Jon Cox shoved him. “I’m not in l—it’s not like a—it—”
“I have to put up with the pining 24/7,” Mama groused.
“I don’t pine!”
“As you can see,” Nihal said, “he can’t even really look at her without his brain turning into a sea cucumber.”
“Nature documentary,” I muttered to Nihal, and he elbowed me.
Jon Cox buried his face in his hands. His glasses slipped up, getting tangled in his swishy hair.
I couldn’t help a grin. Jon Cox losing his shit was kind of cute. I’d wondered why he didn’t have a girlfriend, if his pickup attempts were as frequent as Mama said. Hot guys didn’t stay single long at Kensington, since the girls here were on the whole so much better-looking than the boys, it was almost embarrassing.
By senior year, attractive single boys turned into famously single boys. The way people talked about, for instance, our seniors, you’d think it was a personal insult that they had no apparent interest in dating. I couldn’t blame them for not wanting to get wrapped up in Kensington’s ridiculous dating culture, though. This place bred long, intense relationships with lots of poetic love declarations and romantic serenades. Valentine’s Day at Kensington could induce nausea in even the sappiest people.
Obviously, Trav was already in a relationship with his arranging software. As for Isaac, whoever he eventually landed with, I’d be warning them to keep some sort of industrial-grade muzzle on hand.
The sun had set. With Mama and Isaac still teasing Jon Cox mercilessly, we rotated our hay bales to face the bonfire, which roared up into the purpling sky. I scanned the faces in the bonfire crowd. They flashed yellow-orange in the changing light. A few Theater sophomores sat half a dozen hay bales to the left. To our right, the Minuets hooted with laughter, cluttering up the air.
All of a sudden, the other Sharps fell quiet one by one, their eyes fixing behind me. I glanced up.
Trav stood by our hay bale, looking out of place in neatly pressed slacks.
We were all too still. I could feel the line of attention drawn from Trav to Isaac like a spiderweb, but Isaac was busy examining his tightly laced black sneakers. The noise of people milling around persisted, cupping our silence inside, as clear as spring water.
Trav cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to waste our rehearsal time, but I wanted to talk about yesterday.”
Isaac glanced up, looking wary.
Trav smoothed down his linen jacket. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. It—”
“Hey, Atwood,” jeered one of the Minuets. We looked over. The guy jabbed a finger toward the bonfire. “Check it out.”
I squinted in the direction of his finger to the corner of the bonfire nearest us, where somebody stood dangerously close to the pyre, cast into a tall silhouette by the light. His dark hair caught the firelight.
“Connor,” Nihal murmured, his voice filled with suspicion.
Nearby, the shortest, stockiest, and beardiest of the Minuets stood in front of a teacher guarding the bonfire. The Minuet wore a huge, kiss-ass smile, talking up a storm.
Foreboding settled over me like a cold blanket. As we watched, Connor Caskey unzipped his backpack and pulled out something I couldn’t make out in the brightness of the bonfire. He darted close to the fire, stashed it among the flames, and darted back again before any of the teachers noticed.
The group of Minuets were all wide smiles.
By the fire, Connor reached into his bag again, shuffling out another object.
“Is that . . .” Nihal murmured as it caught the light. This time, I recognized it. A manila folder bursting with stapled papers.
No.
My stomach clenched. I shot to my feet. “The archives,” I choked out. “That’s our music!”
Isaac was already moving. He vaulted a bale of hay and bolted toward the fire, but too late. The second folder landed in the fire and roared into life.
My heartbeat felt hollow, a small mallet knocking against a large, deep drum. I watched with detachment as Nihal darted after Isaac and seized his wrist, pulling him back from the fire. A few people nearby stared, but mostly, in the mix of voices and motion, the whole thing went unnoticed. Just a few guys acting out.
The decoy Minuet left the teacher, who turned to see Caskey a safe distance from the bonfire, strolling backward. For one second, Caskey flashed us an arrogant grin. There it was again: I win. Isaac’s face gleamed in the light as he snarled something at Caskey, and with the rest of the Sharps’ faces a mix of disbelief and fury, unfamiliar rage built in my chest, too, white-hot and righteous.
Fists curling, I looked around. Trav had vanished.
I caught sight of him disguised by the fluttering light. Past the tables, behind the crowds, his black backpack bobbed into the darkness, away from the lot and down the road.
When I opened the door to the Nest, I found Trav sitting on the sofa, his shoulders high and rigid, hands clasped hard in his lap. One thumb rubbed a pink scar on the back of his hand over and over, tight tiny circles. His backpack lay on the ground, half-open, a corner of the black scheduling journal jutting out.
“Hey,” I said.
No answer.
“Look, Trav,” I said, “if I can help rewrite anything, just say the word.”
Trav seemed dazed. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before, sizing me up, slicing me apart and fitting me back together in ways I didn’t recognize. “That’s for me to deal with,” he said quietly.
“You can’t do it all yourself. That’s got to be years’ worth of work.”
“It has to be done correctly. So I’m going to do it.” The words seemed to give him resolve. He stood, picked up his backpack, and headed for the piano.
I didn’t argue. It wasn’t smart.
During practice, nobody said a word to Trav. Everyone could sense it—he was brittle. Right on the brink. At nine o’clock, he vanished like a whisper.
The rest of us settled around the room. “So. Plan,” Jon Cox said. “What do we do?”
“We ruin them, obviously,” Isaac said.
Everyone looked toward the piano bench where he sat. For once, he wasn’t joking.
“Not to rain on that particular parade,” Nihal said, “but personally, I think we should focus on getting back what they burned. We can transcribe a lot of these arrangements from recordings. I’m not a great arranger, but we can figure it out. Work in shifts.”
Isaac pulled his hair loose and started working his fingers through the tangles. Methodical. Steady. “Yeah, don’t get me wrong. That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.” He pointed out the window at the hulking shadow of Arlington. “And let’s also stamp those assholes into the dirt.”
“Isaac,” Nihal said, sounding uneasy.