Gun Games - Faye Kellerman [141]
“Actually yes, I do. My nickname at school is the Wraith. I’m six one and down to one thirty. To call me skin and bones would be a compliment.”
“You look great.”
“I look terrible. It’s what happens when you’re penned up in a practice room for six hours a day after a full day of school. Instead of all that pure California sunshine, you get rain and snow in New York. So you wind up with a pasty complexion, zits on your forehead, and bags under your eyes. And that’s on a good day.”
“Gabe, please. I’m sorry.”
“No apology necessary. It’s true. You should see me in school, floating down the hallway with my greasy hair fluttering behind, my eyes looking very intense and focused . . . like a phantom on drugs. I really do think that most of my classmates expect me to start actively hallucinating by the year’s end.”
“Please stop.” Her eyes got wet. “I’m really sorry.”
“I think I’m regarded like this modern-day Glenn Gould. I’m not within miles of being as good as Glenn Gould, of course. But my mates in piano think I’m good—a little out there in the quirk department but not without the talent to back it up. And that’s not too bad actually. To be considered talented at Juilliard. It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
She glanced at him and looked back down at his lap. “I’m sure you’re still the best.”
“It’s like this . . .” Gabe uncrossed and crossed his arms again. “All your life you’ve been told that you’re a genius, that you’re the best. And then when you’re five and you start competing, you realize . . . hey, you really are the best. And then you’re ten, and you’re still the best, but there are a few others who aren’t far behind. And by the time you’re sixteen, all the other mediocre competition has dropped out—the ones that were good but not good enough . . . and the ones that were good enough but only played because their parents cracked the whip to their back.” He looked at her. “You can’t be forced into this. You’ve got to want it.”
She nodded with her eyes on her lap.
“And then you get to Juilliard,” Gabe told her. “And you suddenly realize that all your classmates want it, too. So you just have to want it more. And hence the six-hour-a-day practicing . . . which is okay, really, because I want to make sure that I’m bone weary. That way, when I drop into bed at night, I fall asleep instantly and I don’t have any time to think.”
Yasmine wouldn’t look at him.
“It’s not too good to think, you know?”
She didn’t say anything. She checked her watch—her old gold Movado—and Gabe caught it. “If you have to go, Yasmine, then go. I don’t want you to get into trouble. And I certainly don’t want you to be here if you don’t want to be here.”
But she didn’t go. Instead, she spoke. Her voice was a monotone. “After you left for Nevada, my mother and I talked a lot. She said you were a remarkable boy, that you were handsome and smart and gifted and talented. That you would probably go very, very far. And that she could understand why I fell in love with you. And she also said that she could understand why you liked me. Because when I came along, you were very lonely. And I was cute and nice and I had a passion for music like you did. So she could understand what happened.”
At last, a tear fell from her eye.
“But then she told me that now you’re in college. And that you’re not so lonely anymore. And that you’re meeting other kids who are like you . . . who like music the way you do And since you’re so handsome and smart and talented, many, many girls are going to like you. And you’re going to like them back. And it’s not your fault. You’re a teenaged boy. And that’s what teenaged boys do. They like girls.”
She wiped her eyes.
“She also said that teenaged boys are way too young to love girls. That they think they love girls, but what they really love is sex with girls. And it’s not your fault if you have sex with girls. Because that’s what teenaged boys want to do. They have sex with girls. And when I argued with her . . . and when I told her that you really did love me . . . she told me that if you really