As Winter Storm Saul loomed in the distance, the season snuck up on us. The cold unsheathed its claws, releasing the sort of chill that had you hiding your frozen lips between your teeth for safekeeping. The year’s first snow came that Monday, showering down from wet skies, plastering Kensington in layers of thick white. By the next day, it had been tramped, sledded, and salted down to mud and slush. From winter wonderland to miserable hellscape in under twenty-four hours.
The midterm election happened that day. Marcus blamed the outcome on the weather, as well as voter apathy, and the poor alignment of the stars, and also there being no God. He couldn’t stop talking about how Anderson Grimsley was going to be the worst senator in US history. He threatened to move overseas a few times. “Ah, of course,” Nihal said. “Our largest emigrant population always has been politically disgruntled fourteen-year-olds.” Marcus turned fire-hydrant red and emitted a sound of protest that sounded like a balloon deflating.
The week after my fake coming-out was filled with questions and adjustments. I meant to ask Erik to say something to Victoria, to follow what had happened at the dance, but I couldn’t settle on the right words. An apology for fleeing, sure, but then what? “I only think of you as a friend”? “I think we should see other people”? “It’s not you, it’s the fact that I’m secretly a girl who sacrificed a foot and a half of perfectly good hair to the dark gods of a cappella”?
Erik himself could no longer stand within a few feet of me without blushing. I wanted to tell him he wasn’t my type, but something told me he would’ve gotten weirdly offended.
And Isaac—I wouldn’t have thought he was the type to act differently around gay guys, but he’d changed too. Vaguely, I remembered something he’d said after the dance—some promise to fix things between him and Trav, to patch everything over. The exact opposite had happened. Isaac stopped coming to the Nest early and stopped staying late. His guitar disappeared from its usual corner. During rehearsals, unless Trav was teaching him his part, he messed around with his phone, an air of avoidance hanging over him. I expected Trav to shatter that phone with his bare hands, but surprisingly, he didn’t seem to think it was an egregious interruption, since it was silent.
I wanted to ask Isaac if he planned to figure out their issues before we had to live in a house with each other in the middle of the mountains, but we were barely talking anymore. He looked at me with something withdrawn, something that looked horribly like Connor Caskey–brand dismissal. I didn’t want to admit how much the cold shoulder hurt. While we’d plotted to steal the Bear, we’d gotten to be actual friends, or so I’d thought from the joking texts fired in each other’s direction every other minute.
I let him push away. Instead, I spent more and more time with Nihal, who’d convinced me to start crossing campus to eat dinner with him in Marden Cathedral. I listened to the dinnertime announcements from Dr. Caskey instead of Reese and took the nightly moment of silence in a space where it felt holy. The girl I was last year was a campus away.
The musical went up a week before Thanksgiving Break. I watched it in the back row on Saturday night, feeling only a bit wistful. Anabel’s eleven o’clock number got a thundering round of applause that lasted a straight minute.
The next day, Winter Storm Saul rolled in, cracked his cloudy knuckles, and got to work. Temperatures nose-dived toward zero. The slush froze into sheets of three-inch-thick ice, and it snowed again—this time for thirty-six hours nonstop. Fifteen inches total. Kensington cancelled classes on Monday, to the shock and confusion of pretty much everyone. I peeked out of my room and saw a couple people walking around the Burgess halls, directionless, like dogs whose owners had dropped their leashes. We’d never had classes cancelled, not once in the three years I’d been here.
The second they sent the e-mail announcing the class cancellation, Trav texted the group: We’re still having rehearsal.
I had to laugh.
“I should’ve gone to Rochester to do door-to-door,” Marcus moaned, traipsing up the stairs ahead of me. “There are some counties where people just don’t have rides—low turn-out areas are always the counties where Republicans win—”
“Rides?” I said, exchanging a look with Nihal. I tried not to laugh. “Marcus, have you even taken Driver’s Ed?”
“I mean. No.” He stopped at the door to the Nest and looked back at us, twitching his head so his too-long bangs flicked out of his eyes. “Guys, come on. I’m a concerned citizen.”
I lifted my hands. Nihal choked out, “Well. I will cosign whatever strongly worded letter you want to send.”
