grl2grl (12 page)

Fear
her
, Bryce. Annika had beat him out for principal cello last year. He was stunned. I loved it.

He so obviously had the hots for her.

My stomach churned. I hauled myself up and dusted off my rear, inhaled the view one last time, and clambered up the hill to
the car. I checked to make sure my case was in the front seat. Stupid to leave it out in the open with the door unlocked.
Stupid to leave the car. Last thing Mom said before I tossed my duffel into the backseat was, “Don’t stop for anything, Kat.
Drive straight through. You don’t know what kinds of crazies live up in the mountains.”

Right, Mom. Cannibals and yetis. She was paranoid.
“Don’t walk home alone in the dark.” “Don’t stay in the practice room after six.” “Don’t take shortcuts.” “Don’t talk to strangers.”

Strangers. The only person in the world who didn’t feel like a stranger to me was Annika.

The last stretch of road was hairpin turns. No cars on Red Mountain Pass. What if I got dizzy from altitude sickness and swerved
over a cliff? The gas gauge wiggled on E. How much farther to the junction? I might be thumbing a ride the last twenty miles.
Twenty miles to Annika. Twenty miles to doom.

Stop it. Stop thinking. I needed distraction.

Stravinsky’s
Violin Concerto
. Saint-Saëns’s
Havanaise
. All the pieces we’d be performing this summer. I should run through the passacaglia in my head, or my Paganini
Caprice
again. I was so happy to read in the program that I’d be doing the
Caprice in A Minor
. Solo violin. Even more stoked to see Martinů’s
Duo #2 for Violin and Cello
. Last year Annika and I had slipped out the first night after curfew. We’d grabbed our flashlights and snuck deep into the
woods to a small clearing. She’d set up her cello and perched on a low branch to balance, while I stood beneath the canopy
of blue spruce. Intoxicating smell. The smell of her.

L’Air du Temps. That was the perfume Annika wore. I wonder if Bryce knew that.

We played. First Bach, to warm up.
Two-Part Inventions
. Then my two-part invention, a speed metal piece that would
sound awesome on acoustic strings and synthesizer. We did the Martinů. We were lost in the dissonance, resolution, tempo changes,
meter, mood, dominant/submissive. We played as one — one instrument, one voice.

There were plenty of professional string quartets, but not many duos. Annika and I both liked classical, but we loved jazz
and rock and alternative and rap and even new country. We clicked. From that first year, we’d just connected. I’d been writing
music for the two of us.

The two of us. Would there be a two of us? My gut twisted. Chill, Kat. It’ll be fine. It’ll be a medical miracle if you don’t
have an ulcer.

I couldn’t believe this was our eighth year at St. Ives. Couldn’t believe we were going to be seniors in high school. I couldn’t
believe I hadn’t told Annika.

At the last minute I decided not to pack her cards and e-mails. I’d printed them off, of course, all her letters. Read them
over and over, trying to glean a hint of anything. Beyond friendship, I mean. Any emotional tenor in her words.

Her face materialized behind my eyes and I felt myself being swept into my newest composition. It was a duet, of course, a
slow, romantic piece. Long, lusty bows and sexy riffs. I called it
Strings Attached
. Why? Would there be strings attached? The refrain had emptied over and over in my sleep, my deepest REM. In my dream I’m
coming in late. Always late. Coming in after the downbeat. I miss my cue and it’s frustrating. I’m concentrating so hard on
getting it right,
getting in, once I’m in, I’m solid. I nail it. On her cello, Annika is my alter ego, my reflective voice. We play the notes
by heart, of course. By soul. We master dynamics and form. This is how my most personal composition will be played. Perfect.
In concert with Annika. My violin gives me presence and purpose. My music is my truth.

Annika got me. She got it. I thought I kept a killer schedule, getting up at five and practicing until school started at eight,
then rushing home to put in another three or four hours before homework, finally drifting off around midnight, my fingers
still buzzing with the vibrations of the strings. Annika managed to fit, at minimum, six hours of practice into her day and
still have a life. She was on the debate team. She played field hockey. She said it was mostly to please her mother, who begged
her to “expand her repertoire and live a little.” The only thing Annika lived was cello.

Until I met Annika, until I came to St. Ives, I had no idea there were others like me. Addicts. People who sacrificed body
and soul to be one with their art.

