by Anna Hecker
“How’d you do?” I ask Crow, bending my head close to hers.
“Good, I think.” She slumps back, knees splayed around her bass. “They’re hard to read.”
“I hope Nicky’s okay in there,” I say. “He looked like he was going to shit his pants.”
A guy clutching a French horn shoots us a dirty look. From a practice room down the hall I can hear a trombone practicing “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” The beat of Nicky’s jittery leg rushes back, its rhythm fitting snugly under the melody. I imagine cutting the trombone’s phrases into little bits and sampling them over the beat.
It don’t mean a … don’t mean a … don’t mean a thing.
“Mira Alden, composition and trumpet.”
My name echoes through the hallway and Nicky’s coming toward me, hand outstretched for a high five. He looks elated, his cheeks glowing pink. I stand, my head spinning, and suddenly all the nerves I haven’t felt all day, all week, all month crash over me and I’m practically paralyzed with fear. My hands pool sweat around my trumpet, soaking my composition portfolio.
“Go!” Crow hisses, scooting me forward.
“You got this,” Nicky says, his voice barely audible over the ringing in my ears.
“Come on in,” says the long-haired man, and then I’m the one disappearing through the double doors.
CHAPTER 44
The concert hall is massive. Rows of chairs fan out around a high stage; a vaulted, chandelier-studded ceiling soars above. The man leads me down an endless aisle and introduces me to the faculty sitting behind a table in the front row. I hand over my portfolio and try to smile as my palms pour sweat.
“You can give your rhythm part to the drummer, and begin when you’re ready,” the long-haired man says.
I nod and walk to the stage, my feet feeling a size bigger with each step. My hands shake as I hand the drummer my music; when I let go I can see the damp outline of my palm. I look out over the room and it feels like the vast space is closing in on me, like the soaring ceiling is collapsing and taking all the oxygen with it.
Play it cool. I have to play it cool.
“Ready when you are,” the drummer says.
I struggle to take a breath. There’s no clock in this room, but I feel a ticking deep inside me as I place my own part on the music stand. It’s the strong, bone-deep tock of the band-room clock, the thud of Derek’s heart against mine, the tribal pounding of drum machines calling me from five stages at once.
I force air through my lungs. There’s no room for those beats in this room.
The drummer raises his sticks. The concert hall stretches in front of me, empty and sterile and static. I bring my trumpet to my lips and in the moment before we begin I close my eyes and imagine the room filled with dancers and pulsing with beats, the energy surging off the dance floor and into my fingers.
I open my eyes and begin. One note. Five notes. A phrase.
Something’s wrong.
The tempo’s too slow, like the piece is dragging through mud. It’s not the drummer’s fault. This is the tempo I asked for, the one I’ve always played. But now it feels as old and slow and used-up as a broken-down bus. The piece needs more life, more energy, more beats, deeper beats, stronger beats. The need propels my fingers faster over the valves and I speed up, passing the drummer and gaining on the curve. I feel him hesitate, and in his hesitation I pause and lose focus. I miss a phrase, struggle to catch it, and blast the wrong note.
In the front row, the faculty winces. I miss another note, choke on my breath, and sputter through the next few bars until I’m lost and tangled in my own piece. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do but stop.
I stop.
The drummer plays a few more measures, realizes he’s lost me, and drags to a halt. Silence fills the room. The long-haired man clears his throat.
“Miss Alden,” he says. “Would you like to start again?”
I don’t want to start again. I want to sink into the stage, to disappear, to pretend this audition and Fulton and my trumpet and jazz and even Grandpa Lou never existed.
“Okay,” I say, so quietly I can barely hear my own voice.
I beat out the tempo against my leg, a fraction faster than it was before. This time we get through the piece, but there’s no joy in it, none of that alive animal feeling I got from playing with Crow and Nicky in the band room just twelve short weeks ago. The beat feels wooden and forced. It feels like every note I breathe has to be trucked in from so far away it’s lost its flavor by the time it arrives.
