When I opened the door to the Nest, I found Trav sitting on the sofa, his shoulders high and rigid, hands clasped hard in his lap. One thumb rubbed a pink scar on the back of his hand over and over, tight tiny circles. His backpack lay on the ground, half-open, a corner of the black scheduling journal jutting out.
“Hey,” I said.
No answer.
“Look, Trav,” I said, “if I can help rewrite anything, just say the word.”
Trav seemed dazed. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before, sizing me up, slicing me apart and fitting me back together in ways I didn’t recognize. “That’s for me to deal with,” he said quietly.
“You can’t do it all yourself. That’s got to be years’ worth of work.”
“It has to be done correctly. So I’m going to do it.” The words seemed to give him resolve. He stood, picked up his backpack, and headed for the piano.
I didn’t argue. It wasn’t smart.
During practice, nobody said a word to Trav. Everyone could sense it—he was brittle. Right on the brink. At nine o’clock, he vanished like a whisper.
The rest of us settled around the room. “So. Plan,” Jon Cox said. “What do we do?”
“We ruin them, obviously,” Isaac said.
Everyone looked toward the piano bench where he sat. For once, he wasn’t joking.
“Not to rain on that particular parade,” Nihal said, “but personally, I think we should focus on getting back what they burned. We can transcribe a lot of these arrangements from recordings. I’m not a great arranger, but we can figure it out. Work in shifts.”
Isaac pulled his hair loose and started working his fingers through the tangles. Methodical. Steady. “Yeah, don’t get me wrong. That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.” He pointed out the window at the hulking shadow of Arlington. “And let’s also stamp those assholes into the dirt.”
“Isaac,” Nihal said, sounding uneasy.
“No, don’t. I mean, come the fuck on. That was like responding to a spitball with a shotgun. I want them sorry.”
Nihal straightened in his seat. “If we do anything, Trav’s going to lose it. Remember yesterday? ‘This is not a discussion’? Nothing’s changed.” Nihal sighed. “You really want to make this situation worse for him?”
Everyone else started laying out opinions. The Nest filled with voices trying to batter each other down.
“Marcus,” Isaac called. His clear tenor broke through the noise. “What?”
Marcus had his hand raised. It stayed high as everyone looked to him.
“What if we voted?” Marcus said with more confidence than I’d ever heard from the kid. Democracy at work. “There’s seven of us, so it won’t be a tie.”
A spark of amusement darted across Isaac’s face. “Great. Sure.” He stuck his hand in the air. “All in favor of getting the Minuets back?”
Erik raised his hand. I hesitated, remembering Trav’s expression last night, the one that left no room for debate. Unless you’ve thought up any other ways to waste my time.
I met Isaac’s eyes. They urged me to take the risk. I thought of the quietness of his voice in the field when we’d snuck out, the way he’d talked Trav down, and I realized the hardness in his expression came from loyalty. This wasn’t on Trav’s time. It was meant to make the Minuets pay for wasting it.
I raised my hand. Jon Cox and Mama traded a look. I saw a whole conversation in the second of eye contact. When they looked away, neither of their hands budged.
“All opposed,” Nihal said. Three other hands joined him.
Isaac’s lips thinned.
“All right,” Nihal said, standing. He didn’t look at Isaac. “It’s settled.” The perpetual amusement in his voice had faded. He sounded tired. “We’ve got a performance in two weeks. We should keep our eyes forward.”
The others filed out, but Isaac and I didn’t move. He was staring at the floorboards, one foot tapping in slow, deliberate rhythm, as the door closed behind Marcus.
After a minute, Isaac looked over at me and said, “You going home?”
I shrugged. “Are you waiting for me to leave?”
He shrugged back, a tight roll of his narrow shoulders.
“You all right?” I said.
He ruminated. I waited for words. It was Isaac; words were coming.
After a second, he said, “Yeah. I mean, I’m fine. Just, this is bullshit, right?”
“Right.”
“And, I mean, I did want them to stop. After a point, I figured they’d—but now Trav has more to deal with on top of everything.”
“Is he okay? Is something going on?”
