Chapter 10 Jamie
Jamie
“Wait,” Shrishti says, still breathless from our last round. “Let me get this all straight. You’re living with Goldie Gensler?”
She says it like I just told her I’d cut off my own right toe, on purpose. “Yeah. What else was I supposed to do? I can’t just stay in the dorms for weeks and practice on my desk keyboard. I need to get ready for Stockholm. Anyway, her dad was nice!”
“Her dad was nice? Bruh, it’s like you’re a different person. Blink twice if you need help.”
I roll my eyes instead. “Okay. Her apartment might be fucking ridiculous—did you know they have a private chef?—but it is possible that Marigold’s not as bad as I thought.”
“No shit. The level of vitriol you’ve held for this girl for the past, like, three years is on a whole different level. I’ve told you a zillion times you’re just jealous, but you always get angry at me!”
“Because it’s not jealousy!” I find myself insisting, only to immediately deflate when Shrishti raises one brow.
“Okay. It’s not entirely jealousy.” Now both brows are up.
“Fine. I’m jealous. But what’s wrong with that?
It’s not just professional envy. It’s the way she grew up.
It’s all the things I had to do to get to where I am, and she just got it all handed to her. ”
Not to mention the ghosting thing. And the shit she talked about me at that party. I can’t believe Shrishti is still expecting me to trot out a list of reasons to resent Marigold Gensler, as if I’m the only one who has been a jerk in this situation.
And I do admit I’ve been a jerk. Just a little.
Still.
“I’ve heard this song and dance before,” Shrishti says.
“That’s because it’s true.”
She just shrugs and starts unwrapping her wrists, the sweaty tape piling up on the locker room floor.
“Listen, as fun as the whole I pulled myself up by the bootstraps narrative is for you, Goldie is still a good pianist. And nobody’s life is perfect—I’m sure there are things you have that she’s jealous of, too. ”
I make a face. “It’s not like I don’t know my own privileges. I know there are advantages I have in life that Marigold does not. But she’s still rich. And she ghosted me, remember?”
“You are extremely hung up on the ghosting thing.”
“Yeah? And why wouldn’t I be? You’d be pissed, too.”
She waves a hand as if to dismiss the whole argument.
“Let’s be real here, Jamie. Yes, the ghosting thing wasn’t great on her part.
Same with her little monologue about redneck cornfields or whatever.
But it’s extra bad to you because you exist in a universe where everything has strict rules and guidelines, and if anyone violates them, your brain dissolves into a puddle of neurotic goo. ”
I’m still trying to come up with a good defense to that when she adds:
“Plus…you’re jealous.”
She smirks, and I accept defeat. A small voice in the back of my head whispers that I should maybe listen to Shrishti, just a little.
She knows me better than anyone. And she’s not usually wrong about social things—which is handy, because my brain is very much not structured to process that kind of thing.
I need Shrishti around as a normal-person-behavior translator.
My rational brain says all that, but reason is currently banging its head against the brick wall of the seething mass of anger and resentment I’ve cultivated over the past three-plus years of knowing Marigold Gensler.
And maybe it’s not totally Marigold’s fault, but I don’t know how to tamp it down, either. To redirect it so all that bitter rage isn’t laser-focused on her.
I still haven’t forgotten the way it felt when we played together at our capstone performance—as if we had become one being composed entirely of music, that musicality of hers buoying me up with it until the notes felt as if they lived in my very marrow.
How, after, I’d been left dizzy and breathless, blinded by the stage lights as we bowed to the audience, Marigold’s hand warm and soft in mine.
You should try cutting people a break sometimes, that voice murmurs again. This time, it sounds suspiciously like Adam.
Something clenches tight and painful in my chest, and I swallow hard.
“Anyway,” Shrishti goes on, “it sounds like you had a good time last night. So maybe this is the end of the Jamie Larson–Marigold Gensler rivalry era?”
“I think that only comes after I beat her at Stockholm,” I say wryly, and Shrishti gives me a light punch on the shoulder.
“Damn right. You get ’em, killer.”
