Then there was Bryce. He lived in Boston. He and Annika saw each other all the time. They talked. They…
I shouldn’t have come to camp. But I had no choice. I had to know. Would this be the beginning or the end? It’d be the longest three weeks of my life if Annika…
If she…
Rejected me.
Don’t think about it, Kat. I squeezed my brain shut. You love St. Ives. You love it.
I did. I loved coming here, playing here. I’d won a full scholarship to continue attending through the end of high school. St. Ives was special, elite. It was a camp for musical prodigies.
We laughed at that too. I never believed I was a prodigy. I worked hard; we all did. We worked our butts off.
Even Bryce. He could work himself into oblivion.
The sign for Deer Creek Junction flew by so fast it only registered as a blip. I had to slam on the brakes and skid to a stop on a curve. Mom would have a heart attack if she saw that.
Sorry, Mom, I mentaled her. Distracted. I turned around.
Annika’s last e-mail: “I know ur thinking about not coming. But u have to, Kat. U HAV 2. Do it 4 U.”
Why didn’t she say, “Do it 4 me?” Everything I did, I did for myself. The practicing, performing, planning for my future. If I had a future.
Annika had added, “Bryce calld last wk. He’s coming 4 sur.” A happy face.
The two of them had gone to the Met in New York. She’d flown to Boston on spring break.
My insides twanged a mass of snapped strings and frayed bows. The feelings, the longings. Not only for Annika, but for life on a human scale. A physical existence.
The duet, the Martinů, had sustained me all these months. The look in her eyes. The chance, the hope that maybe there was more to us than music.
St. Ives. Ten more miles. Ten more minutes to Annika. Concentrate, Kat. Focus on the road. Don’t think. Even if she doesn’t return your feelings, it doesn’t mean the world will end. A meteor won’t crash to Earth and crush every living thing.
Yes, yes, it will. She has to love me back. If she doesn’t, the fire inside me will die. The notes, the lyric — “I love you. I’ve always loved you” — had to be said, sung, shouted out loud.
I parked next to one of the St. Ives minivans. There were four now. They were used to haul groceries and supplies and instruments and musicians to concerts and competitions in surrounding valleys and mountain towns. The vans carted campers from the airport, or designated pickup points. I usually rode up in the van. Annika’s parents drove her. All the way from Maine, they drove. Bryce came with them. They stayed in the same hotel. The same room?
Our final concert at the end of camp would draw a thousand people, easy. Parents and promoters and music school recruiters …
Music school.
This might be my final concert. I’d made my decision. If Annika rejected me, I was giving up the violin.
A chorus of giggles rose over the lake. Family groups paddleboating with their kids. There were more kids every year. More prodigies. As Annika and I got older, everyone else got younger. And better. More talented, it seemed. More determined. Or pushed. If I relented, if I took a break, forfeited my chair, there were scores of musical geniuses eager to take my place. Bryce would try to win back principal this year. All you had to do was watch him practice, see his soul leave his body as he became one with his cello, to know he had the fire.
Annika would watch him, mesmerized. She’d whispered once, “He’s amazing. Isn’t he?”
I grabbed my violin off the front seat and my duffel from the back. I got as far as the edge of the parking lot when I felt her. My eyes raised and saw her.
She was sitting at the top of the knoll, hugging her knees. She leapt to her feet, screaming, and tore down the hill. I set my duffel and violin case on the grass and started running too. We hit each other full speed, full tilt, and went flying. Grass and ground blurred my vision.
We rolled and rolled, wrapped in each other’s arms. “Oh my God. Kat.” Laughing and crying, Annika squeezed my face between her hands. “I was so afraid you weren’t coming.” Her face moved closer to mine, and I thought — prayed — she’d… please. At the last moment her lips veered away from mine and her cheek pressed against my face. Her arms smothered me in a suffocating hug.
I couldn’t breathe. Not only because she’d rolled on top of me; she smelled like pancakes and pinecones and L’Air du Temps.
“Kat. Damn you!” Roughly, she pushed off. “Why didn’t you write to me!” She pounded my shoulder into the ground.
“Ow. I did.”
“Eight times,” she said. “I wrote you eight hundred thousand times.”
