Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [5]
I nod. Not caring. Not at all. Desperate to get to my lesson.
“And what about your college applications? To Juilliard? Jacobs? The Eastman School?” Beezie asks. “Have you written the essays yet? Scheduled any auditions?”
I shake my head, cutting her off. Both legs are jiggling now. I’m sweating. Trembling. I need my classroom. My teacher. I need my music. Badly. Very badly. Now.
Beezie sighs deeply. “You need to find closure, Andi,” she says. “I know it’s still difficult. I know how you’re feeling. About Truman. About what happened. But this isn’t about Truman. This is about you. About your remarkable talent. Your future.”
“No. No, it isn’t, Ms. Beezemeyer.”
I want to stop the words, but I can’t. Beezie means well. She’s good in her way. She cares. I know she does. But I can’t stop. She shouldn’t have talked about Truman. Shouldn’t have said his name. The rage is there again, rising higher, and I can’t stop it.
“It’s not about me. It’s about you,” I tell her. “It’s about the numbers. If two seniors got into Princeton last year, you want four in this year. That’s how it is here and we all know it. Nobody’s paying tuition that equals the median annual salary in the state of New Hampshire so their kid can go to a crap school. Parents want Harvard, MIT, Brown. Juilliard looks good for you. For you, Ms. Beezemeyer, not me. That’s what this is about.”
Beezie looks like she’s been slapped. “My God, Andi,” she says. “You couldn’t have been more hurtful if you tried.”
“I did try.”
She’s silent for a few seconds. Her eyes grow watery. She clears her throat and says, “Senior thesis outlines are due when school resumes—January the fifth. I truly hope yours is among them. If it’s not, I’m afraid you will be expelled.”
I barely hear her now. I’m coming apart. There’s music in my head and in my hands, and I feel like I’ll explode if I can’t let it out.
I snatch the guitar case. 3:21, the clock says. Only thirty-nine minutes left. Luckily the hallways are nearly empty. I break into a mad run. I’m paying no attention, running flat out, when suddenly my foot catches on something and I’m airborne. I hit the floor hard, feel my knees slam down, my chest, my chin. The guitar case hits the floor, too, and skids away.
My right knee is singing. I can taste blood in my mouth, but I don’t care. All I care about is the guitar. It’s a Hauser from the 1940s. It’s Nathan’s. He let me borrow it. I crawl to the case. It takes me a few tries to open the clasps because my hands are shaking so badly. When I finally get the lid up, I see that everything’s fine. Nothing’s broken. I close the case again, weak with relief.
“Oopsy-daisy.”
I look up. It’s Cooper. He’s walking backward down the hall, smirking. Arden Tode is with him. I get it. He tripped me. Payback for this morning.
“Be careful, Andi. You could break your neck that way,” he says.
I shake my head. “No, I can’t,” I say. “Not that way. I’ve tried. Thank you for trying, though, Coop. I appreciate the effort.” Blood drips from my mouth as I speak.
Cooper stops dead. His smirk slips. He looks confused, then afraid.
“Freak,” Arden hisses. She tugs on his arm.
I get up and limp off. Down the hall. Around a corner. And then I’m there. Finally there. I yank open the door.
Nathan looks up from a sheet of music. He smiles. “How’s my crazy diamond, ja?”
“Crazy,” I say, my voice cracking.
His bushy white brows shoot up. His eyes, huge behind his thick glasses, travel from my bloody mouth to my bloody hand. He crosses the room and lifts a guitar from its stand.
“We play now, ja?” he says.
I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. “Ja, Nathan,” I say. “We play now. Please. We play.”
4
I always take the long way home.
Up Willow from Pierrepont. Through the streets of old Brooklyn. What’s left of it. Then I turn right on my street, Cranberry. But tonight I’m hunched up against the cold, head down, fingering chords in the