When We Were Infinite: List 2

My friends had all known one another a long time, but I was still new then; my friendship with them felt tenuous, and it was in the midst of that fighting that I first went to one of their houses.

He died, turned all the way around, and appraised me, a game-day grin spreading across his face. “You been holding out on us, Claire? What are you, some kind of gamer girl?”

Sometimes, growing up, my father had acted like dads did in books or movies—he’d bring home trinkets for me, or he’d come to my shows or back-to-school nights or take us hiking at Sanborn Park.

He liked obscure, process-oriented games where you built something, a house or a rocket ship or an army.

My father despised what he called girl toys—dolls, princess things, anything overtly feminine—and wanted me to be a devoted gamer instead.

He would flinch at each of my mistakes, his voice rising, until he’d commandeered the keyboard again and I stood next to him, inadequate and cast out.

But at lunch that first day back, I looked down at the sandwich I was eating and thought how it would become the glucose flowing through my bloodstream, the amino acids that would form my cells, and what had happened with Jason felt that way too, as though it had become a physical part of me: tangible and permanent, a sharp cold feeling in the abdomen and a wavering of the heart, an extra weight to carry around like so many new cells.

That evening, my phone on loud in case he called, I finally thought of something I could do for him. It was small, and it was frivolous.

There was something in his face that could have been wariness, or could have been a warning; I couldn’t tell.

She hadn’t expected that vehemence, I don’t think, although to be honest I hadn’t either.

But my point, if you’d just listen for like eight seconds, is that you never know what’s going to make you snap and maybe we actually could turn out like that, who knows. I don’t think anyone can say they’re like some inherently good person and there’s things they would just never do, so they never have to worry about it.

He made a frustrated noise and looked to me for help. A sharp ache flickered through me at losing this forever after graduation—my role as the mediator between them. Having people who I knew well enough to mediate.

My dad—after he first came here, he did his residency in this small town in Michigan and people were really horrible to him and he got really jaded.

The season was about to start, and I’d never liked basketball season because Brandon would get absorbed into Leo and the others for nebulous basketball-related reasons.

Because it was official now: I wouldn’t keep playing after this in any real capacity, and a life without violin, when I thought too hard about it, felt colorless and bleak.

Mostly they’d talk about adult things, or sometimes they would rehash or pointedly not rehash the same fights they’d probably had all through my mother’s life, but my grandfather would play tic-tac-toe with me or do math tricks on the paper placemats and my grandmother would grab my hand and press gifts inside, lai see or sometimes gold jewelry in zippered fabric envelopes from the jeweler’s, and then fold my fingers closed over them.

They were financially comfortable now, but my mother had once told me that had come too late; they’d been marked by the difficulty of their earlier years in a way money couldn’t assuage now.

Tara was tall and willowy and a little exhausting—someone who would sidle up to you and ask how you were doing so that when you reciprocated she could launch into an extensive detailing of her latest drama.

I couldn’t bring myself to join in the joke. Because if it was the wrong move, if it upset him, then I would be implicated in it too.

In AP Bio, we’d just done a study on plankton whose phosphorescence made trails across the sea, glowing in the darkness of the depths like the northern lights, and Jason touching me, his arm bare and against mine; it felt like that.

“Sorry,” I said, and my voice came out high-pitched, and he said, also quickly, “No, no, it’s fine,” and then he picked up his violin case again, not for any discernible purpose, but maybe—I thought—just to have something to do with his hands.

Something vital in my chest, some organs and viscera, squeezed into a tight fist.

We were in Grace’s family room, Sunny and me curled up on the soft gray couch with our laptops, Brandon with all his notes spread out across one of the ottomans, Grace attacking her history book with a highlighter.

Mrs. Nakamura had started decorating for the holidays already; three wreaths hung on the wall by the door, and on the mantle there were tall glass apothecary jars all filled with different gold baubles: gleaming Christmas ornaments, tiny wrapped gifts, glittery fake pinecones.

He paused, because Mrs. Nakamura had come in with a plate of cookies that she set down with a flourish on the coffee table.

I made up an excuse to message Jason and didn’t hear back, which hopefully just meant he was sleeping, but I couldn’t stop all the what-ifs from blooming like algae into an opaque, toxic cloud.

The silence on the phone splayed out, miring us inside it.

From inside his wallet he pulled out four sealed red lai see envelopes with gold embossing, and he handed one to each of us.

Brandon stuffed the money back in his envelope, out of sight, and he held the envelope gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

“How do you know they aren’t just renaming the same star every time?” he said, and Grace said, “That’s probably exactly what they do,” and Sunny said, “That assumes there’s even one star they’re somehow in charge of,” and Brandon said, laughing, “Man, you guys are all so cynical," and Grace said, “If you give me two hundred dollars, I’ll print you a certificate right now that says any star you want is now the Brandon Lin,” and it was okay, we were okay—the moment had passed.

I heard the surprise of the rising and falling, the marching sound of the call and echo, how inside those ominous, imperious chords there were little hints of uncertainty, notes that felt like, if you let them, they might take off in another direction altogether.

And maybe whatever it was I managed to impart to the audience was unimportant.

Maybe music, the very best music, was selfish, and maybe all of it—the practicing, the many many repetitions, those flashes of inspiration and this, this revelry—was for me.

In the stillness, in the way all those around me held themselves motionless so they didn’t break that silence I had created, I felt for the first time as though I understood what music really was: It was the work of sifting through all the long, tireless, tedious hours for these single moments of grace.

It was the matter-of-factness that always threw me, how dispassionate it all seemed, as though whatever was between us was already settled somehow.

But I knew she’d have a barrage of questions—it was how she reacted to news, wanting to know everything all at once—and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

And Grace was so effusive with her celebration that it could feel like an unprincipled happiness.

I thought back to the way I’d felt—weightless almost, my whole body light and buoyant—just before that last note, and how that feeling had stayed with me long after.

I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hallway, her quick, uncertain gait, and my heart quickened as she came closer.

I don’t think anyone else saw it; it was subtle, and no one else would have known the context.