He finally met my eyes. The firestorm of anger and hurt there made me want to hide my face behind my hands.
“And what were you thinking?” he said. “You must’ve been standing there calculating. How do I act like I understand? How can I fool him about this, too? What an inconvenient roadblock.”
I had no words. That was wrong, so wrong. But how could I convince him? What was the strategy here?
“I can’t do this. What a cherry on top of the perfect day.” Nihal drew the back of his hand over his eye, crushing back a tear before it arrived. He sucked down a huge, shaking breath.
“I wasn’t trying to fool you,” I said. “You have to believe me. It wasn’t—it wasn’t about you.”
Hurt bled across his expression. “Of course it wasn’t,” he said. “I didn’t say it had to be. Funny how that works. Sometimes you want people to—not even to put you first, or anything, but to just think about you a little, you know?”
His words expanded outward. This wasn’t just me. This was Connor lashing out first and apologizing later. This was his parents treating him like an afterthought, gushing over his med school sister like he didn’t exist. This was everything in his life, and I was the tipping point.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You deserve better.”
Nihal looked so tired. The anger in the air had gotten lost somewhere.
I peeled off every layer I had. He deserved my honesty, even if it was too late. “There were a million times I was going to say something, but I kept choking, because, I guess, what if you hated me, or gave me away? I—I tried out for Sharps because of the competition; it was supposed to be simple. I just . . . got in over my head. I got scared.”
Nihal sized me up with new eyes. His careful examination of me seemed complete. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said in a voice stiff with formality. “Everyone’s scared.”
He walked out. The door drifted shut, leaving me drifting, too, out on a massive ocean. I’d floated out into the doldrums and only just realized I had no map, no oars, no compass. There was no getting back to where I’d started.
It took me a long time to get ahold of myself. I came out fifteen minutes later to find an empty hall. Isaac was gone.
He must have followed Nihal. Maybe he’d tried to explain for me. Hopefully not—it wouldn’t do anything except get Nihal mad at him. Not productive. Not useful.
None of this had been useful. Thirty-six hours, and I’d be slinking away with my tail between my legs, a failure whose chances had run right out. Nihal would tell the guys. That would be it.
I slipped my glasses into my pocket. The poster across the hall caught my eye: Les Misérables. The cast stood in double-file, military coats neatly buttoned, tattered dresses hanging off shoulders. All smiling as if they’d been invited back for a half-dozen curtain calls.
I moved down the hall, out through the hush of night, and back to Burgess. In my room, I shed my disguise.
Somebody was humming in the shower when I got there, in the stall next to me. “The Clockmaker.” Over and over, as too-hot water coated the gummy flip-flops on my feet.
When I got back to my room, I packed up my life at Kensington.
Pencils and notebooks went in my backpack. The clothes I would take home barely filled my suitcase. None of the boys’ clothes—I folded all that into a brown paper bag and left it on my dresser. They could do what they wanted with it when I left. Good riddance.
My desk lamp flickered, casting a blip of darkness over the room. The momentary dark reminded me how exhausted I was. Today seemed years long.
Anabel’s knock came on my door. I glanced at the clock—eleven thirty, my next-to-last check-in. “Present.”
Running a hand over the Les Mis poster by my window, I thought of the smiling Kensington cast, and a strange sense of peace washed over me. Why should I stay? What did I have to show for this place, after all? A list of failed auditions, a roll call of people I’d let down, and a fistful of rose-tinted memories.
And Isaac. For one afternoon, Isaac. I shouldn’t have let him sneak up on me.
I crawled onto my bed, resisted the urge to collapse beneath the sheets. Another quick series of knocks hit the door. “I’m here, Anabel,” I repeated.
The door opened, but it wasn’t Anabel.
It was like he’d read my mind.
Isaac closed the door. “Hey.” He crossed the room, taking in my messy suitcase, my half-opened drawers, and the makeup spread across my desk. He stopped by my bed.
“You doing okay?” Isaac said. He unbuttoned his felt coat, loosening the scarf at his neck.
“How’s Nihal?” I asked.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. We went back for check-in, and . . . yeah, nothing.”
My hands were folded tight in my lap. “Right.”
“How’d he find out?”
“There was a poster in Palmer for my Greek Monologue showcase.”
A tight silence.
Isaac’s hand landed on mine, his string-roughened fingertips a reassuring scrape. “It’s okay,” he said.
“But it’s not,” I managed. The words broke the seal. For the second time that day, my eyes burned with tears. I hadn’t meant for it to be like this. I’d been thinking only of the music, and of the future.
No. You were thinking only of yourself.
I tried my best to keep my breaths quiet. It was late. Nothing worse than an inconsiderate breakdown. Nothing worse than being selfish.
“Hey,” Isaac said. “Hey. Blue jay.”
I managed a bit of a smile.
His hand weighed briefly on the side of my neck, still cold from outside, and then he lifted my chin. I looked into his kind, uncertain eyes. “So it’s not okay,” he said. “But it’ll be better tomorrow. At least a little.”
I wiped my eyes, avoiding the tender swollen spots.
“There’s the competition, and then he has all of break to think it over,” Isaac said, building up steam. “I swear, by the time we get back, start up rehearsals and everything, he’ll probably think it’s funny.”
My throat grew tight.
“Isaac?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not coming back.”
The words sat there between us, impossibly huge. I searched his face for shock. Confusion. I didn’t find it. Instead, his eyebrows drew close in determination.
“You can’t quit,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that you’re a girl. We need you there.”
“No, I meant—”
“I need you there.” His words rushed out. An accident.
Our eyes locked, our mouths shut. My heart went missing for a moment, wandered off between beats, leaving me with tingling fingertips.
I sank into a strange haze. For once, my head wasn’t consumed with whatever might come next. The boy in front of me was a past and a present and a future. I felt outside time altogether, with him looking at me like that, knowing everything and wanting somehow to know more.