That Saturday afternoon, I’m lying on my bed studying a book from my Twentieth-Century Europe class, a highlighter jutting dutifully from between my fingers. The material is dryer than desert sand though, and despite having drunk two cups of coffee, my eyelids keep trying to slam shut. But then my phone catches my eye—I’ve got a text.

What would you say if I said I wanted to see you in a non-street-performing environment?

Garrett. I set my book aside.

I reply: I’d say I was surprised.

Why surprised?

You didn’t even say hello the other day.

You were working.

That didn’t stop you the first time.

You seemed annoyed the first time.

I stare at my phone for several minutes, unsure how to respond.

“What’s going on over there?” Daphne is at her laptop watching me contemplate my phone. I must be screwing up my forehead.

“I…”

“Is it that guy?” she asks. “The one who gave you the water?”

I nod. I told her the other day about Garrett, how he’d taken an interest in my playing. I did not tell her I was dying to stick my finger in his dimple.

“You gonna go play him a private concert?” She waggles her eyebrows at me.

Rolling my eyes at Daphne, I text back: Well I hope you found my performance adequate.

More than.

I smile to myself and send: Good.

Take a walk with me.

Do I have to bring my cello?

Only if you want to.

I don’t.

A few minutes pass.

Are you in the first year dorms?

Yes.

Meet me outside in fifteen.

I don’t like what my heart is doing, how it’s fluttering in my chest like a caged bird. I should keep studying. Or practice. Or…maybe I just don’t want to give Garrett the opportunity to salute me again.

I text: OK. then set my book and highlighters on my desk.

Daphne’s chewing on the end of her pen. “Tell me.”

“I’m meeting him downstairs. We’re going for a walk.”

“Sweet.”

I brush my hair quickly and secure it in a high ponytail. “Oh…should I try to be…pretty? Should I put on makeup or something?” In the mirror over my dresser I look ghostly pale, a feature highlighted by my black hair and the dark, sick-looking circles beneath my eyes. I can’t tell if I look fragile or dangerous.

“Go how you are. If he doesn’t like it, fuck him.”

“You’re wearing makeup right now.”

“I have terrible self-esteem.”

I dig a tube of lip gloss from the top drawer of my dresser and smear it on, smacking my lips at myself in the mirror. “Oh, for god’s sake, what am I doing? Why do I even care?” It’s not as if a splash of pink will make me beautiful anyway. I grab my key card and a few bucks and shove them in the back pocket of my shorts.

Daphne grins over her laptop. “You’re allowed to want to look pretty, Mal.”

I arrive downstairs first, too early—too quick, too ready. I look eager. I’m about to go back inside when I see Garrett a block away, on the other side of the main road adjacent to the school. The party Daphne and I attended last weekend was down that way, in the neighborhoods where the upperclassmen and grad students live. I wonder if Garrett goes to those kinds of parties. Keggers. He seems too…ironed for such lowbrow debauchery.

He looks serious but relaxed, hands in his pockets as he glances both ways before stepping off the curb to cross the street. He hasn’t seen me yet. I step forward, falter, step back. For a fleeting moment I think I’ll turn around and go back inside, but then he catches sight of me and smiles, and I wipe my sweaty palms on the hem of my shorts and head down the steps to greet him. I can’t remember ever feeling so jittery over a guy.

Up close, he is even more tall-drink-of-water than I remembered. “It’s probably not smart to go wandering off by myself with a stranger, huh?” Idiot. Can’t you just say ‘hello’?

“I’m not a stranger,” he says, his dimple deepening with his smile. “I’m a fan.”

“My only one.”

“I doubt that.”

I shrug like I’m not flattered at all.

“Want to walk?” He tilts his chin toward campus.

The sun is setting now, tinting the air yellow and making the buildings glow. We set off in the direction of the music school, walking beneath the lush canopy of the oak trees lining the main drag that cuts through the center of campus.

“So, are you a student too?” I say, looking sideways at him. “Senior?”

“First year grad.”

“Oh.” He’s a little older than I thought. “What’s your major?”

“Law.”

So he’s probably smart, and definitely ambitious. “What…um, area do you plan to practice in? I mean, what type of law?” I’m not sure I’m phrasing things right.

“Real estate.” His face is impassive, and god, his answers are short. Are my questions lame? Up ahead, a girl approaches on a bike, and Garrett and I step aside to let her pass. “I suppose you’re majoring in music?” he asks.

“And economics.”

“Double major, huh?” He nods like he’s impressed. “Why choose something so different from music?”

