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“Focus.” Arjun’s voice slices up my thoughts, juliennes them like vegetables. There is an edge to it. I’ve never played this terribly.
My bow slips out of my fingers, falls to the carpet. Silent tears burn behind my eyes, and I ball up one fist tight, tight, trying not to break down.
“Adina, are you all right? Is something wrong?”
Not something. Everything. The tremor in my fingers spreads up my arms, earthquaking my shoulders. What if it’s starting already? No. No. That’s ridiculous.
Sinking into the chair, I shield my face with my hands, hiding from Arjun, from the portraits of Beethoven and Dvorák and even Claude Debussy himself, who is disappointed I’ve botched his prelude.
Footsteps. Arjun is coming closer. Something touches my right shoulder—his hand. Oh. He rubs it tentatively at first, back and forth, then in circles. Everything in me becomes acutely aware of the few square inches of acrylic his fingers are stroking. My skin is electric beneath it. He has never touched me quite this way before, this intimate, this deliberate.
“Adina,” he says softly, pianissimo. “Adi, please talk to me. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s the matter.”
I drop my hand from my face to find he’s kneeling in front of me. Concern has widened his eyes, and all his earlier harshness has disappeared. He is the Arjun I love again, the Arjun who gave me a cartoon character Band-Aid when I skinned my knee. I wish I could melt off this chair and into his lap.
The tension in my shoulders eases the tiniest bit, and he moves his hand away.
I’ve never wanted to tell anyone about this family heirloom of a disease. But I’ve always been able to talk to Arjun: when school is unbearable, when I’m frustrated with Tovah, when I’ve had a bad day.
I inhale, filling my lungs completely. “My mom . . . she’s sick.”
“Sick how?” He sits back in his chair and turns it toward me. Our legs are almost touching. He is wearing striped socks.
“Do you know what Huntington’s disease is?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure how much I know.”
“Most people don’t.” Leaving out my own genetics, I explain what the disease is, how there is no cure. And then: “My mom has it. She was diagnosed four years ago.”
“I’m so—”
“I have it too,” I blurt, then backtrack. “I mean, I will have it. It’s genetic, and I took a DNA test. A few weeks ago. I—I tested positive. I found out today.” I stare at the floor. “And my sister tested negative.”
Arjun blinks a few times. He lifts an arm as though to reach for me, but then drops it, as though hugging is crossing a boundary he’s already made clear he won’t cross.
“I . . . I had no idea.” He shakes his head. “Sorry doesn’t seem to encompass it, but I’m sorry. So sorry. That’s . . .”
“Shitty. It’s shitty, and there’s no other word for it.” There isn’t enough air in this room either. I will never get enough air into my lungs.
“They find new cures for diseases every day,” he says. “You’re still so young.”
There is the word I hate again: “young.”
“It’s not fair,” he continues. “God, you’re so talented. It’s not fair at all, not to anyone.”
“I know it’s not fair. But—it’s happening.”
Silence for a few moments. I become more aware of how close his chair is to mine, and that nearness distracts me from everything else. Delicate black lashes frame his eyes, and I ache to run my fingers through his neatly combed hair, to mess it up.
I am not some vulnerable fawn, and I won’t let my result turn me into one. I want to be a girl he cannot resist. So I scoot my chair a centimeter closer to his and say, “What happened that day I tried to kiss you?”
“Adina—”
“I’m serious. Why did you stop me?”
He sets his jaw, which is shadowed with stubble. “I told you. I’m your instructor. And you’re only seventeen.”
What he doesn’t say: that he stopped me because he doesn’t like me.
