Free Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez Page B

enjoy music,” I said. “I think they like to pretend. It’s what people in their social circle do, dress up in Gucci and sprinkle money on the lowly artists. Who knows though, when I win the Guarneri, maybe they’ll hook me up with a trust fund.”
    He snorted and leaned over, elbows on knees, fingers laced. His face looked hard, and I knew I’d said something wrong. I shouldn’t have mentioned the Guarneri.
    “You sound confident,” he said.
    “I am.”
    “Hmmm,” he said and glanced back at me, over his shoulder. He didn’t believe me. He knew I was scared. I looked away.
    “Sorry,” he said, and shook his head. “I have a hard time letting my competitive side drop.”
    “I understand.”
    I did understand. One minute I wanted to pick his brain and tell him everything I was thinking, and the next minute I wanted slam his hand in a door.
    We sat, not talking, listening to the cicadas chirp, interrupted by the occasional honk from down the path, where the park met Lake Shore Drive.
    “You know what I love about performing?” he asked. His tone had relaxed again.
    “The applause,” I joked.
    He ignored me. “I love the almost-done. You know, when you’re far enough along and you’ve got the right momentum and you know you aren’t going to screw it up, but you’re still out there, still flying.”
    I closed my eyes and leaned into the back of the bench. It hadn’t felt like flying in a long time.
    “Yeah,” I said. Deep in my stomach, I felt the sadness again.
    I had been wrong about Jeremy understanding me. Nobody could. He came close, closer than anyone else, but then Inderal ruined it. It separated my type of genius from his type of genius.
    “You’re beautiful,” he said.
    I opened my eyes.
    Jeremy’s hair still hung in his eyes and the lamplight washed over his features, casting pointy shadows from his chin and nose.
    I needed a response. I couldn’t think.
    “What time is it?” I asked.
    He blinked. It was the wrong thing to say.
    “The time,” he said, and leaned back so he could reach into his pocket for his cell phone, “is 1:48.”
    “Oh, crap.” I reached down and fumbled for my heels. I had to get home.
    “Past your bedtime?”
    “Kind of,” I said, suddenly aware that I was talking to someone who was allowed to cross continents unsupervised. He would think I was complete baby if I told him I had snuck out. “I’m performing tomorrow night. I should be asleep right now.”
    He nodded, stood up, and took a step out of the lamplight. “You’re one of those people who freaks out if theirpre-performance rituals aren’t just right, aren’t you?” I couldn’t see his face anymore, but scorn had entered his voice. “You seem uptight like that,” he added, more to himself than to me.
    My stomach twisted over on itself. He’d said I was beautiful. And then I’d said the wrong thing, and now I didn’t know what was going on, except that it felt like I’d ruined something.
    “I wouldn’t call a good night’s sleep a ritual,” I stammered. “It’s just common sense. I’m hardly demanding all the brown M&M’s be removed from the premises.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Why did he sound so mean? “Van Halen. It was written into all his contracts. Someone had to go through bowls of M&M’s for his dressing room and remove all the brown ones.” That was Clark’s one area of musical expertise, eighties heavy metal. He had been proud to fill my brain with hard-rock trivia, and I’d been happy to let him because it bugged Diana.
    “Whatever.” Jeremy shrugged, unimpressed.
    I stood up. He didn’t offer me a hand. Not that I’d have taken it.
    We started down the snaking path back to Lake Shore Drive in silence.
    “This is weird,” he said finally.
    I said nothing. It was weird. Wandering around in afreezing cold park after midnight, that was weird. Hanging out with a guy, sadly that was weird too, not to mention that he was my nemesis, my main