You Should See Me in a Crown(3)
At some point, he made sure I knew that our friendship was just a phase. And there wasn’t much I could do about it by then.
Gabi is still looking at me, and I realize I don’t know how he’s doing. I don’t know anything about him anymore.
“I’m not sure, G,” I say.
And despite how I feel about him now, I can’t help but think, But I hope so.
“Is it just me, or was your section particularly out of tune today?” Mr. K asks as I stop by his desk to hand him the sight-reading quizzes we took. His eyebrows are raised in a way that tells me he knows that I know my section was all out of whack today. And as first chair, he expects me to straighten them out. Mr. K is a good guy. He’s young, younger than most of our other teachers, and it shows in the way he’s still all excited every time he walks into the band room. He’s what my granny would call “wet behind the ears.”
Plus, he really cares about us. He spent a lot of his own time helping me prepare for my Pennington music scholarship and orchestra audition, rehearsing the perfect piece—classic, not too contemporary, just what they prefer. And when my granny couldn’t get off work and G had some family thing at the resort in French Lick, he even drove me up there. We’d worked hard—I’d worked hard—and the audition was in the books. My future felt as good as set. I’d gotten accepted to the school itself. Now I just needed to be accepted into the orchestra and awarded a scholarship for outstanding musicianship, and my future would be set, too.
Music is something I understand—the notes are a thing that I can always bend to my will.
Between the promposal at lunch and stories about where Emme has disappeared to since last Friday though, the entire school hasn’t been able to focus on much of anything today, let alone the new arrangement of “Once We Leave This Place” by my favorite band, Kittredge, that Mr. K handed out today.
“You know what? Don’t answer that. I’m hoping it was just me and not the mark of prom-mania descending on my precious concert band again.” He laughs with a shake of his head. He takes the sight-reading quizzes from me and cocks his head to the side.
I look down at my phone, clutched tightly in my hand, and will an email from the Pennington College School of Music to appear. All it takes is one email, one confirmation, and I’ll be on the fast track to the rest of my life.
“You feeling okay today? You’re not looking like the cautiously optimistic, ‘you can catch me smiling at my sheet music only when I think no one is paying attention’ Liz Lighty I’ve come to know. I thought you’d be more excited to play your own arrangement for the first time.”
The classroom has mostly emptied out, the few people left behind far enough out of earshot that they can’t hear us. Mr. K knows I don’t really want anyone to know that the music we’ll be ending our spring concert with is a piece that I arranged myself.
My cheeks heat. I’m not sure why it makes me feel weird to know that people are playing something I had a hand in creating, but it does. It feels too public somehow. Like this thing that I do on my own to stay sane doesn’t belong completely to me anymore or something.
“I am excited, I just—”
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out faster than should be humanly possible.
And it takes less than a minute for everything around me to completely fall apart.
I read through the email quickly.
We regret to inform you that despite your admirable academic and musical achievements, competition was incredibly tough this year, and you were not selected for the Alfred and Lisa D. Sloan School of Music partial-tuition scholarship, nor will you be offered an advanced seat in the orchestra, which means you’re out of luck to the tune of $10K. And while, yeah, it definitely sucks that you didn’t get into the orchestra you’ve wanted to be a part of your entire life, feel free to audition again once you’re on campus—not that you can pay to go!
That scholarship was my ticket to Pennington and all that comes with it. It was the last piece of the puzzle I’ve been putting together for the past four years. Excellent grades? Check. Solid, albeit modest, extracurriculars? Check. Outstanding enough musicianship to earn me a spot in the world-class Pennington College Orchestra and bridge that final gap between the money I’ve saved, the scholarships I’ve managed to get, the loans I qualify for, and the cost of tuition at the most elite private college in Indiana? Not so much.
My mouth goes dry. I open and close it, trying to gather words to explain what’s happened, but nothing comes. All I can feel is dread. All I can think about is what Mr. K said to me as we waited for my audition to begin:
“You’ll fit in so well on Pennington’s campus next year. I know that Campbell isn’t always the easiest place to be, but Pennington was a dream for me,” he’d said as we pulled into the visitor’s parking lot of the music school. As the gorgeous limestone building had come into view, my stomach did what it always does when I get nervous or scared or excited—tightened up, and not in the cute butterflies-in-my-stomach way. Tightened like it was threatening to force out everything I’d consumed that day. I thought I might puke then and there, might just call it quits before I even went inside, but Mr. K cut the engine and pressed on. “This isn’t the only place where you can be yourself, but it was the place where I figured out what it means to be who I am. And that’s worth how you might feel right now.”