On the sofa, Isaac was playing me lullabies, his fingers switching practiced formations over the fretboard. I watched him for a minute, watched his teeth close on the corner of his lip as vibrations danced beneath his fingers. I thought of every Kensington guitarist sitting under a tree in autumn with his guitar, trying to impress girls. It felt strange to watch in earnest.
The sensation of the end approaching closed in like parallel walls, and when they started crushing me, I loosed a breath, moving in, resting my head on his shoulder. The solidness of him helped the tiniest bit. Stop thinking forward. Relax. Be present . . .
It didn’t work. The hours ahead were too tight.
The music slowed, softened, and plucked into nothing. “What’s up?” he said, slipping his arm over my shoulder. I leaned back into the warm weight of it.
“Listen,” I said. He paused, waiting, but my words wouldn’t come.
He raised one eyebrow. “Listen to what?”
“I . . . never mind.”
After a second, Isaac asked, “Was that going to be the what-are-we talk?”
A laugh stuttered out of me. “No. But we can, if you want.”
“No, I’m not—let’s not,” he said. “It’s kind of nice not knowing.”
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Whoa, dude, I’m so blissed out,” he said in a California-surfer-dude voice. “Ignorance is totally tubular.”
I fought back a grin that threatened to make my whole face hurt. “California’s too good for you, city boy.”
“Sure it is.” His hand on my shoulder drew me closer.
Voices echoed up the stairs. We jerked apart. I glanced at the clock—an hour had flicked past in fast-forward. I snatched up my miniature sideburns from the sofa arm and tried to stick the gummy strips back to my face, but they had lost all adhesive power.
As the doorknob rattled, Isaac flew to the door and leaned on it, pinning it shut. “Ahe-he-hem,” he harrumphed through the crack in the door. “Password?”
Protests rose behind the door. “Come on,” groaned Erik’s voice.
“Wrong,” Isaac said.
“Is it Eelectric Eel?” Jon Cox’s voice said. “Best album name ever?”
“You know, shockingly, I didn’t land on that one,” Isaac said. Bracing one hand against the wall to keep the door shut, he gave me an urgent glance back.
I gave up on the sideburns. “Agh,” I said, and flung them out the window as Trav’s voice said,
“Now, Isaac.”
Isaac pulled the door open. “Amazing,” he said. “Trav, you’re psychic.”
Trav gave him dagger eyes, nudging past toward the piano. I leaned my cheek on my hand, trying to look natural, as everyone piled in.
“Okay,” Erik said to the other guys, dropping into an armchair. “Fuck Elena, marry Ayana, kill Libby.”
Loud exclaiming from Jon Cox and Mama. Apparently a controversial choice.
“Wrong,” Marcus mumbled as he hoisted himself into the windowsill. He jerked his head, as if to get his nonexistent bangs out of his eyes. He’d cut his hair short a week ago, but the habit had carried over, leaving him with a new nervous tic to add to his extensive collection of nervous tics.
“Why are you killing Libby?” Jon Cox said. “She’s way hotter than Elena.”
“Because Libby stands for Liberty,” Erik said. “Imagine saying that in bed and hearing in your head, Liberty! Liberty!”
Jon Cox grinned. “You know nobody actually says each other’s names in bed, right?”
“Speak for yourself,” Mama said.
Nihal settled on the sofa beside me, looking pained. “I know so much right now that I did not ask to know.”
“Hey,” Mama said, his eyes falling on me. “Julian. Are you—what happened to your face?”
Everyone’s eyes lit on me, and a hush spread. I angled my face downward, avoiding the stares. “Nothing,” I said gruffly.
“He walked into a wall,” Isaac said. “But, like, repeatedly.”
I sighed, glancing around at the guys. “Me and Connor Caskey got in a fight, okay?”
To my left, Nihal grew rigid.
Surprise registered on the guys’ faces. “Jesus,” Jon Cox said, his eyebrows drawing together. “That’s drastic.”
Erik jumped in, too eager. “Did you win?”
I shot him an amused look. “Two music geeks beating each other up in an elevator? Nobody’s a winner.” Chuckling rippled around the Nest.
“You can sing, yes?” Trav said.
