I prayed for Mom to find another job. I convinced myself it wasn’t useless, although prayer hadn’t done an awful lot for us in the last couple years.
If anything could distract me, it was the looming promise of the Sharps’ first performance. For the back half of the week, we spent rehearsals learning the school songs for the Spirit Rally. We all hated them, these boring four-part arrangements that Trav taught us by ear. The main one went:
O Kensington, we sing to thee; our voice doth fill thy halls!
When far away are we, the winter clamors at thy walls!
O Kensington, we sing to thee, ’twixt stands of oak and maple;
When far are we, we’ll still serve thee, as long as we are able!
Really just vomit-worthy stuff.
A secret sense of purpose powered me through. Isaac and I had stayed late the night of the bonfire talking over possibilities. We’d decided to wait. Wait for Trav to settle, wait for the group to feel unified again—wait for the Minuets’ guard to be down. And then we’d steal the Golden Bear.
The Golden Bear was the Minuets’ pride and joy, featuring in all their concert posters, CD covers, and e-mailed advertisements. A glass statue of a bear on its hind legs, covered in actual gold leaf, it had been passed down since the Minuets’ founding year, 1985. The Bear had lived in their common space ever since.
The problem: Nobody knew where the Minuets’ common space was. According to Isaac, they rehearsed in one of the Arlington recital halls, but that wasn’t their space. They had to have something like the Nest, a home base, but they’d kept the location on lockdown.
Isaac and I were going to figure it out. And then they were going to pay.
“There you are,” Trav hissed as I rounded the corner. “Where were you?”
“Sorry, I left my clothes at home,” I lied. “Had to run back.” I messed with my tie, trying not to breathe in. In a list of Kensington stenches, this gym out-stenched them all. The trash closet smelled foul, sure, but this place was like rubbing your nose into the armpit of somebody who’d just done back-to-back marathons in eighty-degree heat.
I looked down at my tie. Last night, Trav had pulled out eight carnelian-red skinny ties from the chest in the Crow’s Nest. The eight of us made perfect duplicates: sport jackets single-buttoned, khakis pressed, rigid dress shoes squeaking, red ties neat at our throats. Except for my tie, which had somehow turned itself backward again. Or sideways? God, why were these things so impossible?
“Jesus,” said Erik, eyeing my neck.
“What, freshman?”
“Do you not know how to tie a tie, or what?”
I scowled. “I—have not needed to know, no.”
He looked at me with the scathing condescension of a twelve-year-old watching his grandmother try to operate Twitter. “Like, ever?”
“Oh my God.”
“Here,” Isaac said, stepping in. Exasperated, I let my hands drop. Isaac met my eyes. I gave him a warning look, and his eyes danced, but he didn’t say whatever smartass comment he was clearly dying to make.
Isaac straightened the knot and stepped back. “There.”
“Are we done with the sartorial conference?” Trav said through gritted teeth.
“The what conference?” Marcus said.
“Oh, never mind. Just—come on, Julian.” Trav grabbed my elbow and yanked me into my place in line, at the bottom of the concrete steps. The announcer—it sounded like Mr. Hall, the theater school’s voice coach—was already in the middle of his opening speech. He’d be calling us up into the gym any second.
I let out a slow breath, my heart still pounding. My seventh-period teacher had ushered our class over from Blythe Tower to the gym. On the way, I’d given the group the slip and sprinted ahead to the girls’ locker room, where I’d stashed my change of clothes this morning. I’d worked fast, but it had still cut too close for my liking.
The idea of being in front of the whole school had my palms sweating up a rainstorm. At least the student body wouldn’t be too close. The Sharps performed on the court, behind one of the basketball hoops. Everyone else stood up in the bleachers, all shifting limbs and folded arms, a bunch of awkward art kids trying to summon school spirit.
“. . . for their sixty-eighth annual performance of the school songs, please welcome the Sharpshooters!” rang Mr. Hall’s voice. We filed up the steps toward the sound of thunderous applause.
The gym echoed, bouncing one and a half thousand yells down at us. As we emerged from the stairwell into a wash of sickly light, I kept my eyes fixed on the back of Marcus’s neck. Three shiny zits, scrubbed into agitation, encroached on his hairline.
We passed Dr. Graves, who clapped each of us on the shoulder, and formed a semicircle around the microphone behind the basketball court’s baseline. The floor squeaked under eight pairs of shiny shoes.
Trav waited for the applause to end. He looked more at ease here, in front of this massive crowd, than he had since that night in the field.
He blew the pitch, counted us in, and we sang.
“O Kensington, we sing to thee, our voice doth fill thy halls . . .”
Trav’s steady hands cut the air as he conducted, metronome-precise. Downbeat. Swipe left, swipe right, like he was ushering away an insect. Upbeat . . .
As we started the second verse, my attention strayed across the gym. Floods of faces stared our way. The five disciplines stood in sections, partitioned off from each other by rows of teachers. The School of Music stood closest to us, familiar faces studded in the ranks: Victoria Taylor peered out of the second row, barely taller than the kids a row down. But Connor Caskey, beside Victoria, wasn’t gracing us with his attention, because—
My voice faltered. Anabel was out of place, standing in the music section, her golden hair glinting in the sharp light. She and Connor were talking, and in one brisk second, he leaned down to kiss her forehead.
I looked back to Trav. He’d heard my part slip. I picked it back up and held his critical eyes for the rest of the song, but my mind tumbled through the possibilities, already conjuring up the sparks of a plan.
When we finished the final piece, applause washed us back down the steps, and Dr. Graves followed. There was a note of superiority to the unchanging displeasure on his face, as if he were proud that he had never experienced happiness. As we collected our things and prepared to head back up, Graves gave us more claps on our shoulders. It seemed like he meant these to be supportive. The man did not have supportive hands. It felt like getting whacked on the deltoid with a granite club.
He gave Isaac’s hand a businesslike shake, then Trav’s. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Sounding pretty good.”
Trav’s mouth formed a thin smile, but his nostrils flared. His brain had probably translated the phrase “pretty good” into “categorically inadequate.”