When we finished the final piece, applause washed us back down the steps, and Dr. Graves followed. There was a note of superiority to the unchanging displeasure on his face, as if he were proud that he had never experienced happiness. As we collected our things and prepared to head back up, Graves gave us more claps on our shoulders. It seemed like he meant these to be supportive. The man did not have supportive hands. It felt like getting whacked on the deltoid with a granite club.
He gave Isaac’s hand a businesslike shake, then Trav’s. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Sounding pretty good.”
Trav’s mouth formed a thin smile, but his nostrils flared. His brain had probably translated the phrase “pretty good” into “categorically inadequate.”
Graves turned on me, his detached expression unchanging as he glanced me over. I froze. “Now, I know the other new members from class,” Graves said, “but you are a theater student, no?”
“Yeah.” I stuck out a hand. He shook it, granite hand like a clamp. “Julian,” I said.
“Congratulations on your first performance,” he said, every syllable rigid. Maybe he actually meant it. It was impossible to tell. “You know,” he continued, “it isn’t too late to transfer between disciplines. A year and a half is just enough time to complete the basic elective requirements, and Sharpshooters are always welcome in the music school.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. I looked determinedly above his gray eyes, which were set deep into his tan face, piercing me. It took him about eight hours too long to look away.
“Traveler,” Graves said, doing an about-face, “let’s meet soon to talk about December. Dr. Caskey seems convinced that his son’s group will emerge on top, and that cannot be allowed to happen. I enjoy nothing more than embarrassing that man.”
Trav nodded, and Graves marched back up the steps.
I let out a slow breath, feeling uneasy. “Jeez,” I muttered to Nihal.
“He tried to convert me, too,” Nihal said. “He even talked to one of the Visual Arts teachers about it. Apparently he told her I was, quote, wasting my talent, unquote, which is insulting on about six different levels.”
I loosened my red tie, feeling choked. If Dr. Graves asked any theater teachers about Julian Zhang, the act would collapse. This whole thing relied so much on people’s disinterest in each other’s private lives—that if I stayed under the radar and out of everyone’s business, nobody would go out of their way to do much digging on me. If they did, they wouldn’t have to dig far before hitting gold.
Anabel lived in a single on the floor above mine. I knocked on her door and pressed my lips together, feeling the prickle and give of the purplish lipstick.
Anabel answered. “Jordan, hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Hey. Not much. I’ve just got a quick question.”
“Sure. You want to come in?” She held her door open. I glanced in and did a double take. I’d expected gleaming surfaces, designer bedding, some sort of meticulously organized wall calendar. Nope. Her room was a bomb site. Clothes were strewn everywhere, half a dozen pairs of heels decorating the mess.
“Nah, it’s okay,” I said quickly. “I was just wondering if—oh, wait!” I played up an I’m-an-idiot expression. “I just realized I never told you congrats on the musical. It’s going up soon, right?”
She smiled. “Thanks! Yeah, we’re getting pretty close, so . . .” She broke off, seeming to realize who she was talking to. A crease appeared between her neat eyebrows. “. . . so yeah,” she finished awkwardly and bit her lip.
I let the silence stretch.
“Look,” she said, “it sucks that they didn’t find a part for you. Like, everyone is totally on your side. I feel like they should be required to get you into the ensemble if you’re a junior.”
Excellent. “Yeah, well.” I grimaced. “I mean, altos, you know?”
Anabel let out an apologetic-sounding laugh. “Theater is so unfair sometimes. The voice part thing is so arbitrary.”
“It’s okay.” I shrugged. “I was actually thinking of auditioning next year for one of the a cappella groups or something. It’s senior year, why not?”
Anabel lit up. “That’s a great idea,” she said. “It looks so fun. Honestly, sometimes I wish I’d gone for the School of Music instead.”
“I feel you. And it doesn’t hurt that the guys’ groups are . . . you know.” I raised my eyebrows. “Appealing, or whatever.”
Her cheeks went red. “Seriously.”
