People muttered and whispered around me. I was still on the music floor, so most of them were musicians. People I knew, people I’d trained with, but they’d never seen me like that and it was freaking them out.
Somebody fetched Natasha, and I remember her arriving in leotard and pointe shoes and walking me very carefully down the stairs to the main door, one step at a time. I could feel a crowd of musicians watching our retreating backs, waiting until we were out of earshot before they started guessing at what might have happened.
It’s difficult to find a private place at Fenbrook—the stairs are like highways and the corridors are never empty. Natasha took me outside, into the freezing air. It wasn’t snowing, but it felt like it might start at any moment.
Natasha was speaking, and I picked out the words “panic attack,” but as with Professor Harman her words seemed to be coming from a long way away. I didn’t feel like I was having a panic attack. I wasn’t hyperventilating; I barely seemed to be breathing at all.
Her hands were on my shoulders and she kept telling me to look at her. I was looking at her, although she was sort of blurry. I kept thinking how cold she must be, in her leotard, and I wondered why she looked so scared.
And then I don’t remember anything at all.
***
I woke to a triangle of faces, one of them with long red hair. I focused, and saw Natasha, Clarissa and Jasmine. I seemed to be lying on my back, looking up at them.
“Hello,” I said.
“How do you feel?” asked Natasha. I could see the relief in her eyes, and immediately felt awful for whatever I’d done to scare her.
“Okay. I think.” I tried to sit up, and they immediately pushed me back down. I was on some sort of sofa that didn’t look like the furniture at Fenbrook. Where was I?
“Are you you?” Jasmine asked. “Are you back?”
“Back?”
“You went a bit catatonic for a while,” said Clarissa. “You scared the hell out of us.”
“Catatonic?”
“Maybe I should slap her,” said Jasmine. Clarissa caught her hand.
“I’m not going to graduate,” I said suddenly, because I realized they didn’t know. I told them what had happened and watched their faces fall. All three of them took turns hugging me, but it didn’t make it any better.
When they eventually let me sit up, I saw there were thick black curtains all around us, and I wasn’t on a sofa but a chaise-longue. “Where are we?” I asked.
“Backstage in the main hall,” Jasmine told me. “When you passed out on the steps, we thought we’d better bring you somewhere quiet.” She nodded at the chaise-longue. “That’s for Julius Caesar.”
I could tell they all wanted to say something to make it okay, but there was nothing they could offer, no Plan B they could suggest. Flunking students weren’t allowed to repeat a year at Fenbrook—competition for places was too fierce. I had no options, other than to start over at a different college—and my father would never allow that. After Boston and Fenbrook, he wouldn’t want the humiliation of me trying—and possibly failing—for a third time.
It was all my fault, me and my stupid shyness, sitting there failing presentation after presentation. I’d known I had a problem, but I’d thought I could rely on my playing to make up the lost credit. Now the one weapon in my arsenal was being withheld from me.
I thanked them all, then stood up and pushed my way out through the curtains.
“Are you going to be okay?” asked Clarissa.
“I just need to be alone.” I climbed down off the stage and walked through the eerie, empty hall, not looking back.
Outside in the hallway, Vincent—another cellist, who’d once had a thing with Natasha—was standing clutching my cello, having retrieved it for me from Professor Harman’s office. He helped me strap it onto my back, and I could tell he wanted to speak…but couldn’t find the words.
“What are you going to do?” he asked at last, as I pushed the doors to the street open.
I hesitated on the threshold. “I honestly have no idea,” I told him, without turning around. And then I left Fenbrook, possibly for the last time.
Chapter 4
Standing outside in the street with the freezing wind whipping around me, I felt broken inside. Empty, as if something had been ripped violently out of me.
I considered going home, but the empty apartment felt like it didn’t belong to me anymore. I’d lived there while I was attending Fenbrook, and that was over.
I wound up going to Harper’s. I ordered a coffee and then sat there not drinking it, half-hearing the chatter around me. A mixture of students and civilians, and every one of them had things to do that afternoon: classes to go to, music to learn, boyfriends to see.