At the high note, the crowd broke into scattered cheers. Isaac took the solo part back over, and I faded back to my background part. Dum dah det, dum dah det, din din.
I kept my focus on Trav. Some of the crowd was already dancing, but most people just stood there, hardly ten feet away, smiling up at us or yapping with their friends. The knot of people thinned out about twenty feet from the stage’s edge, turning into a scattered sea of disinterested kids in formal wear, eyeing the wintry decorations. Marden Cathedral looked gorgeous tonight, its soaring interior decked in glass snowflakes on thin white threads, pine boughs arranged over stone arches. My freshman year, I’d thought November 5th was ridiculously early to ring in the winter. Then, the day after the dance, the New York sky had dumped several inches of heavy snow onto the ground, and I got the point.
Trav lifted his hand. We crescendoed out on the final note and made a crisp cutoff. Cheering broke out, ringing off the vaulted ceiling. As we filed off the stage, the DJ, some guy in black with a neckbeard, jogged up to take our place.
Nihal and I descended the steps into the crowd side by side.
“Do you think you’ll stay?” he asked, shrugging his blazer off. As he rolled up the sleeves of his blue button-up, I longed to do the same—this place was already heating up beyond belief—but my white shirt’s fabric wasn’t as opaque as I would’ve liked. I was wearing my makeshift nylon binder and an undershirt, but it still felt safer to keep the jacket on.
I shook my head. “This dance is like a four-hour headache,” I lied. Daylight was better than prom and the Valentine’s dance combined, and everyone knew it.
Nihal chortled, but his smile curdled as Connor Caskey approached us, tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair swept back.
“Sharps,” he said.
“Caskey,” Nihal said stiffly. I inclined my head in an unwilling nod.
“You guys sounded great.” He flashed that irritating smile. “For half an a cappella group.”
I gritted my teeth. “You know,” I said, “you’ve got some nerve, saying shit to us after you ruined our music.”
Connor’s smile faltered. A long, awkward second passed. Then he blurted, “I mean, we didn’t expect you guys to just give up.”
I traded a glance with Nihal, who looked blank.
“You what?” I said.
Connor fidgeted, clumsy hands adjusting his tie. “I mean, this is kind of the whole point of a rivalry.”
“. . . No,” Nihal said, utter disbelief dripping from the single syllable. “No, the point of rivalry is not to ruin each other’s lives. It’s an incentive to make everyone better.”
Connor arched an eyebrow, and humor snuck back into his voice. “Jesus. Your version sounds boring, Singh.”
“I used to wonder why all the Minuets call me Singh,” Nihal shot back, “and then I realized, it’s probably because you Neanderthals can’t pronounce Sehrawat.”
“To be fair,” I muttered, “I’ve misspelled your last name like eighty times.”
Nihal gave me a withering look. “It is a mystery that I keep you people around.”
A hand landed on my shoulder. I turned to find Victoria Taylor and one of the other Precautionary Measures, both in black dresses. “Julian, hey!” Victoria said, and went right for the hug. I froze for a second before awkwardly patting her back, praying I didn’t smell too feminine. Hell if I could afford cologne; and I did not have the time, resources, or desire to buy one of those dude body washes that looked like ultrasound gel and came in a dispenser shaped like a torture device.
Victoria’s head fit under my chin. Her wavy hair smelled like peppermint. I glanced around for Jon Cox, but he’d disappeared into the throng.
Victoria pulled back. She looked stunning, put together in the way rich girls could afford, with pearls dangling from her earlobes and draped in a line over her delicate collarbones, set in rose gold. A loose sack dress disguised her curves. I couldn’t look away. In some other lifetime, if she hadn’t left her sitcom for reality, she might have worn this on a red carpet with paparazzi crowding in to ask who she was dating or how she stayed wire-thin. She’d abandoned that lifestyle just before diets and dating became the questions that defined her. A lucky near-miss.
I was looking too hard at her. I looked down instead at the silvery heels that brought her up four inches or so, making her regular-short instead of hobbit-style tiny. Her weight shifted easily from one spindly heel to the other. “You were great,” she said. “You and the other new guy, what’s his name?”
“Marcus?”
“Yeah. Your solos sounded awesome.” She smiled. “Erik told me you’re a junior. You should’ve tried out before this year.”
I looked over at Nihal for backup, but he and Connor Caskey were in the middle of a duel of wits for the ages. “Right, well,” I said. “You know how busy . . . stuff . . . things are.”
Both Victoria and the other Measure looked like they were trying not to laugh. Mentally, I kicked myself. With my best friends excepted, I was awful at talking to girls, especially if they were prettier than me. It felt as if they had some sort of answer key to girlhood—how to walk and how to laugh and how to flirt—and they could tell that I was bullshitting my way through the whole female experience.
Logically, this couldn’t be true, but it still seemed like it sometimes. I would’ve thought it would be easier to be a guy, talking to girls. Apparently not. I felt defensive under their scrutiny.
Music boomed into life over the nearby speakers. Shit.
“You okay?” Victoria said.
“What? Yeah. Why?”
“You just—” She mock flinched.
“Nah, it’s nothing.” Nothing except that, now that the music was playing, the beat was slipping under my skin. I wanted nothing more than to stay and dance. And Victoria—she was all smile and interest and attention, and I couldn’t stop looking at the way her hair fell, collected, shifted, brushed over the curves of her collarbones. Why?
I should’ve escaped the second I got offstage.
“Here,” Victoria said, stepping closer. From the folds of her dress, where a pocket was apparently hiding, she pulled out a flask, keeping it low and hidden from any wandering eyes. “Want some?”
I absolutely did. My nerves were leaping, and the heat was getting unbearable. A bead of sweat itched its way down my spine with torturous slowness. The beat made me want to lose it, break into a dance in front of the speaker.
Victoria raised an eyebrow. She had exclamatory eyebrows, dashes of dark paint, a few shades darker than her hair.
I took the flask, unscrewed the cap, and hunched down to take a swig.
The rim was wider than I’d thought, and a rush of straight bourbon whited everything out for a second, a battering ram of bitterness. I swallowed hard and my ears went hot, the top of my nose burning. Victoria took her flask back, screwed the cap on, and tucked it away. “Feel free to have more, please,” she said. “I’m set for the night, and I have to get rid of that.”