Thirteen
Adina
FIRST CHAIR HAS BEEN GETTING cold. I earned it in sixth grade, and the few who’ve dared challenge me since have lost. First chair is a message: I am the best, it says.
Violas are difficult to hear in an orchestra—difficult for the untrained ear to pick out our distinct sound—but if we were gone, you would absolutely notice. That is why becoming a soloist is so crucial. I need to be heard.
“Welcome back, Adina,” the orchestra conductor, Mrs. Roberti, says as I enter the room. “Feeling better?”
I force a smile, turning my lips into a sideways bass clef. “Much.”
Last night at dinner Aba asked if I was sure I was ready to go back to school. I’d been home for a week and a half, and he and Ima have let me skip Saturday synagogue services too. He said I could take a few more weeks, even a month off. He spoke delicately, like the volume of his words could break me. At least he wasn’t badgering me about college again. It was a terrible thought, that I’ve swapped that horror for one that is much worse.
I glanced at Tovah, who smiled at something on her phone before hastily shoving it into her pocket. When her eyes caught mine, she looked guilty, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been: smiling, texting, generally feeling as though her world had not been turned upside down.
Spending another day at home would have been a hundred times more claustrophobic than the classroom. So here I am. Back.
We begin a Tchaikovsky piece I played a couple years ago with Arjun, but my bow isn’t as fluid as it usually is, and my fingers stumble up and down my viola’s neck. The orchestra devours my sounds as I fall further and further behind. Finally the bell rings, and I stow my sheet music in my case and take out my canvas lunch bag.
“That piece is so cool.”
The voice belongs to Connor Mattingly: tall, reed-thin bassist. He eats lunch in the orchestra room sometimes, laughing too loudly with the other guy who plays double bass—dick inadequacy, I swear—and a girl violinist.
“Cool,” I repeat. These people don’t understand classical music the way I do. Knowing full well I am acting snippy, I continue: “Tchaikovsky composed some of the most popular music in existence, including The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and the 1812 Overture, so yeah, I’d definitely call him cool.”
Connor doesn’t catch my sarcasm. Instead he grins, revealing a row of clear braces. “You know, since we all sit in here at lunch, you should eat with us. If you want to.” His friends are already arranging chairs in a circle.
I shove my avocado and cheese sandwich back into my bag. “I’m not that hungry today.” Without waiting for a reply, I scoop up my viola and leave the room.
The hallway is covered with posters for honor society, debate team, robotics club. Orange and black banners cheer, GO, JAGUARS! When I got to high school, I’d already committed my life to viola, and I imagine my single-mindedness made it difficult to make friends. What was the point of wasting time on something I might not enjoy, like a club or a sport? But what if I’d tried yearbook or soccer, or I’d grown close to the other kids in orchestra, and now I had friends to talk to about this? Now there are only a handful of people I can talk to, and all of them either don’t want to talk or talk far too much. Or they don’t appreciate Tchaikovsky.
I don’t have an off-campus lunch pass, but our security’s so lax I’m able to slip out the back entrance without anyone stopping me. I take the bus so Tovah can drive herself home later. I’ve never skipped school before, but I’m only missing fifth, sixth, and seventh. What do precalculus and physics and US Government matter to me now?
I get off the bus in Capitol Hill. Gray clouds press down on me, threatening rain. I hunch my shoulders and take long strides down Broadway, a street crammed with taquerias and art supply stores and boutiques and a couple sex toy shops. I duck into a coffee shop, order a latte, and take a seat near the window so I can watch the rain. The latte foam makes a leaf pattern. I take a sip, and the leaf is gone.
One day I won’t be able to do this: drink coffee, get rained on, enjoy the classical music playing in the background of the coffee shop, play stupid games on my phone to pass the time.
There are an awful lot of things on the one-day-I-won’t list. Mentally, I tear it into tiny pieces.
When I get back on the bus, I reapply the Siren lipstick I tattooed onto my coffee mug and don’t make eye contact with anyone. As kids, Tovah and I used to make up stories about the people we saw. We learned to ride the bus early, like most city kids, before the training wheels came off our bikes. She’d say, “Look at that guy with the ferret on a leash. He’s totally training him to perform in the circus.” And I’d point across the aisle and whisper, “That girl tapping her three-inch-long fingernails against the pole? She’s growing them out to try to break a Guinness World Record.”
The bus goes up, up, up that familiar hill. I have no idea what to expect at today’s lesson, but Arjun did not cancel, so I guess it’s still happening. It’s pouring when I get off, soaking my hair and eyelashes, dripping down my nose. My coat is in my locker at school, keeping my books warm. I’m still early and I don’t want to buzz up yet, so I lurk out front, lucking out when I catch a woman heading out of the building. I jam my boot in as the door is closing.
