Blue Notes Page 2

  God, I need a shower. Thumping out an original composition is as hard as a Piloxing class. No one thinks twice about taking a change of clothes to the gym. To the fine arts building, though? Yeah, right. I’m a wad of wet cotton balls held together by jeans and the light sweater I button over my morning-after tank top.

  Not that I have personal experience with mornings after.

  A tingle of fear rushes in at the idea, followed by my distrust of being impulsive. After all, Mom got pregnant at sixteen. Really bad choices followed. I could use all eighty-eight piano keys to count reasons why waiting is a bright idea. Plus . . . well, I’m not very good at trusting people. It took years for me to relax around Clair and John.

  A boyfriend would be nice, though. Someone to talk and laugh with. Touch. Explore. Kinda . . . I don’t know. Practice? I’m not the type to start without knowing where to put my hands. I’m used to knowing what to do with my hands.

  The trek to my dorm awaits. I’ve done it only eight times since transferring from a Baton Rouge community college to Tulane. I don’t know this campus well enough to get back the shortest way. I’m useless with maps. Even poking at my iPhone is useless. What seems so clear on a straight grid gets fuzzed out by the actual shapes of buildings and trees. I’m Dorothy trying to get to the Emerald City. Only, someone forgot to paint the sidewalks yellow.

  I’ll get faster. Or I’ll get over the silly reflex that other students give a crap about how I look. They hurry past. A split second is all. If they’re anywhere near as self-conscious as me, they’re sure as hell not paying attention to me.

  I load up my purple—I love purple—messenger bag with sheaves of notes. Then I pull out my iPod and adjust my earbuds. Forget classical when I’m “off duty.” I search out Florence + the Machine. I like the songs of hers that no one wants to sing at karaoke. The good stuff. The stuff with soul so deep that I’ve developed a really unnatural relationship with her. She’s simply Florence. “Goddess divine” works too.

  Maybe I’m too into the music—mine and Florence and a bit of Zoltán Kodály, because I can never truly escape the classics. They overlap in some weird mash-up. Or maybe I’m too busy reading the hieroglyphics of my phone’s tiny screen.

  Or maybe it’s nothing but a dumb thing the universe throws at me, just to be mean . . .

  Because there’s a man waiting outside the door.

  First thing: chocolate. That’s all I can think. I catch a glimpse of chocolate brown hair that’s long enough to curl at his collar, but really neatly styled. The sunlight from a window at the end of the hallway makes the tips of those curls shine.

  Second thing: an honest to goodness three piece suit. He sure isn’t a student. He isn’t one of the music profs either. They only dress up for performances. Normally they resemble me, half possessed and raggedy. This stranger looks like a full blown executive, but young enough to pull off posh guy trends straight out of Details. Coupled with that sunshine-touched hair, the suit makes him into a heady combination of young and mature.

  Third thing: oh holy damn, he’s ungodly handsome.

  Air sucks up from my lungs and into my throat. Breathing, talking, even thinking—they crunch together like a car smashing into a concrete barrier.

  I start with his eyebrows because they’re a language all on their own. Something like surprise instantly changes into sobriety, and I can read it all across those expressive brows. They’d been lifted in an elegant arc that framed his face and gently furrowed his forehead. Now they flatten into a line that accentuates his sharp features.

  I’m used to unmistakable sternness. I’m also used to sternness moving double quick to fury. Is this guy . . . calm? Assured? Detached? It’s bugging the hell out of me because I can’t read a thing. He stares at me with so much intensity. That doesn’t help how stuck my breath still is.

  “And I thought Katrina was a helluva storm,” he says. “Do we really need more hurricanes in this town?”

  He was listening?

  I cringe, then my skin goes hot. Probably flaming red. To be so exposed to a drop-dead gorgeous guy—a man, really . . . Words fail. Brain cells fail. I stutter a meaningless sound.