“Yeah. I’m a little stuffy, but it’s already better than an hour ago.”
“Good. Put on some stage makeup or something tomorrow.” Trav cleared his throat. “And everyone, make sure you’re there by five so we have plenty of time to warm up.”
Seven heads bobbed.
“That said.” Trav folded his hands. “Let’s move our—”
He stopped, his eyes falling to the corner where our equipment always sat, the monitors and the chest of mics. It was empty. “Did someone take that down to Arlington already?”
Awful silence spread. And I realized why, all of a sudden, the Minuets had been so intent on distracting us today.
Standing in the Arlington backstage area, I felt like I was reliving the evening of my audition, when Erik had led me onto the stage. The cascades of the spotlights.
Now, darkness smothered everything except for the ghost light that sat center stage. It cast dim slivers of light back here, onto the rack of music lockers, whose metal webbing covered clusters of musical equipment. Tucked into one cage was a deconstructed drum set, the hammered coppery flats of the cymbals glinting. In another, swaths of cloth wrapped up mixers and miniature keyboards.
Trav was rattling through the cages one by one, double-checking that none of our sound tech had ended up inside.
“How about,” Jon Cox said, “we ask the other groups if they have any equipment we could borrow?”
“Yeah, of course,” Mama said. “They’re totally going to turn down a golden opportunity to ruin our performance.”
“Pessimist,” Jon Cox said. “Let’s call some people. Even if we can just get hold of a beatboxing and bass mic, it’ll be something.” He looked at Erik. “You think the Measures might have any extra solo mics?”
“Maybe,” Erik said, not sounding convinced.
“Ulterior motive,” Mama mumbled. But he, Jon, and Erik took off, and Marcus scrambled after them. The four of them jogged down the upstage wall, past the rows of taut pulley ropes, into the open greenroom.
Trav had stopped searching the cages. He stood at the side of the stage, staring at a patch of ground like he was trying to set it on fire through sheer force of will. He was twisting the stud in his ear so violently that watching it made a sympathetic pang dart across my earlobes.
Isaac jogged over and took Trav’s wrist. He said something too quietly for me or Nihal to hear. We exchanged a look and turned away from the seniors.
After a minute, they approached us. Trav’s hands were back in his pockets. He was breathing more steadily.
“So,” Isaac said. “Do we have a plan B?”
“We already know where it is,” I said quietly. “Where they put our stuff.”
We locked eyes. His expression cleared.
“You think so?” he said. “You don’t think they’d just put it in their rooms?”
“I don’t think they’d risk somebody seeing it.”
Trav spoke, sounding hoarse. “You three check the cinema. I’ll catch up with you.” He pulled his phone from the rustling pocket of his windbreaker. “I’m going to call our sound tech guys. Maybe they know where we can get some last-minute replacement equipment.”
“Cool.” I glanced from Isaac to Nihal. “Let’s go.”
When the three of us arrived at the cinema, the dim light seeping under the emergency exit door told us the Minuets were still here. We skirted the building and kept our distance.
“All right,” I whispered, as we hunched by a dying pine at the edge of the woods. “How do we get them out?”
“Tear gas,” suggested Isaac.
I nodded. “Unleash the wolves.”
“Rocks through the windows.”
“Set fire to—”
“Or,” Nihal said, “we could call the safety hotline, like rational people.”
The possibility stewed in the freezing air.
“They’ll get suspended,” I reminded. “All of them.”
Isaac shrugged. “Yep, I’m fine with that.”
Nihal stayed quiet, picking at the edge of his gray woolen scarf. He was thinking of Connor. I saw it in the distance on his expression.
I nudged Isaac. “You don’t want to see their faces when we beat them tomorrow? Fair and square?”
Isaac sighed. “Has anyone ever told you you’re as stubborn as a brick?”
“Often.”
“Move,” Nihal hissed, pulling me behind the tree. After a second, I peered back out at the cinema. A smudge of facial features hovered, murky, behind one of the windowpanes.
I clenched my freezing hands in my pockets, trying to force warmth into my fingertips. “How about the emergency exit?”
“Yeah,” Isaac said. “Let’s make some noise. Pretend we’re unlocking the door.”
“How about we stake the place out until they leave?” Nihal said. “They can’t sleep there.”
