Chapter Thirty
FOR THE first time in as long as I could remember, my brain was silent.
Not just quiet. Silent.
I’d never thought about living in a mind without constant music. I hadn’t known it was even possible. But thanks to those pills I’d started taking this month, the music had faded to nothing. Melody and Harmony had gone on an extended vacation.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about anything anymore, because I didn’t feel very much at all. The medicine had muted my entire being. I didn’t feel sad anymore. But I also didn’t feel happy anymore. Or angry. I didn’t feel anything anymore.
I didn’t struggle to get out of bed now. I didn’t take time to think about whether or not I wanted to do it or could do it. I just did it. I got up. I went to school. I sat in class. I did my homework. I spent time with Victor. I shuffled through the motions of life.
But now that my brain had gone silent, I didn’t feel like I was actually alive.
Was this what I needed to treat my “anxiety,” as Dr. Richards called it?
Did I even truly have anxiety? Apart from that time when I’d had pneumonia as a kid, I’d never spent a whole week in bed before.
But I’d heard of people being so sad they couldn’t get out of bed.
Was that what had happened to me? Or was the doctor right and there really was something wrong with me?
I’d figured out the text to my next composition, the combination of Psalm 69 and the Langston Hughes poem.
I’d sketched a few ideas in my notebook.
That treble-bass back-and-forth I’d come up with while Mother and Dr. Richards were talking.
But that was all the progress I’d made. I’d started taking those pills the next day.
And after following up a week in bed with a full day of school, I’d been too exhausted to even think about writing music that night.
Or the next night.
Or the next.
By the time I could make it through a day without my body begging for a nap, the music had fallen silent.
I probably should’ve felt pretty devastated that the thing that would cure me was taking away the thing that made me feel alive.
And I would’ve felt that way . . . if I could’ve felt anything.
I had the song text next to my bed for whenever Melody and Harmony returned from wherever they were traveling. I’d clipped another copy into my music notebook in case inspiration struck during the day.
It was probably part of the adjustment process. My body getting used to the medicine. Dr. Richards had said there might be one. Just had to wait it out.
In the meantime I’d kept going through the motions.
My first day back at school, Victor had kissed me right there in front of my locker and told me he’d missed me. He’d tried to come see me, he’d said, but his father had been angrier and more drunk than ever, and Victor hadn’t felt safe leaving his mother alone with the man.
So what’s going to happen with your mom when you move to Chicago in six months? I’d wanted to ask but hadn’t. Victor would just have to figure that out when the time came.
Victor also said he’d tried to call me every night but that my mother wouldn’t let him talk to me.
They were all valid reasons, believable reasons, probably true reasons, but it still hurt that I hadn’t heard from him during one of the lowest weeks of my entire life.
Since I’d been back, though, things between us had gone back to normal.
We went to Sammy’s after school most days, and this day was no exception.
Mrs. Standridge, our math teacher, had given us a speech last week about how she knew we were almost done with high school and all our minds were on things like senior prom and graduation but that we still had work to do.
“You’re not done yet. Graduation is not a guarantee,” she’d said.
“You actually have to finish the work if you want to walk across that stage in June.”
I had no idea what I’d do after high school, but I knew I wanted to graduate and didn’t want to be stuck here in Peterson forever and ever. So I took her words to heart, and now Victor and I were working our way through both our math homework and a basket of fries.
Victor polished off the last of his Coke, the squawk of the empty straw cutting into the music from the jukebox, then stood. He said something about needing to use the men’s room, but I wasn’t really listening. I was trying to finish off the last equation: x equals . . . 46?
Was that right? It didn’t seem right.
Had Victor finished this problem? He was really good at math. Maybe I could check to see if he came up with the same answer.
I wiped my fingers on a napkin, then reached for his homework. Question fifteen . . . question fifteen . . . oh. Yes, there it was: x equals 46. So we were both right or both wrong. Either way, good enough. On to the next problem.
I pushed his notebook back to where I found it, but I pushed a little too hard, and the entire stack of his things fell off the table and onto the floor.
In the past I’d have been mortified, but in my new numb state, I just stared at the papers and books scattered all over Victor’s chair and sliding onto the floor.
Were people staring at me? Did I even care if they were?
No. I didn’t. I just needed to pick up the papers and put them back where they’d been. That was the right thing to do.
Victor was one of the messiest people I’d ever known. A true feat, since I was pretty messy too. But he had papers shoved in everywhere, in the most random places. A history assignment in his science book. An English assignment in his history folder.
And a crisp piece of paper with the Whitehall Conservatory seal jammed into his math textbook.
His acceptance letter. He’d been carrying it around with him. Not that I blamed him. I would’ve been too, had I gotten one.
But the handwriting on the back of the letter . . . I hadn’t noticed that before.
