Chapter 27 Jamie
Jamie
My hands hover over the keyboard, fingers poised to play the opening chords of my final piece.
This is it. The culmination, it feels like, of everything I’ve been working toward over the past three years.
Longer, really. I can close my eyes and almost believe I’m back home, in that small practice room at Iowa State.
My childhood teacher gently prods the tip of a sharpened pencil against the underside of my wrists, encouraging me to lift them higher.
Adam tried piano, too. I’ve always known this, obviously, but right now it’s like I’m remembering it for the first time.
He hadn’t played for long—it wasn’t really his thing.
His lesson was right before mine, so he’d hang around after and watch me play.
When I glanced over my shoulder, I could see his little eyes peering back at me from over the top of the teacher’s couch.
As he got older, he found his own hobbies—dance, mostly.
He loved dance so much, even though it was half the reason people started muttering about him behind his back.
And when Adam finally did come out, everyone acted all surprised.
Like they hadn’t been bullying him for it since he was six years old.
I let my fingers land heavy on the keys, the first notes ringing out into the full auditorium.
Adam was there, when I auditioned for Parker.
He wasn’t allowed in the actual room, of course, but he was standing just outside in the hall.
Close enough, he told me, that he could hear every chord.
You got it, he’d told me with all the certainty of a fifteen-year-old. You’re getting in. Definitely.
And he’d been right.
Like he had been about so many things, Adam was right.
I lean into the following notes, eyes falling shut and letting memory take over.
Is this how it used to be? Music tugging at every thread of my heart, pulling me along after it helplessly, hopelessly, like a child in love.
Adam never heard me play this piece. And he never will.
But I play it for him anyway, play it for the version of him that sits on our teacher’s couch and listens.
The Adam that could have been if our town hadn’t sunk its bloody teeth into him; if depression and self-loathing hadn’t stolen whatever life he had left.
What if we had been born somewhere else? Somewhen else? Maybe Adam would be the one up here, not me. Or maybe I’d open my eyes after and gaze out into the crowd and see him there, the lone standing ovation with a grin splitting his freckled face.
I lose track of time. I don’t remember finishing the piece.
But eventually it’s over, and I open my eyes, and try not to cry.
The way they have us all line up backstage for the announcement of the winners is a terrible idea.
Suspense is all well and good, but that should apply to the audience, not the contestants.
It’s been six hours since the final performance, and that’s more than long enough to send my blood pressure spiking into the stratosphere.
They could always send out an email or something ten minutes beforehand, so those of us who don’t place can hide in our rooms and pretend not to exist instead of forcing ourselves to put some kind of normal-human expression on our faces in front of all our competition.
At least Marigold is here too, her hand interlaced with mine, holding on so tight I’m losing feeling in my fingers.
She keeps bouncing on the tips of her toes like she might give up on this plane and launch herself into orbit just to escape the tension that pervades the wings, all of us contestants practically vibrating with nerves and nausea.
“It’s going to be okay,” I murmur to her, quietly enough that it feels private, despite the crush of fellow performers around us. “No matter what happens.”
She chews her lower lip. Her makeup is already starting to smear, burgundy lipstick smudged against her chin.
“Here—” I turn toward her, bracketing her off from the others as I lift my thumb and gently swipe away the trespassing lipstick.
She shudders slightly at my touch—I hope we never lose that, the way that being so near to each other still conjures a physical and profane reaction, like a cord knotted between our bodies going taut.
“Thanks,” she whispers, and I press a quick kiss to her brow.
And then it’s too late for talk, because the emcee has finished their far-too-long introductory speech and declared that now, at last, it is time to announce the winners.
“Shit,” I mumble, and it’s my turn to grip Marigold’s hand too hard, my throat swollen with the wet, hot throb of my own heart.
“Sixth place,” the emcee says, “goes to Bazyli Dunajski, Poland.”
Backstage, only a few people manage to clap, although some do pat Dunajski on the shoulder as he heads toward the wings, beaming, to accept his prize.
Nausea crawls in the back of my throat like an insect.
Where would I even throw up right now, if I had to?
