Page 120 of Crescendo

Melinda scowled at me. “Dude, you have got to chill out. The world won’t stop turning if you take a break.”

She had no idea how much the worldwouldstop turning if I took a break. How much the ground would give way underneath me and I’d disappear, fade away, if I stopped moving for just a moment.

But I turned back to the computer. “I just don’t want to be in the kitchen when Natália is climbing on the counters gettingexcitedabout food.”

Melinda and Natália exchanged a look, before Natália stood up, hugging herself. “Just don’t stay up here too long!”

I was probably going to. “I won’t,” I said.

Chapter 26

Ella

“So, the winner won’t be announced until Friday,” the instructor, Lorna, announced to the group, “but, as you’re all working on slightly lower-stakes pieces, and because we know you’re all curious, we thought we’d take this afternoon to listen to the pieces you’ve submitted for the competition. Of course, these are bound to provide inspiration, but it should go without saying that if anyone submits anything this weekend that is plagiarised from something you hear this afternoon, we will be having words.”

My heart rate spiked. I’d been trying not to think about the piece the last few days. Trying not to think about anything, honestly. Just going to class, writing music, going home, and sleeping in Lydia’s bed. Where, inevitably, I stared at our text conversation—that had very little in it because we’d barely been apart when she’d been here—and begging for one of us to break the barrier and contact the other. I didn’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to be the one to do it.

I knew you shouldn’t waste time, that life was too short, that you should say the things you needed to while you still had the chance. But that was it, I felt like I’d lost the chance. Shehadn’t reached out, and I didn’t want to trample all over what she needed in favour of what I wanted.

But now, everyone was going to hear this piece that had so much of her in it and I still hadn’t found the courage to even send it to her.

“So,” Lorna said with a huge smile now that she’d done her duty and reminded us that plagiarism was forbidden—even if it hadn’t once been an issue, “have a great lunch and then we’ll reconvene back here to listen to some absolutelystunningpieces.”

My breath caught in my throat. Were they going to play Lydia’s piece too? She’d submitted it. I’d already heard it. But still.

I looked around the room, all of its occupants like a crowded blur. All of them were going to hear me play the clarinet. And she still hadn’t.

Clara, Bansi, and Dodge were getting up on one side of me, readying themselves to leave for lunch. Hannah sat on my other side, but she hadn’t moved. She was looking through her bag like she was Mary Poppins and couldn’t find the bottom of it.

“Ella?” Clara said, her voice muffled to my panicked ears. “Are you coming to lunch?”

The four of them had taken it upon themselves to surround me since Lydia’s departure, as if they could hold me together with their presence. As if Hannah didn’t already have enough romantic trouble herself. Maybe we were just holding each other together, making it through the days by trying to be strong.

“Uh. Go ahead, I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, staring at the front where the instructors were talking and laughing together.

It was different, certainly, but I remembered this part so well—the part where everything felt like a blur that you were just floating through.

“I’ll wait with Ella and we’ll catch you up,” Hannah said, seeming to give up on whatever she was looking for.

“You don’t need to—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, cutting me off.

I nodded, sucking in a deep breath.

My dads, my friends, my therapist… all of them had told me that grief caught you up if you tried to hide from it. I’d been running so long I hadn’t expected it to find me here, like this. But it made sense. If you didn’t deal with one loss, you couldn’t deal with others, even when they were different.

Most of the other students filtered out of the room until it was just me, Hannah, and a couple of people who wouldn’t hear us talking.

It was then that she leaned back in her seat, nudged me with her arm, and kept her gaze straight ahead. “Excited for everyone to hear your piece?”

I let out a strangled breath. “Maybe not the word I’d use for it.”

She breathed a laugh. “Yeah, that tracks. Buckets o’ talent but still hiding behind medicine or learning or… a more famous girlfriend.”

My insides twisted. “Aren’t you still hoping Eliza beats me?”

She finally looked at me, a reluctant smile ghosting across her features. “If Lydia and I were in competition with each other, you’d be rooting for her, right? But I know you like me enough to care about how I do too.”

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