Classes have been tough the first week, but deciding to focus on the showcase has given me an anchor, a reminder of why I’m here.
I’ll do whatever it takes to be that good. No excuses, no distractions.
Tyler coming to my room yesterday was a distraction.
Not only walking in to find him there, studying my things as if he had every right to be in my space, but the things he said…
“You taught me to want things I never let myself want. You taught me to dream.”
And the look on his face—like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
It doesn’t matter that he sounds torn up about what happened between us. He’s the one who walked away.
My hand finds my necklace under my shirt.
After The Little Mermaid, I took the rose Tyler had handed me in the garden and had it preserved in order to remember what happened, to remind myself I’m not fragile and that my dreams matter more than a broken heart.
Now, every time I look at it, I think of him.
I’m not letting him in again. We can coexist, we can even be civil, but we’re not going to be friends. We’re definitely not going to be more than that.
I’ll have my chance to practice keeping him out because we’re all going out to a club tonight for Beck’s birthday.
“You ready?”
My gaze snaps up as a guy maybe ten years older than me appears down the hall dressed in jeans and a denim jacket over a dark T-shirt. His hair is dirty blond and unruly, as if the wind had its way with it.
“Finn. Mr. Harvey? I’m Annie. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Finn’s good.” He retrieves something from his pocket and waves it in front of the door.
The door unlocks, and I follow him inside.
I set my bag on the floor. “How did you end up at Vanier?” I ask.
“They’ve got a push on recruiting people with industry experience for the contemporary program. An old friend twisted my arm.”
The room is about half the size of my dorm room upstairs, and it contains a piano with a bench, three stools, a white board, and two music stands.
Finn says, “So, the next semester of lessons is supposed to improve your technique and performance, blah, blah, blah. But none of that can happen unless I know why you’re doing this. So, tell me what you want.”
His bluntness has me leaning in. “I want to be on a stage.”
“Why?”
I blink. “Because I love creating music. I love when I’m in it.”
“Why else?”
I dig deeper, thinking of what drove me to work my ass off these past couple of years.
“Because I want the world to see me.”
Satisfaction works across his expression. “Show me.”
I take a seat at the piano and play my audition piece, singing overtop.
He cuts me off three bars in. “No.”
I try something else. And another. And another.
Each time, he stops me. “Any kid in a talent contest could sing that.”
“Then tell me what you want me to sing,” I say eventually, frustrated. I rise from the piano bench and turn to face him. “I have some classical training, but I can’t give you Puccini or Strauss. Maybe someone in the next room can”—I hitch a thumb at the wall—“but this is what I am.”
He’s standing in the corner, smirking. “I wouldn’t be wasting my time here for Puccini or Strauss. I saw your audition tape. You grabbed me. You want to be seen, make me see you.”
My chest tightens. Moments before the audition, I’d run into Tyler. It was a kick in the gut. It took everything I had to make it through my piece. I was raw and desperate and earnest.
I don’t know how to be that girl again.
My fingers find my necklace again, twisting the chain between my fingers. Under Finn’s stare, I think of the pictures Tyler found in my room, the words I wrote when I was coming apart.
I reach for the fallboard and tug it down over the piano keys. Then I shift back onto it, perched on the edge, resting my feet on the bench.
“A heart breaking has multiple acts. It doesn’t break in a moment; it breaks over years.
“It tears, not in half, not perfectly. But in layers. Like flower petals.
“Pieces, one at a time. Peeling away.
“And you can put it back together. Collect the pieces. Sew them back.
“It might even look the same, from the outside.”
I lift my gaze to see Finn leaning against the opposite wall, his face impassive.
My throat tightens, and I force myself to take a breath that fills my lungs even though it’s hard.
He’s going to tell me it’s not a song.
He’s going to kick me out, say this was all a mistake, that he doesn’t want to supervise me.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he says, “Keep going.”
“Are we having fun yet?” Elle asks over the music, reacting to my grin as I dance next to her.
“Better than class,” I call back.
I’ve never been to a bar or club except for a concert. This place, with its pounding bass and neon lights and grinding bodies, barely seems in the same category as Leo’s.
If the first few days were like learning to play an impossible sheet of music, the rest of week one was like turning the page and realizing there are ten more pages, each harder than the last.
After my lesson with Finn, which improved somewhat in the last fifteen minutes in that he let me finish but still said we had a lot of work ahead of us, I started sociology homework only to realize I’ve been working from an old textbook.
Wednesday, Talbot assigned us hours of film to watch before next week’s class, which is going to be nearly impossible given I’m going to Dallas for the weekend for my dad’s celebration. Plus, I narrowly avoided slipping up on the phone when we were talking about my visit.
Once I get the showcase, everything will be okay. I repeat it like a mantra.
Auditions are in three weeks. I need to use every second I have to choose the right piece, to work it until it’s perfect.
But for tonight, it’s hard not to want to let loose and be young and alive.
“You seen Jake?” I ask Elle. “He said he’d come tonight.”
He’s the only first year who seems to want the showcase as much as I do.
Elle shakes her head. “But there’s Rae!”
She points at the DJ booth, where Rae’s charmed her way in.
I’m no closer to making inroads with her. I know she makes electronic music. Her chest has an old-style turntable and a bunch of mixing equipment. But I don’t know about her family or her dreams or anything except what toothpaste she uses.
My phone vibrates in my bag.
Beck: BAR. NOW.
Elle and I wind through the crowd to where Beck is holding court at the bar in a pale-purple dress shirt, half tucked-in. His dark hair is spiked, his grin wide.
“Shots!” he demands.
The bartender’s pouring into almost a dozen glasses, and I wrinkle my nose.
Beck passes me two, and I pass one back. “Going home for the weekend tomorrow,” I tell him.
He slides back the second shot. “Your family’s anything like mine, this might help.”
I grin as my attention skims the group of us at the bar—about ten from Vanier, a mix of first years we know and second years Tyler invited—my gaze locking on a familiar one a few bodies away.