It’s still a piece of music, but there’s nothing musical about it. When it’s over it’s a relief: not just for me, but for everyone in the room.
CHAPTER 45
Crow and Nicky can tell from my face. They’re silent as we leave the cold white building, falling into step beside me as a cello solo chases us out the door like the punch line to a bad joke.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Nicky asks when we’ve settled into the LeSabre, city noises beeping and huffing outside.
“No.” I tilt forward, resting my forehead against the steering wheel until it leaves a dent in the skin. Maybe I’ll just stay like this forever, parked and going nowhere.
“It probably wasn’t as bad as you think,” Crow says tentatively. “You’ve always been a perfectionist.”
I lift my head. “If I told you I lost the drummer, played a really bad wrong note, and had to start over, would you believe me?”
“Shiiiiiit.” Nicky releases the word in a long, slow breath.
Crow’s hand flies to her mouth. “Oh my lord.” She looks like she’s going to cry.
“Yeah, so.” My voice comes out flat. “There goes that.”
The Fulton Jazz Conservatory banner flutters in the corner of my eye. There’s no point staying here. I don’t belong here anymore.
I find my keys and start the car.
“Maybe you can petition,” Nicky says as I pull onto 116th Street. “I mean, if you tell them what happened with Britt….”
“No.” We ease into traffic, the sun at our backs illuminating specks of dust on the windshield. “I don’t want their pity.”
“You could try again next year?” Crow suggests. “Like, take a year off after high school and just …”
“Just what?” My voice comes out sharp. “Work at the gym? Live with my parents?” I shake my head. This was my ticket out of Coletown, the only one I had. There is no Plan B.
Crow slumps back. “I was going to say practice,” she says.
“You could live with us!” Nicky’s leg is jittering again, the same rhythm as before. Slick trombone notes float through my head: it don’t mean a ….don’t mean a … don’t mean a thing. “We could still get that place off campus. You could get a job or something.”
“Yeah!” Crow perks up. “You could take time to practice and jam with us every night and then audition next year…. You’d only be a year behind!”
“Yeah, maybe.” I try to picture the loft we’ve always talked about, with the little stage and the big windows and instrument cases piled against the wall. But it’s morphed over the summer, into some combination of Derek’s place in Bushwick and Shay’s basement studio. “I don’t know.”
“This doesn’t have to be a setback.” Nicky’s leg shakes harder, driving the beat like a wedge into my head. I can hear the melody now, almost like it’s in the car with us. It goes with the beat like ice cream with cones, like tires with asphalt. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“You could work at a music store,” Crow suggests.
“Sneak onto campus and audit lectures,” Nicky adds.
“We’ll steal you food from the dining hall….”
I tune them out and wait for tears to come. I should be sobbing right now, mourning the future I just lost. But I’ve spent so much of this summer crying, maybe I don’t have any tears left. All I feel is empty, hollowed-out. Ready to be filled in again.
I swing the car onto Ha
rlem River Drive. The East River sparkles in the sunlight, and I can just see Brooklyn in my rearview mirror. Above our heads a road sign announces the next few exits: Willis Avenue Bridge. 135th Street. Randall’s Island.
I check my watch. Shay will be going on at Electri-City soon, taking the slot that was supposed to be mine. I hope she kills it out there. I hope it launches her career and makes all her dreams come true, so she can spend the rest of her life playing clubs and festivals and getting all the fame and fortune and love she deserves.
I hope somebody’s dream comes true today. Even if it isn’t mine.
Nicky reaches over and pats my leg. “It’s going to be okay,” he says.
I don’t answer him. I open the window and let the air cool my face, feel the hum of motors and thump of tires on rough road fill the empty hole inside of me with sound. The city will always make music, I think as I accelerate around a curve. There will always be the rattle of the subway, the thrum of electricity through underground lines, the melodic lilt of conversation in every language.