There’s a Styrofoam cup rolling around on the sidewalk. I pick it up and chuck it in the trash. Now that he’s asked, I realize I’m not actually sure why I chose such divergent majors. I know that if I continue with music I’ll likely end up an orchestral musician and freelancer, working odd hours and making barely enough money to scrape by. But I’d be artistically fulfilled. If I fail at music and go the economics route, I’ll end up stuffed in a suit for ten to twelve hours a day in an office reeking of paper and printer ink, dissatisfied but financially secure. “I think…I guess maybe because if music doesn’t work out, it’d be easier to do something that’s the opposite of music. Kind of in protest, I guess.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. “Maybe it’d hurt to do anything that felt too close.”

My skin is hot and I wish I could suck the words back into my mouth, but Garrett’s nodding thoughtfully like everything I said makes complete sense. The music building looms ahead, five stories of hundred-year-old red brick. I look up to the fifth floor windows and see silhouettes: two violinists, an oboist, a horn player. From one of the open windows pours the beginning strains of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.

Garrett looks up too. “So you’re double majoring because you’re not confident you’ll make it in music? You don’t think you’re good enough?”

“Oh, well…I mean, I’m a decent cellist, I guess.” I remember Liza’s response from a couple of weeks ago when I asked her if I was good, the Um, fucking DUH, and then the Dad’s fault. I peel my eyes from the window-musicians and glance over at Garrett. He’s still looking up at the fifth floor. “But being good…it’s not always enough.”

“Enough for…?” His voice is neutral, lacking the prickle of overt nosiness. It’s an easy voice to respond to.

“Success,” I say.

“Define success.”

Our faces are a couple of feet apart, but I can smell his breath: wintergreen. “Getting the fuck out of the shithole I grew up in.” Too far. He doesn’t want to hear that. My thumbs work the nailbeds of my fingers, pushing them back one by one.

He nods, though his eyes remain on the practicing silhouettes.

I look up, too. The violinist is running the cadenza to the Mendelssohn now, and I don’t know if it’s the intense chords or the topic of conversation that’s causing my heartrate to increase.

After a few moments, Garrett turns to me and says, “Did you know your name means ‘unlucky’?”

I blink, surprised. My dad used to love to remind me of it, loved to cringe away from me like he was nervous a piano would drop out of the sky and he would end up getting squashed along with me. “How did you know that?” I ask.

“I studied Latin. The root, mal, means ‘bad.’ I looked it up to be sure, because I was curious.”

“You’re a curious kind of guy, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea.” He’s smirking now, and his dimple appears. “So, does the name fit?”

A little shiver crawls up my spine. I feel like he knows, like he can peek through my pupils and into my brain and see the grainy, crackling film of my life: the obsidian window from the old happy house; a pair of inelegant bodies—one hulking, one cowering—scuffling, fighting, knocking things over; two little girls slithering backwards on their bellies under a bed; the plaintive whine of a lone cello ribboning through every scene. I feel like Garrett can see it, hear it, feel it, all of it, every sad, ugly detail.

Unlucky. Maybe the name does fit.

“I’m only eighteen,” I tell him. Who can say at eighteen whether or not they’re lucky? “Ask me again when I’m eighty…if I’m lucky enough to make it that far.”

He gives me a sly smile, then leans in so close that the clean smell of wintergreen makes me self-conscious about my own breath. I try not to exhale. “I want to know everything about you,” he says. “Will you tell me? Everything?”

“You’re intense, man.” I snicker, trying to stay lighthearted, but he’s just set off a cargo ship’s worth of fireworks inside of me. Everything?

“We’ll see.” I’ve already told him way more than I tell anyone else, but everything might be too much. We start walking again—each of us taking that first step without prompting—circling the music building and moving toward the amphitheater on the other side. Garrett links his hands behind his back as he walks, a mannerism that imbues him with both self-confidence and humility. He reminds me of Daddy Warbucks from the old movie-musical Annie.

“I’m not trying to push,” he says, “but you’re very interesting. I feel like I have to know you.”

I roll my eyes, still attempting to keep things light. “You’re laying it on pretty thick, there, Superman.”

“Superman?” He laughs, his whole face crinkling around the gorgeous, baritone sound.

I grimace, my cheeks heating again. “I…seem to say weird shit when you’re around.”

“But Superman?”

“Please, like no one ever told you you look like Superman.”

“Well,” he says, “you look like Lois Lane.”

“Shut up.” That dimple of his is out in full force. My face gets even hotter.

“But back to getting to know you.” We’ve arrived at the amphitheater now. Garrett sits on one of the cement risers. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. Where are you from?”

“Sarasota, on the west coast.” I kick a pinecone off the riser and sit a few inches from him. “How about you?”