The picture of Annika playing, eyes closed, fingers flying across the strings, bowing fiercely, shifting effortlessly in rhythm
with her head. It gave me chills. That first time we played a duet, the Sibelius
Canon
, I never felt so alive. The energy, the electricity. Literally, sparks between us. Last year we ripped the Ravel sonata.
The frenetic, agitated ending. The last pizzicato chord punctuated the turbulent air.

We opened our eyes at the same time to the dull roar of applause, shouts of “brava.” We looked at each other and knew. We
knew. The fire burned through us. It was in her eyes, her face, her bow that trembled in her hand, same way mine did.

Was it my imagination? Did I wish it so hard I’d altered my own sense of reality?

How is that possible?

It’d been a year. A whole year trying to recapture that moment. Impossible to do without her. She lived in Maine. I lived
in Utah. Half a country away. A lot could change in a year.

I’d changed. I’m not sure why or when, but suddenly I needed more than my music. It used to take everything I had to bring
my music up from my very core; there was nothing left over. No time for games or groups or growing up; getting to know people.
Surprise, Kat. There are other people in the world. It was like coming out of a seventeen-year coma. I know people at school
thought I was a mole. Some dark, burrowing rodent that moved in the shadows. I didn’t have friends. Not like Annika. She was
the closest person to me, in heart and soul and mind.

She was going to cry when she saw me. We always cried at our reunions. We cried more when the three weeks ended and we had
to return to our real lives. Last year I think I cried myself to sleep for a month. I missed her so much.

We couldn’t afford long phone conversations.

We’d e-mail. She’d send me cards and notes throughout the year. Holiday greetings. “Thinking of You” cards.

She couldn’t know how often I thought of her. And in what way. When did it start? I don’t even know. Our last good-bye, clinging
to each other, holding on until the very last second, until her father had to pry us apart.

Her mother said, “Kat, you know you’re welcome to come to Maine and visit us anytime.”

“Seriously.” Annika held on to my hand. “Come for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Come spend your Christmas break with me.”

I held her eyes.

She knew it was impossible. I didn’t have money to go to Maine. I wouldn’t let her pay either. Annika was here on scholarship
too. Besides, there was Mom. She needed me. I was her only family, her baby.

Excuses, I know. I was afraid to go to Maine. Afraid for Annika to visit me. Terrified to alter the stasis of our relationship.
Would we still be friends? Would it be the same?

Then there was Bryce. He lived in Boston. He and Annika saw each other all the time. They talked. They…

I shouldn’t have come to camp. But I had no choice. I had to know. Would this be the beginning or the end? It’d be the longest
three weeks of my life if Annika…

If she…

Rejected me.

Don’t think about it, Kat. I squeezed my brain shut. You love St. Ives. You love it.

I did. I loved coming here, playing here. I’d won a full scholarship to continue attending through the end of high school.
St. Ives was special, elite. It was a camp for musical prodigies.

We laughed at that too. I never believed I was a prodigy. I worked hard; we all did. We worked our butts off.

Even Bryce. He could work himself into oblivion.

The sign for Deer Creek Junction flew by so fast it only registered as a blip. I had to slam on the brakes and skid to a stop
on a curve. Mom would have a heart attack if she saw that.

Sorry, Mom, I mentaled her. Distracted. I turned around.

Annika’s last e-mail: “I know ur thinking about not coming. But u have to, Kat. U HAV 2. Do it 4 U.”

Why didn’t she say, “Do it 4 me?” Everything I did, I did for myself. The practicing, performing, planning for my future.
If I had a future.

Annika had added, “Bryce calld last wk. He’s coming 4 sur.” A happy face.

The two of them had gone to the Met in New York. She’d flown to Boston on spring break.

My insides twanged a mass of snapped strings and frayed bows. The feelings, the longings. Not only for Annika, but for life
on a human scale. A physical existence.

The duet, the Martinů, had sustained me all these months.
The look in her eyes. The chance, the hope that maybe there was more to us than music.

St. Ives. Ten more miles. Ten more minutes to Annika. Concentrate, Kat. Focus on the road. Don’t think. Even if she doesn’t
return your feelings, it doesn’t mean the world will end. A meteor won’t crash to Earth and crush every living thing.

