Chapter 4: The Countdown

Richmond, Virginia – October to November

October arrives in Richmond like a slow exhale. The humidity breaks. The leaves on Monument Avenue turn the color of rust and old pennies. The air smells like woodsmoke and decay and the faint, sweet rot of persimmons dropping from the trees in Nana Ruth’s backyard. I walk barefoot through it all, through the piles of crackling leaves, through the cold puddles left by autumn rains, through the first mornings when I can see my breath.

I don’t wear a coat. I don’t wear a jacket. I wear my skin, and my skin learns the seasons.

The days settle into a rhythm. School. Practice. School. Practice. The winter showcase is in December, and Rachmaninoff’s Third is a beast that doesn’t care about my feelings. It demands every ounce of technique, every shred of emotional stamina, every hour I can steal from sleep. I practice four hours a day. Five on weekends. My fingers are raw, wrapped in medical tape. My shoulders ache from the tension. But the music is coming. It’s coming like a tide, slow and unstoppable.

Liam practices with me. Not on the piano, but on his trumpet. We’ve become a strange, unspoken duet. He’ll be in Practice Room 3, working on the Haydn, and I’ll be in Practice Room 4, wrestling with Rachmaninoff. We’ll finish around the same time, meet in the hallway, and walk to the auditorium to run our pieces together on the Steinway, him standing beside the stage, his trumpet gleaming under the lights.

It’s during those sessions that I feel most myself. Not because I’m naked I’m always naked. But because the music strips away everything else. The petition. Morrison. Brittany. The stares. There’s just sound, and shape, and the way his eyes close when he hits a high note, like he’s praying.

By the second week of October, we’ve started talking after practice. Real talk. Not about music.

We sit on the edge of the stage, our feet dangling. He’s fully dressed in jeans, a hoodie, and his silver chain. I’m not. The contrast doesn’t feel strange anymore. It feels like a fact, like the color of his hair or the shape of his hands.

“My dad left when I was seven,” he tells me one night. “He was a trumpet player too. Traveling musician. He said he’d come back after the tour. That was twelve years ago. I still have his old mouthpiece. I use it every day.”

“Does he ever call?”

“Sometimes. On my birthday. He’s always in a different city. Las Vegas. Nashville. Orlando. He sent me a postcard from Branson once. ‘Wish you were here.’” Liam laughs, but it’s hollow. “I don’t wish I was there. I wish he was here.”

I reach over and take his hand. My bare fingers interlace with his calloused ones. “I know that feeling. The waiting. Hoping. The part of you that never stops believing they’ll walk through the door.”

“You think they ever do?”

“I think we have to stop waiting for them to walk through. We have to walk through our own doors.”

He looks at me. The stage lights are dim, but I can see the glint of tears in his eyes. “You’re so wise for a fifteen-year-old.”

“I’m not wise. I’m just tired of lying.”

He squeezes my hand. We didn’t kiss that night. We don’t need to.

The photo leaked on October 18th.

I’m in chemistry when Priya’s phone buzzes. She glances at it, and her face goes white. She passes the phone to me under the lab table.

It’s a picture of Liam and me. Kissing. In the auditorium. The stage lights are behind us, silhouetting our bodies. I’m naked. He’s in his t-shirt. Our lips are touching. It’s intimate. It’s private. And it’s on the school’s anonymous confessions page.

The caption: “So much for ‘it’s not about attention.’”

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. My vision blurs. My hands start to shake.

“Who took this?” I whisper.

“Does it matter?” Priya hisses. “It’s everywhere. It’s been shared 200 times in the last hour.”

I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I finish my lab experiment with acid-base titration, careful measurements, steady hands, and I walk to the music wing during my free period. I find Liam in Practice Room 3. He’s holding his phone, staring at the same image.

“I didn’t,” he starts.

“I know.”

“I would never”

“I know, Liam. I know.”

He puts down his phone and walks to me. He doesn’t touch me, not yet. He just stands there, breathing hard.

“Brittany,” he says. “It has to be her. She was at the auditorium that night. She said she was looking for her phone. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“She set us up.”

“Yeah.” He runs his hand through his hair. “What do we do?”