“New York.”

“City?”

“Just outside of it. White Plains. It’s a small town compared to New York City.” He’s got his elbows on his knees, and the sinking sun is casting a reddish glow on his skin. He is so much more at ease than I am.

“So why did you come here?” I ask. “I would think someone like you would go to school in the city.” I’d wanted to audition for Manhattan School of Music but couldn’t afford the application fee much less the trip to perform the audition.

“Someone like me?”

I shift in my spot. “You give off…like, a city vibe.” Worldly, or something, but I don’t say that aloud.

“I’m just here for the palm trees,” he says, gesturing around us at the sabal palms dotted among the old Florida oaks and pines.

“You didn’t really.”

“The law program here might have had something to do with it as well.” He winks and inches a little closer. He smells so fresh and minty and…confident. Does confidence give off an aroma? “So,” he says, “earlier you said you wanted to get out of the shithole you grew up in. What made it a shithole?”

Jesus, his breath is so goddamn delightful. “My parents. I mean, my dad. He was an asshole.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

I laugh, but it’s a strangled, out-of-place laugh—self-conscious, uncomfortable. I’m telling him too much. I need to stop talking. “It’s not a big deal. Everyone has issues with their parents, right?”

“That’s true,” he says, nodding and pursing his lips. “No one has a perfect relationship with their parents.”

“And you? What’s your story?”

He stares down at the amphitheater stage long enough that I almost apologize for prying, but then he says, “My father was out of the picture since before I can remember. I’m very close with my mother, but she’s sick.”

I frown. “What kind of sick?”

“Lupus. In bed a lot, and they keep giving her prednisone. It makes her all puffy.”

“That sounds terrible.” Now I feel silly for thinking my own problems were even worth mentioning. At least I had a father. At least my mother had been more or less healthy, before…

“My mother is a fighter. Very strong.”

“Sounds like you care a lot about her.”

“She’s my mother, of course I do. Are you on good terms with your mom? You said your dad was an asshole, but…”

I chew the inside of my cheek for a second. There’s a lump in my throat. “She’s…not alive.”

“I’m sorry.” He studies my face.

“It’s been two years. I’m okay. Getting there, anyway.” I smile to reassure him, but I hate this stupid pity dance that happens every time I tell someone my mother’s dead. I focus on the pile of dry leaves at my feet, gritting my teeth until the lump in my throat recedes.

He reaches up and touches the side of my face with his index knuckle, and my heart does a stupid flip-flop in my chest. “I was right,” he says.

“Uh…about?”

“Something in your eyes. You’ve got so much soul. Your eyes are like a well where, if I accidentally fell in, I would never stop falling.” It is an obnoxiously poetic thing to say, but the tone of his voice makes it work somehow, or maybe it’s his confidence again—like he believes that whatever he says will be acceptable, even welcome. Like he has no fear of rejection.

His finger is still brushing my cheek, sending little currents of electricity buzzing under the surface of my skin. How can he just reach out and touch me like that? How can he be so sure I won’t push him away? He’s right, though. I don’t want him to stop touching me. I don’t want to push him away.

But I have to, because if I look into his eyes, if I let him look into mine, if I let him do that cheesy falling-down-the-well thing and he says more weird, poetic things to me, I know what will happen: I’ll crash into bed with him and never get out again. I’ll stick my tongue in his dimple and it will snap shut like a Venus fly trap. I’ll give up on studying and practicing and getting away from my stupid shitty life, and that beautiful cello will never be mine. Garrett is not some random dude you fuck in a coatroom and forget. I could lose myself in this man. I am already losing myself. Jesus.

I stand up fast, almost falling when a pile of leaves shifts beneath my feet. “I can’t do this,” I blurt out, breathing too hard, putting my fingers to my temples as if coming to my senses has been a major exertion. And it has been.

He looks up at me from the cement step. “Pardon?”

“This. I don’t have time for…relationships.”

He smiles, but through pursed lips, like he’s biting back a laugh. “We just met, Malory. I think you’re incredibly interesting, but that doesn’t mean I want a relationship with you.”

I blush for what seems like the hundredth time tonight. I should have some kind of snappy, irreverent comeback, but I don’t.

He stands up and sinks his hands into his pockets, leans in close like he’s about to tell me a secret, his mouth too near my ear: “Maybe I just want to fuck you.”

I suck in a breath, stunned. “I—you—”

He laughs, touches my elbow with his fingertips. “I’m teasing, Malory. I really do like you. But I don’t want to interfere with your studies, with your music. And the other thing I mentioned…well, that’s entirely up to you, isn’t it?”

