3. Harlowe
There was another bill from the hospital when I got home.
I thought the first one was a lot, but that one was just the emergency room bill and the ambulance ride.
Mom also needed surgery, and this was that bill.
My eyes bugged out of my head. Even with payment arrangements, I’d be paying this for the rest of my life.
And Mom was still in the hospital and needed a ton of therapy to be able to walk and manage on her own again. There were going to be a lot more bills and a lot less money in my future. I sighed. I was completely fucked.
I pulled my cash out and started counting. I only made about a hundred dollars in cash, but I knew I would have made more with the QR code I printed and displayed, since most people rarely carried cash. I logged into my account and my eyes bugged out of my head.
There was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my account.
That wasn’t normal at all. I was hoping for at least five hundred since I played way longer than I should and even my well calloused fingers were sore.
I also knew I wasn’t completely terrible.
I’d played up my look, done spooky music for Halloween, and I’d managed to get a spot on the Grand Central platform.
I would have made a little over four hundred except for one person whose username was TheMorningStar. He left me a huge tip and a note with it, so I read it.
“Your talent is wasted on subway platforms playing for pedestrians who can’t appreciate it.
I’d love to see what you could do with Blackvale at your back and no financial worries, but I’d never presume to tell a woman what to do.
Should you choose to go, worry for nothing except your education and writing more music like the pieces you played on the subway station.
If not, please accept this tip and do with it what you wish.
The pieces you wrote and how you performed them stir emotion in a very jaded man, and this tip is worth every penny. ”
So, this was my mysterious patron. He didn’t have a photo of himself on his profile, so I didn’t know for sure it was the deathly hot golden man.
But it had to be, right? I tended to get lost in the music when I played.
I zoned out, and it was just me and my violin.
The first time I had to get up and play at a recital, I was terrified.
My teacher said to just pretend I was alone in my room practicing.
It ended up being easier than I thought.
The fact that I felt him staring at me so intently meant that had to be him because that had never happened to me before.
He was probably the most physically perfect man I’d ever seen, and he was standing in front of a light, so he was bathed in this golden glow, but that wouldn’t have distracted me.
My taste in sexual partners tended to be hot little androgynous men and women, so it wasn’t his beauty that pulled me out of my reverie and made me look up.
So, I creeped on what little profile I had, like he said something nasty online, and I was trying to find his boss and mother to let them know. Was this man trying to buy me, or was he like me? If I had a bunch of disposable income, I’d be a patron of the arts too.
It all spoke to me. I only ever took violin lessons, but I loved looking at art, seeing dance and live theatre performances, and I read every night before bed.
I would probably be terrible at it if I tried to do anything besides violin, but I knew what went into doing those kinds of things professionally and I knew how expensive it was to make art.
I’d love to have a long, illustrious career where I retired rich and then could just support up-and-coming artists from all fields so they could do the same.
Was it really so hard to believe this mysterious benefactor felt the same about the arts?
His profile gave me nothing. It was newly created.
Like, he must have set it up on the subway platform to send me a massive tip and that note, then managed to get Johann Faustus to personally invite me to Blackvale.
And also managed to find out literally all of my business when he couldn’t have even found out my real name when he used the QR code.
I briefly had this cool idea that I could still be a performer by posting my music online and picked the stage name Persephone Draven.
I could put a look together to live up to that pseudonym, but staging my apartment to fit the mood was pretty much impossible because it was your basic ugly, cramped studio with poor lighting that I couldn’t make any major changes to without pissing off my landlord.
I still used it on payment apps because I wasn’t trying to get a stalker. It should have been impossible to find out my real name or anything about my mother. I needed help, so I was breaking out the big guns. Except the big gun was currently calling me.
I’d been best friends with JaToya Frost since second grade, despite the fact that we were complete polar opposites.
I was an only child raised by a single mother.
JaToya had four big brothers and two devoted parents.
