Erik himself could no longer stand within a few feet of me without blushing. I wanted to tell him he wasn’t my type, but something told me he would’ve gotten weirdly offended.
And Isaac—I wouldn’t have thought he was the type to act differently around gay guys, but he’d changed too. Vaguely, I remembered something he’d said after the dance—some promise to fix things between him and Trav, to patch everything over. The exact opposite had happened. Isaac stopped coming to the Nest early and stopped staying late. His guitar disappeared from its usual corner. During rehearsals, unless Trav was teaching him his part, he messed around with his phone, an air of avoidance hanging over him. I expected Trav to shatter that phone with his bare hands, but surprisingly, he didn’t seem to think it was an egregious interruption, since it was silent.
I wanted to ask Isaac if he planned to figure out their issues before we had to live in a house with each other in the middle of the mountains, but we were barely talking anymore. He looked at me with something withdrawn, something that looked horribly like Connor Caskey–brand dismissal. I didn’t want to admit how much the cold shoulder hurt. While we’d plotted to steal the Bear, we’d gotten to be actual friends, or so I’d thought from the joking texts fired in each other’s direction every other minute.
I let him push away. Instead, I spent more and more time with Nihal, who’d convinced me to start crossing campus to eat dinner with him in Marden Cathedral. I listened to the dinnertime announcements from Dr. Caskey instead of Reese and took the nightly moment of silence in a space where it felt holy. The girl I was last year was a campus away.
The musical went up a week before Thanksgiving Break. I watched it in the back row on Saturday night, feeling only a bit wistful. Anabel’s eleven o’clock number got a thundering round of applause that lasted a straight minute.
The next day, Winter Storm Saul rolled in, cracked his cloudy knuckles, and got to work. Temperatures nose-dived toward zero. The slush froze into sheets of three-inch-thick ice, and it snowed again—this time for thirty-six hours nonstop. Fifteen inches total. Kensington cancelled classes on Monday, to the shock and confusion of pretty much everyone. I peeked out of my room and saw a couple people walking around the Burgess halls, directionless, like dogs whose owners had dropped their leashes. We’d never had classes cancelled, not once in the three years I’d been here.
The second they sent the e-mail announcing the class cancellation, Trav texted the group: We’re still having rehearsal.
I had to laugh.
“I should’ve gone to Rochester to do door-to-door,” Marcus moaned, traipsing up the stairs ahead of me. “There are some counties where people just don’t have rides—low turn-out areas are always the counties where Republicans win—”
“Rides?” I said, exchanging a look with Nihal. I tried not to laugh. “Marcus, have you even taken Driver’s Ed?”
“I mean. No.” He stopped at the door to the Nest and looked back at us, twitching his head so his too-long bangs flicked out of his eyes. “Guys, come on. I’m a concerned citizen.”
I lifted my hands. Nihal choked out, “Well. I will cosign whatever strongly worded letter you want to send.”
Marcus went red and shouldered into the Nest. We bustled in after him, stamping snow onto the mat Trav had set in front of the door. Warmth washed over me, courtesy of the space heater plugged in by the couch. Erik was playing some quiet tune on the piano, and bluish shadows of snow were piled on the other side of the windows, and the campus looked dark and hushed and miles away.
“—guess we could bring a sled,” Jon Cox was saying to Mama.
“Bring a sled where?” Marcus said, hopping into his windowsill.
“The retreat,” Erik said, still doodling around with his chord progression, sparing Marcus a did-you-really-have-to-ask? glance over his shoulder.
I couldn’t decide if I was terrified or excited by the retreat. We’d be at Jon Cox’s place Saturday morning through Monday afternoon, arriving back at Kensington that night. The break in routine made me want to plan everything down to the second, but I couldn’t. I had no plan for living with these guys. What did boys do at what was essentially a glorified sleepover? Could I find this on Google?
It could work, though. This might actually be simpler—no switching between Jordan and Julian. The only thing I’d have to worry about was showering, but I could just stay up until all the others had gone to sleep. Who needed rest, anyway?
“How’re we getting there?” I asked, shrugging my coat onto the back of my armchair. It rustled, snow showering off the sleeves.
Nihal perched on a sofa arm. “Jon Cox and Isaac drive a car each.”
Speaking of which . . . I glanced around. Isaac was really cutting it close tonight. In about thirty seconds, he’d be late.
“Dibs on not driving with him, please,” Mama said. “Never again.”
Jon Cox grinned over at him. “You’re just salty ’cause you don’t have your license.”
Mama snorted. “I wouldn’t call what Isaac does ‘driving.’ He brakes like he’s trying to stamp a cockroach to death. It’s the least safe thing since the frickin’ Hindenburg.”
“Ah, Mom, always safety first,” Jon Cox said. “Make sure to bring the baby seats for Marcus and Erik.”
“Shut up,” Marcus and Erik said at the same time.
I grinned, slumping into my armchair. “Why don’t y’all just get Trav to drive?”
“He doesn’t drive,” Mama said. “He—”
The door creaked open. Trav hurried in, shrugging off his black peacoat. He lifted his folder. “Last arrangement’s done.”
A ragged cheer rose. Trav headed to the piano, we hopped to our feet, and the stack of music made its way to me. I grabbed a packet, passed the others, and smoothed my thumb over the title. This song, all bare piano and wistful theme, had been unavoidable a couple years ago. The song of my freshman fall. I’d been listening to it after my first mainstage audition, the first time Michael had walked up to me. “Halloween,” by Girl on a Ledge.
“We’ll start with the pre-chorus. Turn—” Trav cut himself off, glancing around. “Where’s Isaac?”
We all traded looks. “I don’t know,” Mama said. “Did you see him downstairs?”
Trav twitched his head, a quick shake. He pulled his phone from his jeans pocket. “He hasn’t texted.” Disapproval made his voice rigid. “Someone call him. Now.”
Jon Cox tugged out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it to his ear. He waited, staring up at the ceiling. The lights wrapped around the rafters reflected in the lenses of his glasses. After a second, he lowered his phone. “Didn’t pick up.”
Trav’s nostrils flared. He looked back down at his music. “Page four,” he said. “Tenors in unison . . .”