Fever Pitch

by Heidi Cullinan

  Glancing down, Aaron saw a new schedule for the coming Monday, one without Introduction to Management at seven forty-five in the morning but instead had Intro to Theory at nine. History of British Literature was also gone, replaced with History of Music.

  Give it a try. With Walter’s voice echoing in his head, Aaron signed the papers and jumped into trying headfirst.

  Chapter Seven

  On most levels, Saint Timothy was great for Giles. His classes were interesting but not too difficult. He made friends with a lot of guys, a few who were gay and most who weren’t. He got first violin, one of the three freshmen to do so and the only non-music major.

  He loved his orchestra conductor, Dr. Allison. The music was tricky, but he’d taken private violin lessons since he was six, so all he had to do was put in his usual hours of practice in the private rooms off the student lounge in the music building, and he was fine. He saw Mina regularly for breakfast. Brian was a top-shelf friend, the kind of guy Giles could totally imagine asking to be an attendant at his wedding someday.

  He wouldn’t be booking a church anytime soon, though. He’d had a few hookups, and they were fine—great from the standpoint of nobody hazing him after. They were not, though, quite what Giles had thought they’d be. He felt schizophrenic, because sometimes he was upset that the guys simply vanished after…and other times he felt uncomfortable because guys got clingy, thinking a little conversation and a hand job meant they were going to keep hanging out.

  He didn’t hook up with the intense twink from orientation day. They made eye contact across the cafeteria a few times, but if Giles attempted to initiate conversation, the guy bugged off. Giles couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t quite the reaction of the shame-and-blames, but it wasn’t normal, either.

  So his love and sex life wasn’t perfect, but Giles hadn’t expected it to be, not right off the bat. College life was unfolding before him as it should, and he was happy.

  Except every time he saw Aaron, his bubble burst all over again.

  Apparently Aaron was a great singer, and the entire choral department was in love with him. Aaron was one of two freshmen to make it into the Ambassadors. The word on the street was Nussy had taken Aaron on as his personal project, determined to make Aaron a music major by the end of the semester.

  Aaron smiled at everybody, but not Giles. He blushed and aw-shucked and walked around in the choir herd, basking in their collective glory, but if Giles walked past, Aaron went all stiff and never said a word.

  The Saint Timothy Chorale was the other fly in Giles’s ointment. Its members were loud and overly jolly, and they traveled in packs and found a sexual joke in everything. One of the tenors—named Baz, how fucking pretentious—always wore sunglasses, inside and out. Twice Giles had caught him changing sunglasses from indoor to outdoor. Baz was gay, so out he was his own parade. He was hot and cool, and half the gay guys worth cruising had already slept with him.

  Baz cruised Giles, gave him a quick clock and a wink, but that was all. While gay was okay at Timothy, gawky geeks need not apply.

  The choir didn’t do geek—they were all pretension and cliquishness. They sang in the hallways in perfect harmony, as if their lives were an episode of Glee. Several of them lived in a big old Victorian house behind the senior parking lot, called the White House. This was allegedly because the house was white and someone twenty years ago had thought the name was funny, but Giles knew it was because the choir members considered themselves rulers of the free world.

  Everywhere Giles went he heard stories about the choir. The year before on their European tour they’d been given the full-court press at a private winery, then had to hike half a mile up a mountain through snow while dressed in concert attire to their hotel because a freak snowstorm made their ski lodge inaccessible by the charter buses. Once they got to the hotel, they drank the bar dry.

  Apparently the entire choir was a roving band of drunks. Lovable, everyone’s-favorite-people drunks—and the whole world loved the choir best. Nussy’s office was big enough to house a gala and was always full of regents, but Dr. Allison’s was small and shoved in the back hallway. Because he wasn’t the director of the infamous Saint Timothy Chorale. Just the tawdry, award-winning orchestra.

  Saint Timothy was supposed to be Giles’s escape from feeling like a permanent wallflower, yet here he was again. Second-class, second-string, the usual.

