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“She was almost fired over it,” I remind them.

Summer band camp doesn’t exactly bring out the best in people, especially by midweek. Hauling heavy instruments in hundred-degree weather, blowing every breath you’ve got into music you haven’t learned yet, and fresh breakouts around your lips as your mouthpiece jams every drop of sweat right back into your pores makes you cranky. It’s not ideal, but it still wasn’t okay for the flag instructor to toss out the big no-no when a girl lost her pole grip and Miss Upton took one in the face.

“I think you’d swear if your nose was broken too,” Lilly says. She sneaks a glance at me and adds, “Maybe.”

“Yeah, and anyway, she didn’t actually say fuck,” Brooke goes on, ignoring my wince. “It was more like—” She dumps some milk into her palm, huffs it up her nose, covers her face with her hands, and makes an inarticulate noise that might or might not be a swear. I can’t tell because I’m already pushing back from the table to avoid the white froth Brooke is spewing everywhere.

“What?” she asks. “Too much?”

“No wonder you don’t have a boyfriend,” Lilly says.

Brooke waves her off as she wipes her face with a napkin. “Who cares? Unlike Sasha, I can survive without a trom . . . boner.”

And there it is. At least once a week. Why couldn’t I date a drummer?

I wad up my own napkin, tossing it into my chili, where it immediately starts to soak up grease and sink.

“Seriously. Why are we even friends?”

Brooke stops laughing, managing to look dignified even with twin rivers of milk flowing from her nostrils. “I really don’t know,” she says.

And somehow, I feel like I didn’t win that one.

There is nothing as beautiful as silver against black.

My clarinet rests in its case, but not for long. It’s time to practice, time to smell wet cork and my own breath, time for my brain to disconnect and my fingers to move of their own volition, music seeping out from under my bedroom door until Mom calls me down to dinner. And maybe even after that, if I play softly enough that they can’t hear.

Six years ago Mr. Hunter brought us into the high school band room, our little sixth-grade bodies small enough to fit into the instrument cages. He showed us every instrument, played a B flat major scale on each one, sent little slips home to our parents explaining financing options and the pros and cons of new versus used.

I knew what I wanted, even then. An unswerving dedication fired in my soul at the sight of the clarinet. I’m not like Lilly, who started out on trumpet, said it hurt her lips too much and tried a sax, flaked out and switched over to the flute, which she’s stayed with for two years—but I’ve seen her casting looks at the oboes lately. I’m not like Brooke either, happy to stand in the back and hit bells, drums, timpani, freshmen, anything that gets close to her mallets.

They chose music because we always did things together, from dressing up like triplet bunnies at Halloween to making a pact that our boyfriends always had to get along with one another or it was a deal breaker. Lilly’s talents extended from the orchestra pit to the stage, even if she had yet to snag a lead role, while Brooke had transposed her penchant for hitting things into a decent softball career.

Me, I live by one thing. And I do it well.

I snap the joints together and tighten the ligature, ignoring the slight scream in my wrist as I do. My hands have crackled since seventh grade, the tendons forever swollen and stiff. Mom keeps warning me that I’m doing permanent damage. Dad doesn’t comment because he always has earplugs in.

It’s together now, resting on my lap, the last rays of the evening sun slipping through my window and bouncing off the keys. I love how it looks so complicated, spikes of silver flaring, empty holes of nothingness, a mass of wood and metal that almost seems vicious until you hear its voice. Low. Melodic. Lulling. It can convince you of anything if you listen to it long enough. My hands find their place and do their work. They must want Brahms tonight because that’s what my ears get.

There’s nothing better than letting your brain go dead. I use it so much, taxing it to the limit with facts, theories, definitions—whatever I need to regurgitate for the next test. Then I push everything I dedicated my mind to for the week out the back door to make room for the next batch, the next test, a red A+ bleeding onto the white of whatever paper I wrote last.

It’s my hands that know the clarinet, not my brain. It unclenches, resting lightly in a fluid bed as Brahms rocks it to sleep, the curtains of my eyelids drawing shut to give it peace from the daylight.

My phone goes off.

I jolt, knocking my teeth against the mouthpiece. The reed cracks and I suck back a word that I’d yell at Brooke for saying. I settle for growling deep in my throat as I dig through the mass of covers on my bed for the phone. It dings at me again, lighting up enough for me to see it under the pillow where it slipped when I tossed it on the bed.

There’s a text from an unfamiliar number, with a monosyllabic message.

hey

I don’t hesitate with my response. A few years ago Kate Gulland accidentally sexted with her boyfriend’s dad because of a single-digit mix-up. She said it made Christmas dinner incredibly awkward.

Who is this?

There’s no answer. I stare at the screen until the opening bars of Beethoven’s Eighth that I use as my background begin to blur into each other. I roll onto my belly, phone still in hand but composure shattered. Full-on practice mode is my favorite place to be, but it’s not an easy one to get to. Recapturing the semiconscious state that I prefer will take a full ten minutes, only to be interrupted again as soon as dinner is ready.

The phone vibrates in my hand, light bouncing off my palm.