I waited, wondering if I needed to prod further. In my experience, talking about guys was the absolute simplest level of conversation for Kensington girls. It required no thought and no effort. The concept of dating in this place and getting any privacy about it was totally foreign; so most people chatted about it reflexively, like they’d talk about the weather or an upcoming quiz.
Anabel tucked a curl behind her ear, bouncing on her toes a bit. “I’m actually sort of talking to one of the guys in the Minuets.”
Bingo. I feigned excitement. “Really? They’re amazing,” I said, nearly choking on the blasphemy. “And apparently they have a secret hideout somewhere, which is so cool.”
Anabel snorted, then covered her mouth. “Sorry. I mean, yeah, they do. But it’s—” She waved a hand. “Whatever.”
“Wait, you’ve seen it?”
“Yeah, but you know boys. They love thinking they’re so dramatic and mysterious and stuff, when it’s honestly not even . . . like, don’t encourage them.”
I laughed but felt a twinge. I’d thought the same thing about the Sharps before getting to know them—that they needed taking down a notch. It had seemed comical how seriously the groups took themselves, a product of narcissism or low self-awareness, but I understood now, as I remembered the hold of the red tie around my neck and the way it had looked on the eight of us side by side. It was impossible not to love the feeling of owning something and belonging to it in return.
“So, what,” I said, “they’re squatting in some vacant single somewhere and pretending it’s a secret home base?”
“I mean, not quite, but it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. And I have no idea what they’re going to do when it’s winter.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Connor would kill me if I told anyone I’ve been inside, let alone where it is. I . . . yeah.” She gave her head a shake, making her curls bounce. “So, what did you want to ask? Also, how have you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you at all this year.”
No, come on, I wanted to say. Just tell me!
I couldn’t push. It’d be suspicious. This had to seem casual—a two-minute chat, something she’d forget within the hour. So far, she probably thought she’d steered the whole thing.
Besides, I had the sneaking feeling she’d already told me what I needed to know.
“I’ve been good,” I said lightly. “This year’s been pretty hectic—I’ve basically been living in the library.” I pulled out my copy of Lysistrata, which I’d brought along. “Anyway, I’m in Reese’s Greek Monologue class, and I saw you do this one last year, so I wanted to ask what you thought about this section . . .”
I tugged apart her words. I’ve been inside. I have no idea what they’re going to do when it’s winter.
Whatever building they were using didn’t have heat. With the brutal Kensington winters, that narrowed the possibilities down to practically nothing.
That weekend, Isaac and I took a Sharpie to a map of campus, locating the buildings that might not have heating—the ones that were never used. That meant one of two options: the defunct single-screen cinema near the film dorm, or the old greenhouse behind McKnight. We agreed to stake them out. Isaac, the cinema; me, the greenhouse.
Every night, after check-in, I crept out through my window and snuck up-campus to lurk in the woods by the greenhouse, whose doors were boarded up. As I waited, I studied by flashlight against the bole of a tree that was slightly less smothered in ants than the others. I didn’t retreat to Burgess until
1:00 a.m. It got to the point where I couldn’t remember the last good night’s sleep I’d had, but I wasn’t about to let these guys slip by. They were going to pay.
The end of October crept up, and with it, the Daylight Dance. The Kensington administration knew how terrible an idea it would be to unleash a bunch of arts kids on Halloween. (Imagine the costumes.) Instead, they’d placed a semiformal dance a week into November, on Daylight Savings. The Sharpshooters and the Precautionary Measures performed at the Daylight Dance every year, two songs each; for a week and a half, we broke from our competition set to learn the pieces, but the time we lost wasn’t an issue. We’d already memorized half the competition set, and if Trav still wasn’t satisfied, knocking out the performance at the Spirit Rally had at least mollified him.
He never seemed to leave Prince Library anymore. Any time of day, we could find him in the lounge area, headphones on and a MIDI keyboard plugged into his laptop, transcribing. The ghost of his fight with Isaac still drifted over rehearsals every so often, but what the Minuets had done had glued us back together, left us twice as determined to triumph in December.
Then, one Saturday afternoon, Isaac texted me: Hey, swing by my room. Got news. I’m in Wingate 420, insert obligatory weed joke here.
