by Anna Bloom
Eva shrugged, nonchalant. “It’s a way to meet people though, and it looks great on a resume.”
Resume… I hadn’t thought farther ahead than a vague idea on having some dinner.
We both eyed the door. "There’s only one way we are going to know what’s happening out there.”
I loved the fact we seemed on the same wavelength.
“What are you studying?” I asked.
“Musical production.”
“Cool.”
“What about you?”
“Performance.” My gaze wandered to my battered black violin case.
“Let me guess; with a major in strings.” Eva hooked a grin, making her seem almost impish.
“Well it’s all I can play, so yep. And English lit.”
“Come on, let’s go. I want to see where the bars are.”
I had no argument with the plan, so ignoring unpacking the boxes still in the center of the room, I grabbed my purse from where I’d dumped it when I walked in.
The halls were fuller now, sounds of laughter coming from behind doors. A few people had wedged their doors open and gave us waves as we walked past. On a scale of one to a billion, I’d go with a two for how easygoing everything was. One girl, with flame red hair and pale skin grabbed us.
“Party tonight starts at nine. Don’t be square.” She thrust a flyer at us which I took and glanced down at.
We carried on walking as I read. “House rules apparently.”
“Well then, it would be wrong to break them.” Eva flashed a wicked glance in my direction. “What are your thoughts on sororities?”
I folded the flyer and slid it into the back pocket of my cut-offs. “I’m not sure I’ve thought about it.”
Eva shrugged, but I could tell the lie. She’d thought about finding one.
“I mean, if it’s a good one that’s not full of skanks then I’d maybe give it a go,” I appeased.
Her lips curled.
Out in the quad we walked along the stalls, gathering flyers that made me lament for all the trees in the world. A jazz club, about five different barbershop groups, a strings group which Eva pushed me toward. I just grabbed one of their leaflets and then kept walking.
The violin and I were at a point of stalemate. Part of me, a large part of me, didn’t want to unclip the clasps on the case. The other half of me didn’t know who to be without it.
For too long I’d been told I was a star in the making. But a star to what I just didn’t know.
For the last four years, every practice had been mechanical, almost clinical, no heart and soul in a single note I’d played.
It was a catch twenty-two that violin had given me the chance of a life that I no longer knew if I wanted.
When I initially missed out on the scholarship, I couldn’t lie, I’d breathed a sigh of relief.
“So is there a boyfriend in Florida, New Orleans?” Eva said, breaking into my distracted thoughts.
“Boyfriend? Uh no.”
“Really?” She eyed me with speculation, swinging her fair hair out of her face.
“No, why do you say it like that?”
“Well, you’re kind of pretty to look at. I’m thinking you aren’t short on offers.”
I focused on my boots; my cheeks hot. “No, not really,” I mumbled.
“I’m sensing heartbreak.”
Glancing up, I met her gaze. “No, not really. Having a protective older brother kinda keeps the heartbreak away.”
Eva’s gaze drifted wistfully.
“And mainly because he’s a dog and has pissed off most people in the neighborhood.” I smiled. This was mostly true.
“So, no significant other?”
“Nope.”
“Then you totally won’t mind the guy over there checking you out.” I automatically glanced to where she nodded her head and met the gaze of a guy who rocked the embodiment of Abercrombie perfection.
I double took him in, his sandy hair and piercing stare making me forget myself. For a second, his bright gaze made me think of Blue.
And when he wasn’t Blue, a crushing weight pushed on the center of my chest.
Blue’s gone, Lyra. Get over it. Stop looking.
The guy turned in our direction and Eva elbowed me hard in the ribs. “Incoming.”
“What the fuck?” I muttered under my breath.
“Hey?” His smile stretched easily; toothpaste white. “I’m Alex. You guys in Hamilton?”
“Yep.” Eva bounced on her toes. She was kinda short so I let her off. “You?”
“Sure am. This is busy isn’t it?” We all took a silent moment to evaluate the enormous overwhelm of strangers around us. There really were people everywhere, and a lot of them had already seemed to converge into groups and were shouting in excited conversations, pointing at the signs on stalls as they passed by.
I couldn’t look too much, it made me feel a bit sick. I shifted from foot to foot. Could this get anymore awkward?
“Yo, Alex.” Another guy jogged up, blond and tall.
“This is Reyn.” Alex pointed to his friend. “And these are, well I don’t know yet because they are being cagey with their names.”
His gaze rested on me, waiting.
“Oh, I’m Lyra.”
“And I’m Eva.” She let out a little sigh when Alex nodded just briefly at her introduction. I stepped back to carve some space between us all. I definitely didn’t want to piss my roommate off in the first hour.
“Did you guys see there’s a Hamilton House party tonight?” Alex looked down at all our flyers.
“You going?” Eva asked.
“Of course.” His smile slipped across his face with ease, like smiling was his natural state. It was kind of infectious too, not that I went in for smiling much as a means of communication, well a means of anything really.
“We’re on floor five,” Eva added.
“Cool, we’re on the floor below.” An awkward pause followed as the four of us ran out of conversation quicker than a keg of beer at a pool party. Not that I’d ever been to one. Pools weren’t a big thing in our neighborhood, but a girl could Netflix. I pulled on Eva’s elbow.