A million times, I didn’t tell her. A million times I wrote to you. I couldn’t press Send. I couldn’t put the cards in the mail. The letters were too intimate. She had to hear this in person.
“Kat!” She clenched my face in a vise grip and pounded my head on the ground. “You cut your hair. I almost didn’t know you.”
Oh, Annika, I thought. Do you know me?
She looked at me, studied me, threw back her head and laughed. Then she hugged me again and rolled over, taking me with her. We tumbled off the grass and into the parking lot. Gravel crunched my spine.
She wouldn’t let up. She clung, her body pressed to mine. She was shaking, heaving with laughter. Laughter? I tried to push away from her, but couldn’t. She had me in a choke hold.
She squeezed my head so tight I couldn’t think. “Annika?” My voice sounded high, out of range.
“Let me just make sure you’re here,” she said. She crushed me one last time in an embrace. Then flung herself away and scrabbled to sit, yanking me up beside her.
We both exhaled long breaths. She smiled. I smiled. She said, “I love it.”
My whole body seized. “What?”
“Your hair.”
“Oh.” I deflated. “Yeah, well. It looks better without the grass and dirt.” I bent forward and tousled my hair with my hands. Right after I made my decision to come, I’d had my hair chopped and streaked blue and maroon. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like me. What was like me?
She scooted back onto the lawn and tugged on my shirt. I scrabbled up next to her. Touching shoulders, we looked, then looked away.
She lifted hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“You got your hair cut too,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Drastic.” She feathered her bangs.
Her hair was beautiful, curly or straight. But I didn’t care about her hair.
“Annika —“
“Where is —?” She leaned forward and glanced around the van. “Oh God.” She held her heart. “For a minute I thought you didn’t bring your violin.”
I choked. Literally. Annika laughed. It made me laugh. We both knew how ridiculous that was. My violin was an appendage, like her cello. I almost asked where it was, but enough stalling.
Extending my legs, I began again, “Annika.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. Slowly, deliberately, she twisted to face me. “Yes, Kat.” She fluttered her eyelashes.
Dammit, don’t joke around, I thought.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Chunks I’d been blowing for a week. “I have to tell you something.”
Annika pressed two fingers to my lips. “Shut up. It’s been a year.”
Her fingers moved across my cheek and spread apart. Her other hand found my other cheek. With her thumbs under my chin, she drew me close. She kissed me.
Martinů played in my head. Finely tuned, fiercely pitched. We came apart, our lips making a soft suction sound, a conductor’s baton. I locked on her eyes.
“What?” she said.
“Bryce.”
She made a face. “What about him?”
“Are you… ? Does he… ?”
She hunched her shoulders and lifted her palms. “What?”
“You said you’re glad he’s coming.”
Sh
e scoffed. “Well, yeah. He’s my only competition. I plan to beat the crap out of him again.” She cocked her head. “Why? What’d you think?”
I couldn’t speak. My heart roared in my ears. I said the only thing I could. “I was scared. So scared you —“ My throat constricted.
“Kat, I swear.” Annika shook her head. Then pinched me on the arm.
Ow.
“All these years,” she said. “All this time.” Her eyes filmed. “You’re tone-deaf, you know that? You never could pick up the beat.” She exhaled disgust, or something, then caressed my cheek again. I transferred the weight of my head to her hand. The weight of it.
“You always come in late,” Annika said. She pressed her forehead to mine. “Tune in, girl. I love you.”
In this honest, emotionally captivating short story collection, renowned author and National Book Award finalist Julie Anne Peters offers a stunning portrayal of teens as they navigate the hurdles of relationships and sexual identity. From the young lesbian taking her first steps toward coming out, to the two strangers who lock eyes across a crowded train, to the transgender teen longing for a sense of self, or the girl whose abusive father has turned her to stone, Peters is the master of creating characters whose vulnerabilities resonate and stay with you long after the last page is turned. Grl2grl shows the rawness of teenage emotion as young adults begin to discover the intricacies of love and dating.
JULIE ANNE PETERS is the critically acclaimed author of Define “Normal,” Keeping You a Secret, Between Mom and Jo, Far from Xanadu, and National Book Award finalist Luna. Her Web site is www.julieannepeters.com.
Julie Anne Peters, Grl2grl: Short Fictions
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