Another pause. His jaw ticked.
“Orion?”
“Sure.”
So I did. All business. He and I, lab partners.
Just like I wanted.
All the while, Orion simmered next to me, a live wire throwing sparks, or a pot about to boil over. He flexed his fingers again and again, and when the bell mercifully rang, he gathered his things and stalked out.
I dragged myself through the rest of the day, feeling like an exposed nerve, dreading piano class where Wolfe would call me up to play Für Elise. There, I tried to find some of my usual fire and spirit, but I sat hunched in my seat, feeling small and insecure and hating how Rhode Island had doused me with one cold bucket of water after another.
Professor Wolfe strode in wearing jeans—against CHA professor dress code—motorcycle boots, a Pink Floyd T-shirt, and a kind of long black tunic, open in the front and worn like a jacket. Without greeting or preamble, he started calling on students. Mercifully, Iwasn’t one of them. Orion was.
“Mercer,” Wolfe said. “Where is your sheet music?”
“I don’t have it,” Orion said, steadily meeting Professor Wolfe’s gaze. “I don’tneedit.”
“Very well. Be my guest.”
Orion sat down, laid his hands over the keys for a still, silent moment. Then he began to play the Nocturne. It was a short piece, but far more complicated than anything we’d heard from the other students. When it was done, the class started to break out into applause.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Wolfe said, quelling us with outstretched hands. He looked at Orion. “Flawless, technical perfection. And you may as well have been a robot. Or a player piano. Take your seat.”
But instead of returning to his seat, Orion turned back to the keys and began to play a few soft notes, then a slow, climbing of scales.
“What are you doing?” Wolfe said. “I told you—”
Orion kept playing. I didn’t recognize the music until it took off and then it came to me: Chopin again, Ballade No. 1 in G minor. A piece that started slowly then erupted into a rainstorm up and down the scales.
“That’s enough, Mr. Mercer,” Wolfe shouted over the sound.
But Orion didn’t stop. He kept playing through the highs and lows, his hands a blur, the music pouring into the room and over us like a beautiful tempest about to break free. Finally, Wolfe grabbed the piano’s lid and slammed it down. If Orion hadn’t snatched his hands away, his fingers would’ve been broken.
Silence then. All the more jarring after the astonishing thunderstorm we’d just experienced.
Orion shot to his feet, knocking over the bench. He and Wolfe stared each other down, Orion’s eyes blazing, his breath coming out hard. I wondered for a second if the two were going to tackle each other to the ground, fists flying.
And then Wolfe laughed.
“That’s what I’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Class dismissed. Except you, Mercer. You stay with me.”
Chapter 10Orion
I’m your lab partner and that’s all. That’s all I’ll ever be.
No doctor had ever told me it was part of my ADHD, but I visualized images out of words. Recognized patterns. When words failed me, pictures bloomed in my mind.
When Harper drew that line in the sand, I visualized my jacket lying abandoned next to it, something warm and good burning out, a pattern of hookups with girls I cared nothing about and who cared nothing for me but my status, continuing on until I went back to the UK at the end of the year.
But there was also Harper in the moonlight, her dark hair falling over her shoulders and her scrutinizing gaze, trying to decipher if I could be trusted, if I were someoneworthyof her trust, while she didn’t try to do or be anything but herself. I’d barely had a taste of who she was, but I’d liked everything so far. Everything.
But you cocked it up, and that’s all you’ll ever get.
Yet while my ego was not of inconsequential size, my actions on Saturday night couldn’t be the only reason why Harper looked so broken in chem. But I wasn’t about to challenge her in class when shewas clearly at the brink. She had her pride.
But someone had hurt Harper.