I booked it to Wingate and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The sour light of the hallway made my hands look green. I passed a bulletin board plastered with hall rules—check-in schedule, lights out, living agreements—and knocked on Isaac’s door.
The sound of feet bounded toward the door. It flew open. “Hey.” He waved me in.
The Wingate corner rooms had four windows, showering them in natural light. This room might have benefited from a little less visibility. Sci-fi paperbacks, well-worn fantasy hardbacks, and thick textbooks had been chucked at random onto the shelves. Pads of staff paper featured prominently on both desks, balled-up wads of paper littering their edges. Jackets and jeans dangled off bed frames; shorts and socks lay in trails on the mottled carpet.
“Wow,” I managed.
Isaac grimaced. “We’re gonna clean this weekend.”
“No sweat. I’ve seen worse.” I eyed the walls, which were plastered with posters. Isaac’s walls wore a spread of angry-looking rock bands, a rainbow of electric guitars clutched in their front men’s hands. His roommate’s side advertised an array of blood-splattered movie titles, as well as a vaguely pornographic-looking video game. The animated lady’s spandex-clad boobs didn’t follow any laws of gravity I’d ever encountered.
“Where’s your roommate?” I asked.
“He lives in the Arlington practice rooms. Like, there’s definitely a pillow down there.”
“Who is he?”
“His name’s Harry. He’s a cellist from Arkansas.” Isaac saw where my eyes were fixed and glanced at the video game poster. “Um, he just genuinely likes the game.”
“Sure he does.”
Isaac leaned over his bed. A silvery microphone in a foot-tall stand sat cushioned by his comforter, set up beside his laptop. The equipment looked spotless, heavy, professional. “Wanna shut that?” He waved at the door.
“Right.” I shouldered it shut, feeling awkward. We weren’t allowed to be in boys’ rooms unless the door was wide open and it was before 6:00 p.m. “So,” I said. “What’s up?”
Isaac moved his recording setup to his desk with a heavy thunk of the mic stand. “I saw Oscar and Furman and Caskey skulking around the cinema last night. We got ’em.”
“Oh, thank God. No more lurking in the woods until one in the morning.”
“Yeah, stakeouts are surprisingly boring, is my takeaway from this.”
“Seriously.” I navigated through the ocean of discarded clothes to his desk. “Nice job, by the way.”
“Thanks. I’m a legend.” He gazed into the middle distance. “I am destined for a future in espionage.”
I couldn’t help a laugh. “’Cause subtlety is your middle name.”
“I’m the subtlest person I’ve ever met. I’m basically James Bond.”
“Right. James Bond is really well-trained in—” I glanced at the worksheets on his desk. “Identifying imitative polyphony.”
He gave me a catlike grin. “Imitative polyphony is how you beat the Russians.”
I failed to suppress a smile. He brightened, rubbing his hands together. “So, anyway, when do you want to do this thing? We could wait until after Daylight Dance, if—”
“A whole week? Nah, forget that.”
“Sweet. I didn’t want to wait either.” He turned to his desk and flipped a couple of pages. “I’ve got a test Thursday, so I’d rather not sneak out Wednesday. How about Thursday night? That work for you?”
“Sure. We could meet around midnight? One?”
“One sounds good. I’ll—” A knock interrupted him. I wound through the maze of discarded clothes and pulled the door open.
Nihal stood in the threshold. His turban was dark blue today, matching his stiff felt coat. His brown eyes met mine with unshakable calm.
I slipped a smile on. He hadn’t heard anything, had he? If Nihal found out we were going ahead with retaliation, even after the vote, he would . . .
I wasn’t sure, actually. What, would he get mad? The most negative thing I’d seen from him was stress irritation, and even then, hardly any, compared to the rest of us. I wondered what Nihal looked like angry.
“Julian,” he said, looking between me and Isaac. “How are things?”
“Going fine,” I said, standing back. “Come on in.”
As I shut the door, I shot Isaac an urgent glance. He cleared his throat. “We were just, uh. Talking about the retreat. Julian wanted to know what it’s like.”
