Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [28]
There are keys on the table and a note from Lili telling us she’ll be in Bourges tonight and where the nearest Métro stations are, and the nearest grocer, baker, and cheese shop. None of them is very near at all. It’s a hike to get anywhere from here.
I head to the kitchen and am thrilled to find there’s still coffee in the coffeepot. I pour myself a nice big cup, slurp it down, and sigh as the world goes from black-and-white to Technicolor. As I’m reaching for a croissant, my cell phone rings.
“Hey.”
“Vijay? Where are you? The reception’s amazing.”
“I’m up on my roof. Hiding out.”
“Who from?”
“The Vietmom. Who else? Where are you? I went to your house this morning and no one was there.”
“I’m in Paris.”
“Wow. Cool. Hey, if you still want to kill yourself, there’s no better place to do it. You’ve got Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, all those bridges.…”
“You heard?” I say, cringing.
“The whole class heard. Maybe the whole school. Thanks to Arden.”
“What did she say?”
“That you’re in love with Nick and always have been. That you threw yourself at him. But he’s totally in love with her and he blew you off and you were so upset you tried to jump off his roof.”
“What? That’s not how it happened at all.”
“Doesn’t matter. Arden’s an evil genius.”
“You’re half right.”
“You can’t do it now.”
“Do what?”
“Kill yourself. If you do, Arden Tode’s going to get the credit.”
“Wow. Didn’t think of that. You’re right.”
I hear a voice in the background. “Vijay? Viiiijay!”
“Oh, no,” Vijay says.
“Vijay? Vijay Gupta, are you up there?”
“Gotta go. It’s the Momsoon. And hey, speaking of … where’s yours? She go with you? How’d you get her out of the house?”
“No, she’s not here,” I tell him. “She’s … she’s in a hospital, V.”
“A hospital? What happened? Is she okay?”
“No. It’s a psych ward. Dad took her there.”
“And he took you to Paris,” he says.
“Yeah. Because we get along so well, you know? We just love each other’s company. It’s so great being together in Paris. In the dead of winter. A few more days of all this greatness and I’ll be in a psych ward myself.”
“Viiiijay!”
“I’ll call you back later, Andi, but, hey …”
“What?”
“I was only joking, you know. About the Eiffel Tower and all.”
“I know.”
There’s a silence. I can’t speak. I guess he can’t, either. I’ve been close before. To checking out. I’m getting close again. I know that. And so does he.
“Don’t,” he finally says. “Just don’t.”
I close my eyes and squeeze the phone hard. “I’m trying, V. Really hard,” I tell him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously, you okay?”
“I’m okay. Now go call Kazakhstan.”
I hang up. I’m not okay. Not by a long shot. My hands are shaking. My whole body’s shaking. The heart got to me. I saw it in my dreams all night long. I saw Max, too. He was pacing and stamping and flailing his arms. “Maximilien R. Peters!” he was yelling. “Incorruptible, ineluctable, and indestructible!” Truman was there. Trying to walk by him.
If I could only go back. To Henry Street. On a gray December morning. All I’d need is a minute. Not major time. Not the kind of time it takes to compose a symphony. Build a palace. Fight a war. Just a few crappy seconds. The kind of time it takes to tie a shoe. Peel a banana. Blow your nose. But I haven’t got it. And I never will.
Dad finishes his phone call, too. “G left you some more books on Malherbeau,” he tells me. “On the coffee table.”
I walk across the room to check them out, grateful for a distraction, and find that one of the books contains scores—including a Concerto in B Minor that I’ve never seen before. My croissant’s forgotten. So’s everything else. I put the book down and take the old guitar—the one G let me play last night—out of its case. I start reading the score, fingering the chord progression as I go, trying to see how the notes lie on the strings. Which is hard. Malherbeau must’ve had fingers like a chimp—a chimp on speed—to hit these chords so fast. They’re all over the place. I start to play what I’m seeing,