurt that they went to all of Britt’s games and almost none of my recitals.

  The one where they actually apologize.

  “You never seemed like you needed us,” Mom confesses, wiping mascara-tinted tears from her cheeks. “You always seemed so confident. Like it didn’t matter if we were there or not.”

  “It mattered,” I tell them, my eyes watering. “It still matters.”

  With every word I feel the ball of rage I’ve been carrying all summer unravel just a little more. I know my family can’t go back in time and change anything, but it helps to know that they never meant to hurt me, that they were just doing what they thought was right.

  It’s almost eleven by the time we’re done talking. The doctors want to keep Britt overnight for observation, and Mom and Dad prepare to spend the night in the waiting room.

  “You should go, Mir-Bear,” Mom says as I stifle a yawn. “Get some sleep.”

  I’m too tired to argue. I stand and kiss Britt on her cheek, resting my head for a moment against hers and savoring the feel of her breath, shallow but warm and alive, against my face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers, so quiet only I can hear.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper back, the very last of my anger ebbing away. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  Dad gets up to give me a hug.

  “We love you, Mir-Bear,” he says.

  Mom goes next. “To the moon and back,” she adds.

  We hold each other for longer than usual, their smell and the feeling of their arms reminding me of how it felt to be a little kid, when I really believed they could protect me from anything.

  “I love you guys too,” I say.

  I turn and make my way through the muted hospital halls, driving home through the still, warm night. As I let myself into the house and start up the stairs I notice glitter winking up at me from the carpet. A shard of broken mirror catches the light, reflecting the chaos in Britt’s room.

  Right. Britt’s room. She must have trashed it before she collapsed. And now it’s a mess, just when it’s starting to feel like everything else in our family is finally coming together. As tired as I am, I don’t want them returning home to this.

  I enter Britt’s room and pick her soccer trophies off the floor, arranging them in neat rows on top of her bureau. I find the caps for Yelena’s eye pencils and tuck them into her makeup bag, fold her clothes into her suitcases and zip them shut and take them to the garage. I find rubber gloves and contractor bags and start in on the broken mirror, careful not to let the jagged edges touch my hands. A fractured mosaic of my face stares up at me: curls limp with fatigue, dark circles under my eyes. I look older, I think as I toss pieces into the trash bag, dissembling my face bit by bit. I look like I’ve lived through a year in the last night.

  I look like my mom, and my dad. I look like Britt.

  I take out the trash and lug our old Hoover up the stairs, falling under the spell of its dull roar as it sucks flecks of glitter from the carpet. I read once that a vacuum cleaner has the same frequency as the inside of a womb—some parents even use it to soothe babies to sleep. Right now, I believe it. I’m practically asleep on my feet.

  The Hoover bumps the edge of Britt’s desk and her computer comes to life. DJ Skizm blares through her desktop speaker, overpowering the vacuum with chomping beats and shrieking chords. It jolts me out of my trance, making my ears ring and my stomach do angry somersaults. It feels like it’s inside me, clawing at my guts and trying to swallow me whole.

  I dive at Britt’s desk, trying to find the mute button on her keyboard, but my palm slides over her mouse pad and I trip on the vacuum cleaner’s cord. My knee hits the floor, slamming into a sliver of glass. It lodges in my flesh. Blood gushes from my leg.

  The music gets louder, the beat throbbing along with the pain. A wave of pure hatred crashes over me then: not just for DJ Skizm but for the music itself, for this track and this set and every other song made on a computer and peppered with drum machines.

  If it weren’t for the music I never would have let myself get sucked into this scene. I would have tried to stop Britt from partying instead of going to parties with her; I would have run to our parents the second I found out she was taking drugs.r />
  But the music seduced me: the music, and Derek, and the lights and glitter and magic of diving feet-first into a brand-new world. It blinded me so I didn’t see all the ugliness beneath the surface, deafened me so I didn’t hear the wake-up call when Yelena died. Instead of turning away and dragging Britt with me, I went in deeper. I let the music be my guide.

  My hand scrambles on Britt’s desk, knocking her keyboard to the floor as the music blares on and on and on. I can’t believe how naïve I was, thinking there was more to this world than canned rhythms and sketchy drugs. Thinking I had a place here, a future. Thinking it could maybe even change my life.

