When I opened my eyes again, it was better. The piano was made of a soft black ebony, the kind that I knew would feel cool to the touch. I settled my hands atop the keys, smoothing my fingertips over their slick surfaces.
It was time.
I played the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, a transcription of Bach’s original violin partita for the piano. It was elaborate, Bach’s partita extrapolated with cadenzas and tempo changes and polyphony. Allegedly the piece was written as a requiem for Bach’s late wife. And I felt that as I played—the joy in celebrating her life, the devastation of her loss.
The piano and I bled together into one instrument. I took its lead, rather than the other way around, letting the music pull me along with it, musicality developing only as I went along. When I was finally done, I felt breathless, as if that piece had stolen something from me—as if I’d traded a part of my soul at the crossroads and knit it into the chaconne.
I only realized that the audience was clapping when I stood and gave my awkward little bow before rushing offstage, back to the safety of my seat and Jamie Larson’s smile.
4
Jamie
Two and a Half Years Ago
The noise never fucking stopped.
It never stopped, it never relented, it just gotlouderandthumpieruntil I was on the brink of putting on my heaviest boots and jumping on the floor just to make them shut up.
“This doesn’t bother you?” I asked Ken for what felt like the fifth time. He was huddled up on his bed with headphones on and just shrugged. Which was extremely helpful.
I was well aware that I was more noise sensitive than other people, but surely this level of obnoxiousness was universally infuriating. It was a Friday night, sure, but it was also the week before finals, when most people were nose to the grindstone trying not to fail out of Parker. I got that people had to let off steam, but surely they could let off steam morequietly.
I crammed my headphones over my ears again and hunched over my music theory notes, desperately trying to finish my Schenkerian graphic reduction before I lost my fucking mind.
So obviously that was when my phone buzzed. It was a text from my mom. Something incoherent, a bunch of random letters strung together. She was drunk again, burying her grief in thenearest bottle of cheap gin. I wanted to throw my phone across the room and scream and scream and scream until I drowned out the people below me, drowned out the stupid guilty voice in my head that told me I should’ve been be working harder, drowned out the even stupider voice that wanted to call my mom right then and there and ask if she was okay.
Fuck it.
I shoved my feet into some shoes and headed downstairs to find the room directly below mine and knock on the door.
Someone inside immediately turned the music down and I heard some muffled conversation—probably debate about whether they should have actually opened the door or not. But then there were footsteps, and the door swung open, and I found myself face-to-face with Marigold Gensler.
You,I almost said.Of course it’s you.I caught myself just in time.
“Can you turn that down?” I said instead. “I live right above you. It’s exam week. My roommate and I are trying to focus.”
She lifted both brows. “I’d think you don’t need to study, considering you’re the best student in our year. According to you, anyway.”
I didn’t remember ever saying that. I chalked it up to yet another asshole move from me that only existed in Marigold’s head. I refused to find that surprising anymore. I was smart enough to accept when I’d become somebody’s villain.
“Can you turn it down?” I repeated.
Over her shoulder I spotted Cessy, Shrishti’s girlfriend. And a couple other people whose names I didn’t know, presumably from other departments. Dance, probably, if Cessy was there. They all shared that odd, ethereal beauty of dancers.
Adam had that kind of beauty.
“Sure,” Marigold said, in a tone of voice that made it clear she had no such intention. “Bye.”
I wanted to keep fighting, now. That was a fighting kind of response. She wanted a reaction, and I knew, Iknew,I shouldn’t give it to her. I bit the inside of my cheek until it hurt.
They’d already turned the music up again by the time I made it back upstairs. Predictably.
“I thought you talked to them?” Ken said.
“Yeah, I did.”
I gritted my teeth and dropped back into my desk chair, seething as I curled my body over my pages of theory. But my brain had lost the capacity to process anything so analytic. All I felt was the tension of bone grinding against bone as I clenched my teeth.