Maybe I could just puke politely behind a curtain and clean it up later.
“Fifth place: Naoki Yoshida, Japan.”
Four places left. Four chances to win. Or at least, not want to die.
My view of the stage is blurry, as if I’m trying to squint through tears—even though I’m not crying. Can your optic nerve just…shut off from sheer anxiety?
“Shit,” I mutter, and Marigold’s hand tightens on mine.
Naoki was a sure thing, anyway. And I heard Bazyli was great.
I should have watched the other performances.
What if I have no idea where I actually stand in the rankings?
How can I know? Out of seventy-five participants, I haven’t seen everyone play.
What if my calculus is all wrong? I’d thought Xinyan was a sure thing, after all, and she hadn’t made it past the second round.
“Fourth place…”—Jesus fuck god please—“…Marigold Gensler, United States.”
“Fuck!” Marigold exclaims, and something electric bursts in my chest. All at once, that dizzy fear is gone as Marigold twists to throw her arms around my neck, laughing.
I grab on tight, squeezing her whole body as I press a hard kiss against her cheek.
“Fuck,” she says again, and I’m grinning, grinning so hard my face hurts.
“Go!” I whisper in her ear. “They’re waiting for you. Go!” And I push her away, still buzzing with adrenaline as she wavers on her feet like she’s about to pass out. I nudge her gently toward the wings, and at last she goes, all but floating toward the stage like she’s walking on clouds.
I wish I had my phone on me so I could capture the elation on her face as the announcer shakes her hand and passes her the bouquet of flowers. She has never looked as beautiful as she does right now.
Of course, now that she’s onstage, I have no one to crush my hand while waiting to hear the remaining three winners.
Third place goes to Iza Krajnc from Slovenia. Second place: Lijing Ming, Canada.
Each time someone else walks past me to go and receive their adulation, the pit in my stomach digs a little bit deeper. One more chance missed. One more prize I didn’t win. One more fucking…failure.
“And first place in the sixteenth annual Stockholm International Piano Competition goes to…James Larson, United States.”
Wait, what?
I can tell people are clapping. Someone slaps my shoulder and says something I can’t hear. There’s only white noise roaring in my ears, crescendoing to a fever pitch.
James Larson, United States.
No way.
Someone nudges me forward, and my legs start to move of their own accord, carrying me out onto the stage and into the white glare of the lights, where a smiling woman hands me flowers and a little trophy shaped like a golden piano.
Marigold is beaming at me, her face as radiant as the sun, and I start to walk toward her before the emcee gently pulls me back, keeping me in line.
Keeping me next to her. Where the winner stands.
It should feel different. Right? I should feel something. I should be elated, overflowing with joy, all but vibrating with it. Instead, I stand there like an idiot while the announcer keeps saying things that my brain doesn’t bother trying to process.
I glance back over at Marigold. She’s still watching me, her own bouquet clutched between both hands. She looks happy. She looks like she is grateful to be here.
I just feel tired.
Finally it’s all over, and they usher us offstage. Celia is waiting there in the wings, grinning at me like a lunatic.
“I knew it,” she says, dragging me in for a one-armed hug, which is the last thing I expected to get from my grumpy old piano instructor. “You were wonderful, James. Good work. Good work.”
Wonderful. I was wonderful—I’m always so damn wonderful, so wonderful but so soulless, and nobody ever bothers asking why.
Why it’s only when I’m on that stage at the restaurant, playing for strangers, that I remember I love piano.
When my life feels bracketed into sequences of practice-class-competition-recital-repeat and there’s nothing left for me anymore, nothing left to love.
Because how can you make good music when you aren’t really living?
What kind of feeling can you pour into your work when you don’t give yourself time to feel anything at all?
The revelation careens into me fast enough that I’m left reeling, breathless with the power of it.
How had I not realized? How, in all these years of dragging myself to lessons, grinding away at my desktop keyboard and in the practice rooms until three in the morning, all those nightmares where I woke up sweaty only to realize I still had to go to class in the morning—
How had I never said it in these simple words:
I don’t want to be here.
I can’t.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I say.