His words echoed around the movie house for a long second. Finally, he shook his head and left. The door banged shut behind him.
Isaac stood stock still, potential energy coiled up in every inch of his body. After a long second, he dropped the binder and kicked the crate back into place over it. “Fucking Christ.”
He stormed up the aisle.
For a second I stood alone, looking around the empty theater. I stood tall and unbending, a hollowness in my chest, unsure what I was feeling, unsure what I was even thinking. Everything seemed to swim. Was this what boyhood was supposed to feel like? A power struggle, a punch to the stomach? It was foreign and inaccessible. It was something I could feel in my blood. It was only just beginning to grow clear.
I’d set down the burdens of being a girl, unstrapped them one by one and left them on the roadside, but my shoulders didn’t feel any lighter. They were carrying different, unfamiliar weights now. As I stood there in that derelict husk of a theater, I felt like I’d gotten lost in between my lives, and the road ahead looked long and strange and poorly lit.
During Friday’s rehearsal, I couldn’t meet Isaac’s eyes, or Trav’s. Staring down at my sheet music, I got the overwhelming sense of their mirror-image disappointment in me, Isaac’s for not backing him up, and Trav’s for my betrayal. I was the bad seed, now, the disobedient kid, and it stunned me how much I cared. I kept remembering the ringing silence after Trav had pleaded for us to just work with him, and the heady scent of Isaac’s cologne in the dark.
Nihal hadn’t texted me all day. Good. I had nothing to talk about with him.
If the other guys noticed something was off, they covered it up valiantly. Marcus, at the very least, was even more excitable than usual. “Guys,” he exclaimed after rehearsal, “I can’t wait to perform for people. It’s going to be great. Right?”
“Yeah, Daylight’s always a good time,” Mama said.
“It’ll be weird not watching it this year,” I murmured, perching on one arm of the sofa. The Measures and the Sharps performed at the start of the night, a ploy to get people to show up on time. Daylight Dance, like every other Kensington dance, was awkward by nature. Too many teachers standing around the periphery of Marden Cathedral’s cleared dining hall. Too many kids from class getting weird on the dance floor.
My plan: perform, then make a break for it. This wasn’t like the Spirit Rally, where everyone up on the bleachers had seen barely anything of me except a blur of black hair and hipster glasses. The makeshift stage they set up for the DJ at the Daylight Dance was close and personal, and I had a short solo part in our second song, “After All.”
Still. The idea of leaving early left a sour taste in my mouth. I loved that dance.
Jon Cox made a grumbling sound, and Marcus wilted a bit. “You don’t think it’s going to be good?”
Mama rolled his eyes. “He’s just bitter he didn’t have the balls to ask Victoria to go with him.”
“I have a date,” Erik declared from the piano bench, changing the subject with all the subtlety of a rhinoceros crashing into an even larger rhinoceros.
“Who’re you taking, rook?” Mama said, sounding half amused and half proud.
“This girl in Carnelian. Her name’s Camilla; she plays string bass.”
Jon Cox gave his sleaziest grin. “Good with her hands, huh?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Jon,” Mama chided. “Please, have some decorum. Erik’s, like, four years old.”
Erik’s cheeks went red. “Shut up. She’s cool.” He busied himself with his phone.
“Hey, Julian. Can we talk?” Nihal said from the door to the Nest.
He looked cautious. It irritated me more than it should have. No, I wanted to snap, but I managed to muster up an “Okay.”
I followed him into the dimness of the stairwell. We headed to the bottom of the steps and halted by the door that led back into the library.
Nihal sat on the windowsill. “So,” he said.
“Yeah,” I grunted, sticking my hands in my pockets. I scanned his face but couldn’t hold his eyes—he was examining me in that careful, knowing way of his, a look that exposed as much as it questioned.
He chose his words carefully. “You know, this is probably exactly what the Minuets wanted.”
“What did they want?”
“To get us fighting. Nothing sounds worse than a group that hates singing with each other.”
I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath through my nose. He needed to stop being reasonable. The only thing worse than arguing with someone who was clearly wrong was arguing with someone who was clearly right.
Nihal stayed quiet for a minute. Something like guilt niggled at me, and I kicked it away. Why was I feeling guilty? Nihal had been the one to go running to Trav without even talking to us. Weren’t guys supposed to be confrontational, or something?
Examining his downturned face, though, I began to see the other side of the coin. He’d probably felt like he had to rat us out. We’d put the Minuets issue back on the burner two nights before a performance.
Maybe Nihal deserved an apology. Just a bit.
I opened my mouth, searching for words, but trying not to look apologetic. It felt too close to my actual self—like if I apologized, the lines and contours of my real face would glow right through.
Nihal spoke first.
“Sorry for telling Trav,” he said.
I blinked a few times, taken aback. “If you’re sorry, why’d you do it?” I asked. Something bolder than I ever would have said out of disguise.
“I’m sorry to you specifically. Because I know Isaac’s hard to say no to.”
Guilt set in. It was my idea, I wanted to say. I suggested going behind your backs. Not Isaac.
Nihal shrugged, rubbing his scraggly beard. “I don’t regret it, but I’m still sorry. Anyway, I thought I should at least try to clear the air, since . . .” He shifted on the windowsill. “I don’t know. It’s been good getting to know you this year, and I guess I didn’t want hard feelings. But if you don’t . . .” Uncertainty dragged his voice into silence.
Something softened in me and melted. The resentment faded as I studied him, Nihal with his unassuming gentleness, with his quiet but firm desire to do the best thing for as many people as possible.
“No, of course,” I said, my voice thick. “No hard feelings, man.”
“’Cause after all, you know I love you,
And after all, you know I want you,
Baby, after all, you know I need you,
After all this time.”
The last “time” hit an A-flat above middle C, the very top of my belt. I only held it for a second before riffing downward—disguising my voice up there was way more of a task.