  I haven’t been at a loss for words for years, not even when I gave testimony to the judge in San Joaquin. That had been a helluva lot scarier than getting attitude from a souped-up preppie.

  He’s still staring at me with that harsh but oddly unreadable expression. He’s almost beautiful. His features are elegant, as if bred from perfect aristocratic lines. Cheekbones to die for. Lashes tipped with gold. Piercing, heart of a flame blue eyes.

  Absolutely fathomless.

  Then the strangest thing happens. My idiot brain remembers to act like a grown-up. “Where do you get off?” Okay, sort of grown-up.

  His expression barely changes except that his eyebrows again lift into elegant arcs, but these are condescending. He’s talking to an ant and wants me to know it. “Nowhere public.”

  It takes me a few seconds to catch the innuendo. I wind up even more embarrassed. I know the mechanics of a guy getting off, but that’s where my knowledge ends. I want to find some snappy sexual retort that’d really shock him. . . .

  Nope.

  “I’m serious,” I say, my anger rising. That’s what my family does. Did. Confrontation means hackles up and voices raised. “Do you dress up and skulk around the music halls, waiting to insult someone?”

  “I don’t skulk.” He waves a derisive hand toward the open door to my rehearsal room. “Whatever that was would’ve bent anyone’s ear.”

  Speaking of ears and listening, his voice is really getting to me. It’s refined but with that unmistakable New Orleans saunter. Down here people still believe in juju. Or pretend to. Where else can you openly carry voodoo dolls and tarot cards and be taken seriously? New Orleans tops the list. His voice is voodoo. I want to melt into it. Be hypnotized by it.

  Instead, my pride gets the better of me.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t limit your skulking to this place.” He scowls and seems surprised by my words. That gives me another kick of courage. “Why don’t you head over to the art department and knock the wind out of someone else? ‘Sorry, sugar, that color palette is an insult to my eyes.’ ”

  His lips, which had been pressed tight and thin, relax a little. “I didn’t call you ‘sugar.’ ”

  “Small favors.”

  “If I want to talk about how things look.” He flashes his gaze up and down my body. It’s definitely not appreciative. “You give me a lot to work with.”

  Talk about hitting a girl where she lives. Better yet, we’ve gathered a small crowd. Five or six students carrying different instrument cases stop to watch the drama. I would’ve, myself, had our places been reversed.

  “I’ve been rehearsing for an hour,” I say, proud that my words are steady and forceful. “You’ve been, what, primping for an hour? Give me that much time and I could look like a pretentious snob too.”

  He doesn’t get mad. I don’t know what to do with that. The way I was reared, a moment like this escalates to vicious levels—or worse than that, like when my mom threatened to turn state’s evidence against my dad.

  Instead, this guy seems amused. The relaxed lull of his lips has turned into a half smile that would outshine most I’m really trying smiles. “You really don’t know who I am,” he says with a chuckle nearly as hypnotic as his voice.

  I’m burning from the skin inward, but I stand my ground. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m not even sure myself. I appreciate the laugh, though.”

  It’s not even his words that bug me. It’s his tone and the way he’s looking at me, like I was put on this earth to be his jester. I so want to hit him. A messenger bag can be turned into a weapon, right? I think the little crowd of onlookers wants it. I can feel expectation like a rising wind.

  But I beha
ve. I’m a living, breathing example of what amazing foster parents can do for a kid. Catfights are for girls on recess yards. I owe Clair and John better than that. They taught me that I owe myself better than that.

  “Fine, be a jerk.” I lift my chin and tug the strap of my bag. “Yeah, I’m loud and I’m a mess, but I’m damn good at what I do. You, however . . . You can get out of my way.”

  He steps dramatically back, even offering a condescending bow. “Like this, sugar?”

  “Dick.”

  I turn away before I make a bigger scene. The impulse to run is really strong, but I’m okay. Right? Sure. No biggie. Just walk away as if I know where the hell I’m going. Which I don’t. I’m blinking past a wash of red.

  “Dead end that way,” the stranger calls.