Isaac closed his eyes. I could sense the explanation building up, a rising tide held back by a weakening wall. Finally, he caved. “Yeah, it’s college stuff, family stuff. His parents went through this shitty, messy divorce last year, and they’re both kind of scary. Not even regular Kensington-parent scary, seriously unreasonable.” He tied his hair back up, twisting it into a bun. “It’s not applications, so much. He’s going to get in everywhere, obviously. He’s a genius. But his mom’s this famous movie critic, his dad’s an oncologist, and his mom’s all like, ‘Pursue music, only the arts matter!’ and his dad’s literally said, ‘If you don’t do pre-med, your mother’s going to be shouldering your college bills alone.’ It’s really fucking with his anxiety, trying to pick a track.”
“God,” I said.
“Yeah.” Isaac grimaced. “Obviously, it’s not really my business, but I think leading up to them separating, he got this totally unrealistic concept of what he needs to do to be a person, you know? His whole thing with feeling like he has to do everything—that’s got to be some sort of holdover. Like, if he isn’t totally adjusted and responsible and on top of his shit all the time, he’s the reason his parents didn’t end up happy.”
“He knows that’s not true, right?”
Isaac shook his head. “I don’t know. They’ve never done anything to reassure him. I kind of hate them, dude. They haven’t come to a single concert, even though they live in the city. It’s not that bad of a drive. I do it every break. Six hours out. And you know how much he cares about this stuff.”
“They sound awful.”
“Yeah. I don’t know. He frustrates the absolute shit out of me half the time, but the guy’s one of my best friends, and most of the time I feel like I can’t do anything to help.”
Isaac pushed the sleeves of his sweater to his elbows, accordions of charcoal wrinkles. His sneaker tapped the floor faster and faster, and the longer I sat in my armchair, the more pressure piled onto my shoulders. The storm crackled in my chest, rolling thunder, ladder lightning. Images flashed. Connor’s smirk as he backed away from the fire; the way he’d looked at me with pitying disdain when we’d first met. Trav rubbing the scar on the back of his hand so hard, the healed gash faded from brown to pale. All those handwritten arrangements, hundreds and hundreds of painstakingly written pages, some of them dated years before I was born, incinerated in a matter of seconds.
“Look,” I said quietly, “I’m still down to get them back.”
Isaac went still. After a moment, he glanced up at me, his eyes dark. There was that hesitant look, the weight and the measure.
“Yeah?” Isaac said.
“Yeah.”
He cracked a smile. “All right, then.”
The week flew by. Nihal learned that his sister had been accepted early-decision to Yale Med School, and he bragged about it so often, I started to suspect he felt sort of insecure by comparison. Marcus badgered each of us individually to volunteer for the Democratic Senate candidate, irritating Trav to the point that he vowed not to vote at all. And one evening, on a dare, Isaac climbed halfway out a window of the Crow’s Nest, aiming for the roof (“I’m going to get old-style initiated!”). Before he could get there, Marcus’s protests escalated so much that a librarian stormed up and ordered us to stop being so disruptive, and also what are you doing dangling out of a fifty-foot-high window, Mr. Nakahara, are you trying to break your neck.
Meanwhile, I turned in a long essay for The Greek Monologue, finished mapping a project for Lighting Design, and delivered a biweekly critique for Character and Humanity. All fine.
The world outside Kensington wasn’t as manageable. The only interview Mom had gotten for a job came and went without a word, and I knew what that meant. Sometimes, when I ate, my mind ended up back in California, imagining my mom or dad at some cash register, swiping our EBT card quickly so the people behind them in line wouldn’t give them judgmental looks.
I prayed for Mom to find another job. I convinced myself it wasn’t useless, although prayer hadn’t done an awful lot for us in the last couple years.
If anything could distract me, it was the looming promise of the Sharps’ first performance. For the back half of the week, we spent rehearsals learning the school songs for the Spirit Rally. We all hated them, these boring four-part arrangements that Trav taught us by ear. The main one went:
O Kensington, we sing to thee; our voice doth fill thy halls!
When far away are we, the winter clamors at thy walls!
O Kensington, we sing to thee, ’twixt stands of oak and maple;
When far are we, we’ll still serve thee, as long as we are able!
Really just vomit-worthy stuff.
A secret sense of purpose powered me through. Isaac and I had stayed late the night of the bonfire talking over possibilities. We’d decided to wait. Wait for Trav to settle, wait for the group to feel unified again—wait for the Minuets’ guard to be down. And then we’d steal the Golden Bear.
The Golden Bear was the Minuets’ pride and joy, featuring in all their concert posters, CD covers, and e-mailed advertisements. A glass statue of a bear on its hind legs, covered in actual gold leaf, it had been passed down since the Minuets’ founding year, 1985. The Bear had lived in their common space ever since.