I release the breath I just sucked in, every square inch of my skin hosting its own little bonfire. I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round, spinning too fast and about to puke. Why would I start yammering about relationships out of the blue? And where the fuck are all my snarky responses? “I just—I mean, I came here on a mission. Maybe I’m a little too focused. Maybe I’m a little…culture shocked.”

But I’m not culture shocked because of school. It’s Garrett. He feels like a foreign land. He speaks a language I don’t know, follows a set of rules I can’t see. I’m a stranger here.

He tips his chin in the direction of my dorm. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“I said something stupid, right?” Jesus Christ, I need to stop talking immediately.

“Not at all. I was just thinking you probably have studying or practicing to do.”

We walk back in silence, him relaxed in his hands-in-pockets way and me stiff and quaking under the crushing weight of my own stupidity.

It’s fully dark now. The glow of the streetlights shines through the branches of the old oaks towering over the campus walkways, scattering leafy patterns across the sidewalks. The crickets have begun to sing, and their chorus seems extra loud, magnified by our silence. My shoulders are hunched up, still tensed in mortification. I don’t have time for relationships. God, I’m an idiot.

It takes me three tries to swipe my key card so I can open the door to the dorm. “Thanks for the walk,” I tell him, the words coming out crackly and breathy like I can’t decide if I want to whisper or speak.

“Yep. I’ll see you around.” His voice is perfectly clear. With his hands still in his pockets, he bounds down the steps and across the lawn like he can hardly wait to get away from me.

---

I play again for Yarvik on Monday, the Popper etudes and the Elgar, and the way she drills me, with no pauses to take a breath, makes me feel like a machine—but in a good way. She’s training me to perform on demand, without thinking about my body, without even thinking of the notes. My hands just move, and music comes out.

Bethany and I have agreed to meet every morning at eight o’clock to practice. Starting Tuesday, we set up in practice rooms opposite each other, breaking every half hour to stretch our fingers and backs, only leaving the practice room hallway to attend class and grab lunch. She performs scale after scale for me, and though she shakes and reddens at first, she gradually gains confidence. She actually has a lovely, pure tone when she’s not vibrating with anxiety.

“Now do a few push-ups,” I tell her, “to get your heart rate up like it would be if you were nervous. And then play it again.” She struggles through the push-ups, and I regret suggesting it because she’s on the heavy side and I don’t want her to think I’m surreptitiously trying to get her to exercise. But then she’s up and back on the cello and I’m hulking over her trying to be intimidating while she concentrates on releasing her muscles and letting the music flow.

“You’re just as good as Yarvik,” she tells me when we’re packing up, and I say, “No, I’m trying to mimic her.”

On Thursday I lose track of time practicing and arrive at my Twentieth-Century Europe class late. Professor Hart is writing something on the white board but turns to glare at me as I hurry for my seat. Creepy Elevator Guy is slouched in the front row and doesn’t look up. I’ve missed a few points but manage to figure them out from what is written on the board, and during the break I stay in my seat and study my notes, pages and pages of them. I’ve never taken so many notes in a class before.

I perform my first Popper etude in studio class on Thursday, and Bethany, more and more my friend, rolls her eyes at me with faux envy. She does a scale, shaking a little less, playing mostly in tune, and gives me a high five as she passes on her way back to her seat.

Garrett doesn’t call, but that’s okay. Music Theory, Orchestra, Ear Training, Geology, Statistics, Macroeconomics…my days rush by in a blur as if I’m in a spaceship going at light speed. By Friday, everyone in the music school recognizes the last two rooms in the practice room hallway as Bethany’s and mine. We even use the rooms for studying, which we weave in between long practice sessions and short bursts of ear training exercises with the in-room pianos.

No one practices as much as Bethany and I do, but a few other undergrad musicians take up similar residence in the hallway, and inevitably we find ourselves spread out on the floor between the rooms, with music, books, and Styrofoam coffee cups littered about. Two weeks into college and I’ve never felt more at home in my life. The only thing missing is Liza.

Friday evening, I’m taking a break from practicing, flipping through some notes for my geology class, when I get a text from her: Is it fun? Is it way better than here?

I can sense the sadness in her typed words, and just like that my heart is a hunk of chalk in my chest, crumbling apart.

I text back: People are complaining the beds are uncomfortable. It makes me laugh.

She replies: I just finished Great Expectations. You’re Pip.

I am? How so?

With your cello benefactor and your scholarships and your promise of a better life.

But I have no Estella, I text. Who am I trying to prove myself to?

Yourself, of course. You’ve always been your own Estella.