Passenger

by Alexandra Bracken

  Etta wanted to see her mom smile again when she played.

  She put the red dress away, pulled out a more serious, subdued black dress instead, and sat down at her desk to start her makeup. After a few minutes, her mom knocked on the door.

  “Would you like some help with your hair?” Rose asked, watching her in the mirror that hung on the wall.

  Etta was perfectly capable of taming her hair, but nodded and handed her the bundle of bobby pins and her old brush. She sat up straight as Rose began to work the tangles out of her hair, smoothing it back over the crown of her head.

  “I haven’t done this since you were a little girl,” Rose said quietly, gathering the waves of pale blond hair in her hand. Etta let her eyes drift shut, remembering what it felt like to be that small, to sit in her mom’s lap after bath time and have her hair combed out while listening to stories of her mom’s travels before Etta was born.

  Now she didn’t know how to reply without sending Rose back into her usual tight, cool silence. Instead she asked, “Are you going to hang up the new painting you finished? It’s really beautiful.”

  Rose gave one of her rare, soft smiles. “Thanks, darling. I want to replace the painting of the Luxembourg Garden with this one—don’t let me forget to pick up the hardware for it this weekend.”

  “Why?” Etta asked. “I love that one.”

  “The play of colors will work better,” Rose explained as she plucked one of the bobby pins off the desk and pinned Etta’s hair back into a twist. “The flow of darkness to light will be more obvious. You won’t forget, will you?”

  “I won’t,” Etta promised and then, trying her luck, asked, “What is it of?”

  “A desert in Syria…I haven’t been for years and years, but I had a dream about it a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.” Rose smoothed the last few stray strands of hair back and spritzed hair spray over them. “It did remind me, though—I have something I’ve been meaning to give you for ages.” She reached into the pocket of her old, worn cardigan, then opened Etta’s hand and placed two delicate gold earrings in her palm.

  Two brilliant pearls rolled together softly, knocking against small, heart-shaped gold leaves. What Etta sincerely hoped were dark blue beads, not actual sapphires, were attached to the small hoops like charms. The gold curved up, etched in meticulous detail to look like tiny vines. Etta could tell by the quality of the metalwork—slightly rough—and the way the designs matched imperfectly, that these had been painstakingly handcrafted many years ago. Maybe hundreds of years ago.

  “I thought they’d go beautifully with your dress for the debut,” Rose explained, leaning against the desk as Etta studied them, trying to decide if she was more stunned by how beautiful they were, or that her mom, for the first time, seemed to genuinely care about the event beyond how it would fit into her work schedule.

  Her debut as a concert soloist was still a little over a month away, but Etta and her violin instructor, Alice, had started hunting for fabric and lace together in the Garment District a few days after she found out that she’d be performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic. After drawing out her own sketches and ideas, Etta had worked with a local seamstress to design her own dress. Gold lace, woven into the most gorgeous array of leaves and flowers, covered her shoulders and artfully climbed down the deep blue chiffon bodice. It was the perfect dress for the perfect debut of “Classical Music’s Best-Kept Secret.”

  Etta was so tired of that stupid label, the one that had chased her around for months after the Times article was published about her win at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. It just reinforced the one thing she didn’t have.

  Her debut as a soloist with an orchestra had been coming for at least three years now, but Alice had been staunchly opposed to making commitments on her behalf. As a young girl with crippling stage fright, one who’d had to fight with every ounce of nerve she possessed to overcome it at her early competitions, she’d been grateful. But then Etta had grown out of her stage fright and suddenly was fifteen, and sixteen, and now close to eighteen, and she’d begun to see kids she had squarely beaten making their debuts at home and abroad, passing her in the same race she’d led for years. She began to obsess over the fact that her idols had debuted years before her: Midori at age eleven, Hilary Hahn at twelve, Anne-Sophie Mutter at thirteen, Joshua Bell at fourteen.

  Alice had dubbed tonight’s performance at the Met her “soft launch,” to test her nerves, but it felt more like a speed bump on the way to a much larger mountain, one she wanted to spend her whole life climbing.

  Her mom never tried to convince her not to play, to focus on other studies, and she was supportive in her usual reserved way. It should have been enough for her, but Etta always found herself working hard for Rose’s praise, to catch her attention. She struggled to gain it, and had frustrated herself time and time again with the chase.

  She’s never going to care, no matter how much you kill yourself to be the best. Are you even playing for yourself anymore, or just in the hope that one day she’ll decide to listen? Pierce, her best-friend-turned-boyfriend, had shouted the words at her when she’d finally broken things off with him in order to have more time to practice. But they’d risen up again and again as a hissing, nasty doubt in the six months since then, until Etta began to wonder, too.

  Etta studied the earrings again. Wasn’t this proof her mother cared? That she did support Etta’s dream?

  “Can I wear them tonight, too?” Etta asked.

  “Of course,” Rose said, “they’re yours now. You can wear them whenever you like.”

  “Who’d you steal these from?” Etta joked as she fastened them. She couldn’t think of a time in her mom’s forty-four years when she could have afforded something like this. Had she inherited them? Were they a gift?

