Chapter 11 Julian #2
Malik stood, moving into the aisle like he was floating, stunned and grateful and carried forward by applause that felt like needles in my ears now.
Someone clapped him on the back with enthusiastic approval.
Someone grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously.
He looked over his shoulder at me again, and I saw it in his face, that bright relief, that triumph, that gratitude that seemed so genuine it made me question my own sanity for a moment.
I saw the slight falter though, the twitch of his smile, the flicker in his eyes that didn’t match the rest of his expression. He could no longer maintain his innocence. The mask slipped, just for an instant, but it was enough.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt locked down, ribs compressing my lungs like they were trying to protect my heart from what it already knew, from the truth that was already cutting through me like broken glass.
The applause went on and on, endless and thunderous, while the saxophone sang my secrets to the room, while my creation was claimed by another name, while my future slipped through my fingers like water.
Malik disappeared toward the stage to accept the scholarship, swallowed by the crowd, carried forward on a wave of validation and opportunity that should have included both of us.
I sat there like a fool, still smiling, because I didn’t know how to stop, because my face had forgotten how to form any other expression, because shock had frozen me in a moment I couldn’t escape.
When the ceremony ended, the crowd surged forward like a living thing, hungry and eager.
People swarmed Malik, congratulating him like he’d just single-handedly saved music from extinction.
Donors smiled and shook his hand with proprietary pride.
Teachers beamed like they’d birthed him themselves, like his talent was somehow their creation.
I pushed through the bodies, my legs moving on autopilot, my hands numb at my sides, my vision tunneling until I saw only him in the chaos.
I found him near the side corridor outside the auditorium, surrounded by noise and praise and flashing cameras documenting the moment for posterity.
He saw me approaching and the smile on his face widened, brightened, as if I was part of the victory.
As if we were still in the same story, still walking the same path.
“Jules,” he breathed, and his eyes were bright with something that looked like joy but felt like theft. “We did it. We—”
“I guess I know why I never heard your piece. That’s mine,” I said motioning to the certificate in his hand, the physical proof of his betrayal, the tangible evidence of what had been taken.
The words came out quiet. Deadly quiet. The kind of quiet that made his smile falter, that made his body tense in preparation for what was coming.
He blinked, confusion passing over his face like a shadow. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Malik. Don’t ‘what’ me. That piece.” My voice shook now, the crack in it betraying everything I was trying to contain, the emotion that threatened to spill over into something uncontrollable. “That composition.”
Malik’s face changed, eyes widening with something that looked like fear.
He glanced around, scanning the crowd that still pressed close, like he didn’t want anyone to hear.
Like he already knew what I was about to say would ruin the moment, would tarnish the shine of his accomplishment, would expose something he wasn’t ready to admit.
“Julian—”
“That’s my piece,” I repeated, louder this time, my voice carrying despite the noise around us. “How did you submit my music?”
Because the piece I sent to Juilliard hadn’t been this one. I’d played it safe and submitted something polished, something complete. This was the unfinished composition I’d played for him repeatedly, the piece I wasn’t ready to give to anyone yet.
His throat worked visibly, the motion betraying his struggle to form words. He swallowed hard. His hands, still holding the award, tightened around it until his fingers curled hard enough to crease paper, to bend the corners of his stolen achievement.
“I—” he started, then stopped, like his words had suddenly abandoned him, like language itself had fled in the face of truth.
My stomach twisted so hard I thought I might actually vomit right there, adding physical humiliation to the emotional devastation already consuming me.
“Say it,” I demanded, my voice low and dangerous. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that wasn’t my work. Tell me I didn’t just hear my soul played back to me with your name attached to it.”
His eyes darted over my face, searching for something, mercy, perhaps, or understanding. His lips parted, trembling slightly. His chest rose on a breath that sounded like pain, like effort.
“Jules,” he said again, softer, pleading already, asking for forgiveness before he’d even admitted his crime. “Listen to me. Please, just listen.”
