Night Music by Jenn Marie Thorne

Author:Jenn Marie Thorne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2019-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

22.

bad idea. I hit West Sixty-sixth Street. So many levels. Sixty-fifth.

When I stepped onto the plaza, I expected to feel the same controlled panic as last time—an astronaut bracing for reentry—but the place seemed to have lost some of its turbulence.

Maybe because I had a singular purpose this time. It wasn’t stalking—it was truth-seeking. Totally honorable.

I seemed to remember Amberley’s rehearsal schedule being fairly regular. Mornings for class, afternoons for sectionals, evenings for full orchestra rehearsals. I “seemed to remember” it because I used to sit in the back of Lilly Hall and watch them, sure I’d be among their ranks one day. It was easy to be sure when you were nine.

I stepped into the ice-cold lobby—empty, good start—and listened. There was no sound in the auditorium except someone talking, too far to hear. I stepped forward, tentative, and then—

The orchestra erupted.

It was familiar, stone and color and wind. I squinted, listening, trying to identify the composer . . .

“Oh my God,” I mouthed. “Oh my God!”

Soundlessly screaming, I opened the door to the auditorium, sliding inside to crouch in the last row. All the house lights were up, but there were a lot of lookie-loos, and not one head turned to see who had popped in. They were all staring forward.

Watching Oscar Bell conduct his own symphony.

It was the theme he’d played me, but hearing it on my piano had been like watching that single light shoot up in the sky before the fireworks go off. Now they had exploded, unexpected colors, a million new directions, and I was stunned. I didn’t know where this chair, this floor, this hall ended and I began.

I only knew, with absolutely certainty, how I felt about the composer.

The second theme came in. The Romantic theme, Dad had called it. I held my breath, listening to it tease and hide and caress the first theme, heal it like balm on a livid burn. It felt like a whispered message meant only for me.

But then, from my hiding spot behind a row of seats, I saw who was playing it. First violin. She was standing up, watching Oscar as she drew out the notes with her bow, piercing in their beauty and longing. It was gorgeous enough to make you believe she was feeling it. That he was too.

The orchestra swelled with a syncopated march beat that I picked out as the sound of the subway, the swoosh and stop and sway and stop. But my eyes kept darting between Oscar, his broad back, hair bobbing, arms flying, and that violinist, playing so beautifully. She was astonishing.

She was impaling my heart with every note.

The strings rose for a bar, then Oscar waved his hands and dropped them and everybody stopped.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Oscar shouted. “That was great, but if you can get to that fire, that”—he made a loose fist—“oomph by bar twenty, it’ll make that pizzicato more jarring. Does that make sense?”

The string section laughed and nodded. A man—Reinhardt, the

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