  Things got better when the special music groups got started. To his complete shock, Giles made chamber orchestra. It was an exclusive, mostly upperclassman group that performed throughout the year at special functions, including homecoming and the annual epic Christmas with Timothy festival, and homecoming was a month away. The chamber orchestra also broke off into several string quartets rehearsing on their own—Giles was in one of those too. He was first chair in chamber and in the most advanced quartet.

  He went back three times to check the announcement on the bulletin board, because he didn’t understand how he kept seeing his name there. Only six other freshmen had made it into the chamber orchestra, most of them music majors. Mina was happy for him, but Giles could tell she was jealous.

  Giles went to Dr. Allison, pretty sure there had to be a mistake.

  Dr. Allison only smiled at him, though, leaning his rickety desk chair against a towering cabinet overflowing with stacked sheet music and textbooks. “No mistake. I heard you audition last May, and I’ve heard you practice in sectionals and on your own. You’re exactly what we look for in the chamber orchestra.”

  The idea that all those times he’d been practicing were auditions freaked Giles out. “But I’m not a music major.”

  “There’s no such requirement. Did you not know your section leader is pre-med?”

  Giles did, but Karen Stacy was her own level of overachievement. “I just don’t think I’m quite what maybe you think I am.”

  Allison raised a wooly white eyebrow. “I don’t think so. I think you’ll start practicing tonight, and when Karen sets up special practice sessions for you, you’ll attend. Though if you’re worried, I have a few lesson spots open. I was surprised you hadn’t signed up yet.”

  Now Giles felt guilty. “I—I meant to. It’s not that I don’t take it seriously…”

  Giles fully expected Allison to be disappointed in him, but the conductor only continued to appear amused. “No, you’re simply human. I understand. Of course, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to decline the advanced placement orchestras and continue as you are. I chose you because you strike me as a talented young man who enjoys music—and perhaps was in the need of a greater challenge.”

  “I don’t want to decline. I’m…honored. Thank you. And if there’s lesson space, yes, I’d love it.”

  He did work his tail off. “Canon in D” he’d played so many times he could perform it drunk—the song was apparently a Saint Timothy staple, and alumni were allowed to join the current members and play along. But the rest of the music he had to learn put him through his paces, and between the two orchestras Giles had eight pieces of music to learn. With his quartet group the total was nine. He practically lived in the music building now, hovering outside his reserved practice room for his chance to rehearse, going over fingerings as he zoned out during Intro to Psychology, tapping out rhythms on his plastic tray in the cafeteria line.

  He was so busy he didn’t have time to obsess about Aaron Seavers and his adoring throng, though he did occasionally note how nobody hosted parades for violin virtuosos unless they looked like Joshua Bell. The ones with big ears they worked to death.

  “It’s going to kill me,” he complained to Brian after returning from a grueling sectional and quartet rehearsal. He collapsed onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling in a daze. “They’re all so good. I have no idea what I’m doing there.”

  “I bet you’re fine.” Brian tossed him their communal bag of Twizzlers Nibs.

>   Giles pulled out a handful of candy and put it mindlessly into his mouth. It tasted like tangy wax, but as soon as the sugar burned into his bloodstream, he didn’t care. “These groups are a lot smaller. I can’t drop out and let the others cover me on a rough patch.”

  They ate more candy as the main-menu music for Halo 2 played in the background.

  Brian broke the silence. “The weird thing is, as stressed out as you are, I don’t think I’ve seen you this happy before.”

  Giles thought about that for a minute and laughed. “You’re right.”

  Brian picked up his controller and scrolled mindlessly through the menu options. “It’s too bad you don’t want to major in music.”

  “There are no jobs. The three majors are music ed, music therapy and music performance. I don’t want to teach, and I don’t think I’m zealous enough for performance. Plus, they all starve or play street corners.” He popped more Nibs. “I’ve half-considered music therapy, but I’m already too late.”

  “What’s music therapy, and how are you late? We’re only in the first semester of college.”

