Zach isn’t the biggest fan of classical music, and though I wish it would, a community college orchestra certainly isn’t going to change his mind.
But I know what is most important to him—movies,horrodies—and I want him to know what’s most important to me.
The concert is two hours long, and even though the orchestra is relatively unpolished, they are good. I can tell they’ve been playing together a long time.
The good news is that Zach doesn’t fall asleep. The bad news is that he shifts uncomfortably every now and then, trying hard to be attentive but failing. I feel the slightest twinge of disappointment. I know he doesn’t have to like the same things I do, or even understand them—and heistrying—but it still makes me sad. Especially when the performers start on the second-to-last piece on the program. It’s Bach’s Orchestral Suite in D Major. I’ve heard the most famous movement on its own before—the one later arranged as “Air on the G String”—but hearing it in the context of the whole suite, the way the story was meant to be told, takes my breath away.
So I do something I never thought I’d do.
I break one of Mrs. Dubois’s cardinal rules of concert etiquette. I lean up and whisper into Zach’s ear, tugging slightly on his hair to bring his face closer to mine. “What do you think of this song?”
“It’s, uh…” Zach seems to search for words. “Very good. Very violin-y.”
I giggle, steal a quick glance around to make sure we’re not annoying people with our whispers, and then say, “It reminds me of a boy who likes Ciano movies, and a girl who likes his puff.”
I swear his smile starts at his eyes, and if we weren’t in public, I’d have no choice but to kiss the crap out of him.
But even Zach, his closeness, his smile, can’t eclipse the music. The melody is so hopeful and warm, deliberate but unsure. It’s true that it makes me think of me and Zach. Not because anything about it sounds like us, but becauseIdecide it does. I picked it right now, this moment. I close my eyes and picture us ducking under the arch of the cello’s trembling string. Crouching, lingering. Who will think to look for us here?
The long-drawn-out violin notes are how long it takes for breath to rise from the base of my lungs and out of my body when Zach is around. And the bop of his hair, his cheerful twinkling eyes, they’re hidden inside this piece, too.
When my parents separated, music became my safe place. Where I stowed pieces of myself I couldn’t express or bear for anyone to see. Everybody’s parents broke up. It was as run-of-the-mill as losing your baby teeth, being picked last in gym class, or getting a growth spurt at eleven. You were supposed to shake it off and keep going if it happened to you. When it happened to you. But the pain at the thought of two separate rooms and two toothbrushes and two birthday cards didn’t feel so collective. It felt so distinctly mine that it made the hairs on my body stand up when I thought about it too hard, stung the back ofmyeyes and mademythroat close up.
I looked for things in the pieces I played, for the yelp my mother would give when Dad jumped around a corner, surprising her by flying in an hour early because of unbelievably good weather in the Keys. I looked for that feeling of certainty, of everything right and in its place, instead of broken and scattered andwrong.For an explanation of why everything had fallen apart without warning, why there seemed to be holes and cracks in my life I couldn’t explain.
But mostly, I found things in my music. Hope. Distraction. Happiness. I found those things and held on to them as long as the piece lasted, and then I tucked them back inside a melody, where they’d be unreachable.
I explain this to Zach after the concert. If he thinks I’m crazy, he doesn’t show it.
We talk about that Bach second movement the rest of the drive home. I stop short of calling itoursong, because Katy once told me that sharing a song with someone is on par with sharing a pet. It just should not happen. For everyone involved.
But Zach says, “Air on a Thong. I kind of like it.”
I throw my head against the headrest when I laugh.
But I think he agrees that somewhere in the second phrase, in between the tremor of the violin strings, there’s a little bit of us.
AFTER
January
After me and my parents get back from Overton, I spend the next three hours tearing my room apart. Searching every drawer of my dresser, every corner of my closet, under my mattress, beneath the rug. I throw all my clothes out of my closet and search the pockets of pants I haven’t worn in years. Looking for a note, a T-shirt I don’t remember, a picture.
A memory.
Bus Boy is one thing: his full-wattage smile, the weird ease I feel around him. And I want to see him, Ilikebeing with him, but even being with him is so incomplete.
His first name is a start, but with more, I could findmore.I feel disgusted at myself for ever walking into Overton voluntarily. Why would I do that? What could have happened?
Why would I knowingly rob myself of a life that had real experiences? And if it’s true that I did, then I owe it to myself to figure this out, to piece everything together myself.
I could ask Katy to explain it to me, to tell me what happened assheremembers it, but I don’t want her version of the truth. I don’t even know how much I can trust it. I want to find all the pieces that have been lying around me all this time—that muststillbe lying around somewhere—and fit them together to rebuild the scattered fragments of my life.
And I need to do it alone.
I keep searching through everything I own, looking for a clue.
Maybe two initials scribbled on the back of my sneakers, or a name etched into the wall behind my headboard.