Yes, yes, it will. She has to love me back. If she doesn’t, the fire inside me will die. The notes, the lyric — “I love you.
I’ve always loved you” — had to be said, sung, shouted out loud.

I parked next to one of the St. Ives minivans. There were four now. They were used to haul groceries and supplies and instruments
and musicians to concerts and competitions in surrounding valleys and mountain towns. The vans carted campers from the airport,
or designated pickup points. I usually rode up in the van. Annika’s parents drove her. All the way from Maine, they drove.
Bryce came with them. They stayed in the same hotel. The same room?

Our final concert at the end of camp would draw a thousand people, easy. Parents and promoters and music school recruiters
…

Music school.

This might be my final concert. I’d made my decision. If Annika rejected me, I was giving up the violin.

A chorus of giggles rose over the lake. Family groups paddleboating with their kids. There were more kids every year. More
prodigies. As Annika and I got older, everyone
else got younger. And better. More talented, it seemed. More determined. Or pushed. If I relented, if I took a break, forfeited
my chair, there were scores of musical geniuses eager to take my place. Bryce would try to win back principal this year. All
you had to do was watch him practice, see his soul leave his body as he became one with his cello, to know he had the fire.

Annika would watch him, mesmerized. She’d whispered once, “He’s amazing. Isn’t he?”

I grabbed my violin off the front seat and my duffel from the back. I got as far as the edge of the parking lot when I felt
her. My eyes raised and saw her.

She was sitting at the top of the knoll, hugging her knees. She leapt to her feet, screaming, and tore down the hill. I set
my duffel and violin case on the grass and started running too. We hit each other full speed, full tilt, and went flying.
Grass and ground blurred my vision.

We rolled and rolled, wrapped in each other’s arms. “Oh my God. Kat.” Laughing and crying, Annika squeezed my face between
her hands. “I was so afraid you weren’t coming.” Her face moved closer to mine, and I thought — prayed — she’d… please. At
the last moment her lips veered away from mine and her cheek pressed against my face. Her arms smothered me in a suffocating
hug.

I couldn’t breathe. Not only because she’d rolled on top of me; she smelled like pancakes and pinecones and L’Air du Temps.

“Kat. Damn you!” Roughly, she pushed off. “Why didn’t you write to me!” She pounded my shoulder into the ground.

“Ow. I did.”

“Eight times,” she said. “I wrote you eight hundred thousand times.”

A million times, I didn’t tell her. A million times I wrote to you. I couldn’t press Send. I couldn’t put the cards in the
mail. The letters were too intimate. She had to hear this in person.

“Kat!” She clenched my face in a vise grip and pounded my head on the ground. “You cut your hair. I almost didn’t know you.”

Oh, Annika, I thought. Do you know me?

She looked at me, studied me, threw back her head and laughed. Then she hugged me again and rolled over, taking me with her.
We tumbled off the grass and into the parking lot. Gravel crunched my spine.

She wouldn’t let up. She clung, her body pressed to mine. She was shaking, heaving with laughter. Laughter? I tried to push
away from her, but couldn’t. She had me in a choke hold.

She squeezed my head so tight I couldn’t think. “Annika?” My voice sounded high, out of range.

“Let me just make sure you’re here,” she said. She crushed me one last time in an embrace. Then flung herself away and scrabbled
to sit, yanking me up beside her.

We both exhaled long breaths. She smiled. I smiled. She said, “I love it.”

My whole body seized. “What?”

“Your hair.”

“Oh.” I deflated. “Yeah, well. It looks better without the grass and dirt.” I bent forward and tousled my hair with my hands.
Right after I made my decision to come, I’d had my hair chopped and streaked blue and maroon. I don’t know why. It wasn’t
like me. What was like me?

She scooted back onto the lawn and tugged on my shirt. I scrabbled up next to her. Touching shoulders, we looked, then looked
away.

She lifted hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“You got your hair cut too,” I said.

“Oh yeah. Drastic.” She feathered her bangs.

Her hair was beautiful, curly or straight. But I didn’t care about her hair.

“Annika —“

“Where is —?” She leaned forward and glanced around the van. “Oh God.” She held her heart. “For a minute I thought you didn’t
bring your violin.”