  “It’d be killer to join them at this point—their schedule is brutal. Music therapy is pretty much what it sounds like: using music in therapy. Psychotherapy, healing therapy, hospice. Say you’re fighting cancer. It’s grisly, wearing stuff. A music therapist comes in on a regular schedule and has you play music or sing, or plays music with you.”

  “How in the world does that help anything?”

  “Music is powerful, and when you’re fighting a health battle, it can mean the difference some days between the strength to fight or giving in. In practical terms, music therapists help with small, specific goal achievements, but patients who use music therapy are passionate about how much the treatments helped them emotionally.”

  “I suppose.” Brian continued choosing armor for his avatar.

  The dismissal irked Giles. “Music is huge in our lives. Ignoring the scientific evidence of what it does to our brains, how it helps us forge connections and relearn patterns—look at what you’re doing right now. You’re playing a game, but it has its own soundtrack. We pipe music into elevators, malls, city squares. You stream Spotify every morning while you study. I’ve caught you humming along with the Nationwide Insurance commercial. Imagine somebody using music deliberately during a time of pain and suffering. Or taking a frustrating occupational or physical therapy task and turning it into something with music attached.”

  Brian put the controller down, chagrined. “Wow. Okay, you’re right. And you need to totally go switch your major, because holy crap, you’re almost vibrating when you talk about it.”

  He was, Giles acknowledged—but the realization only depressed him. “I can’t. It’s a five-year program with overloads, and that’s when you start at the beginning of your freshman year. Also, I’d have to apply. It’s a separate degree. There’s only a handful of schools in the whole Midwest offering it.” He shrugged. “I’m probably being flighty, high on rehearsal. The urge will pass.”

  “It sounds like you can’t switch anything out until term anyway. Do some investigating, and see where it takes you.”

  The idea rattled around in Giles’s brain for days, haunting him. He thought of it every time he saw Aaron laughing and happy with his choir buddies.

  Giles could hate Aaron for being popular, but there was no question—Aaron had found his joy.

  You deserve your joy too, a voice in the back of his mind whispered.

  He did. But first Giles had to be brave enough to seize it.

  Though the music part of his life was good, Aaron’s roommate was strange.

  Aaron tried to engage Elijah, but it never got him anywhere. Take, for example, their exchange when Aaron pointed out he had plenty of extra space in his fridge if Elijah wanted to share it.

  “Thank you, I’m fine,” Elijah replied, and went back to writing in his notebooks.

  “I don’t mind, really.”

  “I appreciate it, but I don’t need to use your fridge.”

  Aaron should have left it there, but he’d seen Elijah come from the cafeteria with leftovers and drink warm soda from cans. “The thing is, my dad insisted I get this big model, but I hardly put anything in it. I seriously don’t mind at all.”

  Elijah put down his pen with a scary smile on his face. “Okay. If I put a goddamned pop in your fridge, will you leave me alone?”

  Aaron blinked and took a step back. “I— Sorry. I didn’t—”

  Rolling his eyes, Elijah pulled a Dr Pepper from beneath his desk, marched to the fridge and slammed it on the door. “There you go. I’m using your fridge. Good deed done, move on.”

  The soda never moved, and no other foodstuffs of Elijah’s ever joined it.

  It was like that with everything. Aaron would tell Elijah about floor meetings or campus events, but Elijah only ever snapped at him. It hurt to realize not only would he not be friends with his roommate, he’d have to work to not talk to him or risk a blowup. He supposed there were worse arrangements in the world probably, somewhere. All Elijah did was sit at his desk, writing on and on in his notebooks—which, weirdly, were never visible unless Elijah was actively working on them.

  If Elijah was weird, his friends were weirder. He seemed to have exactly two, and wouldn’t you know it, they were poster people for the kind of crazy Christians Aaron had feared he’d encounter at Saint Timothy.

