His eyes lit on the chest, and he sighed. “Thank God. Let’s get this to Arlington.”
As he made for the chest, he passed the Golden Bear, and his steps faltered. He stopped by the projector, his eyes fixing on the statue.
“I found it under the—” Isaac started.
Trav’s eyes narrowed. Then, in one sharp motion, he smacked the Bear into the air.
It caught the light as it spun for a split second, resin base over distended golden jaws. Then it crashed to the floor, shattering into a thousand glass splinters. And the most wonderful look spread across Trav’s face, a look I’d never seen before—a broad, dizzying, don’t-give-a-damn sort of smile.
“My mistake,” he said. He crossed to the corner, hoisted the chest, and carried it toward the steps. “Let’s go.”
For once, both Isaac and I were wordless. We followed, stunned, as he sauntered down the stairs.
Connor had disappeared by the time we entered the foyer. Trav split off from us to carry the chest back to Arlington. We offered to help, but Trav seemed determined to martyr himself. “Go home, save voice, and sleep,” he ordered, already marching off with the chest, so we trudged through the snowy plains back toward the south of campus.
Our footsteps crunched. Nihal had been quiet since we’d left. I wanted to ask if he was okay, but there was no way to split up from Isaac to do it. The blank look on his face worried me.
Ahead, the theater quad peeked out of the night, dark silhouettes gilded with lamplight. I tried to steer us right, toward the street.
“Can we swing through Palmer?” Nihal said. He sounded shaky. On the verge of a breakdown. “I need to . . . um, to use the bathroom.”
Isaac shot me a questioning look. I gave my head a shake as we veered toward Palmer.
We pushed inside as the bell tower boomed a solemn 11:00 p.m. Palmer’s side door opened onto a hall lined with dressing rooms that snaked beneath the mainstage theater. Framed posters of student shows crowded the cinderblock walls, signed by their casts, dating back to the forties. The posters made this hall popular with visiting parents, all obsessed with picking out famous people’s signatures from when they’d been our age.
Nihal sped forward, head ducked, and disappeared into the guys’ bathroom. Isaac flitted from poster to poster, studying the ones with celebrities. I was restless. The sooner we got out of here, the better.
My eyes fixed on one of the girls’ dressing rooms, an individual one reserved for a lead. It still had Anabel’s name on the door. I could practically see her in front of the wide mirror, beneath the wide white bulbs, penning thick eyeliner in above her eyelashes. I’d always wanted one of those rooms to myself.
“You okay?”
I startled, looking over at Isaac. He leaned against the wall beside me, fiddling with the zipper on his coat.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning next to him. Against him.
“Long semester,” he said absentmindedly.
I glanced over at him. He looked distant. “I bet,” I said. “College apps and all. You’re done, right?”
He sighed. “Yeah, thank God.”
“Where’d you apply?”
“Um.” Isaac rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re going to laugh.”
“Will I?”
He glanced over at me. “I applied to sixteen schools.”
“What?” That seemed like a terrible way to spend five hundred dollars or so.
“I know.” He tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t even know why. My parents didn’t ask me to, I just—Trav was applying to fifteen, and my friends from home were doing a dozen each. So.” He rubbed his forehead. “Waste of money. I just wish I knew what was happening already. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even care if I get into half these places.” He thought for a second. “Okay, no, I care. But I care less about getting in than just knowing, you know? That there’s something after this that I’ll be happy with.”
“You think you’ll miss it?” I said. “Kensington, I mean?”
Isaac laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Just, of course I will. I had no idea who I was before I got here.”
The door to the boys’ bathroom swung open down the hall, and Nihal drifted through. His silence from before had turned to sluggishness. He stopped just outside the door.
“Ready to go?” Isaac called, but Nihal didn’t move.
“Nihal, come on,” I said.
Still nothing. Then his eyes fixed on mine, and he said in a small voice, “Julian, can I talk to you?” It barely carried down the hall.
Trading a look with Isaac, I saw my worry reflected in his eyes. I turned back to Nihal. “Yeah.” I jogged down the hall to him. “What’s up?” I said as I broke from my jog, ready to console him, all but ready to tell him to cry into my shoulder if he wanted. Nihal pushed back into the bathroom. I followed him in.
As the door shut behind us, Nihal swung the first stall open.
My body went cold. A poster for the monologue showcase hung on the back of the door. I remembered Ash Crawford saying, “The best place to hang up posters . . .”
Nihal’s brown eyes brushed me up and down, and I felt an inch tall. His scrutiny turned me into a jester in my false face and bulky clothes—an actor who’d walked out into the world wearing some inappropriate costume.
“So,” he said, tapping the photograph. “That’s you. You’re a girl?”
There was no use denying it.
I slid my glasses off and nodded.
A long moment passed. Nihal looked back at the poster, then down at the water beaded on the rubber ridges of his Bean boots. He tugged at the edge of his turban. Deep red, today.
He was waiting for me to fix it. Waiting for my apology. Back in the Prince tower, the same air of unhappy disappointment had hung over him.
What could I say? “Sorry” seemed so minuscule.
My time ran out. Nihal spoke. “I feel like an absolute idiot right now,” he said, as frankly and disinterestedly as he would’ve said any other sentence.
I blinked fast, baffled. Everyone had bought it, not just him. He had to know that, right?
“I’m just thinking,” he went on, “about the night I told you all that about me and Connor.” His lips moved a bit farther than necessary to form each word, and otherwise every other muscle of his face was perfectly still. This was anger. This was what it looked like on him. My heart dropped.
“I was standing there,” he said, “and I was thinking, Thank God, someone who gets it. I felt lucky, you know? Grateful. I’d been so nervous about telling everyone, to the point where I literally felt ill, and suddenly, oh, divine providence! Here’s someone who can get why, and who can understand what it feels like. All of it. That’s what I was thinking.” His mouth tugged down at both corners, and I realized all at once that he was on the verge of tears.