Professor Yarvik has the kind of look many would call “handsome”: middle-aged and dignified, with the straightest posture I’ve ever seen. Her spine has probably petrified that way after years of perfectly upright cello playing. I adjust my own posture, stretch a little taller in my seat.

I’ve just finished the first movement of the Elgar Cello Concerto. Yarvik is sitting quietly, contemplating me, her index finger pressed against the edge of her mouth. “Just out of curiosity, Malory, where else did you audition?”

“Central Florida.”

“Nowhere else?”

I shake my head.

“Hmm.” She swivels in her chair and pulls a notebook and pen from the cluttered desk behind her. “I’m just…you know, Malory, I’m really not sure what to do with you.” Her speech still carries a hint of a Russian accent. She taps the pen on the notebook and then jots something down. Silence. The room is dim, with the overhead lights turned off and only a stand-up lamp in the corner for illumination. The large window hints at the bright day outside, but the office faces a shady, treed courtyard, so not much sunlight comes in. I don’t mind the dim; the overhead fluorescents in the rest of the building make me feel like the ceiling is trying to suffocate me.

“What do you mean,” I say, “that you don’t know what to do with me?” Am I so far behind the other cellists that they won’t even let me in the school’s orchestra? I thought I was at least decent.

“We’re a very small school. I’m sure you knew this when you applied.”

“I know you’re selective in the students you admit.” My heart is thudding; I’m in defense mode. I know her extensive experience, the training she’s received, how she’s played all over the world, taught at the best music festivals. How she went to Juilliard back when no other school compared. “I just thought maybe I could prove myself—”

She’s holding up a hand, twisted and gnarled with arthritis.

I pause and consider. “I think…I think I’m not actually sure what you’re trying to tell me.”

She smiles and looks down at her notebook, her back still ramrod straight. “You’re too advanced for me to pair you with any of the other students for chamber music, and I don’t think we have a student pianist skilled enough to play sonatas with you. I will have to talk with the other faculty and see what we can arrange.”

Advanced. Skilled enough. Talk with faculty. So she thinks I’m good. Maybe…too good? Really? My whole body is buzzing with a frenetic energy.

“In the meantime, let’s talk about goals. What are you looking to accomplish this year?”

“I have to win a fellowship to Aspen Music Festival.”

She makes a little huffing sound. “That is a lofty goal for a first year. They only give out ten per year for cello, and hundreds audition. There are other festiv—”

“It has to be Aspen. That’s the deal.”

Her eyes widen.

“Sorry, it’s—to win this cello.” I explain the story of the eccentric old man and the “deserving students.” I tell her how, after two years of playing on this cello, I couldn’t imagine giving it up. I don’t have anything else. “I have to win it. I have to.”

“Good god, child, that’s a lot of pressure.”

“I guess…but it’s a good cello, right? Can you tell?”

She nods. “Oh yes, I can tell. I suppose I thought your parents had purchased it for you.”

I chew the inside of my cheek.

“Well.” She narrows her eyes and considers me for a moment. “It would be awful for you to have to give up this cello.” Her mouth twitches into a smile. “All right then. First off, we need to give you some performance opportunities for your resume so that you have something to go along with your actual playing.” She scribbles in her notebook.

“I play in the street all the time.”

She looks up from her notes.

“You know, for money?”

“Ah. No wonder you’re such a confident performer.”

“I’m not confident.”

She stares at me hard, like she’s trying to puzzle me out. “Fair enough. But we’ll still look for other performance opportunities. And you do have a chance, albeit a slim one, of winning a fellowship.”

“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Good,” she says, rolling her chair over to a filing cabinet full of music. “Put away your Elgar for now—I want you to learn Popper.”

The hardest, most virtuosic etudes for cello. My heart flies out of my chest and right up to heaven.

---

“Twentieth-Century Europe is not a class for the weak.” Professor Hart stands at the front of the lecture hall, his fingertips resting lightly on the wooden desktop in front of him, his head tilted down so he can peer at us from between bushy silver eyebrows and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. Stout, gray-haired, and tweed-jacketed, he is such a stereotype that he ought to be embarrassed.

