“I’d say we’re a lot closer than some people,” Gabi says, voice laced with faux sadness. “Closer than Freddy, at least.”
I’ve been good, careful, not to ever have any cafeteria mishaps, but other people haven’t been so lucky. Last week, Freddy Brinkley tripped over his own shoelaces (rookie mistake, you always double-knot before you start the trek into the battle zone) on his way to his seat and face-planted into a plate of spasagna, Campbell County’s lasagna-spaghetti hybrid dish.
At least thirty people captured it on Campbell Confidential, and it’s been remixed, remastered, and retooled so many times and in so many ways that I don’t think poor Freddy is ever going to get past #SpasagnaGate.
Freddy got cocky, thought he could make The Walk without the proper precautions, and he paid the ultimate price: a public meme-ification. You hate to see it.
Britt and Stone leave us at the band room to head to their next class. Band passes quickly, too quickly for my taste. Between my anxiety about waiting for the scholarship email, which I know is supposed to come today, and the general buzzing energy of prom season kicking everything into overdrive, I’m not ready for class to be over when it is.
Gabi gathers her things quickly once the final bell rings, not taking nearly the same care as I do to tuck her clarinet back into the soft velvet of the hard case. She’s going to miss her favorite Campbell Confidential livestream—the Prom Projectioners, a group of girls who make predictions every Monday afternoon about who does and doesn’t stand a chance at making prom court—if she doesn’t leave right now.
The rest of our classmates are pouring out the side doors into the parking lot, but I’m staying behind like I do most afternoons. There’s always something more to get done before going home.
“I still can’t believe that Emme went ghost like that.” She pulls her sleek black sunglasses from her bag and adjusts them over her eyes. She pauses for a second. “You think Jordan is okay?”
Emme Chandler: Jordan’s girlfriend of three years, the sweetest person alive, and mysteriously disappeared shoo-in for prom queen. We weren’t friends with her—we were barely in the same area code, socially—but since she’s practically Campbell County royalty, it’s hard not to wonder where she went.
But the question still catches me off guard. Back when the three of us were friends, G and Jordan fought constantly. I wonder if a part of her cares about him still, even if she doesn’t want to, the same way that I do.
Jordan, G, and I were closer than close in middle school. For years, the three of us did everything together. We all met in band in sixth grade, when me and Jordan were battling (auditioning, technically) for first-chair clarinet. And whenever he landed first chair, his smile smug and shining with his braces, he’d say, “Don’t be embarrassed, Lighty. A first is nothing without a good second!”
During the school year, we would watch Jordan hang up his nerd hat on Friday nights to play football for our surprisingly good middle school team, and then we’d practically camp out at Gabi’s house for the rest of the weekend—me and Jordan putting Gabi on to black cult classics from the ’90s like House Party and Friday. We were so goofy back then, so unconcerned with what other people thought of us as long as we had each other, we even performed in our school’s talent show together. Or at least me and Jordan did. Even then, Gabi had a pretty refined aesthetic.
Jordan and I dressed up in these awful, thrifted, super-baggy ’90s outfits and did the Kid ’n Play dance sequence from the first House Party. We got second place, but honestly, we were robbed by Mikayla Murphy and her stupid Hula-Hoops.
But things change, people change, and Jordan is no different.
At some point, he made sure I knew that our friendship was just a phase. And there wasn’t much I could do about it by then.
Gabi is still looking at me, and I realize I don’t know how he’s doing. I don’t know anything about him anymore.
“I’m not sure, G,” I say.
And despite how I feel about him now, I can’t help but think, But I hope so.
“Is it just me, or was your section particularly out of tune today?” Mr. K asks as I stop by his desk to hand him the sight-reading quizzes we took. His eyebrows are raised in a way that tells me he knows that I know my section was all out of whack today. And as first chair, he expects me to straighten them out. Mr. K is a good guy. He’s young, younger than most of our other teachers, and it shows in the way he’s still all excited every time he walks into the band room. He’s what my granny would call “wet behind the ears.”
Plus, he really cares about us. He spent a lot of his own time helping me prepare for my Pennington music scholarship and orchestra audition, rehearsing the perfect piece—classic, not too contemporary, just what they prefer. And when my granny couldn’t get off work and G had some family thing at the resort in French Lick, he even drove me up there. We’d worked hard—I’d worked hard—and the audition was in the books. My future felt as good as set. I’d gotten accepted to the school itself. Now I just needed to be accepted into the orchestra and awarded a scholarship for outstanding musicianship, and my future would be set, too.
Music is something I understand—the notes are a thing that I can always bend to my will.
Between the promposal at lunch and stories about where Emme has disappeared to since last Friday though, the entire school hasn’t been able to focus on much of anything today, let alone the new arrangement of “Once We Leave This Place” by my favorite band, Kittredge, that Mr. K handed out today.
“You know what? Don’t answer that. I’m hoping it was just me and not the mark of prom-mania descending on my precious concert band again.” He laughs with a shake of his head. He takes the sight-reading quizzes from me and cocks his head to the side.
I look down at my phone, clutched tightly in my hand, and will an email from the Pennington College School of Music to appear. All it takes is one email, one confirmation, and I’ll be on the fast track to the rest of my life.
“You feeling okay today? You’re not looking like the cautiously optimistic, ‘you can catch me smiling at my sheet music only when I think no one is paying attention’ Liz Lighty I’ve come to know. I thought you’d be more excited to play your own arrangement for the first time.”
The classroom has mostly emptied out, the few people left behind far enough out of earshot that they can’t hear us. Mr. K knows I don’t really want anyone to know that the music we’ll be ending our spring concert with is a piece that I arranged myself.
My cheeks heat. I’m not sure why it makes me feel weird to know that people are playing something I had a hand in creating, but it does. It feels too public somehow. Like this thing that I do on my own to stay sane doesn’t belong completely to me anymore or something.
“I am excited, I just—”
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out faster than should be humanly possible.
And it takes less than a minute for everything around me to completely fall apart.
I read through the email quickly.
We regret to inform you that despite your admirable academic and musical achievements, competition was incredibly tough this year, and you were not selected for the Alfred and Lisa D. Sloan School of Music partial-tuition scholarship, nor will you be offered an advanced seat in the orchestra, which means you’re out of luck to the tune of $10K. And while, yeah, it definitely sucks that you didn’t get into the orchestra you’ve wanted to be a part of your entire life, feel free to audition again once you’re on campus—not that you can pay to go!