I squinted to read the scribbly, scrawly handwriting.
Mr. Nelson—I wanted to take a moment to personally congratulate you on writing such a fine piece for our consideration.
In my twenty-two years at Whitehall, I have never come across an audition piece written at such a high level.
To be quite frank, “I Am My Beloved’s” exhibits a brilliance we rarely see even from our graduate-level students, and to find it in a high school student with no formal training is quite extraordinary.
I am excited to help nurture and develop such a remarkably gifted individual, and I look forward to meeting you this fall.
Congratulations on your acceptance. Wonderful things are ahead of you.
Cordially,
R. M. Hochsteiner, Professor of Theory and
Composition
I stared at the letter. I stared and stared and stared.
That was my piece this professor was talking about. “I Am My Beloved’s.”
I wrote that.
A brilliance we rarely see . . .
Quite extraordinary . . .
A remarkably gifted individual . . .
Wonderful things are ahead . . .
Professor R. M. Hochsteiner thought he’d written those things about Victor Nelson.
But he hadn’t.
He’d written them about me.
That piece with Victor’s name . . . should have had my name.
That spot at Whitehall that belonged to Victor . . . should have belonged to me.
The audition piece I’d sent under my own name hadn’t been my best work. But this was.
And not only was it my best, it was brilliant.
The restroom door squeaked open. I shoved the letter back in place, and by the time Victor’s shoes appeared on the black-and-white tile floor, I’d nearly finished the last of my clean-up job.
“What are you doing, Iris?” he asked.
“I knocked everything on the floor by accident. I’m sorry, Victor.”
He had a blank, dead-fish look in his eyes, but the second they met mine, they brightened. “No need to apologize. Accidents happen.”
“I was just checking one of my math answers against yours, since you’re so brilliant at math.” I probably didn’t need to flatter him, but I’d learned to err on the safe side.
Sure enough, it worked, and his dimple deepened. “Did you get it right?”
“I did.” I waved an imaginary cheerleader’s pom-pom.
“Good job, Iris.” He slid into the booth and returned to his homework like nothing in the world had happened.
And for him, nothing had.
But for me, a nuclear bomb had exploded, and I was now dealing with the fallout.
Victor had never showed me that note on the back of his acceptance letter. Never even told me about it.
He probably hadn’t seen it at first. We’d both been pretty focused on reading the main text, after all.
But at some point, between the excitement, the telling his parents, the whole week I’d spent in bed, the time I’d been back at school .
. . sometime in the last few weeks he had to have seen it. He had to know what it said.
He had to know it was about me.
And maybe that was exactly why he didn’t tell me.
He didn’t want me to know what Whitehall said about me.
I’d let him have my best work, but he needed everyone to believe that it was his work. Maybe he needed to believe it himself too, because that was the level of work they’d expect from him.
He’d absorbed the best thing I could give him into himself and claimed it as his own. Next fall, everyone would think he was some genius. He had a wonderful future ahead of him.
A future that should’ve been mine. A future I’d handed him on a silver platter. A future he might not have had at all thanks to his birthday being drawn in the lottery.
And he’d never even said thank you.
Wait a minute. Did he even love me? Or did he just love my talent, the fact that I’d give him my best and ask for nothing in return?
Did I mean anything at all to him? Or was I just someone he had to step on—step over—to get where he wanted to go?
The room spun. My stomach churned. I couldn’t be here anymore. Not now. Not with him. I needed space for my drug-dulled brain to make sense of this. Because it was Victor. The man I loved. He couldn’t be this person.
Could he?
Maybe he wasn’t. He probably wasn’t. It was probably the new medicine making me paranoid and anxious and seeing ghosts where none existed.
But it sure didn’t feel like nothing.
It felt like . . . the truth.
Maybe I wasn’t crazy. Or maybe I was. Maybe the drugs helped me think clearly. Or maybe they made me see monsters.
I needed fresh air. I needed to walk home. I needed to be by myself in my pink-flowered prison and go back over my relationship with Victor and hope and pray that something—anything—from the past few months would convince me he really did love me.
“I’m sorry, Victor.” I gathered my books. “I just remembered my mother needed me home by five tonight.”
“I can’t walk you.” He didn’t even glance up. “I have to get these finished here. You know I can’t concentrate at home.”
For the first time, his excuses didn’t disappoint me.
Would they, if I were capable of feeling disappointed?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t care.
All I knew was that I could leave right then and Victor wasn’t even asking why. I should take the win and skedaddle.
So I did. I walked out of the café and turned left down the broad, tree-lined street toward home.
This all had to be a dream. Any minute now I’d wake up and look at the clock and realize I’d overslept. That’s how this had to go. It couldn’t be real. None of it could.
Because if it was real?
Then I’d been completely and totally fooled.
And I’d made the biggest mistake of my entire life.