“Come on, let’s go. Maybe see you guys tonight then?” I said as I towed her away.
“Looking forward to it.” Alex gave us a wave. “I’ve heard it’s wild.”
Eva gave a little squeal under her breath, which to me didn’t bode all that well at all.
In the end, we picked up enough flyers to decorate our room with should the need take us. We walked around the main building, trying to guess where our lectures might be. We’d mourned the fact we wouldn’t be in all the same lectures all the time, just a few that crossed over, but I guessed they split people up in dorms to try to get everyone to mingle.
Eventually we found a coffee shop open and grabbed some hot drinks before heading back to our rooms.
“What do you think?” Eva fell back on her bed.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to take everything in.” I took my boots off and rubbed my feet. “I’ve got sore feet if that counts for anything.”
She laughed and stretched her own toes. “Campus is bigger than I remember it being when I visited. Is it to you?”
Ah. How to say that I hadn’t even visited. Did I even need to? She wasn’t wrong. Everything did seem so much bigger than home. Not just the buildings and the amount of people, but also just this wild sense that this was the cusp of something unchartered. I felt rather like a small boat being tossed at sea in a wild storm. Not an entirely comfortable feeling.
“I’m kinda knackered from the drive,” I said, unsure how much more small talk I could make in the space of one day. I missed home: the creak of the floorboards, the familiar smell that reminded me of Grams, violet water and cinnamon. None of those things existed here.
“I’m going to go and knock on some doors.” Eva cast me a sharp glance as she rolled off her bed and groaned, shaking her legs out and rolling her neck. “Sure yo
u don’t want to come?”
I shook my head and motioned to my bed. “I need some shut eye, otherwise I won’t make the party later.”
“You’re going even if you’re asleep.” She wagged her finger at me and swung out of the door with some impressive energy. I fell back on my bed with a groan.
This was great, I’d been paired up with a party animal, a social butterfly.
Turning over on my mattress, I pushed my face into the pillow. I hadn’t even made it, my new sheets from Grams were still in the bottom of my suitcase, but regardless, I closed my eyes for a moment and just tried to breathe.
“How do I look?” Eva smoothed the front of her halter neck. She couldn’t smooth the back because there wasn’t one.
I’d gone for a baggy fit crop top and some wide-legged cropped trousers I’d paired with my chunky sneakers. With some good luck I’d managed to tame the frizz and had risked the liability of wearing my hair down, partnering the curls with big gold hoops that picked up my coloring.
I looked nothing like a standard classical violinist. With not a formal skirt in sight, I lived in my cut-offs and plaid, but could branch out into something randomly put together if needed.
‘Wow, you look frickin amazing.” Eva assessed me from under eyelids swept with thick eyeliner.
“I feel this is all a bit much.” I eyed our reflections in the mirror across the room.
“Lyra, first impressions are everything.”
“Yeah.” I smiled a sly curve of my lips. “What was your first impression of me?”
She fired back, straight off the bat. “That you have the hottest brother I’ve ever seen and therefore we should be best friends.”
I chuckled and scrunched my fingers into the back of my curls. “I figured.”
“Hey, don’t be offended. We’re friends for life now.”
“So says every friend I’ve ever made.”
It was the sad truth, but it wasn’t worth being bitter about. I’d always marched to my own tune and had very quickly realized that usually, girls who were my age and wanted to hang around just wanted a first class hall pass to Luca.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah I think so.” My chest banded with tightness, my heart beat a fraction too fast.
We worked our way down to the common room, the loud shout of voices telling us we were going in the right direction. A guy with a clipboard waited at the door, his smile still wide but a little tired around the edges. I wondered if he regretted putting his name down for Hall Monitor now.
“Room?” He held his pen ready to tick; floppy, ash-brown hair falling in his eyes.
“One seven five,” Eva told him, and he scrolled down the page with his biro.
“Eva and Lyra, right?” He looked back up at us with interest, his long pause prompting us to fill in which of us was who.
I cringed. One glance down at his clipboard and I could already see the star next to our entry on the list. Shit.
“Eva,” she pointed to herself and then to me, “Lyra.”
“Lyra, I’ve been waiting to meet you.” The guy pushed his bangs out of the way and wedged his clipboard under his arm, almost knocking Eva off-balance in a bid to shake my hand. “You should have come to find one of us earlier.”
“Hey!” I righted Eva before shaking his hand and peering at him closer. Under the floppy hair he was kinda cute with freckles and dark eyes.
Eva’s face scrunched with confusion, totally undermining the effort she made with her makeup. I turned, slightly aware of a lulling silence in the room.
We had all the attention. Yay for us. What a way to make an entrance. I’d like to die right now please.
“No rush,” I whispered to him, my heartrate now on a dangerous collision with a heart attack. “I was tired anyway from the journey.”
I turned quickly and pulled Eva after me, using her as a shield from all the weighted stares.
At a table holding soft drinks in red plastic cups she pulled away slightly. “What the hell was that about?” She frowned. “Why was the dude in the hall monitor T-shirt shaking your hand. Are you royalty and I don’t know it?”
