“I’m playing,” she told her instructor, “tonight, and at the debut. I don’t care what you think, or if you believe in me—I believe in myself, and there is literally nothing in this world that can keep me from playing.”
Alice called after her, but Etta turned on her heel and stormed back down the hall, keeping her head up and her shoulders back. Later, she could think of all the ways she might have hurt the woman who had practically raised her, but right now all Etta wanted was to feel the stage lights warm her skin. Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder.
THERE WAS ALWAYS A MOMENT, JUST BEFORE SHE PUT HER BOW to the strings, when everything seemed to crystallize. She used to live for it, that second where her focus clicked into place, and the world and everyone in it fell away. The weight of the violin cradled against her shoulder. The warmth of the lights running along the lip of the stage, blinding her to everyone beyond it.
This was not one of those moments.
A flustered, panicked Gail had met her in the hall, and dragged her backstage as guests began to file into the auditorium.
“I thought you said I’d have time to rehearse!” Etta whispered, nearly stumbling as they took the stairs.
“Yes, twenty minutes ago,” Gail said through gritted teeth. “Are you all right to just go out there? You can warm up in the green room.”
Panic curled low in her belly at the thought, but Etta nodded. She was going to be a professional. She needed to be able to take any hiccup or change in plans in stride. What did it matter that she’d never played on this stage? She’d played the Largo hundreds of times. She didn’t need Alice standing by, waiting to give her feedback. She would give Alice proof that she could handle this. “That’s fine.”
Michelle, the curator in charge of the Antonius, met them in the green room. Etta actually caught herself holding her breath as the Antonius was lifted out of its case and placed gently into her hands. With the care she’d use to handle a newborn chick, Etta curled her fingers around its long, graceful neck and gladly accepted its weight and responsibility.
Ignoring the eyes of Sophia, the dark-haired girl watching her from the corner, Etta set the bow to the violin’s strings, crossing them. The sound that jumped out was as warm and golden as the tone of the instrument’s wood. Etta let out a faint laugh, her anxiety buried under the fizz of excitement. Her violin was a beauty, but this was an absolute prince. She felt like she was about to melt at the quality of each note she coaxed out of it.
She’s not ready for this. She doesn’t have the right training, and there’s no guarantee it’ll go the right way for her.…
Etta closed her eyes, setting her jaw against the burn of tears rising in her throat, behind her lashes. What right had Etta had to yell at Alice like that? How could she think her opinion was somehow more accurate than Alice’s, when the woman was lauded the whole world over, when she’d trained dozens of professional violinists?
A small, perfect storm of guilt and anger and frustration was building in the pit of her stomach, turning her inside out.
What had Pierce told her? You’ll always choose playing over everything else. Even me. Even yourself.
Etta couldn’t even argue with him—she had made the choice to break up with him. She loved him in a way that still made her heart clench a little, from memory alone. She missed the light-headed giddiness of sneaking out at night to see him, how reckless and amazing she’d felt when she let herself relax all of her rules.
But a year after they’d gone from friends to something more, she’d placed second in a competition that she—and everyone else—had expected her to win. And suddenly, going to movies, concerts, hanging out at his house, waiting for him outside of his school, began to feel like lost hours. She began tracking them, wondering if Alice would let her debut with an orchestra sooner if she dedicated those precious minutes to practice. She pulled herself deeper into music, away from Pierce.
As she had done with everything but the violin, she’d shrugged him off, and expected that they could go back to the way they’d been for years—friends, and Alice’s students. The only way to get through the breakup was to focus, to not think about the fact that no one called or texted her, that she’d chased away her only friend.
Just a few weeks later, she’d run into Pierce in Central Park, kissing a girl from his school. Etta had spun on her heel to walk, and then run back up the path she’d just taken, cut so neatly in half by the sight that she kept looking down, as if expecting to see her guts spilling out of her skin. But instead of letting herself cry, Etta had gone home and practiced for six straight hours.
Now not even Alice believed in her.