  The guy, Reece, was the one who’d handed Aaron a Jesus flyer during orientation, and he was even freakier up close. Aaron didn’t get into fat shaming, but something about the way Reece wore his weight made Aaron have to work not to stare. Reece wasn’t jolly like Aaron’s RA, always wearing comfy sweats showcasing his ample belly and offering to share the cookies his grandmother sent. Or the beefy guy across the hall who held gaming competitions in his room and worked as a bouncer for the Shack and shouted at anyone passing through the hall who he thought might be considering calling him fatty.

  Reece was something else entirely. His weight was dough around him, straining his skin, making his bulging, wild eyes appear that much crazier. He seemed unaware of his size, wearing too-tight, unflattering clothes. Everything about Reece was pushy. He didn’t simply talk to people—he invaded their space and sprayed them with spittle when he got excited about something. He always carried pamphlets and flyers, sticking them on or under doors, forcing people to take them, eliciting promises they’d attend his upcoming meetings if they didn’t immediately bolt. He proselytized every chance he got, urging the residents of Saint Timothy to accept Jesus and be saved from sin…which Aaron thought was ballsy to do at a Lutheran university hosting three campus pastors, a huge religion department, daily optional chapel and weekly church services.

  Elijah’s other friend was female. Emily was pretty and petite, always neatly groomed, her hair either in a demure Sandra Dee-like ponytail or held back in an equally 1950s’ headband. Her clothes were clearly carefully chosen and fully fashionable—even when she wore a religious T-shirt fifteen other people wore at the same time. She wore smart little pins on the lapel of her cardigan broadcasting quiet moral admonitions and invitations. Come To My Church With Me. PRAY HARD. Do You Know Jesus?

  The one she wore most often when visiting Elijah was a red marriage-equality equal sign—with a line through it.

  Though Reece was openly creepy, Emily was stealth, and she made Aaron nervous. While Reece bellowed Good News in the hallway, Emily stood on the sidelines like a demure hawk. When the Campus Crusaders held their meetings in the main lobby of the union, Emily managed to stand next to earnest young men and talk about a woman knowing her place…while at the same time clearly running the show. She spoke of abstinence and purity while giving not-at-all-subtle bedroom eyes to any hot guy who happened by. If she was somehow still unsoiled, as she encouraged her female disciples to be, she was the vampiest virgin
Aaron had ever seen.

  She had her headlights set on Aaron.

  On the day of the Ambassadors’ first rehearsal, Emily and Reece came to pick Elijah up as usual. He’d decorated his desk with a few of the religious knickknacks from the bottom drawer before they arrived, and he donned the khakis, short-sleeved shirt and powder-blue tie that made him look like a dryer-shrunk door-to-door salesman. His notebooks vanished to whatever special wormhole he kept them in, and he waited at his desk, surfing Christian websites on his computer, his Bible-study binder and well-worn Bible beside him.

  Emily and Reece wore matching shirts: a large rainbow arched over a cross, the words Take Back the Rainbow blazed along the colored spectrum in a cheesy font with glitter around it over a dull gray landscape. They were horrifically ugly, though Emily had managed to make hers work with a fire-engine-red cashmere shrug and matching earrings, necklace, bracelet and headband.

  She smiled at Aaron, tucking her hair behind her ear and batting her lashes in a move both shy and devastatingly calculated at once. “Can we tempt you along, Aaron? We have a guest speaker talking about how to maintain quality relationships. Sustained romantic compatibility is so important in a Christian connection.”

  “I have choir practice.” Aaron couldn’t stop staring at their shirts, trying to figure them out. He stared at Reece’s because Emily’s rainbow was tight against her prominent breasts, and he didn’t want to encourage her. Reece’s cotton straining from the rolls of his belly wasn’t attractive but at least wouldn’t be misconstrued as an invitation for a sustained Christian relationship.

  The shirts made no sense, though, no matter how Aaron studied them. Where were they taking the rainbow? Why? And seriously, who in the hell saw that font and thought, Man, let’s use this?

  Reece beamed and tented the shirt away from his body in display. “Aren’t they great? I’ll get you one when I bring Elijah’s.”