  Hot tears leap to my eyes. I rise to my feet and clamp my hand over the speaker until I feel it vibrate against my palm, through my veins and into my chest.

  I heave the speaker against the wall.

  It cracks the drywall and slides to the floor and I leap on it, stomping until the sound goes fuzzy and distorted.

  I am done with this music: not just here and now, but forever. I am done listening to it, done mixing it, done making it. Electronic music has done nothing but distract me and lie to me. This world has given me nothing but heartache.

  The speaker’s plastic shell finally cracks under my feet. The music grinds to a halt and a thin plume of smoke drifts up from the speaker, almost like a sigh. The white noise of the vacuum cleaner fills the room again. I yank its plug from the socket.

  I look down at the bits of speaker littering Britt’s carpet, the blood trickling from my knee and pooling in my shoe. It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as the music did.

  I slide down the wall and onto the floor, breathing heavily. Silence covers me like a coat.

  CHAPTER 42

  My world shrinks to the size of my trumpet.

  There is nothing but the flow of breath through brass, the click of notes finding their place on the staff, the tock and whoosh of my metronome. I push everything else to the side, where I can’t hear it and it can’t touch me. My audition is three weeks away.

  Crow and Nicky come home the day after Britt’s overdose. They try to tell me about camp but I don’t want to talk; I only want to play. We jam until Crow’s music room is thick with sweat, stop to eat sandwiches and crank the A/C, then go again. I didn’t realize how far I’d fallen behind: their sound is mature and polished, gleaming like fine, old wood. It’s what happens when you spend eight weeks practicing, when you have instructors correcting every note. I’ve been on my own all summer, and compared to them I sound raw and wild.

  My audition is two and a half weeks away. I have a lot of work to do.

  Britt has a lot of work to do too. She’s grounded for the rest of the summer, only allowed to leave the house to see her new grief counselor or meet with her substance abuse group. Our parents have started taking turns coming home early from the gym, so she won’t be lonely. So she’ll feel like they’re there for her, no matter what.

  There’s no more talk of her rejoining the soccer team, and she’s even questioning whether she’ll go back to Pepperdine. Her counselor suggests taking a semester off, maybe taking a few classes at community college while she figures out what comes next. And for once our parents aren’t talking to her about pushing herself or winning; they’ve been reading the books her counselor sent home and are speaking a new language now, one that’s all about living life as it happens and taking things one day at a time.

  My audition is two weeks away. I’m up until dawn putting the final touches on my composition portfolio, staring at Sibelius for so long that even when I sleep, black notes swim in front of my eyes. I have no time to think, no time to socialize, no time for anything but this. I’m already too far behind.

  I erase the DJ software from my laptop. I hide my thumb drives and delete all my new tracks. Sometimes I still find snippets of dance music echoing in my head, haunting my jazz compositions with the guttural throb of bass or teasing me with the promise of creating something new. I push it all away.

  My audition is a week and a half away. I tell Shay she can take my set at Electri-City. She refuses at first but caves eventually—it is, after all, her dream. I don’t tell Derek. He can find out when she takes the stage. I tell myself I don’t owe him anything, not after all his lies. I delete his texts and voice mails.

  My audition is one week away. I’ll be playing “Lou’s New York,” the piece I debuted in the band room on the last day of school. I thought about playing one of my compositions from this summer but they all bring up too many memories: the jingling of Derek’s keys, the swing of Yelena’s hips, the sweetness of holding a dance floor in the palm of my hand. I can’t afford to get emotional during my audition. Any distractions could ruin the most important ten minutes of my life.

  My audition is one day away. My recital dress is clean and pressed, my sheet music neatly labeled, my trumpet polished until it gleams. I know my piece backwards and forwards; the compositions in my portfolio are printed out and perfect.

  The electric buzz of summer is so far behind me I can almost believe it never happened. The warehouses and festivals, the lights and speakers and dancing crowds, are hazy as a distant dream. I’ve wiped every emotion from my mind; I push forward on autopilot, thinking only of the music and only of reaching my goal. My Fulton audition is tomorrow, and it’s the only thing left that matters.