We split up for showers, and once we’re all clean and toweled-off and wearing normal clothes again, Shrishti and I head out of the gym and start heading toward the subway, our duffels bumping companionably together as we walk.
“How are things going with Cessy, by the way?” I ask. “You’re still on-again, right?”
“You make me sound like such a fair-weather lover!”
“If the shoe fits—”
It’s her turn to roll her eyes at me. But hey, she started it.
“It’s weird, though,” she goes on. “Dating someone who is still stuck in the whole Parker scene. Like…I forgot what it’s like to spend your whole life obsessing over performances and accolades and trying to cram four hours of practice into every day.
Easier this time, though. Maybe because I’m not all caught up in it myself.
I get to watch it like it’s an…an anthropological expedition.
But sometimes it does make me wonder what things’d be like if I hadn’t… ” She trails off.
Dropped out. The unspoken words hang heavy.
“You did what you had to do,” I tell her. “You were going to lose your mind if you stayed at Parker one more term. It was eating you up inside.”
“I know,” she says, and blows out a heavy gust of air. “I know. Just…could-have-beens, you know? But it’s good. It’s all good. I’m happier now. And Cessy is different than I was. She’s like…stable, and shit. She can handle the pressure. She’ll be okay.”
Sometimes I wonder what Shrishti thinks about me and my ability to handle the pressure. She’d be honest if I asked. Which is part of why I never have.
I’m not sure I want to know the truth.
My path doesn’t cross Marigold’s much the following day, despite our talk.
I’m not sure if that’s because Marigold has better things to do than spend time with me and left, or because the apartment is simply so big that she’s gotten lost in it.
The place feels empty now—her father left on his trip early that morning, and the rooms are extra echoey, furniture looming large like watchful giants.
So I spend most of the day in my room, my phone set on “do not disturb” and my body hunched over a small mountain of sheet music, poring over my and Celia’s notes until my head spins.
Finally, when the notes have started to blur together, I give up.
I open my laptop instead and tab over to my Dropbox folder that holds the videos of all my own past performances.
Celia has me go through them periodically—A frank account of your own qualities and mistakes is the best way to improve, she’d said, and she’s probably right, but I hate listening to myself.
It feels indulgent and vain, even if it is literally a school assignment.
I’m going through in reverse chronological order. No particular reason aside from it being the way the computer’s organized my files already. I click the next one without even checking the date stamp—but the second the video starts to play, I know that was a mistake.
I’m onstage, the audience is clapping, the camera shaking as the person holding it claps his hand against his thigh and hoots as loud as he can.
It earns a couple disapproving backward glances—people don’t usually hoot at this kind of thing—but when he flips the camera around to show his own face, my brother clearly doesn’t care.
“You’re about to watch the greatest virtuoso piano performance of all time,” Adam declares to the lens. “My big brother, a rising star, future Parker student and future pianist for the New York Philharmonic—James Michael Larson!”
Adam hoots again, and he’s laughing as he flips the camera back around to fix on that image of me onstage, a stupid proud smile plastered on my stupid face.
I make myself watch.
Every movement, every measure. My hands dance over the keyboard. The expression I wear is that of a boy transformed, elated by the glorious music pouring from that instrument.
Here, in real life, my shoulders tremble. The first hot tear slides down my cheek, and I glance anxiously over my shoulder—but of course no one is there to witness it.
Fuck. Maybe it’s that I’m already so revved up, because that five seconds of Adam on tape has a choke hold on my heart. But I’ve never felt this way before, not while listening to my own music.
And god, it’s beautiful.
I rewind and play the beginning again, and again, and again, until I can’t process Adam’s face anymore, Adam’s voice. It’s all white noise.
Then I make myself listen to my performance again, wrangling my treacherous mind into submission and taking notes. I replay certain parts. I take more notes. I should have taken my Vyvanse today, I know that, but I woke up anxious, didn’t want to make things worse, and now I’m paying for it.
I slam my laptop shut and blow out a heavy breath.
I wish I could feel that way again about music.
I can’t, not after Adam.
But I wish I could.
More than that, I wish Adam were still fucking here.
I need a break.