“Based on past iterations of this class,” he continues, “a number of you will tuck tail and run today. Half will drop before the semester midpoint.” His voice is gruff and craggy, like a wet pumice stone. “And, of those who remain, another half will fail and be unable to remove the F from their transcript.”

The class, a mix of all grade levels, falls into an awkward, seat-creaking silence. I’ve chosen a spot in the dead center of the stadium-style seating and have my notebook and pen at the ready. Professor Hart doesn’t intimidate me. I love a challenge.

“The reason for this tremendous tendency toward failure,” the professor says, bending to grab a heap of books off the floor and plunking them on the desk in front of him, “is these. Your assigned reading, and if you think you can skim World War II for Dummies instead and still eloquently and thoroughly answer the thought-provoking questions I put forth for the final essay, you will find yourself sorely mistaken.” He looks around the room at us students, his expression simultaneously bored and accusatory. “So this is your chance to leave. I won’t hold it against you.”

There is a brief moment of hesitation before, as the professor predicted, several students gather their things and stand to leave, their shoulders hunched in a mix of embarrassment and “fuck this shit.” The springs in the theater-style seats groan in relief as they snap back into folded position.

After the door clicks shut behind the last one, the professor looks around at his new class, now with a little gleam of excitement in his eyes. “I always like to get that mess out of the way first thing.”

Professor Hart begins his lecture with a discussion of early globalization and how it affected the gradual shift toward decolonization. My pen races across my notebook, my hand cramping as I fill one page after another. Hart speaks fast, much faster than my high school teachers, and for the first time in my life, I struggle to keep up.

Midway through the ninety-minute lecture, we’re excused for a break. I stand and stretch, glad for the mental respite. On my way back from the restroom, I almost collide with Creepy Elevator Guy from my dorm—the one who invited me to smoke pot with him in his room.

“Ah, sorry,” he says, and then he looks at me and his eyes brighten. “Oh, it’s you.”

“What are you doing here?” It’s a strange and rude thing to ask, mainly because I don’t mean “What are you doing here in this hallway?” What I mean is “What are you doing in my personal space? In this school? In this world?” It was unnerving, seeing him hanging out with a group of people that day after he’d been so creepy on the elevator. Why, when I had found him so immediately distasteful, did others welcome him? Is something wrong with me, or with them?

“I’m in your class, front row. You didn’t see me?”

I roll my eyes.

“Hey, what’s your problem? What did I do?” Though his words convey indignation, his expression is merely curious.

I sigh. “You really don’t know that it’s creepy to invite random girls to your room?” An image flashes through my mind: getting fucked against the wall in a stranger’s dark bedroom while my roommate wanders the crowd, drunk and alone. I squash it back down.

He holds his hands up, defensive. “Hey, I didn’t mean to creep you out.”

“Well,” I say, “you did. Now, can I get by, please?” He’s blocking the door to the lecture hall.

“You didn’t give up on the class.”

“Obviously.” I throw him a deadpan look.

“Seems hard though, doesn’t it?”

“Not if you’re smart.”

He smiles and raises his eyebrows. “I am.”

“Good for you.” We’ll see about that.

“We should study together.”

“You wish.” Other students are pushing their way past us, seating themselves for the second half of class.

I make a move to get by him too, but he sidesteps me and blocks my way again. “Wanna know why I asked you to come chill?”

I stare at him. Little prickles of anger are stirring the hairs on the back of my neck. The persistence of this guy makes me want to punch him in the nuts. And he’s about to make me late.

“Out of everyone who moved in on Sunday, you were the only one who didn’t have any family with her. Sorry if the ‘come to my room’ thing creeped you out; there was a group of us, I swear. I just thought you might feel a little lonely, like you might need a friend. I’m really not…some ghetto gangbanger or whatever you think I am.” He looks down at his baggy clothes, then back up at me. “I guess I can understand why you might jump to that conclusion, but…”

I shove my way past him then, my eyes now stinging with inexplicable tears.