  Her mom stiffened, her shoulders curling in like the edges of the old scroll she displayed on her desk. Etta waited for a laugh that never came—a dry look that acknowledged her stupid attempt at humor. The silence between them stretched past the point of painful.

  “Mom…” Etta said, feeling the stupidest urge to cry, like she’d ruined whatever moment they’d been having. “It was a joke.”

  “I know.” Her mother lifted her chin. “It’s a bit of a sore spot—it’s been years since I had to live the way I did, but the looks I used to get from others…I want you to know, I have never stolen anything in my life. No matter how bad things got, or how much I wanted something. Someone tried to pull a fast one on me once, and I’ve never forgotten what that felt like. I almost lost something of your great-granddad’s.”

  There was a hum of anger behind the words, and Etta was surprised that her first instinct wasn’t to back off. Her mother so rarely spoke about her family—less than she spoke about Etta’s father, which was next to never—that Etta found herself reaching for the loose thread and hoping that something else would unravel.

  “Was it your foster father?” Etta asked. “The one who tried to steal from you?”

  Her mother gave a humorless little smile. “Good guess.”

  Both parents gone in one terrible Christmas car accident. Her guardian, her grandfather, gone after little more than a year. And the family that had fostered her…the father had never laid a finger on her, but from the few stories Etta had heard about him, his control over Rose’s life had been so rigid, so absolute, it was a choice between staying and suffocating, or the risk of running away on her own.

  “What was it?” Etta asked, knowing she was pressing her luck. “The thing he tried to steal?”

  “Oh, some old family heirloom. The truth is, I only kept it for one reason: I knew I could sell it and buy my ticket out of London, away from the foster family. I knew your great-granddad had bequeathed it to me so I could make a choice about my future. I’ve never regretted selling that old thing, because it brought me here. I want you to remember that—it
’s our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.”

  Etta turned her head back and forth, studying the earrings in the mirror.

  “I bought these from a vendor at an old market—a souk—in Damascus when I was about your age. Her name was Samarah, and she convinced me to buy them when I told her it was my last trip, and I was finally going back to school. For the longest time, I saw them as the end of my journey, but now I think they were always meant to represent the beginning of yours.” Rose leaned down and kissed her cheek. “You’re going to be wonderful tonight. I’m so proud of you.”

  Etta felt the sting of tears immediately, and wondered if it was possible to ever really capture a moment. Every bitter feeling of disappointment was washed out of her as happiness came rushing through her veins.

  There was a knock at the door before Alice used her keys and announced her arrival with a cheerful “Hullo!”

  “Now, get going,” Rose said, brushing a piece of lint off Etta’s shoulder. “I need a few minutes to change, but I’ll meet you over there.”

  Etta stood, her throat still tight. She would have hugged her mom if Rose hadn’t stepped away and folded her hands behind her back. “I’ll see you there?”

  “I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

  A ROLL OF FIRE BREATHED THROUGH THE NOTES, RATTLING THE breath in Etta’s chest, and sank down through her skin to shimmer in the marrow of her bones as she and Alice slipped inside the still-empty auditorium.

  She could admit it; this violinist…Etta looked down at the program she had picked up. Evan Parker. Right. She’d heard him play at a few competitions. She could admit that he was decent enough. Maybe even a little good.

  But, Etta thought, satisfaction slinking through her, not as good as me.

  And not nearly good enough to do Bach’s Chaconne from Partita no. 2 in D Minor justice.

  The lights dimmed and swept across the stage in bursts of shifting color as the technicians in the booth made last-minute adjustments to match the mood of the piece; Evan stood in the middle of it, dark hair gleaming, and went at the Chaconne like he was trying to set his violin on fire, completely oblivious to everything and everyone else. Etta knew that feeling. She might have doubted many things in her life, but Etta had never once doubted her talent, her love for the violin.

  They had no choice which piece of music the museum’s board of directors had assigned each of them for that night’s fund-raising performance, but some small, sour part of her still stewed in envy that he’d been picked. The Chaconne was considered by most, including herself, to be one of the most difficult violin pieces to master—a single progression repeated in dozens of dizzying, complex variations. It was emotionally powerful, and structurally near perfect. At least, it was when played by her. It should have been played by her.

  Her piece, the Largo from Sonata no. 3, was the last of the violin set. The piece was sweetly stirring, meditative in pace. Not Bach’s most complex or demanding, or even the brightest in its colors, but, as Alice said time and time again, there was no cheating when it came to Bach. Every piece demanded the full force of the player’s technical skill and focus. She would play it flawlessly, and then the whole of her attention would be on the debut.

  Not on her mom.

  Not on the fact that she now had no one to text or call after the event to give an update to.

  Not on the fact that one night could determine her whole future.

  “You would have done a bang-up job of the Chaconne,” Alice said as they made their way to the side of the stage, heading to the green room, “but tonight, the Largo is yours. Remember, this isn’t a competition.”

  Alice had this magical look about her, like she would be at home in front of a hearth, wrapped in a large quilt, telling nursery rhymes to sweet-faced forest critters. Hair that, according to pictures, had once been flaming red and reached halfway down her back was now bobbed, as white as milk. Turning ninety-three hadn’t dulled any of her warmth or wit. But even though her mind was as sharp as ever, and her sense of humor twice as wicked, Etta was careful to help her up the stairs, equally careful not to hold her thin arm too tightly as one of the event coordinators led them to the green room.

