Nothing is so startling, so awakening, as when someone looks at you and you know they see you. Not just what you’ve polished to smoothness and perfection but the jagged edges, the rough patches, and the uncertain tangles in your center. All of you.
I rose to my knees with a creak from the bed frame and cupped my palm against the back of his neck. I leaned in and pressed my lips to the line of his eyebrow. The tip of his nose. He was perfectly still; I could tell his breath was held. I kissed his mouth deep and slow, and as he shifted against me, I closed my eyes tight and let myself vanish. I tilted my head and breathed him in, a slow inhalation through my sore nose. He was as cold as new snow. The lapels of his coat were chilly as I held them.
He drew back, his coat rustling. “Hey,” he whispered, his hands curled loosely around my forearms. “We’re going to figure this out, okay? I’ll help with the guys—it’ll work out. I know it’ll—”
“Hush.” I hooked one finger into the neck of his T-shirt and pulled. He slipped up onto the bed with me. I pushed his coat off his shoulders, hung it from one of the bedposts, and he kicked his winter boots off. Then his hands warmed my waist, and the rough wool of his scarf scraped up against my collarbones. I tugged it from around his neck and let my hand trace the angle of his jaw, the column of his neck, the light muscles over his bony shoulders. We keeled toward the bed and kissed, and with his back to the light on my desk, his face was shadowed and his lips were sweet, and his crooked fingers drew music out of my skin.
He touched me with the barest traces, like I was something he was imagining with his hands, some formless collection of fire or wind. I pressed closer, urging him, wanting him, until his hands closed tightly around my waist. We kissed for God knew how long. Long enough for my lips to learn the rhythms he kissed by, forceful until he turned meek, wanting until he turned fearful, the music until the quiet.
“Isaac?” I said, finally.
“Yeah?”
I swallowed my pride. It was late and dark and I didn’t want to be alone. “Will you stay?”
“Sure,” he murmured. “Didn’t want to put my shoes back on, anyway.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Hit the light, would you?”
He leaned over to flick the desk lamp off. The sudden darkness made him tentative as he settled against me, settling one wiry arm over my waist. He dropped a kiss onto my forehead before drawing the covers over us.
“I like winding up with you,” he murmured into the stillness, a breath’s worth of words that ghosted across my cheek.
“I . . . yeah, you too,” I whispered back, inelegant, insufficient. My voice, which had gotten me so far, gave out. My heart pulsed slow and painful and full. I moved closer, holding on tight to him, and for an instant I felt like I had it: the whole world, gathered up in my arms.
The day of the competition, the sun hung low and blinding, turning buildings to ice sculptures and the stamped-down plains of snow into sheet silver. The talk in McKnight over lunch—the last school meal of the semester—was ferocious, and the glares the other groups gave me and Isaac when we walked through the Arlington doors were merciless. I’d taken concealer and foundation to my face in thick swipes this morning, covering up the creatively colored bruises that made me look like a badly conceived Jackson Pollock knockoff.
Kensington was, I decided, the worst place on earth to host any sort of competition. I expected bloodshed after the winners’ announcement.
“Even if Nihal told Trav, he won’t bring it up,” Isaac muttered as we headed toward the greenroom, where warm-up sounds issued beneath the door, muffled cascades of lip trills and humming. “He’s not going to throw the competition by dropping a bombshell.”
“Fingers crossed,” I muttered back. I pushed into the greenroom.
I instantly knew that Isaac was right. Trav’s eyes brushed over me as if I weren’t there.
Had Nihal told him?
I couldn’t look at Nihal, but I felt him standing against the wall, shoulders folded in, guard up. Our awareness of each other radiated across the room, so cold with shame, I couldn’t believe the guys didn’t feel the chill.
After our warm-up, during sound check, I caught sight of Connor Caskey. He wore an unconcerned smirk, as if absolutely nothing of interest had happened in the last twenty-four hours, as if Trav hadn’t destroyed their prized possession. The other Minuets weren’t so restrained. They shot us looks that were so furious they crossed the line into being sort of comical.
We retreated to the greenroom. Soon enough, the other groups poured in alongside us to wait. We huddled up in separate corners, trading narrowed looks. As six o’clock approached, the distant whisper of the approaching crowd turned into a murmur, then into a colony’s buzz of voice. Every seat in that hall would be full.
The stage manager called us out, and we filed backstage. Nobody spoke. We straightened ties, sipped water, set down water bottles, cleared throats, and adjusted cuffs. Our sound tech guys finally dropped Official Sound Guy Face, offering us a pair of smiles and a “break a leg.” We waited as the lights faded and the sounds of the crowd died.
In the darkness, I curled my toes up in the ends of my uncomfortable shoes. I flexed my fingers around the barrel of my mic. The boiling water in my stomach bubbled up and up.
We walked out in the darkness, curved into formation, and the quiet buzz of the pitch pipe rang to my right. I imagined my note, a fifth above, and cupped it in my throat, waiting.
The lights blasted on.
I made them out in the front row—a row of silhouettes with vaguely famous hairstyles. Aural Fixation. Three months ago, I’d stood alone in this exact spot, scanning seven different silhouettes. Are you nervous? Isaac had asked.
I wasn’t nervous anymore, even with the waiting silence of a thousand people forming a thick bubble ahead. So many darkened faces in that crowd, and all I felt was impatience.
The eight of us drew breath together, lifted mics to our lips, and Erik spat the beat into life. We sang.
The familiar notes vibrated up from my chest, instinct guiding my motions. Out in the audience, one by one, the people evaporated. The distant back curves of the auditorium folded away. The spotlights became an indistinct flood, and all I could feel was the soaring pop of the tenor lines as they spun out from my lips, and the slight tremor in the back of my calf as I fell into line with the guys.
“And you asked, ‘When you gonna tell the truth?’ and I said, ‘Never.’”
Nihal and I brushed shoulders, and my stage smile felt, all of a sudden, stretched too far. A flash of panic veiled my vision, and I snuck a deep breath between phrases.