Passenger (Passenger, #1)(9)

This was not one of those moments.

A flustered, panicked Gail had met her in the hall, and dragged her backstage as guests began to file into the auditorium.

“I thought you said I’d have time to rehearse!” Etta whispered, nearly stumbling as they took the stairs.

“Yes, twenty minutes ago,” Gail said through gritted teeth. “Are you all right to just go out there? You can warm up in the green room.”

Panic curled low in her belly at the thought, but Etta nodded. She was going to be a professional. She needed to be able to take any hiccup or change in plans in stride. What did it matter that she’d never played on this stage? She’d played the Largo hundreds of times. She didn’t need Alice standing by, waiting to give her feedback. She would give Alice proof that she could handle this. “That’s fine.”

Michelle, the curator in charge of the Antonius, met them in the green room. Etta actually caught herself holding her breath as the Antonius was lifted out of its case and placed gently into her hands. With the care she’d use to handle a newborn chick, Etta curled her fingers around its long, graceful neck and gladly accepted its weight and responsibility.

Ignoring the eyes of Sophia, the dark-haired girl watching her from the corner, Etta set the bow to the violin’s strings, crossing them. The sound that jumped out was as warm and golden as the tone of the instrument’s wood. Etta let out a faint laugh, her anxiety buried under the fizz of excitement. Her violin was a beauty, but this was an absolute prince. She felt like she was about to melt at the quality of each note she coaxed out of it.

She’s not ready for this. She doesn’t have the right training, and there’s no guarantee it’ll go the right way for her.…

Etta closed her eyes, setting her jaw against the burn of tears rising in her throat, behind her lashes. What right had Etta had to yell at Alice like that? How could she think her opinion was somehow more accurate than Alice’s, when the woman was lauded the whole world over, when she’d trained dozens of professional violinists?

A small, perfect storm of guilt and anger and frustration was building in the pit of her stomach, turning her inside out.

What had Pierce told her? You’ll always choose playing over everything else. Even me. Even yourself.

Etta couldn’t even argue with him—she had made the choice to break up with him. She loved him in a way that still made her heart clench a little, from memory alone. She missed the light-headed giddiness of sneaking out at night to see him, how reckless and amazing she’d felt when she let herself relax all of her rules.

But a year after they’d gone from friends to something more, she’d placed second in a competition that she—and everyone else—had expected her to win. And suddenly, going to movies, concerts, hanging out at his house, waiting for him outside of his school, began to feel like lost hours. She began tracking them, wondering if Alice would let her debut with an orchestra sooner if she dedicated those precious minutes to practice. She pulled herself deeper into music, away from Pierce.

As she had done with everything but the violin, she’d shrugged him off, and expected that they could go back to the way they’d been for years—friends, and Alice’s students. The only way to get through the breakup was to focus, to not think about the fact that no one called or texted her, that she’d chased away her only friend.

Just a few weeks later, she’d run into Pierce in Central Park, kissing a girl from his school. Etta had spun on her heel to walk, and then run back up the path she’d just taken, cut so neatly in half by the sight that she kept looking down, as if expecting to see her guts spilling out of her skin. But instead of letting herself cry, Etta had gone home and practiced for six straight hours.

Now not even Alice believed in her.

She should have asked Gail for a minute, a second, to get her head and heart straightened out. Instead, when the woman appeared, chattering into her headset, Etta found herself following her, walking out into the flood of soft blue light on the stage. The applause rolled over her in a dull wave.

Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it.…

Etta found her mark and took a moment just to study the violin, turning it over in her hands, fingers lightly skimming its curves. She wanted to still everything that was hurtling through her as she stood under the stage lights; to freeze the fizz of disbelief and excitement, remember the weight and shape of it in her hands.

The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium in the Metropolitan Museum of Art wasn’t the grandest venue Etta had ever performed in. It wasn’t even in the top ten. But it was manageable, and more importantly, hers to command for a few minutes. Seven hundred faces, all masked by shadows and the glare of the lights high overhead as they shifted into a final, rippling blue that reminded her of the ocean, with wind moving over the surface.

You have this.

The applause petered out. Someone coughed. A text alert chimed. Instead of sinking into that calm, the deep concentration, Etta felt herself hovering on the surface of it.

Just play.

She dove into the Largo, pausing only for a steadying breath. Seven hundred audience members stared back at her. Two bars, three bars…

It crept up on her slowly, bleeding through her awareness like light warming a screen. Her concentration held out, but only for another few seconds; the sound that began as a murmur, a growl of static underscoring the music, suddenly exploded into shrieking feedback. Screams.