“Nothing. Jesus, I didn’t know they were going to have our room starred and underlined a hundred times in indelible ink.”
She waved her hand, circular sign language for, ‘start talking’.
“You heard of the Collins Foundation?”
Eva’s gaze widened into huge balls, the whites of her eyes shocked. “You’re the Collins kid?”
I groaned at the word kid. Would there ever be a point in my life when I wasn’t a ‘kid’? I’d be a hundred and five and there would still be someone one hundred and six calling me kid.
“I’m the Collins beneficiary. I don’t think it makes me theirs.”
Eva’s eyes were still as wide as dinner plates and she shook her head. “No, I think it means you’re their bitch, for three years.”
I scrunched my face as I contemplated the full ramifications of my scholarship. “It’s just funding, Eva.”
“By the Collins family… who give more to the arts in the whole of the United States than any other organization, public or private.”
Well, when she said it like that…
I shifted from foot to foot. Why was everyone still watching us? They weren’t all really staring at me, were they?
Oh God.
My tongue dried, tingling almost. My palms hot and sticky.
“This means that it really doesn’t matter what you do the next three years, you’ll still get a principal player role. You’ll end up at the Met, or London, or Vienna.”
“It’s not like that. I only applied for the scholarship because I couldn’t afford to come otherwise. My grams could never afford to send me, and my mom…” I trailed off and dug my toe against the shiny wooden floor of the common room. “Well, Mom checked on us a long time ago.” The less I thought about her, the better.
“This is crazy.’ Eva pushed a hand through her hair, sending strands flying, and grabbed my arm with the other in a tight squeeze. “I mean, this is just…” She trailed off, I guess trying to think of a suitable adjective that would describe this fortuitous stroke of good luck. “We’re going to be invited to every party. Fucking A, Lyra, this is amazing.”
She grinned so wide, her cheeks almost splitting with the effort, her excitement almost contagious. For a moment I could see things the way she did, that somehow little old me from the shitty back streets of New Orleans could open up doors that might have otherwise been closed; and all because some people liked the way I played my cheap old violin my grams had picked up at a thrift store.
For one single minute I could see the dream the way Eva did.
Then I remembered why I’d come. That one foolish night, surrounded in saltwater and blood of rust, I’d made a promise that I would try.
So, I had.
And now I was here, and it echoed of emptiness and disappointment until it made me wonder if I had anything left on the inside of me to give: to music, to people, to life itself.
Shaking off my shadowy thoughts, I turned to take in the room. Everyone had moved on from the Collins kid’s arrival and conversation hummed again. Thank fuck. The expectation of the Collins Foundation weighed on my shoulders, like a heavy gold necklace I wanted to wear because it was precious but knew might ultimately crush me.
What would happen when people realized I couldn’t play?
“So,” Eva carried on. “What exactly do you get? I mean do you get your own throne to sit on in lectures?”
I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, because I’d love to sit on a throne.”
“Oooh, I bet you have to go to loads of boring dinners with the faculty.”
My face folded into a frown. “God, I hope not. Can you imagine?”
Fucking hell, what if they made me play at faculty dinners?
“It’s a dream come true though, isn’t it?” Eva’s cheeks tinged with pink, her excitement for my scholarship
making me all off balance.
Suddenly this idea seemed even more ridiculous.
Hot and sweaty and in need of some fresh air to cool down, I glanced toward the door, catching a flash of startling green and dark hair. I ran, pushing through the crowds of people, sure it was him, sure it was Blue, because in truth, he was the only dream I’d ever held dear.
Chapter Five
Lyra ~ Four years Ago
I waited for the scatter of small pebbles against the windowpane. I’d sat on my hands, willing them to stop jittering, but my knees bounced up and down.
It came, gentle as rain cutting through stifling summer heat. Jumping from my bed, I edged to the window and pushed up the sash.
Blue sat in his window.
Luca and he had come home half an hour ago. I’d listened to them clatter down the street, wild like tomcats coming home from a prowl.
Play for me. He held up his sign, but I folded my arms across my chest and shook my head directly at him.
We teetered on the cusp of a change. I knew he could feel it too.
Between us had grown something unmentionably dangerous. It threatened to slice us to the quick.
He pushed his battered piece of A4 against the glass and implored me with deep pools of green, but I held firm.
I lifted my own piece of paper. Come here and ask.
My heartbeat thudded against my ribs, skipping a rhythm that made my stomach roll.
He shook his head, but I could feel the hesitation.
Raising an eyebrow, I waited. We watched one another, time slipping by, taking us further into tomorrow and stealing us away from today.
His shoulders sagged and he dropped his bit of paper. For a moment I almost knocked on the glass and took it all back. Like a junkie, I craved what we had, didn’t want that to end... but if I never pushed, how would I ever know?
He held up his hand, fanning his fingers... five.
I swallowed hard, my heart booming a deafening pound.
Was Blue going to play my game?
Five minutes until what?
He turned his back and walked away from the window. I watched the broad curve of his shoulders. He’d changed, grown, broadened the last twelve months.
