The next morning, we dug into choreographing the other half of our performance set. The first song was “Open Wide.” Trav had reinvented it—his arrangement accelerated from a half-tempo slow jam to a firecracker-fast breakdown section. After five hours straight working on the choreography, we were sweaty, discouraged, and still hadn’t done a complete run of the song with any success.
“Let’s just move on,” Mama said, checking his watch. We switched to our ballad, “The Clockmaker,” a lilting piece by an overemotional indie band called Hyper Venti Latte.
In comparison to “Open Wide,” the choreography for “Clockmaker” was blessedly simple. I kept count of the times we dramatically turned, lifted, or dropped our heads. It came to an even dozen.
We’d finished learning by sunset. My brain felt pumped full of new information, clouds of steps and gestures still hardening into place.
“One last time,” Mama called, “from the beginning.” We gathered into a clump in the center of the room. Mama’s body was big and soft against my back. Erik’s knobby shoulder dug into my bicep.
Trav played the starting note on the pitch pipe, counted us in in a whisper, and we started singing.
Nihal stepped forward, tilting his head upward.
“You know what they say:
I can’t ever get out of my own way.
And I know this, I know all about myself.
I know myself too well.”
In the resonant space of the great room, the humming was as otherworldly as celestial noise. We fanned into a line, facing the fireplace. Nihal’s voice carried crisply in the acoustic, and with my part committed so deeply to memory that it was thoughtless, I could finally focus on his words for the first time:
“So I came down Saturday, beside
the statue of a man who died twice,
when his name went quiet, quiet,
and I met her there, and I met her there . . .”
Motion seeped into the background parts. In my peripherals, as we shifted formation, Jon Cox’s sturdy body swayed, and Marcus’s round shoulders drifted. The sound grew from a soothing chorus of ooh to a brassy, ringing oh, melding with the solo into something bright and strong.
“And I asked the clockmaker
how much it would break her,
her cogs and bells and wooden ledges,
her painted face and gilded edges,
to turn back the dial
to turn back the dial for a while.”
The song built up on itself. The bridge began with a sudden hush, a prickling rest, before circling, gathering momentum. It teetered high on that energy—a violent windstorm of sound—and crashed into the final chorus, which whipped by in a rush.
The last note held, thin and pure. I didn’t want to stop singing. I wanted it to cycle on and on, and when we were done, we’d turn back the dial, and I’d still be here, barefoot on the slick floor of this room, or huddled in the warmth of the Nest as Jon Cox brayed his throaty laugh, or in the back of his convertible on an autumn day as Isaac leaned carelessly out the side and Mama turned up the music. But the last wisp of sound floated up to brush against the high ceiling, and then the moment was gone.
“Well,” said a voice from behind us. “Guess I didn’t even need to be here.”
We turned as one to find Isaac leaning against the archway into the kitchen. At his feet lay a long duffel bag and his guitar case. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, the ends of his dark jeans crusted with snow.
The silence of the end of the piece hung over us. Nobody spoke.
The tip of Isaac’s long nose traced undecided shapes in the air as he looked around. His eyes couldn’t fix anywhere. They scanned the fireplace. Our bare feet. The steep staircase against the other wall. “My—” he said, and stopped. He swallowed, took a second, and tried again. “My dad’s out of the hospital. So I thought I should stop being a dickhead and show up.”
“Your dad’s what?” Mama said.
Nihal and I glanced at the others. Stunned to silence, all of them. The look of comprehension on Trav’s face was painful to see.
Isaac’s eyes wandered again. Discomfort settled into every inch of his face, every line of his body. He bowed under it, narrow shoulders slumped. “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to take my stuff upstairs.”
Jon Cox’s head bobbed.
Isaac slung his duffel over his shoulder and crossed the room, his head ducked. He retreated with his tail between his legs. It occurred to me that as much as the guy hunted the spotlight, he obviously hadn’t figured out how to deal with it.
“Hey! That’s my hotel,” Marcus protested, leaning over the coffee table to grab at Jon Cox’s pastel heaps of money. “C’mon—I—pay up.”
Jon Cox clapped his hand over Marcus’s eyes and flicked the red plastic hotel off the board. “What hotel?” he said innocently. “I don’t see—what are you talking about?”
Marcus pulled away. “I totally called this,” he asked, looking mutinous. “It hasn’t even been a month since the election, and corruption’s already taking over.”
“Oh, boy,” I muttered.
“Here we go,” Jon Cox said, swirling his drink before downing the last of it. “Hey, Marcus, can you give me ten more minutes? I’m not drunk enough for the whole Republicans-are-Satan thing yet.”
“Well, they are,” Marcus grumbled. “Free trade.”
“Get thee to an economics class, thou filthy liberal!” Jon Cox declared in a truly despicable attempt at an English accent. “Wouldst thou like to take this outside and duel for thy honor?” He brandished a finger at the front door.
“Thine honor,” Nihal said absentmindedly, drawing a card from the board.
Jon Cox rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Nihal.”
“Hey, guys?” Isaac said. He was sitting on the ground in front of the hearth, looking small and folded.