A sign for the Randall’s Island exit swims into view. I put my blinker on and cut across one lane of traffic, then two.
Nicky’s head jerks around. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“We’re getting off here.” I take the exit. “There’s something I need to do.”
CHAPTER 46
“Have you gone off the deep end?” Crow’s eyes are wide with shock in the rearview mirror. We’ve made it to the island and a tangle of beats engulfs us, the woolly thump of bass from far-off stages mingling with a half dozen DJ mixes trickling from the open windows of cars around us.
A guy in an orange vest directs us to a spot at the edge of a vast parking lot. Girls in tiny shorts and clear backpacks hurry past; guys high-five as they lope toward the gates, their goofy, excited grins mirrored in each others’ sunglasses.
“Who are these people?” Nicky scrunches up his nose. “What are we doing here?”
I climb out of the car. “My friend is on in like twenty minutes. I just want to catch her set. Then we can go.”
“And you’re just going to leave our instruments in the car where anyone can steal them?” Crow crosses her arms over her chest.
I sigh. “Nobody’s going to steal our stuff.”
“We don’t know that,” Crow argues. “We don’t even know these people.”
I check my watch again. Eighteen minutes until Shay goes on. I don’t have time for this.
“So just bring them, if you’re so worried.” I grab my trumpet from the trunk. “See? No big deal.”
Crow scowls. “It IS a big deal. My bass is huge!”
I can feel myself unraveling. After everything that’s happened today, I can’t handle Crow’s drama, too.
“Then just stay here,” I snap. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Crow.” Nicky gives her a look. “C’mon. Mira’s having a tough day.”
“Okay, fine,” Crow huffs, dragging her bass from the car. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“I can’t believe it either,” Nicky confesses, clutching his saxophone case. “But here we are. At some rave thing.”
I ignore my friends, as well as the looks we get crossing the parking lot: three jazz nerds in our finest recital clothes, lugging instruments while everyone else skips toward the entrance in crocheted vests and fairy wings. A month ago I would have died of embarrassment, but now I don’t care. I’m not here to make friends or impress anyone. I just want to see Shay.
At the gate I plunk down my emergency debit card and buy three day-passes. It’s practically all the money in my account, but it’s not like I have anything to save it for anyway.
“Electri-City,” Nicky reads the banner above our heads, twisting his bracelet and huddling close as we wait for a team of beefy security guards to pat us down. Huge signs at the entrance remind us that Electri-City is a zero tolerance event; anyone caught buying or selling drugs will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
The guards paw through our instrument cases and spit us out into the festival, where the crowd fans out into a street lined with vendors. Nicky sniffs the air, taking in the scent of Red Bull and sunscreen. “So this is what you’ve been doing all summer without us?” he asks.
“Kind of, yeah.” We reach a junction and I find a sign pointing to the NRG stage. Eleven minutes until Shay goes on.
“Whoa.” Crow pauses as a gaggle of girls carrying neon Hula-Hoops flits by, their fiber-optic plumage sending sprays of light across our faces. “This place is nuts.”
“Kinda cool, right?” I turn left, toward the stage.
“I didn’t say that,” she grumbles.
There’s a band playing live progressive house jams on the NRG stage: DJ, electric bass, drum set, and keytar. LED lightning flashes and plumes of fire shoot up whenever the beat drops, orange flames tickling the sky.
The beat enters me, steadying me, and I think back to that trombone in the practice room: It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing. It’s almost too much here, with the band jamming on stage and the beats all around me and the music in my head.
I push through the crowd.
“We’re really going in there?” Nicky says in my ear, his short legs pumping as he hurries to keep up.
“Yeah.” I want to be right up front when Shay goes on. I want to hear her set in the place where the sound is brightest and loudest and most immediate, and I want her to see me and know I’m there.
