“Sofía,” I say. “How did I get here?”
“The key to a fugue is not in the way things are the same,” she says, “but in how they become different.”
“Why do you have a cello?” I ask. Panic is rising in my voice. Something’s not right. “When did you become an expert on fugues?”
“This is a fugue,” Sofía says, her voice soft. “A repetition of a short melody. In a good fugue, there are layers. You play one melody, and that melody is not only repeated, but developed. It evolves. It changes. It’s the same melody, but different.”
“You just said that.” My hands are clammy.
“The key to a fugue is not in the way things are the same,” she says, “but in how they become different.”
“Sofía?”
She continues to play, her whole body bent over the cello, her eyes closed. “This is a fugue. A repetition of a short melody. In a good fugue, there are layers. You play one melody, and that melody is not only repeated, but developed. It evolves. It changes. It’s the same, Bo, but different.”
I back away slowly, my hand reaching for her door.
“The key to a fugue is not in the way things are the same,” she says, “but in how they become different.”
“Sofía, please, please, say something else.” My voice betrays my fear. “Anything.”
The music stops.
Sofía looks up at me, her neck twisting uncannily.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says in a growl. She stands abruptly, and the cello drops to the floor. The strings make weak, broken sounds, muffled by the pink rug.
“Sofía?”
She grips the bow like it’s a sword. “This is a fugue,” she says in a horrible monotone. Her eyes are dead and empty as she advances toward me. My back’s pressed against the wall.
She pulls her arm out, her soulless eyes locked on mine, and drives the cello bow into my chest.
Everything goes black.
I don’t mean I passed out. I mean, one moment I’m there, with a cello bow sticking out of my chest, the wood splintering but still powerful enough to pierce my skin, and the next moment I am floating in nothing. There’s no more cello bow.
There’s no more Sofía either.
There’s no more world.
There’s only . . . nothing.
“Hello?” I say into the void.
Silence.
For a long time, I exist in the nothing. And then light starts to glow around the edges. I start to feel pressure on my back; I’m lying down. My room comes into focus, and I sit up in bed.
On the nightstand beside me, my clock ticks.
CHAPTER 53
When Dr. Franklin comes to my room the next day, I keep my guard up. I pretend everything is fine. Dr. Franklin talks about banal things, like paranoia and trust, and I nod along. Soon enough, I’m allowed out of my room and back with my unit.
“Where have you been, spaz?” Ryan asks me quietly as I make my way to the library. I’ve been given permission to skip all my classes and do silent study, as long as I have private sessions with the Doc.
I don’t answer, so Ryan follows me down the hallway.
“You’re going to get in trouble for skipping class,” I say.
He shrugs. “I bet they won’t care. This place is all going to shit anyway.”
“The Doctor will care.”
“If he’s even the Doctor for much longer.”
I stop short in front of the library, my hand on the door. “What do you mean?”
“I overheard the officials talking to the Doc the day before spring break. They completed their investigation. They’re contesting the, uh . . . the accreditation of the school. I didn’t know what that meant, but I looked it up, and it’s bad.”
“So what does it mean?” I ask in a low voice.
“My dad said the school would lose funding, and there’s no way it’ll stay open if that happens.” Ryan looks back at Dr. Franklin’s closed office door. “Dude, it was brutal. Those officials tore Dr. Franklin a new one. They said the school wasn’t safe and Sofía was proof of that—and so were you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, they brought you up. I told you not to be such a freak in front of them. They said Dr. Franklin let you get away with too much and that he wasn’t ‘providing you with all the resources you need.’ They mentioned Harold too. That he should be put in a home or something.”
Poor Harold. He’ll be locked away in a padded cell if Berkshire shuts down.
The sound of hammering fills my ears, and rattling shakes my bones. I look down, and the floor is gone. I am balancing on wooden beams, high above the unfinished construction of the academy, as carpenters and electricians and plumbers work to create the building.
I blink, and the floor is back, the hardwood nicked with age and dust gathering along the baseboards.
“I’m going to be pissed if the school closes,” Ryan continues, oblivious to time cracking up around him. “I think I know what I need to do, but . . .”
What will my parents do with me?