The problem: Nobody knew where the Minuets’ common space was. According to Isaac, they rehearsed in one of the Arlington recital halls, but that wasn’t their space. They had to have something like the Nest, a home base, but they’d kept the location on lockdown.
Isaac and I were going to figure it out. And then they were going to pay.
“There you are,” Trav hissed as I rounded the corner. “Where were you?”
“Sorry, I left my clothes at home,” I lied. “Had to run back.” I messed with my tie, trying not to breathe in. In a list of Kensington stenches, this gym out-stenched them all. The trash closet smelled foul, sure, but this place was like rubbing your nose into the armpit of somebody who’d just done back-to-back marathons in eighty-degree heat.
I looked down at my tie. Last night, Trav had pulled out eight carnelian-red skinny ties from the chest in the Crow’s Nest. The eight of us made perfect duplicates: sport jackets single-buttoned, khakis pressed, rigid dress shoes squeaking, red ties neat at our throats. Except for my tie, which had somehow turned itself backward again. Or sideways? God, why were these things so impossible?
“Jesus,” said Erik, eyeing my neck.
“What, freshman?”
“Do you not know how to tie a tie, or what?”
I scowled. “I—have not needed to know, no.”
He looked at me with the scathing condescension of a twelve-year-old watching his grandmother try to operate Twitter. “Like, ever?”
“Oh my God.”
“Here,” Isaac said, stepping in. Exasperated, I let my hands drop. Isaac met my eyes. I gave him a warning look, and his eyes danced, but he didn’t say whatever smartass comment he was clearly dying to make.
Isaac straightened the knot and stepped back. “There.”
“Are we done with the sartorial conference?” Trav said through gritted teeth.
“The what conference?” Marcus said.
“Oh, never mind. Just—come on, Julian.” Trav grabbed my elbow and yanked me into my place in line, at the bottom of the concrete steps. The announcer—it sounded like Mr. Hall, the theater school’s voice coach—was already in the middle of his opening speech. He’d be calling us up into the gym any second.
I let out a slow breath, my heart still pounding. My seventh-period teacher had ushered our class over from Blythe Tower to the gym. On the way, I’d given the group the slip and sprinted ahead to the girls’ locker room, where I’d stashed my change of clothes this morning. I’d worked fast, but it had still cut too close for my liking.
The idea of being in front of the whole school had my palms sweating up a rainstorm. At least the student body wouldn’t be too close. The Sharps performed on the court, behind one of the basketball hoops. Everyone else stood up in the bleachers, all shifting limbs and folded arms, a bunch of awkward art kids trying to summon school spirit.
“. . . for their sixty-eighth annual performance of the school songs, please welcome the Sharpshooters!” rang Mr. Hall’s voice. We filed up the steps toward the sound of thunderous applause.
The gym echoed, bouncing one and a half thousand yells down at us. As we emerged from the stairwell into a wash of sickly light, I kept my eyes fixed on the back of Marcus’s neck. Three shiny zits, scrubbed into agitation, encroached on his hairline.
We passed Dr. Graves, who clapped each of us on the shoulder, and formed a semicircle around the microphone behind the basketball court’s baseline. The floor squeaked under eight pairs of shiny shoes.
Trav waited for the applause to end. He looked more at ease here, in front of this massive crowd, than he had since that night in the field.
He blew the pitch, counted us in, and we sang.
“O Kensington, we sing to thee, our voice doth fill thy halls . . .”
Trav’s steady hands cut the air as he conducted, metronome-precise. Downbeat. Swipe left, swipe right, like he was ushering away an insect. Upbeat . . .
As we started the second verse, my attention strayed across the gym. Floods of faces stared our way. The five disciplines stood in sections, partitioned off from each other by rows of teachers. The School of Music stood closest to us, familiar faces studded in the ranks: Victoria Taylor peered out of the second row, barely taller than the kids a row down. But Connor Caskey, beside Victoria, wasn’t gracing us with his attention, because—
My voice faltered. Anabel was out of place, standing in the music section, her golden hair glinting in the sharp light. She and Connor were talking, and in one brisk second, he leaned down to kiss her forehead.
I looked back to Trav. He’d heard my part slip. I picked it back up and held his critical eyes for the rest of the song, but my mind tumbled through the possibilities, already conjuring up the sparks of a plan.
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.