I grimaced. “I wasn’t built for this weather.”
“California,” Isaac said, rolling his eyes.
I shouldered him. “Okay, first of all—”
“Guys,” Nihal said, looking between us with something like suspicion. “A little focus?”
Isaac and I put a few more inches between each other, sheepish. We had to be less obvious.
I couldn’t help it, though. I had the buoyant feeling inside my chest of someone who was learning to fly.
I looked at his hand against the tree bark and felt it forceful on my back, careful in my hair, sweeping down my shoulder, scraping across my cheek. I glanced over his features, shadowed in the dark, and thought, You’re mine. When he caught me looking, the night felt endless again, and we were the only spots of life on a barren plain of snow.
Nihal was still puzzling things out. “How did they get into the Nest in the first place?” he murmured.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’d have to have a key, right? Unless someone forgot to lock it.”
Isaac shook his head. “I was the last out last night. I locked it.”
“They must’ve stolen a key,” I said.
Isaac didn’t look convinced. “Who even knows we have doubles of the key?”
Nihal’s lips thinned. “We should get a move on. Isaac, could you make a diversion? Rattle the door?”
“On it,” Isaac said, and loped off through the trees.
I waited until he was out of earshot to look back at Nihal. He was wearing an uncertain-looking frown.
I leaned against the tree. My nose and lips had gone numb. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You sure?”
Nihal closed his eyes hard, his long eyelashes folding up at the top of his cheeks. “No,” he murmured. “Just, Connor knows I keep my key in my backpack.”
A long second later, he gave me a look that searched for reassurance, his brown eyes deepened by the night.
I shook my head. “Well, text him and ask, then. If he did it.”
“I don’t want to attack him.”
“It’s not an attack. It’s a—” Movement behind the cinema windows cut me off. As I went quiet, I heard Isaac’s voice, distant but sharp, behind the building. He was singing Sam Samuelson’s “The Way You Loved Me” at the top of his lungs. Subtle.
The lookout’s face vanished from the window. Nihal and I ducked back into the woods, snow crunching beneath our boots. A minute later, a shadowy figure pushed the window up and darted across the lawn. Then the other Minuets poured out. I counted them as they went.
The last one to leave shoved the window down and hooked the board back into place. He broke into a run and tripped not far from us, plowing face-first into the snow with a painful-looking smack. I shifted, and a branch snapped beneath my heel.
Nihal tensed. I froze, but the guy had already twisted toward us. It was Connor, a jagged leaf of bruising wrapped over his temple.
He picked himself up and straightened to his towering height, brushing snow off the sleeves of his fleece. Nihal swayed forward, as if to drift out of the woods.
A dozen feet apart, they looked at each other for a long moment. Connor’s broad features were weighted with words. For a second, I thought he might approach us—or give us away.
Then he gave his head a shake and backed up, moving after the rest of his group. He broke back into a run and disappeared.
It wasn’t until he was long gone that I looked back at Nihal. “Hey,” I said quietly. “You good?”
His eyes were still fixed on the spot where Connor had disappeared. A long moment passed, and the tightness around his mouth didn’t ease. I could practically smell the disappointment on him, a bitter haze.
Finally, he turned back to me, resignation worn into the creases of his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The theater was less impressive than I remembered it. In my memory, it was a cavernous space, magnificent but faded, like an ancient opera house in need of restoration. As I stood here at the top of the aisle, though, it looked small and shabby and smelled like winter and dust.
“There’s nothing here,” Isaac called from the screen at the front. “Just like with the Bear.”
I shook my head. “It has to be here.”
“Maybe there’s a basement,” he called. “Like a boiler room sort of situation.”
“That,” I muttered, “or they’re meeting in the bathrooms.”
“Up there,” Nihal said. He hadn’t said a word since we’d come in, drinking the place in with weary scanning eyes. Now he stood halfway down the aisle, pointing up at the back of the theater. The projection window glinted in the center of the wall, a black aperture cut into the paneling.
I exhaled. “Nihal, you’re perfect.” I scanned the walls for a way up, found nothing, and pushed back into the foyer. A peeling door stood ajar beside the ticket booth. “Out here,” I called to the guys, and shouldered into the darkness behind the door.