  I come to an emergency door.

  Screw it.

  I slam the door’s horizontal exit bar. It gives way. I let that get out impulse take over. I’m so wound up. I can’t think of anything else. Just get down the stairs and escape.

  As alarms ricochet through Dixon Hall, I really don’t care.

  Two

  “Did you hear something about the emergency alarm at the music building? Probably not the best for practicing!”

  Great.

  That’s my roommate, Janissa Simons’s, first question when I open our dorm door. She looks up from her vanity/desk combo. My side of the cramped room mirrors hers. I flop my bag on the floor and sprawl on my single bed. The western sun streams through the room’s single wide window. It’s bordered with thick, plain brown curtains that match the low, low carpeting. Instead of Better Homes & Gardens, we get the answer to that eternal admin question: How many years can we accommodate sloppy coeds before we need to renovate?

  “Yeah, I heard it,” I say, noting the cringe in my voice.

  “I thought you’d be over there.” Janissa smiles. “You look like it, anyway.”

  Great flicks through my brain again. I knew it. Apparently I don’t just play like a hurricane. I wind up looking like I was caught in one, especially after running half blind past the great oaks of Newcomb Quad.

  Funny, I didn’t get lost. Propelled by instinct, I guess.

  I wonder if our having known each other two weeks is enough for Janissa to pick up on my funky mood. “Gee, thanks. I didn’t have time to stop by the salon on the way home.”

  She waves a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I wish I could get so worked up about anything.”

  Janissa’s a chemistry major. We speak a variant of math, she’d said during our first day moving in. Technically that’s true. Music theory involves a lot of math. So does chem.

  It was enough for us to start up a quick, very necessary friendship. Geek Number One, meet Geek Number Two. She has the sleek hair of a starlet from the ’40s, all auburn perfect. But she never styles it. Just lets it flop down her back. I suspect it’s so long because she never makes time to get it cut. Doesn’t matter. It’s beautiful and so is she.

  “Don’t give me that,” I say, grinning. “When you really get going, you wear pajama bottoms all weekend.”

  She grins in return. “Too true. Clean undies is about the best I can manage.”

  “My obsession is the piano. Yours is in your brain.”

  “Nah. You should’ve seen the time I lit an entire magnesium strip in my AP class.”

  “You’re gonna have to explain that one.”

  She turns in her chair with a bright, animated gleam in her green eyes. “See, magnesium is a quick flash–burning metal. It’s thin and can be cut in these long strips that get rolled up. So many uses.”

  I let that one slide, because as much as I like Janissa, I don’t need to follow every detail to get a kick out of her stories. She’s sweet, a year younger than me, short, with a ton of grace and a great figure. Like, D-cup hourglass great. Maybe guys don’t swarm her because, pajama pants aside, she usually wears sweats and old T-shirts from when she played water polo in high school. She still swims every day, so she has great muscle tone too.

  Not me. I have long fingers—the better to play piano with, said the big bad wolf. Everything about me is long and thin. Unless I’m sitting at a piano bench, I’m as graceful as a giraffe bending down in an attempt to drink.

  That didn’t stop my dad. It wasn’t long after I hit puberty that he started talking about me “earning my keep.” Circumstance meant I never got around to learning firsthand what he meant by that, but the words had been enough to turn my stomach to rancid meat.

  “So,” Janissa continues, “I needed an inch or so for a hypothesis about—” With another grin, she catches herself. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I wondered what would happen if, well . . . if the whole roll caught fire.”

  “You daredevil,” I tease.

  “In this case, yeah. Magnesium burns so bright, you wouldn’t believe it. I dropped it quick into a petri dish, which melted. I was at the back of the class and it just glowed. I couldn’t look away. Just stared at how bright and big it was. My lab partner had been at the teacher’s desk. She told me later that it’d looked like a flaming sunrise.”

  “And the teacher?”

  Janissa laughs and tugs her hair back from her oval face. “Not amused. I got suspended for two days.”

