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“She what?” Miki gasps. The melody stops.
“Sorry, dude.” Jude murmurs. “That’s brutal.”
“What she do to you?” Miki continues. “If you want to share.”
“Let’s see.” I begin counting on my fingers. “She broke up with me one day out of the blue, said she didn’t want to ‘see me anymore’.”
“Who says that?” Jude scoffs.
“Well, she was sixteen at the time. We both were,” I explain. “But she made her feelings pretty clear. The next day,” I keep counting on my fingers, “her dad called my very expensive boarding prep school in Massachusetts and reported me for ra—for forcing myself on his daughter.”
Another gasp from Miki.
“We had only ever kissed. Anyway, the school expelled me. Yale expelled me as well—they had accepted me in their honors program, early acceptance. I was blacklisted from every other college. I tried to hide the accusation from my mom, but it was impossible. My mom cried herself to sleep every night, on top of already crying herself to sleep every night. We had lost my dad only two years ago. My mom had to take a leave of absence from New York’s philharmonic’s busiest season, to help me apply to every college that might take me at last notice. None did. My grandpa…”
I take a sharp breath. I feel like I’m underwater.
“My grandpa died of a heart attack two weeks later. And I can’t help thinking that these accusations about me, as well as the complete and utter loss of my future, are what broke his heart. He was perfectly healthy before. He wasn’t sixty years old yet. My dad had died on the floor in the opera’s backstage room, in my little brother’s arms, two years ago. After that, it was just my mom and my grandpa who raised us. And just when I thought it wasn’t possible to lose anymore, my grandpa, the one who had tried to fill my dad’s shoes, went to sleep and never woke up. All our lives were obliterated once more within seconds. Everything, just… gone.”
Miki looks away.
“Why did the school believe her dad?” Jude asks, his voice choked up.
“He was a millionaire or something. Even though his daughter always wore the same ripped sweater.”
Jude chews on this for a second.
“This poet girl is supposed to be dirt poor. Or near enough,” he says.
“I’m holding hope that it’s a different girl,” I tell him. Holding on to it for dear life.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s her or not,” Miki says slowly. “If she reminds you of your girl so strongly that you… you nearly threw up last night, then I don’t want her anywhere near us.”
Jude quickly looks at him, and Miki clamps his lips shut. What was that about?
“What was her name?” Jude says after another long silence. He’s shuddering.
Miki looks like he wants to throw up.
I shrug. I don’t want to say it. Not yet. Not until I absolutely have to.
I try to take a shallow breath, and it burns my lungs going in.
I turn around to face them—both their eyes are rimmed red.
“I lied,” I say and two pairs of surprised, misty eyes meet mine. They know me; I don’t lie. “She doesn’t look exactly like her. I think sheisher.”
…
Jude swallows hard. Miki avoids my eyes.
“What?” I ask.
Are they pitying me right now? Because if they are, I swear, I’ll throw myself in the Ionian sea like Icarus or something. Only, you know, on the other side of Greece.
“What, guys? You’re freaking me out.”
“It’s just…” Jude shifts his feet, crossing one leg over his knee. “I don’t know that you can fire her, Isaiah.”
