Mama nodded. “Laura,” he said, with significance.
I glanced around, not liking the looks the others had, as if this was going to turn into an actual discussion. How weird would that be, talking about Michael with the Sharps?
“I’m just surprised we get reception out here,” I said loudly. Everyone got the hint. Even Trav went back to slaughtering monsters with renewed vigor.
It was strange, though. As I cracked open the book I’d brought to read, I felt almost disappointed that not one of them had pushed it. Shanice and Jenna would have been happy to let it drop, but Maria would have been all over me, badgering me to vent out every tiny bit of feeling, making sure I didn’t need tea or chocolate or a ranting session. Talk it out, talk it out, she always said, clapping her hands like a coach. Let’s go. Tell me everything. Businesslike in her empathy.
After a couple minutes, Nihal cleared his throat gently.
I glanced over at his sketchpad. A caricature stared back: a guy-face with greasy-looking bangs, a lopsided nose, and a sleazy leer. Below it, Nihal had written, Julian’s Ex. Arrows pointing to the picture added helpful taglines like Obviously an idiot, Has definitely been miserable since June, and Julian can do way better.
I laughed. Delighted, I reached for the sketchpad, but Nihal was already turning the page, a secret smile hinting at his eyes.
The next morning, we dug into choreographing the other half of our performance set. The first song was “Open Wide.” Trav had reinvented it—his arrangement accelerated from a half-tempo slow jam to a firecracker-fast breakdown section. After five hours straight working on the choreography, we were sweaty, discouraged, and still hadn’t done a complete run of the song with any success.
“Let’s just move on,” Mama said, checking his watch. We switched to our ballad, “The Clockmaker,” a lilting piece by an overemotional indie band called Hyper Venti Latte.
In comparison to “Open Wide,” the choreography for “Clockmaker” was blessedly simple. I kept count of the times we dramatically turned, lifted, or dropped our heads. It came to an even dozen.
We’d finished learning by sunset. My brain felt pumped full of new information, clouds of steps and gestures still hardening into place.
“One last time,” Mama called, “from the beginning.” We gathered into a clump in the center of the room. Mama’s body was big and soft against my back. Erik’s knobby shoulder dug into my bicep.
Trav played the starting note on the pitch pipe, counted us in in a whisper, and we started singing.
Nihal stepped forward, tilting his head upward.
“You know what they say:
I can’t ever get out of my own way.
And I know this, I know all about myself.
I know myself too well.”
In the resonant space of the great room, the humming was as otherworldly as celestial noise. We fanned into a line, facing the fireplace. Nihal’s voice carried crisply in the acoustic, and with my part committed so deeply to memory that it was thoughtless, I could finally focus on his words for the first time:
“So I came down Saturday, beside
the statue of a man who died twice,
when his name went quiet, quiet,
and I met her there, and I met her there . . .”
Motion seeped into the background parts. In my peripherals, as we shifted formation, Jon Cox’s sturdy body swayed, and Marcus’s round shoulders drifted. The sound grew from a soothing chorus of ooh to a brassy, ringing oh, melding with the solo into something bright and strong.
“And I asked the clockmaker
how much it would break her,
her cogs and bells and wooden ledges,
her painted face and gilded edges,
to turn back the dial
to turn back the dial for a while.”
The song built up on itself. The bridge began with a sudden hush, a prickling rest, before circling, gathering momentum. It teetered high on that energy—a violent windstorm of sound—and crashed into the final chorus, which whipped by in a rush.
The last note held, thin and pure. I didn’t want to stop singing. I wanted it to cycle on and on, and when we were done, we’d turn back the dial, and I’d still be here, barefoot on the slick floor of this room, or huddled in the warmth of the Nest as Jon Cox brayed his throaty laugh, or in the back of his convertible on an autumn day as Isaac leaned carelessly out the side and Mama turned up the music. But the last wisp of sound floated up to brush against the high ceiling, and then the moment was gone.
“Well,” said a voice from behind us. “Guess I didn’t even need to be here.”
We turned as one to find Isaac leaning against the archway into the kitchen. At his feet lay a long duffel bag and his guitar case. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, the ends of his dark jeans crusted with snow.
The silence of the end of the piece hung over us. Nobody spoke.
The tip of Isaac’s long nose traced undecided shapes in the air as he looked around. His eyes couldn’t fix anywhere. They scanned the fireplace. Our bare feet. The steep staircase against the other wall. “My—” he said, and stopped. He swallowed, took a second, and tried again. “My dad’s out of the hospital. So I thought I should stop being a dickhead and show up.”
“Your dad’s what?” Mama said.
Nihal and I glanced at the others. Stunned to silence, all of them. The look of comprehension on Trav’s face was painful to see.
Isaac’s eyes wandered again. Discomfort settled into every inch of his face, every line of his body. He bowed under it, narrow shoulders slumped. “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to take my stuff upstairs.”
Jon Cox’s head bobbed.
Isaac slung his duffel over his shoulder and crossed the room, his head ducked. He retreated with his tail between his legs. It occurred to me that as much as the guy hunted the spotlight, he obviously hadn’t figured out how to deal with it.
“Hey! That’s my hotel,” Marcus protested, leaning over the coffee table to grab at Jon Cox’s pastel heaps of money. “C’mon—I—pay up.”
Jon Cox clapped his hand over Marcus’s eyes and flicked the red plastic hotel off the board. “What hotel?” he said innocently. “I don’t see—what are you talking about?”
Marcus pulled away. “I totally called this,” he asked, looking mutinous. “It hasn’t even been a month since the election, and corruption’s already taking over.”
“Oh, boy,” I muttered.
“Here we go,” Jon Cox said, swirling his drink before downing the last of it. “Hey, Marcus, can you give me ten more minutes? I’m not drunk enough for the whole Republicans-are-Satan thing yet.”
“Well, they are,” Marcus grumbled. “Free trade.”
“Get thee to an economics class, thou filthy liberal!” Jon Cox declared in a truly despicable attempt at an English accent. “Wouldst thou like to take this outside and duel for thy honor?” He brandished a finger at the front door.
“Thine honor,” Nihal said absentmindedly, drawing a card from the board.