Marcus went red and shouldered into the Nest. We bustled in after him, stamping snow onto the mat Trav had set in front of the door. Warmth washed over me, courtesy of the space heater plugged in by the couch. Erik was playing some quiet tune on the piano, and bluish shadows of snow were piled on the other side of the windows, and the campus looked dark and hushed and miles away.
“—guess we could bring a sled,” Jon Cox was saying to Mama.
“Bring a sled where?” Marcus said, hopping into his windowsill.
“The retreat,” Erik said, still doodling around with his chord progression, sparing Marcus a did-you-really-have-to-ask? glance over his shoulder.
I couldn’t decide if I was terrified or excited by the retreat. We’d be at Jon Cox’s place Saturday morning through Monday afternoon, arriving back at Kensington that night. The break in routine made me want to plan everything down to the second, but I couldn’t. I had no plan for living with these guys. What did boys do at what was essentially a glorified sleepover? Could I find this on Google?
It could work, though. This might actually be simpler—no switching between Jordan and Julian. The only thing I’d have to worry about was showering, but I could just stay up until all the others had gone to sleep. Who needed rest, anyway?
“How’re we getting there?” I asked, shrugging my coat onto the back of my armchair. It rustled, snow showering off the sleeves.
Nihal perched on a sofa arm. “Jon Cox and Isaac drive a car each.”
Speaking of which . . . I glanced around. Isaac was really cutting it close tonight. In about thirty seconds, he’d be late.
“Dibs on not driving with him, please,” Mama said. “Never again.”
Jon Cox grinned over at him. “You’re just salty ’cause you don’t have your license.”
Mama snorted. “I wouldn’t call what Isaac does ‘driving.’ He brakes like he’s trying to stamp a cockroach to death. It’s the least safe thing since the frickin’ Hindenburg.”
“Ah, Mom, always safety first,” Jon Cox said. “Make sure to bring the baby seats for Marcus and Erik.”
“Shut up,” Marcus and Erik said at the same time.
I grinned, slumping into my armchair. “Why don’t y’all just get Trav to drive?”
“He doesn’t drive,” Mama said. “He—”
The door creaked open. Trav hurried in, shrugging off his black peacoat. He lifted his folder. “Last arrangement’s done.”
A ragged cheer rose. Trav headed to the piano, we hopped to our feet, and the stack of music made its way to me. I grabbed a packet, passed the others, and smoothed my thumb over the title. This song, all bare piano and wistful theme, had been unavoidable a couple years ago. The song of my freshman fall. I’d been listening to it after my first mainstage audition, the first time Michael had walked up to me. “Halloween,” by Girl on a Ledge.
“We’ll start with the pre-chorus. Turn—” Trav cut himself off, glancing around. “Where’s Isaac?”
We all traded looks. “I don’t know,” Mama said. “Did you see him downstairs?”
Trav twitched his head, a quick shake. He pulled his phone from his jeans pocket. “He hasn’t texted.” Disapproval made his voice rigid. “Someone call him. Now.”
Jon Cox tugged out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it to his ear. He waited, staring up at the ceiling. The lights wrapped around the rafters reflected in the lenses of his glasses. After a second, he lowered his phone. “Didn’t pick up.”
Trav’s nostrils flared. He looked back down at his music. “Page four,” he said. “Tenors in unison . . .”
I wondered what Isaac could be doing. Hopefully he hadn’t slipped on the ice and broken something. It was dangerous out there, especially coming downhill to Prince.
I shouldn’t have worried. He strolled in twenty minutes late. His expression was completely blank, as if there were nothing weird about showing up a third of the way into rehearsal, when nobody had been as much as twenty seconds late the whole year.
We all watched him grab the extra copy from the piano and join the circle.
“Anything you want to say?” Trav said, dead quiet.
Isaac shrugged, stiff and detached. He barely resembled the Isaac from callbacks, so comfortable, who’d looked at everyone as if he felt lucky to have them around. That kid was absent. Some shallow avatar of him had stepped into his clothes.
Trav seemed at a loss. After a long moment, he said, “We already did the first four pages.”
“Got it,” Isaac said, looking down at the music.