I held out my phone, revealing the shadowy helix of a spiral staircase. The mold and damp smelled twice as strong in here, pressing the taste of earth into my mouth. The Minuets’ snowy shoes had left the steps squeaky. I jogged up. The staircase came out inside the projector room, whose ceiling leaned closely over my head.
The guys came up behind me. “Watch the ceiling,” I said to Isaac as he reached the top of the steps.
“Thanks.” He craned his head sideways to keep from bumping it. “Jesus. This room is for elves.”
Nihal ran a hand along the wall, found a light switch, and flicked it, revealing a long, narrow room. Shelves had come loose from the wooden pegs propping them up; they hung diagonally, handprints disturbing the thick coats of dust they wore. Snatches of drab pale blue glimmered between the concert posters and CD covers the Minuets had plastered over the walls—their own, of course. Except for one Sharps concert poster, which had been mercilessly defaced.
The lone projector hunched in the center of the room, its metal body scabbed with decay, the empty slots for film reels blooming in circles above and below. At the end of a thick cylinder, its lens peered up against the projection window’s glass, like a sniper rifle’s barrel eyeing a faraway target.
In the corner sat a familiar chest.
“Shit yeah.” Isaac held out his hands to Nihal and me. We slapped them.
Noise shuffled up from downstairs. “Hello?” said a rich baritone voice. Trav had caught up.
“I’ll tell him we found it,” Nihal said, winding his way back down the steps. His gray windbreaker rustled away into the dark.
Isaac and I moved to the corner and cracked open the chest, sorting through the materials. Mic carriers had come unzipped and unbuckled. Isaac grimaced. “Trav’s going to have to check that everything’s still in here,” he said, glancing over my shoulder at the staircase.
“Yeah, I’ll grab him.” I dodged the projector, spiraled down the steps, and stopped.
Nihal’s voice was echoing past the door, low and urgent. “—said you were done with this stuff, you promised you’d stop!”
“Nihal, I said I’m sorry,” said the other voice. It wasn’t Trav.
Lurking in the darkness, I craned my neck to see through the cracked door: Connor Caskey stood in the foyer, dark-cheeked and glassy-eyed from the wind, knit hat pulled low over his arched eyebrows. Everything was bluish in the night.
Had he brought the other Minuets back? Decided to give us away?
No. He was alone, breathless tension on his face, as if he were about to jump out of an airplane.
“Okay, but are you sorry?” Nihal said. “Because you’ve said that before, but actual guilt makes people act differently, and as far as I can see, you haven’t gone out of your way to do anything you said you’d do.”
“Like what?”
“Like acting like a decent human being! What you drew on Mama’s door wasn’t funny. It’s not funny. Connor, you beat up my best friend!”
I leaned back from the door. It should have felt wonderful to hear that—best friend. But guilt soured the glow, seeping around the edges.
“Come on.” Connor’s voice was low and embarrassed. “Don’t be like that. It was just—”
“Answer the question. Did you take the key or not?”
“I . . . look, I didn’t want to hurt you or anything. I didn’t think you would . . .”
“Didn’t think I would what?” Nihal said. “Care? You didn’t think I would care that you swung by my room for the first time just to steal something from me? Or was it that you didn’t think I’d hold you accountable?”
Silence.
The manic edge to Nihal’s voice dulled. “Because I suppose, you know, I haven’t really done that. I’ve given you a dozen second chances.” He sighed. “I don’t understand. I’ve done everything you asked. I’ve kept myself in the closet, even though I’ve wanted to be out for months now, and all I want is—I just want to know you give a shit, don’t you get it? That’s all I’ve wanted, this whole time.”
Silence.
Nihal let out one of his little laughs. It sounded like an injury. “I mean, what,” he said, “are you so ashamed of me, you can’t even admit you care in secret?”
The hurt in his voice gutted me. Numb, I turned to head back up the stairs. This wasn’t for me. I shouldn’t have listened to any of it.
“No, come on,” Connor murmured. “Of course that’s not it. Hey.”
“Don’t touch me,” Nihal said. And then they were out of earshot.
When I got back to the projection room, Isaac was holding the Golden Bear.