When We Were Infinite

by Kelly Loy Gilbert

  I was the last one awake that night, back at the hotel, after we’d stayed up talking until three. I listened to the four of them breathing, and I felt all the weight of the past between us like an anchor. And in that room, in the way the night felt suspended like the morning was never quite going to come, it was as though all the things we’d been remembering and revisiting together had formed a little pouch around us, had pulled a drawstring to cordon us off once more into this old closeness. I thought about the ways we’d made it to the other side, and I thought about the ways things reverberate across the years, and I thought how one of the enduring gifts of the past is that it’s yours to keep.

  And then, that night, was the thing I’d thought was gone. Lying awake, sensing their presence around me it felt, just for a moment, like being back in BAYS in those rare times when we were able to give ourselves over completely to the music, when we were able to draw on all our moments of practice and all our repetitions and all our intimacies with a piece so we inhabited it, so it flowed through us and we could feel the percussion in our pulses. I felt it there again that night, the way it always was with Mr. Irving holding us in the moment, all of us suspended in that same stillness, holding our instruments carefully and watching, waiting. And all at once, and just for a moment, I was back there, back up on that stage looking out, the weight of what we’d just played all around me in a way that happens so rarely, a way that so consumes you that when the song ends—a song you’ve grown to know, one you’ve crafted and built—you sit there, blinking in the lights and coming back slowly to the world, and you find that the song, in its closing, has opened up a whole new silence for you to fill.

  RESOURCES

  This book discusses suicide, abuse, racism, mental health, and microaggressions. If you find yourself struggling, while you’re reading or at any other time, please reach out to one of the resources listed below. You deserve help, and the world is better with you in it.

  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (available 24/7): 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

  Crisis Text Line (available 24/7): text “hello” to 741741.

  The Trevor Project hotline, for LGBTIA youth in crisis (available 24/7):1-866-488-7386, thetrevorproject.org

  National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline (M-F, 10am-6pm ET): 1-800-950-NAMI or nami.org

  Visit https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help/index.shtml for more resources on mental health and suicide prevention, and for a list of action steps to take if you’re concerned about a friend or loved one.

  National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453, childhelp.org

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Adriann Ranta Zurhellen first read this book in 2011, and has believed in it and championed it tirelessly ever since. Adriann, thank you for always holding this book in your heart and seeing it into the world after all these years.

  I’m grateful to my wonderful editor, Kendra Levin, for her work on this book—for caring so deeply about these characters and for always pushing them to deeper and more interesting places, and especially for making room for female anger.

  Thanks to Lizzy Bromley and Akiko Stehrenberger for such a lovely face for this book. Thank you also to Katrina Groover, Amanda Ramirez, and the whole team at Simon & Schuster BFYR for their efforts to turn this story into a real book, a process that seems magical to me still.

  I’m indebted to the mentors who worked with me on early drafts of this book—Nona Caspers, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Maxine Chernoff and Peter Orner—and to the MFA community at SF State and the friends—Toshio Mori, Patti Wang Cross, Mary Taugher, Cindy Slates, Ami Sheth, Traci Chee, Jean Znidarsic, Diane Glazman—who read and offered feedback. Thanks to others who read early and encouraged me—Colleen Dischiave, Jen Ireland, Andrea Heggem, and Reneé Euchner.

  Thank you also to my grandmothers, Marjorie Gilbert and Helen Loy, and my great-aunt, Mary (Junnie) Young, for sharing so many of your stories with me, so many of which have shaped our family history and also my own life and my imagination.

  If this book had been published when I first started working on it, it would’ve been one of extremely few YA novels by and about Asian Americans, but today it’ll join a rich literary tradition. I’m grateful for the work of authors who paved the way, such as Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon, and for the efforts of We Need Diverse Books and the writers, agents, editors, librarians, booksellers, scholars, and readers who work toward a literary landscape that greater reflects our diverse reality. I feel privileged every day to be part of the YA community and I’m especially thankful for the friends I’ve made in it and for the Bay Area crew.

  I have been working on this story since 2006—it’s seen me through most major transitions in my life and has been around long enough that the original manuscript had landlines and no cell phones—and it’s been many different versions of itself, but at its heart it has always been a story about friendship and was written in tribute to some of the most important friendships of my life. Thanks to the incredible friends I’ve been blessed with, and especially REA, for all those ways we’ve tried to figure out the world together. Also, Tim, thank you for resurrecting all our old group emails and reminding me of the core of our friendship at a crucial time in the writing when I’d forgotten entirely what I ever wanted this story to be about.

  Thanks always to my parents, BreTT and my constellation of extended family for their support and encouragement. Thanks to my beautiful children, who make me laugh and give me hope for the future and let me witness the magic of storytelling in all its many forms, who steel me for our collective responsibility to write better stories for the next generation.

  And thanks always to Jesse—you are the reason I get to live so many of my dreams.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photo by Dayna Falls

  KELLY LOY GILBERT is the author of Conviction, a William C. Morris Award finalist, and Picture Us in the Light, a Stonewall Honor book and winner of the California Book Award. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Kelly-Loy-Gilbert

  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text © 2020 by Kelly Loy Gilbert

  Jacket illustrations © 2020 by Akiko Stehrenberger

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Interior design by Lizzy Bromley

  Jacket design by Lizzy Bromley © 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-5344-6821-4

  ISBN 978-1-5344-6823-8 (eBook)

 

 

 
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