“I just moved in, and I’m such a scatterbrain. What’s the code again?” I flash a smile, hoping I sound genuine.
“One-nine-four-five,” she says. “The year the complex was built.”
“Right.” I commit the numbers to memory. “Thank you.”
“Sure,” she says, her grin now matching my fake one. “Welcome to the building. The bottom dryer in the laundry room likes to eat socks.”
I hear the music before I reach his floor. It’s a viola sonata by Shostakovich, a twentieth-century Russian composer who finished this piece weeks before his death.
The music roots me in place, but on the inside I am in motion. Strings soar and fall, winding circles around my heart, tugging it this way and that. Behind his door, Arjun’s slicing and sawing and plucking. The piece is so beautiful, I ache right along with it. It is hopeful, then hopeless, then flitting between the two as though it cannot make up its mind. I’ve never heard it played with this much melancholy before, and it makes me wonder if Shostakovich knew he was going to die. He was waiting for it to happen, and this was his way of expressing it.
When the song is over, I chance a few steps forward and ring the bell. Footsteps pad along the hardwood floor, and then Arjun throws the door open.
“Adina? We’re not scheduled for another half hour.” His hair is a little out of place, as though he’s been exercising instead of playing Shostakovich. It is a burgundy sweater day.
“School got out early,” I say. “No. That’s a lie. I left early. I cut class.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. Or anyone else to talk to. Maybe we could . . . talk.” It’s only when I say it that I realize this is what I have been aching for: to talk to someone who isn’t a doctor, who has no connection to my family, who is entirely on my side. Someone who cares for me and only me so much he cannot be objective about this miserable mess.
His statue face softens, dark eyes widening with an emotion I can’t place. Sympathy? “Come inside.”
If it is sympathy, I decide I don’t mind. I prop my viola against the wall and lead him into his living room, not the studio. It is sparsely decorated, a geometric-patterned rug, simple shelves, no television. I sit down on the couch and unzip my boots so I don’t track any mud onto the rug.
He takes a seat in an armchair on the other side of the room. It doesn’t match the couch, but I like the incongruity. “Can’t you talk to your family?”
“They all look at me differently now. It hasn’t been that long, but it feels like everything’s changed.” I heave a sigh. “You’re the only one I feel like I can talk to.”
He straightens his posture, as though he is taking pride in my compliment. I didn’t mean to flatter him, but I’m glad for his reaction regardless. “Really?” he says.
“You don’t act like I’m fragile.”
“You’re not someone who should ever be considered fragile, I don’t think.”
I pick at my tights, tugging on one long thread. “I haven’t been able to play since I got the results. Not really. But I heard you playing just now, and I don’t know, something happened to me. I’ve heard you play before, but this time . . . I didn’t know the song could have so much sadness in it. I felt sad listening to it. That’s exactly what music should do, right? That’s what you teach us to do, play with enough emotion to make other people feel something? I know that whatever happens to me, I can’t let myself get lazy. I can’t stop playing.”
“Thank you,” he says, genuine. “I’ve never met anyone who feels music the way you do. I’ve always thought that one day I’ll have nothing left to teach you.”
“It’s true. I’m sure I’ll be better than you one day,” I joke. “Maybe I should find another teacher to keep your ego intact.”
This jolts him. “You haven’t wanted to find another instructor, have you? Because of . . .” He can’t finish the sentence.
“No. I only want you.”
The words linger in the space between us. Perhaps I intended the double meaning, but I truly didn’t come here to try to seduce him. I thought I’d tell him about my insomnia or the article Tovah found about Huntington’s symptoms in teens. He gets up from the chair and sits on the couch next to me. I say nothing. The past few weeks, he has tried to put space between us, but now he is getting close to me on purpose.
The couch groans softly beneath his weight, and my skin sparks with electricity at his nearness. Many measures pass before he speaks again.
“I should be honest with you. I’ve been attracted to you for a while,” he says. “You’re so talented, and you’re beautiful, and you’re intelligent. And you’re, well, I feel like I understand you, and you understand me. Sometimes I feel like a stranger in this country, and I think you do too.”
All I can do is nod.
“But you are my student. I wasn’t supposed to have those feelings for you. I needed some time to think, I guess. I didn’t know that everything I was feeling wasn’t . . . wrong.”
Hearing him confess that feels like passing my hand through a flame without getting burned. This is proof my body is still powerful. It flips a switch, turns me from fawn to minx again.
“You can have all the feelings for me that you want. I won’t tell anyone. We can keep it inside your apartment, and no one will ever know.”
“Adina . . .”
I lick my lips, aware he is watching me. “I want you,” I repeat, intentional this time. “You want me. Life is short. Why should we deny ourselves something that could feel really amazing?” I reach out a finger and stroke it across his wrist. “This isn’t wrong, is it?”