Everyone around the game board paused, and we could hear the uneven licking of the fire again. Trav lifted his pen from his journal, which was open to a spread of staff paper that he’d covered in chord analysis. From the couch, Erik looked up from his phone. He hadn’t set it down all night.
Isaac was picking strands from his bun, pulling thoughts out of place. “I should apologize for the last couple weeks. I don’t know why I took it out on everyone.” He sounded strangled but determined, as if his voice were a solid object that he was trying to cram through the crack of a closed door. “Obviously I think this matters. Not just the music. This.” He swung one of his full-body indications around at us, busy arm and bothered torso and sweeping eyes. “Sharps has been my most important thing for a fifth of my life, which, apparently, means I can get shitty and complacent about it, because—I don’t know. I guess that’s what you do with everything you care about. You forget how to care about it right. So.” He grimaced. “I didn’t say sorry. I’m sorry. There.”
“We should apologize, too,” I said. The Sharps’ eyes fell on me. I didn’t back down. “We should’ve noticed there was something wrong.” I hoped he heard what was behind the words. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I snapped at you, sorry I saw that flash of disappointment from you and didn’t understand what it meant, sorry I saw you pulling away and assumed it was selfishness.
A sigh issued from the last person I expected. “I agree,” Trav said. He twisted the stud in his ear over and over. It refracted the firelight. “This year has been rocky, and to a degree, I think it’s my fault.”
Isaac eyed Trav curiously. “Why?”
“My parents told me they’re coming to watch the competition, and I want them to know what this means.” After a moment, Trav shook his head. “Singing is what makes me feel like I’m here. But I know for most people, it’s the opposite: They’re here because they like to sing. That’s valid. It doesn’t have to be your life’s blood. There is actually more to the world than a cappella.” His eyes twinkled with firelight. “Or so people keep trying to tell me.”
The thickness of the air loosened a bit, and Marcus shifted, and Nihal was holding back a smile. Mama had that serene look he sometimes wore when he forced us to listen to Handel.
“Anyway,” Trav said. “I’ll accept your apology for showing up late, but nothing else. And even that’s—well, I drove here myself. So maybe your dramatics were worth it.”
“What, the whole way?” Isaac said.
“Yes.”
I expected some sarcastic jab about the number of casualties, but Isaac’s mouth pressed into a small and genuine smile. “That’s awesome.”
“Thank you,” Trav said. We were all quiet for a second. I watched Trav carefully. There was less tension in him than usual, from his expression down to his folded hands.
Without a further word, Trav went back to his journal. The others returned to their conversations, but I kept watching. He dotted note heads on the staff with precision and intent, as if he were the captain of a ship charting a course home.
My phone alarm rang at 3:15 a.m. I silenced it, slid out from between the sheets, and lifted the fluffy towel from the end of the bed.
Wrapped up, I crept down the curving staircase to the second floor. The sound of Jon Cox’s aggressive snoring rumbled through the door of the master bedroom as I slunk by. The cold floorboards issued protests under my toes, every step a conspicuous squeak. I hurried toward the bathroom, ducked in, and slid the lock into place with a satisfying shunk. Safe.
A glass door separated the shower from the rest of the bathroom. I cracked it open, stepped in, and twisted a thin chrome handle. Steaming water cascaded from the broad showerhead to the silvery tile.
Hot water coaxed the tension out of my muscles. I scrubbed shampoo through my hair, letting the water trickle between my roots. Soon I stepped out, glancing at the mirror. I placed the flat of my palm to the glass and swiped a gap into the condensation; then, after a moment, I wiped the whole mirror clear.
I looked different. I always lost weight at school, with the healthy food to eat and the campus to walk, but this was something else. More even than my new posture, head held higher, the squareness of my shoulders, the straightness in my back. Something in my eyes, maybe. I looked brazen.
I wondered if, when I stopped playing Julian, his influence would leave my body piece by piece, like the slow replacement of dead cells. I didn’t like the idea. This new face was a treasure I’d stumbled upon. I always wanted to look this sure of myself.
I thought of ignoring Michael’s call earlier. In retrospect, I felt strong having done it. At the beginning of the year, I would have given in. Jordan didn’t have this much control, this much agency. In the battle between the halves of myself, I felt like she’d finally been eclipsed; only a crescent glow of her still peeked out.
Exhaustion crept over me. I thought of Shanice’s fierce loyalty, Jenna’s clowning and posturing, Maria’s warmth. I could hardly remember what it felt like to have a history. When the girls looked at me, they saw seventeen years of me. The Sharps barely had a few months. And now I was this, something new, so quickly, and what was it? Was I happy this way?
I swept the towel from the rack and wrapped it around myself. I hit the lights, peered out the door, and crept back down the hall. I accelerated as I went, dashing for the steps. Past all the guys’ bedrooms.
A door swung open in front of me.
Shit—
I tried to stop, but my wet feet squeaked against the hardwood, and I wheeled off-balance. One hand flailed out, grabbing the doorjamb, swinging me into the person standing in the doorway. My other hand let go of my towel, which, for a second, slipped down to my waist. I snatched it back into place, but too late.
As I righted myself, Isaac stared down at me with total astonishment.