A needle of irritation prodded me. Of course he could just sight-read it, but why did that give him a free pass on showing up on time? Trav probably would have flayed the rest of us alive. Glancing around the circle, I saw hints of the same feeling on the guys’ faces. I wasn’t the only one a bit confused, and a bit more annoyed.
Isaac came late the next night, too. He rolled in at 8:15, and this time, Trav didn’t stay quiet about it. “Talk to me after,” Trav said, his voice like gravel.
“Can’t,” Isaac said. “I’ve got a counterpoint project to finish.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care about my grades? That’s funny. I do.” Isaac shrugged off his backpack and set it down by the piano. “So I’m going to go home after rehearsal, although you’re welcome to try to stop me.”
I stared at my shoes, baffled. One of my best friends, Isaac had said about Trav. Who acted like this to a friend?
Unwillingly, I found myself wondering if this was my fault. Had my coming on to him freaked him out this much? Was Isaac secretly a Westboro Baptist–type or something? After all, he barely even looked at me anymore, and when he did aim a furtive glance my way, he looked completely walled off.
The tension didn’t ease during rehearsal. Whenever someone failed to get a part perfect the first time, Isaac shifted in place like he could barely contain his exasperation. As nine o’clock crept up, Marcus fluffed some line on his second try—not an easy line, either; a fast harmony with a surprise natural—and Isaac sighed audibly. Marcus shot a hurt glance his way but, of course, didn’t speak up.
My vision sharpened with anger. I couldn’t hold it back. “Hey, Isaac,” I said, “if you think you can help, how about you go ahead and sing Marcus’s part with him?”
“Julian,” Trav warned.
“I’m serious.” I kept my eyes on Isaac. “I mean, apparently it’s obvious to you when we don’t get everything 100 percent right the first time. So, how about you help out, genius?”
Isaac’s eyes burned into mine. For a second the walls fell away, and I saw a flash of bitterness, of disappointment. I stared mulishly back, my heart pounding.
Finally, he yanked back the sleeve of his coat and twisted his watch to check it, fingers tight on its brown leather band. He hadn’t even taken his scarf off, ready to go at the soonest possible opportunity. “We’re done,” he said.
As the clock tower began to strike, he grabbed his backpack and disappeared.
The next night, he was on time. I felt a pang of embarrassment when he walked in. I shouldn’t have snapped last night. It wasn’t my job—I’d probably just made Marcus anxious.
Isaac settled by the window near my armchair. Silence hung between us like a thick, opaque veil. I drew it back with a clearing of my throat. “Hey, listen.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled, not meeting my eyes.
“. . . yeah, sure, but—”
Trav walked in, and I sighed, standing. When Trav’s searching eyes found Isaac, his expression cleared.
Maybe this was just another blip on the radar. Isaac would explain in a few weeks what was going on. College apps stress, maybe. And then he would get into every school, and we’d think it was hilarious in hindsight.
Maybe.
“We’re in the home stretch,” Trav said. “First thing: Rooks, I need you to go to a meeting Friday afternoon with Dr. Caskey. He’s working through the competition’s program order, and we need to be last. Got it? Second-to-last at an absolute stretch. Nothing else is acceptable. I don’t care if you have to extort somebody to make this happen. His e-mail said 3:45 in Arlington, so be there at 3:30, in case the chronology of your arrival makes a difference.”
We grumbled our agreement.
“Next.” Trav handed the arrangements to his right. “If we finish this tonight, we’ll have tomorrow and Friday night to focus on memorization before even getting to the retreat. That’s ideal, so let’s focus up. Got it?”
Heads bobbed.
“All right. Page sixteen.”
We learned quickly. As the minutes passed, the thick discomfort in the air lessened, turning less oppressive, until I could almost tell myself it felt normal again. We’d finished the arrangement before eight thirty.
We had a set. Jon Cox let out a whoop, and Mama clicked his heels, nearly crashing into Erik as he landed.
“From the top.” Trav joined the circle, closing it. He tugged his pitch pipe from his jeans pocket, lifted it to his lips, and blew a pitch. The arrangement gathered momentum and took off.
