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“Thank you, Adina,” Professor Mitrovic says.
“Thank you for the opportunity.” I turn to place my viola in its case, but my sore fingers lose their grip. The instrument slips from my hand, plunging straight to the wood floor. It lands with a painful smack, and the professors gasp.
I am frozen for a split second, but I recover it quickly, running my hands over it and making sure it’s okay. My index finger finds a crack near its base, and my heart cracks right along with it. I imagine mahogany blood pooling on the floor beneath me. I got this Primavera viola as a bat mitzvah gift, and I’ve always been so careful with it.
“Everything all right?” Professor Romar asks, but she looks severe, like I have somehow offended her.
“Fine,” I squeak, hugging my case to my chest as I race out of the audition room, my boots skidding on the floor. My feet have a traitorous route all their own.
Aba is meeting up with an old friend who lives in Baltimore, so I have the entire afternoon to myself before we fly back early tomorrow morning. I get on a bus called the Circulator, curiosity pulling me several miles north to Johns Hopkins. My sister has devoted her entire high school life to this place; it must be pretty spectacular.
The route is a study in contradictions. One block is urban, with big buildings and trendy cafés, and the next is full of row houses and yards littered with junk. In Seattle, each neighborhood feels like its own bubble, but here everything runs together.
The campus is not quite as striking as Peabody, a place so beautiful it hosts weddings. Johns Hopkins looks like a textbook college campus: brick buildings and sprawling quad and students slouching beneath the weight of heavy backpacks.
If the past several years had unfolded in a parallel universe, Tovah might be here with me. We would try the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, be tourists at the historical sites, go to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerhoff or the Maryland Science Center.
So far I have exacted only small revenges: embarrassing her in front of her boyfriend, taking the car when she needs it, sneaking into her room and resorting the assignments in her intricate color-coded filing system. I am saving up for a grand finale, though, something that will certainly destroy her. I am a crescendo; I will get louder and louder until I am nothing but noise and destruction.
When I’m done, she will have no choice but to despise me. And when I’m gone, she won’t miss me.
No sadness. No tears. She can have the spotlight to herself, the way she always wanted.
For a second, I waver. Deep in my soul, I wish I could have her back, that we had never been broken apart. One thing she wouldn’t understand, though, is my plan for when my symptoms show up. In Judaism, some people regard suicide as akin to murder. Tovah and I have never talked about it, but then, we’ve never had a reason to. She has never had a reason to feel sad, to fear for her life. If she had tested positive, she’d go to med school and find a fucking cure.
Even if I wanted to, there is no point in making amends. Why should she reconcile with a girl who is as good as dead? We c
annot erase what we’ve done. I cannot go backward, only forward.
“Excuse me. Are you part of the tour?” asks a girl in a blue Johns Hopkins sweatshirt.
I stare at the group of eager kids and their parents that I’ve accidentally fallen into step with. “Yes,” I say. “I am part of the tour,” and I spend the next hour listening to the guide talk about the history and the architecture and the professors and the research opportunities and Johns Hopkins’s world-class reputation. I can understand why Tovah has devoted the past four years of her life to this place.
When the tour ends, I navigate back to the nearest bus stop. If anyone wondered why a prospective Johns Hopkins student was carrying around a viola, they said nothing.
This bus ride, though, I cannot focus on the scenery outside. I keep hearing this sound, like a D-minor chord, and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. I’m not listening to music—perhaps someone disconnected their headphones?
As we’re stuck in traffic, the sound intensifies. I jump from my seat, knocking my viola case to the floor.
“Are you all right?” asks a woman next to me.
“Don’t you hear that?” I ask, twisting my face and clutching my ears tighter. While I love minor chords, this sound, it’s agony.
“Hear what?”
“That noise? It sounds . . . like a minor chord?”
“I don’t hear anything,” she says, eyeing me like I have lost my mind. Everyone else on the bus is unfazed, swiping at their phones or reading books or chatting animatedly with their friends.
It’s suddenly clear only I can hear the minor chord.
The same way my mother hears imaginary dogs barking.
I sit back on the hard seat and cross my legs. The sound follows me back onto the street, making me even more confused. If no one else can hear it, and it’s only happening inside my head . . .
Though I’ve been pondering death for months, the idea of my plan becoming reality sooner than I previously anticipated is enough to make me cold all over. I still haven’t determined how I will end my life. I thought I had more time. I need more time—not just to plan, but to fit everything in. Achieve what I have always dreamed of: me on a stage and a captive audience.
In my mind I do some quick calculations. Perhaps I could audition for a symphony while I’m still in school. I could still become a soloist—maybe, hopefully—but how many tours will I go on? How many sold-out Carnegie Hall performances?
