I wondered what Isaac could be doing. Hopefully he hadn’t slipped on the ice and broken something. It was dangerous out there, especially coming downhill to Prince.
I shouldn’t have worried. He strolled in twenty minutes late. His expression was completely blank, as if there were nothing weird about showing up a third of the way into rehearsal, when nobody had been as much as twenty seconds late the whole year.
We all watched him grab the extra copy from the piano and join the circle.
“Anything you want to say?” Trav said, dead quiet.
Isaac shrugged, stiff and detached. He barely resembled the Isaac from callbacks, so comfortable, who’d looked at everyone as if he felt lucky to have them around. That kid was absent. Some shallow avatar of him had stepped into his clothes.
Trav seemed at a loss. After a long moment, he said, “We already did the first four pages.”
“Got it,” Isaac said, looking down at the music.
A needle of irritation prodded me. Of course he could just sight-read it, but why did that give him a free pass on showing up on time? Trav probably would have flayed the rest of us alive. Glancing around the circle, I saw hints of the same feeling on the guys’ faces. I wasn’t the only one a bit confused, and a bit more annoyed.
Isaac came late the next night, too. He rolled in at 8:15, and this time, Trav didn’t stay quiet about it. “Talk to me after,” Trav said, his voice like gravel.
“Can’t,” Isaac said. “I’ve got a counterpoint project to finish.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care about my grades? That’s funny. I do.” Isaac shrugged off his backpack and set it down by the piano. “So I’m going to go home after rehearsal, although you’re welcome to try to stop me.”
I stared at my shoes, baffled. One of my best friends, Isaac had said about Trav. Who acted like this to a friend?
Unwillingly, I found myself wondering if this was my fault. Had my coming on to him freaked him out this much? Was Isaac secretly a Westboro Baptist–type or something? After all, he barely even looked at me anymore, and when he did aim a furtive glance my way, he looked completely walled off.
The tension didn’t ease during rehearsal. Whenever someone failed to get a part perfect the first time, Isaac shifted in place like he could barely contain his exasperation. As nine o’clock crept up, Marcus fluffed some line on his second try—not an easy line, either; a fast harmony with a surprise natural—and Isaac sighed audibly. Marcus shot a hurt glance his way but, of course, didn’t speak up.
My vision sharpened with anger. I couldn’t hold it back. “Hey, Isaac,” I said, “if you think you can help, how about you go ahead and sing Marcus’s part with him?”
“Julian,” Trav warned.
“I’m serious.” I kept my eyes on Isaac. “I mean, apparently it’s obvious to you when we don’t get everything 100 percent right the first time. So, how about you help out, genius?”
Isaac’s eyes burned into mine. For a second the walls fell away, and I saw a flash of bitterness, of disappointment. I stared mulishly back, my heart pounding.
Finally, he yanked back the sleeve of his coat and twisted his watch to check it, fingers tight on its brown leather band. He hadn’t even taken his scarf off, ready to go at the soonest possible opportunity. “We’re done,” he said.
As the clock tower began to strike, he grabbed his backpack and disappeared.
The next night, he was on time. I felt a pang of embarrassment when he walked in. I shouldn’t have snapped last night. It wasn’t my job—I’d probably just made Marcus anxious.
Isaac settled by the window near my armchair. Silence hung between us like a thick, opaque veil. I drew it back with a clearing of my throat. “Hey, listen.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled, not meeting my eyes.
“. . . yeah, sure, but—”
Trav walked in, and I sighed, standing. When Trav’s searching eyes found Isaac, his expression cleared.
Maybe this was just another blip on the radar. Isaac would explain in a few weeks what was going on. College apps stress, maybe. And then he would get into every school, and we’d think it was hilarious in hindsight.
Maybe.
“We’re in the home stretch,” Trav said. “First thing: Rooks, I need you to go to a meeting Friday afternoon with Dr. Caskey. He’s working through the competition’s program order, and we need to be last. Got it? Second-to-last at an absolute stretch. Nothing else is acceptable. I don’t care if you have to extort somebody to make this happen. His e-mail said 3:45 in Arlington, so be there at 3:30, in case the chronology of your arrival makes a difference.”
We grumbled our agreement.
“Next.” Trav handed the arrangements to his right. “If we finish this tonight, we’ll have tomorrow and Friday night to focus on memorization before even getting to the retreat. That’s ideal, so let’s focus up. Got it?”
Heads bobbed.
“All right. Page sixteen.”
We learned quickly. As the minutes passed, the thick discomfort in the air lessened, turning less oppressive, until I could almost tell myself it felt normal again. We’d finished the arrangement before eight thirty.
We had a set. Jon Cox let out a whoop, and Mama clicked his heels, nearly crashing into Erik as he landed.
“From the top.” Trav joined the circle, closing it. He tugged his pitch pipe from his jeans pocket, lifted it to his lips, and blew a pitch. The arrangement gathered momentum and took off.
About twenty seconds in, Trav suddenly stopped singing the solo. He gestured for us to keep going, but a grimace worked its way onto his face. I heard it too. The background was cluttered instead of smooth, just off-key enough to hit the ear like an accident. Trav leaned forward into the circle to listen, his arched eyebrows practically meeting above his nose. “Whoever’s suspending the second, don’t,” he called halfway through the verse. I had no idea how he heard it, but somebody’s note shifted back into place.
As the song went on, the tonality sank even further. With dissatisfaction fastening into place on Trav’s expression, we were getting nervous, depressing the sound, tending flat.
“Pitch,” he warned. Backs straightened, and the sound lurched about a quarter-tone sharp, buckling into place part by part. By the second chorus, we’d grappled our way on top of the piece. But as we cycled through the chords leading into the bridge, Trav called out, “There’s no flat seven in these chords!” and then, “Stop, stop.”
He looked around the circle. “Who’s doing that? This isn’t fucking jazz, guys.” He glanced at Marcus, and his voice softened a bit. “Is—do you need to go over that part again?”
Marcus looked hurt. “I thought I got it right.”
To my surprise, Erik said begrudgingly, “He did get it right, I’m pretty sure.”
“But the Tenor 2 line . . .” Trav rounded on Isaac. “Is that you doing that? Are you just adding random sevenths?”
Isaac gave him a blank, confused look.