I lead us past tight circles of friends dancing together or taking photos, trying not to jab anyone with my trumpet case, Crow grunting and lugging her bass behind me. People move aside; whether it’s because we take up so much room or just look so out-of-place is anyone’s guess. We’re just a few feet from the front now: I can see the spot I want, directly in front of the DJ booth.
Then someone moves in front of me, slight but muscular in a loose black tank top and sleeves of tattoos. My heart stops and my blood stops and I stop. I’d know those tattoos anywhere.
CHAPTER 47
Derek doesn’t see me. His back is to me and he’s talking to a girl with long blond hair that sweeps the skin below her tube top, their heads bent close in conversation. I watch him dig a bag from his pocket, count a few pills into his palm, and press them into hers.
The pills are flat and grayish. Like the powder inside Britt’s baggie. Like the pills that almost took my sister’s life.
I surge forward, slamming into the girl. The pills fly from her hand.
“Hey! Watch it!” She turns and glares at me before crouching down, reaching for the pills scattered in the mud. I put my foot over them.
“Mira!” Derek’s eyes go from hard to soft in the space of two syllables. “What are you doing here? You should be backstage.”
“You don’t want those,” I lean down to shout in the girl’s ear, so she can hear me over the music. “They’re laced.”
“So?” She sneers up at me and I notice with a shock that she’s even younger than I am. She can’t be more than fifteen. “Let me know if you find any shit that isn’t.”
“With meth,” I tell her.
“Ew, really?” She looks from me to Derek. “Is that true, dude?”
“I—” Derek starts.
“He has no idea,” I tell her. “My friend died on his shit.”
“Okay, god.” She straightens up and gives him a dirty look. “That’s fucked up, dude,” she says before scampering off into the crowd.
I whirl on Derek. “You told me you were going to stop!” My head swims as I realize how many pills he must be carrying right now, how many people at this festival could end in the hospital like Britt…or like Yelena. How many other parties has he been to since the Pine Barrens, I wonder? How many innocent people have ended up sick, or hurt, or worse?
“Yeah, and then you ghosted on me anyway.” Derek’s eyes go cold, the blue turning to ice. “What the hell, Mira. After everything I did for you?”
His eyes narrow as he gestures toward the stage. “Like getting you this set? Making you a star?” He shakes his head, his lips twisting in disgust. “Why aren’t you backstage, anyway? You should be setting up.”
“I gave the set to Shay. How are you still selling that crap?”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” Hurt percolates in his eyes.
“After you almost killed my sister? No, sorry, I had more important things on my mind.”
He shakes his head sadly. “I see what this is really about,” he says, so quietly that I have to strain through layers of beats to hear him. “You let Shay get to you. After you promised me you wouldn’t.”
For a moment all I can do is stare at him, dumbstruck. A tornado of fury starts in my stomach and whirls through my chest, up into my throat.
“You’re making this about Shay?” I say finally, when I find my voice. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re literally killing people with your shitty drugs, and you’re turning this into some petty ex-girlfriend drama?”
“Mira …” He reaches for my hand. “Don’t be like this. Don’t ruin what we had.”
I yank my hand away. “I know why you didn’t want me talking to Shay.” My hands are shaking, but to my surprise my voice is calm. “You were worried she’d tell me the truth.”
Derek’s eyes flash. There’s anger there but something else too. Just for a moment, he looks afraid. “Because she lies,” he mutters, his face reddening.
“Did she lie about Britt needing her stomach pumped?” I look at the bulge in Derek’s pocket, the bag I know is full of pills. I think about the young blonde girl out there somewhere in the crowd, about all the people who will buy whatever he sells them and swallow his pills without knowing what they are. “Did she lie about what happened to Yelena?”
“That was an accident,” Derek mutters. But I’m not listening anymore. I know, now, that no matter what he says, Derek isn’t going to stop. He isn’t going to stop selling drugs, and he isn’t going to stop preying on girls who are too young and naïve and awestruck to realize he’s weaving a web of lies.