About twenty seconds in, Trav suddenly stopped singing the solo. He gestured for us to keep going, but a grimace worked its way onto his face. I heard it too. The background was cluttered instead of smooth, just off-key enough to hit the ear like an accident. Trav leaned forward into the circle to listen, his arched eyebrows practically meeting above his nose. “Whoever’s suspending the second, don’t,” he called halfway through the verse. I had no idea how he heard it, but somebody’s note shifted back into place.
As the song went on, the tonality sank even further. With dissatisfaction fastening into place on Trav’s expression, we were getting nervous, depressing the sound, tending flat.
“Pitch,” he warned. Backs straightened, and the sound lurched about a quarter-tone sharp, buckling into place part by part. By the second chorus, we’d grappled our way on top of the piece. But as we cycled through the chords leading into the bridge, Trav called out, “There’s no flat seven in these chords!” and then, “Stop, stop.”
He looked around the circle. “Who’s doing that? This isn’t fucking jazz, guys.” He glanced at Marcus, and his voice softened a bit. “Is—do you need to go over that part again?”
Marcus looked hurt. “I thought I got it right.”
To my surprise, Erik said begrudgingly, “He did get it right, I’m pretty sure.”
“But the Tenor 2 line . . .” Trav rounded on Isaac. “Is that you doing that? Are you just adding random sevenths?”
Isaac gave him a blank, confused look.
“Okay. Never mind,” Trav said. “One more time from the top.” He took a deep, exasperated breath.
Then he froze. Dread seeped into the room as if the coldness outside were slipping through the windows. Trav leaned past Marcus, closer to Isaac, and took a second, sharper breath through his nose.
Isaac moved back, but Trav was dropping his pitch pipe into his pocket. “Why do you smell like weed?” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “Are you high right now?”
I—and all the other guys—turned a disbelieving stare on Isaac. Jon Cox and Mama smoked in the woods pretty often, but never anytime close to rehearsal, out of sheer self-preservation if nothing else. Since when did Isaac even smoke?
A long moment drew taut, a quivering string. Isaac glanced around the circle, as if for backup, then back to Trav. “Yeah.”
“Answer something for me.” Trav’s voice was taut with control. “When are you going to start taking this seriously?”
“Calm down,” Isaac said.
“No. Not until you get rid of this new attitude, treating rehearsal like it doesn’t matter.” Trav’s voice rose. “Look at you. You’re late, you’re distracted, you show up like this—”
Isaac snapped. “Maybe that’s because this doesn’t fucking matter!”
A flinch impacted the circle, and something awful happened. We were punctured and began to deflate. I felt ridiculous, sheet music drooping in my hand. All this—it was kind of silly, wasn’t it? Singing nonsense words until they sort of fit together, trying to massage pop music into a format that lent itself to humor more than anything else? And Trav’s absolute seriousness made it ludicrous, if you thought about it too hard. I glanced around the circle and knew everybody else was feeling it, too. A sudden blast of unwelcome perspective.
“What?” Trav said. “What’s that supposed to mean?” The fury had evaporated from his voice. He sounded hollow.
“What do you think it means? Look at this.” With a toneless laugh, Isaac threw his sheet music on top of the piano and turned on the rest of us. He searched blank face after blank face. “What do you think we’re doing here? Curing cancer? Jesus, what do you think this is? Eight guys standing around making noise.” He rounded on Trav, and for the first time, it was obvious the height Isaac had on him. “I’m done with you, acting like this is life and death.”
I wanted to step in, but this had been coming since that night in the theater, since that first rehearsal when Isaac hadn’t been paying enough attention for Trav’s taste. It had been coming since before I’d even auditioned.
“Forget it. I can’t do this.” Isaac went for the door. The bang when he slammed it made tingles run down my arms.
“Jesus,” Jon Cox muttered.
“I—I can go after him,” Marcus said, “if—”
Nihal shook his head. Marcus fell quiet.
The air was still. One by one, we looked to Trav. There was nothing behind his eyes. Usually, you could see calculations, or judgments, or appraisal. Or that rare dash of happiness. Now, nothing.
“We’re done for the night,” he said, his voice raspy.
Every movement slow and methodical, he collected the music, closed his binder, and left, as silent as a shadow.