There is a new energy between us. An inevitability. “No,” he says. “It’s not wrong.”
“And this?” I place my palms on his chest, inch them toward his shoulders. His eyes flutter shut, but again, he doesn’t stop me.
“This, I like,” he says. He puts a hand on top of mine. We are only touching in innocent places, yet my heart finds a racehorse rhythm. His thumb strokes my knuckles, and I feel my cold skin start to heat up.
I lean in close, my lips a whisper from his. “This?”
His eyes flick open for an instant. “Yes,” he says, and I trap the word between our lips.
Our first kiss tastes a hundred times better than my fantasies. There is no hesitation or uncertainty, only force and greed. He kisses the way he plays viola: hard and fast, leaving both of us breathless. I grip his collar. His hands are in my hair, clutching me close, and though my hair is damp and tangled from my walk in the rain, under his touch, it must be the softest thing in the world.
Suddenly I pull back.
“Adina, what is it?” His voice is hoarse, as though kissing me has drained all his energy and he has little left to speak. “Is everything okay?”
“You’re not doing this because I’m sick,” I say, my own voice quaking over the words. I want to be irresistible, not pitiable. “Or that I’m going to be sick . . . I don’t know. I can’t get the tenses right.”
“I promise you, I’m not,” he says, his fingers still winding through my waves. He takes a breath. “When you asked several weeks ago if I imagined us . . . together . . . the answer is yes.”
I can’t formulate a response, so I use my body instead of words. I climb onto his lap so I can kiss him with my whole body pressed against his, so I can feel between my legs exactly how badly he wants me. We kiss like that for a long time, long enough for me to memorize his every texture. His jawline, rough with the sketch of a beard. His mouth, slick and hot against my neck. His teeth, sharp as they tease my skin.
Desperate to feel even more of him, I peel off his sweater and unbutton his shirt. My hands explore the hair on his chest, something I find undeniably sexy about older guys. He runs his hands up my legs beneath my dress, fingers getting caught on the runs in my tights.
A buzzer rings, making us spring apart.
“Shit,” he says, breathing hard. He coaxes a shirt button into the wrong hole, tries again. “Shit, shit, shit. That’s my next student.”
My lips pull into a smile. “I’ve never heard you swear before.” His speech is usually so formal. I’m breathing hard too. I had no idea so much time had passed. A laugh bubbles up my throat as I realize I have painted his mouth with Siren red. I help him thumb it off.
“It’s only because I’m genuinely frustrated that we have to put this on pause.” On pause. Meaning we can hit play at some point. His brows furrow, and he continues: “What you said earlier, though, about keeping what happens between us inside this apartment? It has to stay that way, Adi. I can’t risk any of my students—or their parents—finding out about this.”
“I know,” I say quickly as I slide off his lap, trying to ignore the flash of irritation that runs through me. My age has made me a secret before. A part of me hoped it would be different with Arjun, but I understand why it can’t be.
I straighten my clothes and run my fingers through my hair. It doesn’t matter where I have him because he is finally mine. Kissing him has delicious side effects: my face warm, my lips fried, my insides melted.
“I’ll be back next week,” I say as I zip my boots. “Or maybe next week is too far away?”
He pushes my hair away and kisses the back of my neck. Now that the way we both feel is obvious, touching is effortless. “Come over tomorrow.”
“I have work.” I can’t afford to miss a shift. “After? I can be here around eight.” I’ll lie to my parents if I have to.
“Eight,” he confirms, the word hot on my skin.
No more procrastinating. When I get home, I round up the requirements for the conservatories on my list. What happened at Arjun’s reinvigorated me, plucked me from days and days of gloom. But furthermore, if I somehow miss these deadlines, I will never forgive myself. Regardless of what else is going on in my life, I have been working toward conservatory for too long to give up on it. Tonight I will not think about Huntington’s. I will think only in quarter notes and rests, alto clefs and codas.
I free my viola and open the video recording program on my laptop, giving the camera a half smile before I launch into my pre-audition pieces. Any time I am dissatisfied with the sound, I start over.
I’m in the middle of a flawless rendition when someone knocks on my door. “Adina? It’s dinnertime.”
“Aba!” I shout, frustration jumping my voice an octave. I punch the stop button. “I was recording. For my applications.”
I can practically hear him recoil. “Sorry. I’ll keep some warm for whenever you’re ready.”
Two hours later, I am finally pleased with my videos. My fingers are sore and my hands are cramping, but I shovel fettuccine into my mouth while I type out my essays. Which musician, living or dead, would you like to collaborate with, and what might you produce together? How will you benefit from an education at our school? What is your most memorable experience with music?
I climb into bed only after I’ve turned in every application, Debussy echoing in my ears.