“Yeah. I’m…thanks. That was great.”
I don’t know why my body is reacting like this. Traitorous thing. I need to put some kind of space between us before I do something I might regret, so I push off the bench and take a few steps back for good measure, stuffing my hands into my pockets.
“I messed up,” Marigold says, half-whispering, like it’s some great confession. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I hadn’t noticed. She sounded as incredible as she always does, like the music rose from some place deep and mysterious inside her.
“It sounded fine.”
She shakes her head, however minutely. “It didn’tfeelfine. It felt…I felt distracted.”
Her cheeks color a deep rose at that. I’m no genius, but I have a feeling I know what was so damn distracting about that piece.
I was distracted, too.
That night I can’t stop thinking about her. Marigold’s sweet-smelling hair, the mascara on her cheek, how soft her skin felt as I wiped it away.
I’m falling hard.
And I don’t know what to do about it.
It’s an odd existence, trying to get ready for an international piano competition in close quarters with…well, the competition. Celia does a couple of lessons with me over video, but it’s not the same—she can’t be there in the room with me and hear how the musicactuallysounds, or evaluate every iota of my posture the way she normally would.
Instead, it’s just me and Marigold. She’s the one who is always there to tell me when I’m missing the “point” of a piece, or if my andante is ever-so-slightly too allegro.
At first, I wondered—paranoid, I know—if maybe she was giving bad advice on purpose, trying to mess me up. But no, she wassincerelytrying to help me. Believe it or not.
I’m lying on my bed reading some shitty pulp thriller and working my way through a family-sized box of Cheez-Its—or trying to, anyway. Marigold is practicing in the other room, and my focus keeps sliding away from the words and toward her music instead. I feel hyperaware of her presence all the time now, as if there’s a cord tying us together, one that tugs at my chest every time she moves.
That’s the music,I tell myself. Marigold’s just that good. It has nothing to do with her as a human.
Music isn’t just an auditory art. Yes, of course you could just listen to a recording and enjoy a piece—that’s how I consume 99.9percent of music, too. But there’s a reason people will pay out the ass for concert tickets. Something about being there in person just hits different. It’s like you feed off the energy of the performer, like they’re communing with you on some spiritual level that you can only access here, in this moment, in the flesh.
That gets magnified tenfold when it’s Marigold playing.
Fuck it. I’m not going to be able to read this book. Not like this.
I toss it aside and take my Cheez-Its down the hall to the living room. I try to sneak in quietly, so she doesn’t notice, skulking along the wall to take up residence on the sofa.
Then my phone rings.
Shit.It’s Tuesday. And every Tuesday night, my mom facetimes me. I know this, I’ve known it forever, because it’s been Tuesday nights ever since I started at Parker, and yet somehow I forgot.
Marigold startles, jerking around so fast she almost topples off the piano bench.
“Sorry. Sorry.” I hold both my hands up, like I just got caught at the scene of the crime. “Um. Ignore me.”
“You scared the shit out of me!”
“Sorry. Uh. I’ll just…” I wave the phone and take a step back toward the hall, but Marigold crosses her arms over her chest.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she says. “Answer it.”
I accept the call and lift the phone so Mom can see my face. “Hi, Mom. Um. Listen, it’s not a good time at the moment; can I call you back in a few?”
“Where are you?” Mom says. She starts craning her neck, like that’ll somehow make her able to see more of the room I’m in. “Is this your friend’s house?”
“Yeah. And we’re in the middle of practice, actually, so—”