I stared at him, waiting, every muscle in my body tense with anticipation. The world held its breath with me, suspended in the moment before confession, but he didn’t, no he couldn’t deny it. He didn’t even try. The truth sat between us, ugly and undeniable.
“I needed it,” he said, and the words were so devastatingly simple they didn’t feel real, didn’t feel adequate for the magnitude of what he’d done. “I needed to win. It was the only way, Jules. You don’t understand what was at stake for me.”
My vision sharpened painfully around the edges, everything coming into cruel focus. “So, you stole it. You just took it, like it meant nothing, like I meant nothing.”
Malik flinched as if I’d struck him physically, his body recoiling from the accusation. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that simple.”
“What was it like then?” I asked, voice rising, the calm finally cracking beneath the pressure of betrayal. “Explain it to me. Because right now it feels exactly like that. It feels like you saw what you wanted and took it without a second thought.”
He reached for me, instinctively, like he always did when words failed. Like touch was his solution to everything, his way of bridging gaps that language couldn’t cross.
I stepped back, putting distance between us that felt both physical and symbolic.
His hand hung in the air, empty and rejected, before slowly dropping back to his side.
“I thought. . .” he started, eyes desperate and pleading. “I thought you would still get in. I thought your parents would pay. I thought you had it covered. I thought you would be okay.”
A laugh scraped out of me, sharp and broken, a sound of disbelief rather than humor.
“You thought. Well, you thought wrong, Malik. You just gave them a reason to hold on to me tighter. You just handed my parents the perfect excuse to keep me here, to keep me controlled, to keep me from becoming who I’m supposed to be. ”
“I didn’t want to lose you,” he said, and the words came out too fast, tumbling over each other like a confession he couldn’t stop once it started, like a dam breaking after too much pressure. “I didn’t want you to go without me. I didn’t want you to leave me behind.”
My throat closed around something vicious, something that tasted like bile and fury and grief all at once.
“So, you trapped me,” I whispered, the words barely audible but landing with the force of a scream. “So, you chained me here to make yourself feel better.”
Malik’s eyes went wet immediately, tears gathering but not falling, making his gaze shine in the harsh hallway lights. “No. Julian, no, I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean,” I repeated, like I could taste the lie of it, like the words were poison on my tongue. “You didn’t mean to take my future. You didn’t mean to take my way out. You didn’t mean to take the one thing I had that belonged only to me. The one thing that was mine alone.”
His face twisted, like the words were physically harming him, like each one cut into his skin. He shook his head, frantic and desperate. “Please. Please, I can fix it. I can tell them—”
“You can’t fix this,” I said, and the certainty in my voice scared me with how calm it was, how final. “You already did it. What’s done can’t be undone.”
Malik’s hands trembled visibly, his composure shattering completely. “Jules—”
“I’m never going to speak to you again.”
His whole body jerked, like I’d struck him with full force. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.”
“I mean it,” I said, and the words felt like a door slamming shut inside my chest, like a finality I couldn’t take back once spoken. “You ruined my life.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did,” I snapped, finally losing the last thread of control that had been holding me together.
“You did. You took it. And now you get to leave. You get to be free. You get to build a career on my work while I stay here and suffocate in expectations and limitations and everything I tried to escape.”
Malik looked like he couldn’t breathe, like the air had been knocked from his lungs. He looked like a boy again, terrified and panicking and desperate to keep hold of something slipping through his hands, something precious he’d damaged beyond repair.
“Please,” he whispered, the word barely audible over the buzz of conversation around us. “Please, Julian. There’s a reason. If you’d just let me explain—”
I stared at him, my whole body shaking with an emotion too complex to name. “Your reason doesn’t matter. Nothing you can say will undo what you’ve done.”
Then I turned and walked away while he called my name like it could stop me, like it could rewind time, like it could undo the fracture that had just split our lives apart. It couldn’t.
I blink and the hotel room swims back into focus, reality reasserting itself with brutal clarity.