Beck stumbles to help her, although stacking other people’s plates comes with a mountain of pressure. He doesn’t want to be all thanks-for-the-meal-and-here-let-me-accidentally-drop-and-smash-all-your-crockery. So he goes for the plastic salad bowl and gingerly takes it to the kitchen. August laughs silently.
‘Why are they terrified of me?’ Shane looks alarmed. ‘If you’re referring to the time of Andrea and the python—’
August shudders. ‘Don’t rehash that story. Andrea doesn’t even talk to me any more, by the way. You scarred her for life.’
‘What about Sumi and Ajeet?’
Her nose wrinkles. ‘They’re busy, OK? At least I have friends. Beck over here is a moody hermit.’
‘Please, no,’ Beck whispers.
‘He has exactly one friend,’ August goes on.
‘Who?’ her father says.
She glares.
‘Oh. Oh yes. You.’
‘I’m glad you came to that conclusion so fast.’ She clears his plate while he’s still taking a last bite of garlic bread.
He huffs and feeds the crust to one of the many dogs sniffing under the table. A cat has climbed on to Beck’s vacated chair and mews piteously.
‘I have cashew ice cream for dessert,’ Tammy says. ‘And fresh cherries.’
‘Cherries aren’t in season, darling,’ Shane says.
‘Then un-fresh cherries.’ Tammy looks like she’s considering standing, but not sure if the effort is worth it.
Beck understands. He’s absolutely stuffed. And he hasn’t felt that way in – ever? Cashew ice cream sounds dubious at any rate, so as he gives August a pleading look and she understands.
‘Actually, I’m liable to pop,’ August says. ‘Can we skip? I need to show Beck outside before he goes.’
‘But it’s dark,’ her mother says.
‘That is quite perfect for what I want to show him.’
Shane shares a mock aghast look with his wife and then slams a hand on the table. Three dogs skid out from under it. ‘Now, young lady, there will be no—’
August covers her face. ‘Please don’t say anything embarrassing to me, Dad. I beg you. I’m showing him the stars. The stars in the sky that God has made. If you embarrass my friend to death I swear I will run away from home and live in Paraguay.’
Tammy sighs. ‘Paraguay is such a long way off, Shane, darling. Leave the poor children be. Beck looks a little shell-shocked by us as it is.’ She waves them off. ‘Off you go. Stargaze. Freeze your appendages off.’
August beams like a child with chocolate, and then tugs Beck out the back door.
‘No hanky panky!’ her dad calls.
‘Darling,’ Tammy says, ‘no one says that any more.’
The back door claps shut and the Frey parents are silenced. The night wraps cool, sweet arms around Beck’s throbbing head.
He follows August down a pebble path. ‘Your family is …’
‘Intense. I know. But they only mean to squish you with love and weirdness and puppies. Some people are suited to non-judgemental animal company, don’t you think?’
‘Actually, I was going to say they’re nice.’
She quiets. Beck feels guilty, like he’s playing the woe is me card since the reason he’s here is because his mother is nothing like hers. Gingerly, she slips her hand into his. His heart leaps.
‘Come with me,’ she whispers.
Beck is endlessly glad for the borrowed jacket, although the blush creeping up his neck warms him too. She’s holding his hand again. What’s he supposed to do with this feeling?
Solar lights mark the way down the pebble path, circuiting several old, swooping trees. They pass two kennels and a dog starts howling.
‘That’s Caligula.’ August moves fast to bypass the hysterical animal. ‘He’d probably kill you. He’d probably kill me. Manners aren’t his strong point.’
‘So you save all these animals just … just because?’ All Beck can think of is the Maestro telling him how he’s just a project to August. He’s a number out of a hundred on the list of things she’s ‘saved’. How is he supposed to ignore that, to think he’s more than a pitiful reject in her eyes?
August shrugs. ‘Yes? Sort of? We try to get them adopted out too. We run newspaper ads and give out flyers and convince everyone we meet how much they need a psychotic, not-house-trained, abused, partially blind labradoodle in their lives.’
‘How often does it work?’
‘Relatively well. I’m very convincing.’
That’s true.
The backyard is damp with night tears. Gardens are barricaded with mossy logs and rocks, and staghorns droop from the huge trees. Beck breathes grass clippings and orchids and starlight.
August takes him to a hammock. It’s the flat kind, wide as a mesh bed that at least five people could lie on while gazing up through the trees at the sky. She flops on to it and, even though Beck protests, she grabs the corner of his jacket and tugs him down.
They’re very close. Arm wedged against arm. His hand brushes hers and her hair tickles his ears. He’s terrified of how comfortable this is, of how close and warm and safe he feels.
He’s not a fool. Blink and this is over. He’ll go back to his piano, the Maestro, the agony, because as much as he hates it, it’s all the family he has.
But right now? He has a second of August and stars and magic.
‘Behold,’ August says. ‘The most beautiful sight in existence.’
Their feet trail the grass as they both rock the hammock gently and watch the map of stars above. He’s never paid attention to anything but music before. Semiquavers and chromatic scales, Liszt and Rachmaninoff and Chopin. Music he’s forced to play and music he could compose. They are his language, his focus, his life. He’s never looked at the stars before, never realised they’re freakishly entrancing.
And slowly, one note at a time, the music in his head begins again – soft and scared – but there. It terrifies him, the thought that one day the Maestro might hit him enough for his music to disappear for ever.
He taps a rhythm on his thigh to see if the notes will disappear again.
They stay. Twirling under his skin.
‘I did write something for you.’ It just comes out, and part of Beck feels stupid, the other part brave.
‘Really?’ August nestles her head next to his. ‘Can I hear it?’
‘It’s awful.’
‘I know it’s not.’
‘You’ve never heard me play.’
She snorts, which sort of breaks the electric brilliance of the sky and the stars and the quietness. Beck relaxes into the hammock with a half smile.
‘You think you’re a mystery,’ she says, ‘but I’ve figured out a lot. I’m a sleuth like that.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes. I know you breathe music, but it embarrasses you and maybe you even hate it a little. Which is confusing,’ she adds. ‘I know your home sucks—’ She cuts off his mumbled protest. ‘But despite that, you’re a marshmallow and a fantastic big brother, because Joey is proof of that.’
‘You mean the kid who’s been suspended from preschool?’
‘Joey is incredible.’ August gives the hammock an energised push. ‘I also know what you dream of.’
How much does she think about him?
As much as he thinks about her?
‘Escape,’ she says, like she’s plucked the word from between the rusty piano strings that bind his heart together.
He feels hollow without his secret.
‘But,’ she says, slowly, ‘you’re trapped.’
He wants to tell her about Germany – about staying or going. Not that it’s his choice, it never will be, but no matter which direction the Maestro binds him to, it’ll be the wrong one. Leaving Joey? Leaving August? Unthinkable. Staying? He’s going to snap someday.
‘You like me because I’m pathetic,’ he says suddenly. ‘Like your dogs.’
He wishes he could take it back. Did he just splinter their night with his poisoned self-loathing?
‘You’re not as cute as my dogs,’ she says.
He should’ve known she couldn’t take anything seriously. It stabs him, a little, because he can’t joke all the time. He should go, unravel and collapse somewhere in private.