They wrote it in permanent marker, Jon Cox texted. I’m taking it down. Mama’s pretty upset about it. He’s skipping his last orchestra practice.
I stared at the horrible drawing. This must have hit hard. Nothing else all year had managed to tear Mama away from Handel, the love of his life.
Furious heat itched up my back. Of every shitty thing so far—the music-burning, the car-keying—this was the shittiest. What had Mama ever done to Connor Caskey?
Yes, fine, Connor’s dad was an asshole, but past a point, that stopped mattering. A reason wasn’t an excuse. Same genus, different species.
I pulled my coat on and flung my window open, outrage spurring me faster. The snow hampered my rushing steps. It took longer than I would’ve liked to reach the music academic building, a heather-gray block adjacent to Arlington Hall. Teachers bulky with coats trickled steadily through the lobby, the stairwell, and the second floor. I rushed down the hall, scanning the plaques on the office doors. Mrs. Chen. Mr. Goossens. Ms. Mburu. The faculty in the School of Music kind of resembled a United Nations conference.
Finally, I knocked on Dr. Graves’s door, praying he hadn’t left yet.
“Come in,” he called, sounding impatient.
I entered. Wintry sun through an arched window limned the office with white light. A bookcase by the door held titles like A Brief Introduction to Modal Counterpoint, and Religiosity in the Life of Bach, and Early Music and the Evolution of Stable Harmonies. Dr. Graves himself stood behind an oaken desk, hunched over his keyboard, square glasses perched on the prominent bridge of his nose.
He straightened up. “Julian. Hello.” His computer sang a tune, shutting down. “I’m on my way out. I’ll be at the competition tomorrow; may we talk then?”
“This won’t take long.”
He checked his watch with a humorless laugh. “Can you make it under five minutes?”
“Sure,” I said, drawing myself up. “The Minuets are trying to sabotage us.” It sounded so petty out in the air like this.
His expression darkened. “How so?”
“It’s been a bunch of stuff. Vandalism, and they burned a bunch of our music, and today they left graffiti on someone’s dorm.”
“What sort of graffiti?”
I shifted. “Well, it . . . here.” As Dr. Graves buttoned up his coat, I pulled out my phone, searching for the photo. Gray leather briefcase gripped in his grayish, leathery hand, he ushered me out the door. Backing up a bit in the hall, I held the screen out to face him.
Graves locked his office, tucked his keys away, and peered at my phone through his glasses. A shadow passed across his expression.
After examining the picture for a second more, he drew back and pinned me with a look I’d never seen on a grown-up’s face before. Some withering mixture of disdain and dismissal. “Mr. Zhang, if you can prove who exactly did this, let me know.” His gray eyes flashed. “In the meantime, may I give some advice for you and the boys?”
“Yeah?”
“Man up.”
And he set off down the hall, leaving me doused in disbelief.
Man up. I would have found the rebuke funny for the double entendre if it hadn’t sliced in like a paper cut and kept stinging. What, I wasn’t allowed to stand up for my friend? Mama wasn’t allowed to be upset if someone took a sucker punch at his weight? There was something deeply screwed up about that attitude. There is no world where “you’re wrong” is an acceptable answer to “this hurts.”
Man up. What a cleverly disguised way to say shut up. Shut up, or fight back, or you deserved what you got.
Everything was growing clearer. So this was why the guys had such an issue backing down—why Mama fought for the last word in every argument, why Erik wanted revenge for every prank, why Isaac said sorry like it was brine on his tongue. I finally understood it. No, I felt it. Rage was mounting inside me; not at Graves, somehow, but at Connor fucking Caskey for setting me up for humiliation in front of a teacher. There was nowhere else to put the anger except back where it came from.
I stormed away from the music quad. Soon, I realized my feet were carrying me toward Wingate. Around to the side door. Up four flights of steps, which I powered up mechanically, relishing the burn in my thighs.
When I stopped at room 420 and knocked on Isaac’s door, Harry yanked it open.
“What now?” he snapped. Harry was obviously suffering a postfinals hangover. His hair stuck out from his scalp at an impressively vertical angle; Band-Aids wrapped his fingertips. He’d probably resorted to playing his cello with his toes.
“Where’s Isaac?” I said. I needed him to talk me down. I needed his endless tangents and distractions.
“Oh my God.” Harry shoved his glasses up violently, as if they’d done him an unforgivable wrong. “Some guy literally just came by to grab his guitar for his EP thing, so probably Arlington or Prince? I don’t friggin’ know.”
Harry made to shut the door, but I frowned, slamming a palm onto the wood. Isaac had told me he’d finished recording all his guitar parts over break. And . . . some guy? Who would Isaac ever trust to touch his guitar?
“What guy?” I said.
“I don’t know. Dark hair. Weirdly tall.”
My fists clenched. I felt a strange excitement. The sun of anger in me lashed out a flare. “When did he leave?”
“I mean, you knocked about ten seconds after I shut the door, so—”
I spun away, scanning the hall. He couldn’t have come up this stairwell. I would’ve passed him.
I stalked down the hall, hunting. Halfway down, I broke into a sprint. Half-open doors flew by, issuing snatches of soothing study playlists, hints of violin and flute. The sheets of paper pinned to the walls rustled and flailed as I rushed by.
Up ahead, the elevator dinged.
I flung myself around the corner to the elevator bay and through the closing doors, smacking into Connor Caskey.
“Shit,” he said. We fell apart, I thumbed my glasses back into place, and he caught himself against the back wall of the elevator. His right hand was fastened about the neck of Isaac’s guitar, that smooth rosewood. Strips of cloudy mother-of-pearl in the fret-board glittered behind his fingers. He gripped so hard that white bays pooled around his fingernails.
Caskey straightened up. We stood at an impasse as I fought for breath. The elevator doors drew shut behind us, but the car didn’t budge. I glanced at the panel—I’d knocked him away before he’d pressed a floor.
I had him cornered. Finally. “Give me the guitar,” I panted, “or else.”
“Or else?” Caskey said, and took a tube of acrylic paint out of his jeans. He flicked the cap open, held Isaac’s guitar out, and lifted the tube. “How about you move, or else.”
The fury that had simmered all afternoon reached boiling point. Something snapped, blanking my mind out like a flood of white paint.