Nihal smiled, leaning his backpack against Isaac’s desk. He took a seat. “It’s the best.”
“We’re staying at Jon Cox’s mountain house,” Isaac said.
Of course Jon Cox had a mountain house.
“His mom was there last year,” Isaac said, “but I think his grandparents are flying in to Boston for all of Thanksgiving Break this year, so we’re on our own.”
“We’ve been specifically instructed to leave the place in one piece,” Nihal said.
“You’ve been instructed,” Isaac said. He gave me a knowing look. “Jon Cox’s mom loves Nihal.”
Nihal shrugged. “I’m good with moms.”
Piece by piece, Isaac disassembled his recording equipment, unscrewing the cage-like shock mount from the mic stand. As his quick hands worked, my heartbeat slowed. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten outright angry, but Nihal would’ve said something if he’d heard us.
He slid open one of Isaac’s desk drawers, peering in with mild interest. “Isaac, do you have time to double-check some of the Fall ’99 stuff I transcribed?” he said, pulling some sort of hair-product aerosol out of the drawer. “The ‘Baby One More Time’ arrangement is strangely complex—I might have gotten the bridge wrong.”
“Yeah, sure,” Isaac said. “Also, I can start on Spring 2000, if you haven’t yet.”
The guys glanced at me, as if waiting for me to offer my help. I would have, if arranging weren’t a foreign language to me. Instead, I checked my watch and grimaced, as if it had told me something important. “Oh, I gotta run. See you at rehearsal?”
“Later,” Isaac said, lifting a hand. I ducked out of his room and hurried for the stairwell.
Thursday night arrived, clear and bright. At 12:45 a.m., I zipped up my dad’s old winter coat and slipped out my dorm room window.
My body went tight with cold. California had nothing like this sort of chill, although the air still hadn’t started to bite properly. Winter was sinking slowly into the earth, layering the crisp scent of frost over campus night by night.
I slunk down the wall of Burgess and paused. Three windows down, Reese’s light was still on.
I snuck a peek over the windowsill and through the glass. The housemother’s quarters were a more legitimate-looking livin
g space than any dorm in Burgess. We had diseased-looking carpets and furniture that looked like it’d been swiped from a rejected IKEA concept catalog. This room had hardwood floors and a kitchenette, and Reese sat at a sleek glass desk, poring over a thick stack of essays. Her thin hair was down, half-curled from being in the grip of her bun all day; her reading glasses were on and her eyes unlined. She looked entirely relaxed.
For a second I watched, weirdly entranced by the quiet, personal sight. Then she stretched and looked toward the window, and I flung myself flat to the flowerbed, my cheek pressing hard into the mulch. I shimmied forward with my forearms and hips, cursing my own curiosity, and once I’d escaped sight of her window, I fled toward August Drive.
The starlight showered around me, stark and revealing. Brightness you’d never see in a night sky in San Francisco. I always found myself staring up on nights like this—cloudless, infinite sky nights. I brushed mulch off my jacket and hustled forward, curls of white warm breath winding between my lips.
I froze at the southeast curve of August Drive. A mechanical whir echoed down the road—one of the ATVs that electricians and maintenance used to navigate campus. I dashed for the nearest cluster of bushes and crouched behind them, waiting for the sound to pass.
A minute later, the ATV’s back lights disappeared down the street, a distant pair of red eyes. I crept out and up the road. Movement caught my attention—Isaac crossing the street. A long silhouette stretched out from his feet, cast by the streetlamp. His narrow shoulders were wrapped in a black fleece, his hood up.
I jogged up. “Hey,” he whispered, eyes bright with mischief. “Ready to break and enter?”
“Definitely.” We darted behind the row of film buildings, heading for the rim of the woods.
The old cinema was a single-screen theater from the 1940s that had been on the renovation list for a decade and a half. I doubted it’d ever happen. The newest film house had a screening hall in the basement, complete with a projection and sound system, so there wasn’t much reason to fix this old place up. Still, there was something to the aesthetic of it. The cinema stood, tall and rickety, on the edge of the woods, looking like something out of a horror movie with its boarded-up windows and padlocked doors.
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