  “But also remember,” Alice whispered, grinning broadly, “that you are my student, and you are therefore the best here by default. If you feel inclined to prove that, who am I to stop you?”

  Etta couldn’t help herself; she laughed and wrapped her arms around her instructor’s shoulders, and was grateful to have the hug returned tenfold. When she was younger, and just starting out on the competition circuit, she couldn’t go onstage until she’d had three hugs from Alice, and a kiss on the head for luck. It made her feel safe, like a warm blanket tucked around her shoulders, and she could disappear inside the feeling if she needed to.

  I have Alice.

  If she had no one else, she had Alice, who believed in Etta even when she was playing at her worst. Of the two Brits in her life, she was grateful that at least this one seemed to care and love unconditionally.

  Alice pulled back, touching Etta’s cheek. “Everything all right, love? You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  “No!” God, she couldn’t give Alice any excuse to cancel the debut. “Just the usual nerves.”

  Alice’s gaze narrowed to something over her shoulder; Etta started to turn, to look and see what it was, only to have her instructor touch one of her earrings, her brow wrinkling in thought. “Did your mum give these to you?”

  Etta nodded. “Yeah. Do you like them?”

  “They’re…” Alice seemed to search for the word, dropping her hand. “Beautiful. But not half as beautiful as you, duck.”

  Etta rolled her eyes, but laughed.

  “I need to…I think I ought to make a call,” Alice said slowly. “Will you be all right to start warming up by yourself?”

  “Of course,” Etta said, startled. “Is everything okay?”

  Alice waved her hand. “It will be. If I’m not back in a few minutes, make sure they let you have your turn onstage—you’ll need the most time, since you couldn’t make the dress rehearsal. And the Strad—which one are they giving you again?”

  “The Antonius,” Etta said gleefully. It was one of several Strads in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, and the very first one she’d been allowed to play.

  “Ah, the golden child. It’ll take a bit of work to get him to behave himself,” Alice told her. “I don’t care what your mother says about preserving them for the future. Holding incredible instruments hostage in glass cases. You know that—”

  “—the longer you silence a violin, the harder it is for it to find its true voice again,” Etta finished, having heard the argument a hundred times before.

  A Strad—a Stradivarius—one of the stringed instruments crafted by the Stradivari family of northern Italy in the late seventeenth, early eighteenth centuries. The instruments were legendary for the power and beauty of the sound they produced. Their owners didn’t describe them as mere instruments, but like humans—temperamental friends with moods that could never be fully conquered, no matter how skilled the player.

  No matter how lovely her own violin was—a Vuillaume copy of the “Messiah” Stradivarius she had inherited from Alice—it was still just that: a copy. Every time she thought of touching the real thing, it felt like sparks were about to shoot out of her fingertips.

  “Back in a bit, duck,” Alice said, reaching up to give her an affectionate tap under the chin. Etta waited until she was safely down the stairs before turning back to squint her way through the darkness.

  “There you are!”

  Etta turned to see Gail, the concert organizer, hustling and wriggling over the stage as best she could in her long, tight, black dress. “The others are backstage in the green room. Need anything? We’re running through warm-ups one by one in order, but I’ll introduce you to everyone.” She looked around, a flash of disappointment cr
ossing her face. “Is your instructor with you? Rats, I was hoping to meet her!”

  Alice and her late husband, Oskar, had both been world-renowned violinists, and had retired to New York City when Oskar became sick. He had died only a year after Etta started taking lessons from Alice, but at five, she’d been old enough to form a true impression of his warmth and humor. While Alice hadn’t played professionally in years, and hadn’t had the heart to try after Oskar passed, she was still worshipped in certain circles for a breathtaking debut performance she’d given at the Vatican.

  “She’ll be back,” Etta promised as they made their way to the green room. “Will you introduce me to everyone? I’m sorry I couldn’t make the dress rehearsal.”

  “Evan couldn’t make it, either. You’ll be fine—we’ll get you situated.”

  The green room’s door was open, and a current of voices, pitched with excitement, rolled out to meet her. The other violinists studied her with blatant curiosity as she walked in.

  They’re wondering why you’re here. She squashed the voice down and sized them up in return as Gail went around the room and rattled their names off. Etta recognized two of the three men present—they were older, near retirement age. Evan, of course, was still onstage. The organizers had balanced out their number with three women: an older woman, herself, and another girl who looked to be about Etta’s age. Gail introduced her only as “Sophia,” as if no last name were necessary.

  The girl had tied her dark, nearly black hair back from her face and pinned it up into an old-fashioned twist. She wore a plain white shirt tucked into a long, dark skirt that fell to her ankles, but the outfit wasn’t half as severe as the expression on her round face when she caught Etta studying her, trying to place whether they’d crossed paths at a competition.

  “Mr. Frankwright, you’re up,” Gail called as Evan made his way in and introduced himself. One of the old men stood, was handed a gorgeous Strad, and followed.