Page 66 of The Failed Audition

Timo’s face falls. “Come on,please. Don’t do this.”

She sticks her earbuds in, ignoring him.

“Katya,” he pleads. “You don’t want to go to Saint Petersburg. What’s there?”

Her cheeks flush red, able to hear him. “Family.”

Timo shakes his head wildly, his earring swaying. “Your family is here. Have you even talked to Luka about his trip?”

Luka shifts his weight apprehensively. “Stop, Timo.”

But Katya takes the bait, pulling out her earbuds. Her orb-like eyes tentatively flicker to me, for reassurance, I think. As though I can tell her the right path. I can’t. That’s for her to decide. I’m honestly just a bystander, a voyeur in the Kotova backstage experience. This time, I think I did purchase a ticket to it.

“What happened?” Katya asks her older brother.

“Nothing,” Luka says. “Nothing happened.”

Timo points at Luka, about to share details that aren’t his. My interest has piqued. Curiosity—it’s a naughty, wicked thing.

“You said you felt lost. Don’t lie,” Timo retorts.

Luka removes his baseball cap, combing his fingers through his short hair. “Look,” he says to both his siblings. Then he struggles for the next words.

Like Katya, he turns to me for that same support. I almost wonder if Nikolai fills this role in their lives. I just nod to him in encouragement, internally sayingyou can do this,whatever this is.

His chest inflates, his shoulders rising. “…I thought I’d feel…home when I got there, but I didn’t. A lot was foreign to me.Ifelt foreign. Growing up here with part of the culture is different. We’re different, and we don’t fit in there…Kat.”

Tears well in her eyes, and her chin trembles. “But we don’t fit in here.”

Timo chimes in, “Yeah we do. Maybe what you’re feeling isinternal, so don’t take it out on us.” He’s still trying to get her cash.

Katya flips him off.

I smile.

Timo groans. “Come on, Kat—” She dives underneath her comforter, physically icing him out. He sighs in frustration and turns to Luka.

“No.”

Timo focuses on me and presses his palms together, in prayer formation. “Please, please, Thora James. I’ll even take a twenty and pay you back fifty after I win big. You know I can.”

When I sat with him at John’s table, he won forty extra dollars, but he only left because he had to go prep for Amour. I tell him the truth, “I don’t carry cash on me.”

The door whips open for the third time, and I realize that the television is shut off, no interfering noise below. Everyone must’ve left. Nikolai stands strict in the door frame, and Timo and Luka go suspiciously quiet.

We can all hear Katya crying softly beneath her purple comforter.

“What’d you do?” He looks between both his brothers.

Timo rolls his eyes, but I see the remorse flood his features, his bright gray irises beginning to cloud. “I told her that I’m not going to Saint Petersburg.”

Nikolai glowers likewhy would you ever fucking tell her that?He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Everyone knew I was never going to go,” Timo refutes.

Luka whispers back, “You could’ve let her believe what she wanted, at least for two more years.”

Timo touches his chest. “I’m being criticized for telling the truth. Does anyone see how wrong this is?” He looks to me. “Thora?”

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