She was very much a Virgo and got mad when she looked it up after I told her that and she realized I was right.
I was the failed musician who was waiting tables, and JaToya didn’t have an artistic bone in her body.
She tried to take an art class for one of her humanities requirements for her major and had to drop it because she was going to flunk.
But JaToya Frost was nearly a genius when it came to math, science, and computers.
She was currently building robots in the medical field.
One would think we wouldn’t get along and would have nothing to talk about, but you’d be wrong. She was fascinated by my music and wanted to hear all about it. And she could dumb the STEM stuff down so that I could follow, and I loved how passionate she was about it.
“You know you’re viral, right?” she asked.
“Excuse me, what?”
“Well, my super sexy best friend decided to play up her assets and show off in the subway. Someone filmed you and now everyone wants to know who you are.”
“What the fuck? I was about to call you. Some hot guy in a suit was watching me. I think he’s either trying to buy me or is just really into the arts.
He tipped me nearly two hundred and fifty thousand and managed to get the headmaster of Blackvale in the subway to offer me a free ride.
He’s also offering to help Mom, but I don’t know if it’s the same guy I caught staring.
It’s weird if he filmed me and blasted it to the internet too, right? ”
“Did you see him filming you? Because it’s pretty obvious if someone is pointing their phone at you. Was he wearing those AI glasses?”
No, he wasn’t, so I asked her for the account that made me viral. From the angle where I was filmed, I could tell it wasn’t my golden man, but it was pretty obvious who did put me online.
“So, it wasn’t the golden man. Someone kicked the garbage can over to make a noise to distract me. When I looked over, he shook his head at me as if he were trying to warn me away. This was filmed where he was standing.”
“Say less. He went viral on his first post, which is weird because he doesn’t seem that tech-savvy.
His real name is Gadreel. I can’t find a last name, or that could be his last name.
He tried to hide his identity with a lot of religion and angels, which is weird he filmed you without shitty commentary.
You were looking extra witchy dominatrix in the video.
Even I wanted you to spank me and call me a bad girl, and I’ve held your hair back when you discovered Long Island Iced Tea. ”
“I’m so confused.”
“Me too, because I found another account for him. It’s full on cuckoo.
Remember that sheltered guy you dumped after two dates when you found out he legitimately thought you were a vampire who could make him immortal just because he'd never met a hot goth girl before? His whole profile is about trying to save people from making deals with demons. He thinks he’s an angel whose mission from God is to prevent people from selling their souls. ”
“So he made me internet famous?”
“My granny is better at the internet than he is. It wouldn’t shock me if he did some kind of scathing commentary and uploaded the wrong video.”
“Anything on my benefactor? Because he managed to find out all my secrets, and you know I keep my family stuff inner circle only.”
“Guy’s a total ghost, but his handle isn’t.
The Morning Star is a charity that’s heavily involved in the arts.
They are the biggest donor to Blackvale, but I also found where they’ve funded the restoration of theatres that needed it.
They’ve founded free schools in areas that might not be able to afford them that teach art, music, dance, and theatre.
I can’t find anything weird and nasty, which is more than I can say for your stalker.
You should do it. I only like classical music when you’re the one playing it. ”
That much was completely true. JaToya came to every single one of my performances and cheered the loudest. I had to stop inviting her if I wasn’t playing because she snored and got violent when elbowed.
“Is this seriously happening to me?”
“You deserve this, but you have to video call me every day while you’re away and send me anything new that you compose.”
That was the thing about JaToya. She only liked classical music if I was the one playing it, but she was brilliant at critiquing my compositions.
If I wrote something and wasn’t completely convinced it was perfect, JaToya could generally point out it wasn’t in a non-offensive way from someone who knew absolutely nothing about music.
Also, if my Virgo bestie was telling me it wasn’t completely rash and insane to pack my back and take a train upstate to study music after some weird encounters in the subway, then it probably wasn’t.
I guess I was going to Blackvale Academy.