  “You? A whole two days? No way.”

  She nods. “My parents sure as hell cared, but I didn’t. One of the coolest things I’ve ever done, which, now that I think of it, is pretty sad.”

  “Not sad,” I say. “Just proof of what I told you. You get worked up about your favorite things too.”

  “Whatever. I bet you’ve never done anything that stupid. And except for really needing a shower right now, you’re always so put together.”

  So wrong on so many levels, I don’t know where to start. So I don’t.

  But she’s sweet to say I’m put together. That much is deeply ingrained. Always look pretty, Mom used to say. Not because she wanted a beauty queen for a daughter or anything, but because a tidy girl fits in at new schools. No threat that social services will come calling.

  I wish I’d looked good for him.

  Dammit. A dumb, stray thought about what I should’ve done or said when confronted by that arrogant bastard. Apparently I need to keep torturing myself over someone I’ll never meet again.

  I appreciate the laugh, though. . . .

  Sugar.

  Still on the bed, I exhale quietly. My tension doesn’t leave. Neither do the memories. Goose bumps cover my skin. “Sugar” could be such a cool endearment. He’d made it into a slur.

  I prop myself on my elbows. “You wanna get dinner? I’ll keel over if I don’t eat soon.”

  “Can’t.” She glances at the digital clock on our minifridge/microwave combo. “I have thermodynamics in twenty.”

  Sure enough, a vibrating buzz shakes her phone on her desk. She has alarms for everything—as bad with time as I am with maps.

  Janissa packs up and leaves with a wave and a smile. I’m left alone with my thoughts. Even my longed-for shower doesn’t wash away the afternoon.

  I can’t get him off my mind.

  My classes are over for the day. I call Clair, but I only get her voice mail. I try to keep my voice steady as I say a casual “Hi, I just miss you both.” She’ll probably hear through it. She always does.

  So I need something else to do, like write down what I’d composed that afternoon—the hurricane session, apparently—and maybe watch Say Yes to the Dress while nursing a pint of Cherry Garcia.

  Instead, I rummage through my desk to find the letter I’ve been ignoring all week. It bears the Tulane seal. I wear a ring with the same seal. It’s given to juniors to wear upside down until graduation. I’m still getting used to wearing it.

  The letter lists the name of my freshman mentee. Is that the right word? I’m her
mentor. She must be my mentee. Too bad this girl, Adelaide Deschamps, will be at a complete loss with me as her guide. I wear a hefty, important ring, and mentor sounds so impressive, but I’m living in a dorm for the first time. Considering my ineptitude with maps, I can’t even give directions for a damn. Two weeks on campus. Three weeks in town. No experience with guys or stability or telling the whole truth. My only friend so far is nearly as socially withdrawn as me.

  What do I have to offer this poor girl?

  At least Adelaide is a music major too—though musical theater, not composition like me.

  I dial the number on the letter.

  I’m not prepared for the blaring Dixieland that vomits out of my iPhone. I glare at it as if Steve Jobs himself were to blame for blowing up my eardrums.

  “Hello?” The word is shouted. Of course it is.

  “Adelaide?” I’m glad our room is empty because I need to shout in return. “I’m Keeley Chambers, your music department mentor.”

  “Yeah, I’m Adelaide.”

  That’s it. No, Glad to hear from you. Or maybe, I was hoping you’d call first because I was nervous too! Just blaring Dixieland.

  I want to hang up. This has already taken a lot more guts than I usually manage. Stick with it, my foster dad would say. Then again, my real dad used to say the same thing. But such a huge difference in meaning.

  “I called to see when you can meet up,” I say. “Get to know each other.”

  “Right, yeah. That’s fine.”

  She sounds really young. A freshman, probably.

  “This’ll be good for both of us.” I feel like I’m reading a script.

  “Now’s good,” the girl shouts. “You know Yamatam’s off South Carrollton?”

  “Sure,” I lie.