Kenji, to his credit, does not laugh in my face. Instead, his expression relaxes by micrometers, his dark eyes assessing me in that careful way I detest.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “Of course I’m coming with you.”
Fourteen
Sunlight glances off my eyes, the glare shifting, flickering through a webbing of bare branches as a gentle breeze moves through the yard, fluttering leaves and skirts and flower petals. The scent of the gardenia affixed to my lapel wafts upward, filling my head with a heady perfume as the sharp collar of my shirt scrapes against my neck, my tie too tight; I clasp my hands in front of me to keep from adjusting it, my palms brushing against the wool of my suit, the fabric soft and lightweight and still somehow abrasive, suffocating me as I stand here in stiff shoes sinking slowly into dead grass, staring out at a sea of people come to bear witness to what might be one of the most publicly vulnerable moments of my life.
I can’t seem to breathe.
I can’t seem to make out their faces, but I can feel them, the individual emotional capsules that make up the members of this audience, the collective frenzy of their thoughts and feelings overwhelming me in a breathtaking crush that crowds my already chaotic thoughts. I feel myself begin to panic—my heart rate increasing rapidly—as I try to digest this noise, to tune out the barrage of other people’snervousness and excitement. It’s a struggle even to hear myself think, to unearth my own consciousness. I try, desperately, to find an anchor in this madness.
It is nearly impossible.
Sonya and Sara lift their violins, sharing a glance before one of the sisters, Sonya, takes the lead, launching into the opening of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Sara soon accompanies her, and the evocative, heart-wrenching notes fill the air, igniting in my chest a flare of emotion that only intensifies my apprehension, pulling my nerves taut to a painful degree. I swallow, hard, my pulse racing dangerously fast. My hands seem to spark and fade with feeling, prickling hot and cold, and I flex them into fists.
“Hey, man,” Kenji whispers beside me. “You all right?”
I shake my head an inch.
“What’s wrong?”
I can feel Kenji studying my face.
“Oh—shit—are you having a panic attack?”
“Not yet,” I manage to say. I close my eyes, try to breathe. “It’s too loud in here.”
“The music?”
“The people.”
“Okay. Okay. Shit. So you can, like, feel everything they’re feeling right now? Right.Shit.Of course you can. Okay. All right, what should I do? You want me to talk to you? How about I just talk to you? Why don’t you just focus on me, on the sound of my voice. Fade everything else out.”
“I don’t know if that will work,” I say, taking a shaky breath. “But I can try.”
“Cool. Okay. First of all, open your eyes. Juliette is going to walk out in a couple of minutes, and you won’t want to miss it. Her dress is awesome.” He whispers this, his voice altered just enough that I can tell he’s trying not to move his lips. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything about it, because, you know, it’s supposed to be a surprise, but whatever, we’re throwing surprises out the window right now because this is an emergency, and I have a feeling that once you see her your brain will do that creepy super-focus thing it always does—you know, like when you ignore literally everyone around you—and then you’ll start feeling better because, um, yeah”—he laughs, nervously—“you know what? I’m beginning to realize only right this second that, uh, when she’s around you don’t even seem to notice other people, so, um—until then I can—yeah, I’m just going to describe her to you, because, like I said, she’s going to look great. Her dress is, like, really, really pretty, and I don’t even know anything about dresses, so that should tell you something.”
The sound of his voice is a strange lifeline.
The more he speaks, filling my head with easily digestible nonsense, I feel my heart rate start to slow, the iron fist around my lungs beginning, slowly, to unclench.
I force my eyes open, and the scene briefly blurs in and out of focus, the pounding of my heart still loud in my head. I glance at Kenji, who is staring straight ahead, his face atrest as if nothing is amiss. This helps ground me, somehow, and I manage to pull myself together long enough to look down the petal-dusted aisle.
“So Juliette’s dress is, um, like, really glittery, but also really soft-looking? Winston and Alia had to come up with a new design on such short notice,” Kenji explains, “but they were able to repurpose some gown you guys got at the Supply Center yesterday. There was lots of, like, sheer fluffy fabric, I don’t know what it’s call—”
“Tulle.”
“Yes. Tulle. Yes. Whatever. Anyway Alia spent all night, like, first of all, making it nicer, and then sewing these little glittery beads all over it—but, like, in a nice way. It’s really nice. And it’s got, like, these little tulle sleeves that aren’t really sleeves—they sort of fall off the shoulder— Hey, is this helping?”
“Yes,” I say, drawing in a full breath for the first time in minutes.
“Great, so—nice sleeves, and, and um, you know, it’s got a long fluffy skirt— Okay, yeah, I’m sorry, bro, but I’m kind of out of descriptions for Juliette’s dress, but— Oh, hey, here’s a fun fact: Did you know that Sonya and Sara used to be, like, young virtuosos, way back in the day, pre-Reestablishment?”
“No.”
“Yeah—yeah, so they started playing violin when they were fresh out of diapers. Pretty cool, huh? Nazeera helped us confiscate the violins they’re using today from oldReestablishment holdings. They’re playing this song frommemory. I don’t know what it’s called, but I’m pretty sure it’s something fancy, from some old dead dude—”
“Of course you know what it’s called,” I say, still staring straight ahead. “Everyone knows it.”