  CHAPTER 43

  “Here it is!” Crow cries. “The bastion of all our dreams!”

  I pull up in front of a white stone building with the Fulton Jazz Conservatory’s purple banner rippling over the entrance and wait for the rush of adrenaline to kick in. Crow and Nicky leap to the sidewalk, anticipation radiating from them in waves. I try to catch some but it’s elusive, twitching away from my grasp.

  I grab my trumpet from the trunk and hope excitement comes soon. This is my big day, the moment I’ve been prepping all summer for. Surely I’ll start feeling something any minute now.

  We enter the building in hushed, reverent silence, our footsteps echoing on the marble floor. A woman sitting at a large wooden desk hands us each a placard with our name, proposed major, and audition time.

  “You’re on soon.” She points to a series of practice rooms. “Better warm up quick.”

  We follow her finger past a dozen other nervous-looking high school students clutching their instruments on stiff wooden chairs. Alone in my own tiny practice room I play scales and wait for the jitters to begin.

  This is it, I tell myself, fingers flying over the valves. You’re finally here.

  I want to shock myself into feeling something, but my palms aren’t sweating and my throat isn’t dry and I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up. Over the past three weeks I’ve worked hard to tamp down every emotion, to turn myself into a machine with nothing but this moment on my mind. I guess I’ve succeeded too well. Now that I want to feel something, I’m not even sure I can.

  I’m cool, I realize. After all these years of trying, I’m finally cool.

  I segue into my audition piece. Back in the band room at the beginning of summer it felt so alive, like the music was a wild animal desperate to burst from my trumpet. Now it feels sparse and flat, as empty as this room.

  I place my trumpet gently on a stool and run my hands over the braids Mom put in my hair this morning. I’ve probably just played it too many times, the way if you say a word over and over in your head it loses its meaning. Everyone says this piece is great. I just need to believe in it. I just need to nail this audition and get that callback, and then my life can start up again. I’ll start feeling things, start falling back in love with jazz. It’ll be like this summer never happened.

  I run through my piece a few more times and take a seat in the hallway. I can hear the faint trill of scales coming from the other practice rooms, the swish and creak of bodies moving on old wooden chairs and the gentle swish of traffic outside. I close my eyes and a beat starts to emerge from somewhere deep in my chest, pulsing and electric, filled with energy and
heat. It jogs alongside my heart, bass layering in and merging with the sounds all around me until I find myself nodding along. My tongue tsks with imaginary snare.

  A shadow falls over my face and my eyes fly open. Crow and Nicky are standing over me. The track grinds to a halt.

  “Sorry,” Nicky whispers. “Were you going over your audition piece?”

  I nod. It should have been my audition piece. “You guys ready?” I ask.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” Crow bounces on her toes, the feather quivering in her fedora.

  “Same.” Nicky looks pale. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “You’ll be great.” I pat his arm just as the doors to the concert hall open and eject a girl with a clarinet and an expression of blissful relief. A skinny man follows her, shoulder-length hair tucked behind his ears. “Crow Cutler?” he calls. “Double bass?”

  “Good luck!” Nicky and I whisper as Crow hurls herself at the concert hall. The doors shut behind her with a somber click.

  “This is seriously going to be the longest ten minutes of my life.” Nicky paces back and forth, each step jerkier than the last. I wish a nervous spark would fly off of him and kindle something in me.

  Nicky abruptly stops pacing and drops into the chair next to mine. His leg keeps bouncing, his knee going a hundred eighty beats per minute and setting off a drum-and-bass rhythm in my mind. The squeak of his chair forms a melody of ancient creaks and cartoonish shrieking. I look down at my hands and see that I’m drumming along.

  Nicky notices too. He looks at my hand and I stop, clutching the fabric of my dress instead. He gives me a sympathetic nod. He thinks I’m nervous, like him.

  If only.

  The double doors open and Nicky grasps my arm. Crow flies out, her wing tips clattering on the floor. She wears a flustered smile.

  “Nicky Soriano?” the man calls. “Double major in drums and sax?”

  “Break a leg,” I whisper as he stands, his tiny body almost vibrating, and makes his way to the doors.