Double Time ✓

34 | downbeat

As section leader, I distributed the parts out at the start of spring semester, which meant I got my pick of instruments with no-one to fight me on the matter. With music folders, there's no rush to memorize anything, no competition, and now I just show up every Wednesday to play my part, take advice from Keller, pack up, and leave.

I still love music, but maybe I love the environment less without Bay. My leadership rested on hers, my passion was a countermove.

To put it bluntly, I really fucking miss her.

And I thought I was doing such a good job hiding my sour attitude until one Wednesday, a month after spring semester started, when Quen comes up to me and says, "Let's go get dinner."

"I need to study," I tell him. Another unremarkable HSO rehearsal has just ended. I'm sliding the timpani covers back on and zipping them up.

Quen doesn't believe me. "You're down in the dumps because Bay left band. Come on. You get to pick the restaurant." I recognize exactly what he's doing. I took him for a drive after his fight with Noah, talking through his girl troubles, and now he's extending a similar helping hand.

I sigh, zipping the last timpani cover shut. "Fine."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

I choose a hotpot restaurant in a strip of eateries in the center of town.

It's freezing past sundown these days, plus I'm sad, so I want warm comfort food. The walls are polished mahogany, the hotpot booths made of similar dark wood. Gold-accented decorations line the walls and paper lanterns hang from the ceiling. Quen and I slide into the booth adjacent to the full-length windows at the front of the restaurant. A middle-aged woman comes to sink a fresh metal container into the cavity in the center of the table, one large square alongside two smaller ones for different soups and sides.

She starts speaking to Quen in Mandarin, so he orders in the same language, the usual carnivorous selections. "How did she know you spoke Chinese?" I wonder, when the woman wanders back to the kitchen. "Does she know you?"

Quen leans closer, shaking his head. "I have no fucking idea. Mom told me all Chinese ladies over a certain age can clock it at first glance. It's like a superpower."

The food comes, we bathe the strips of meat in spicy sauce, and compare our different engineering internships this semester, and I'm starting to feel better about myself when Quen chooses that moment to say, "You should get Bay back."

A fleck of beef travels down my windpipe and I start choking at the table. At the loud disruption, everyone in the cozy restaurant looks over at me with concern and/or amusement, like ah, the white boy can't handle spice. (Which I can, thank you very much.)

Quen slides me a glass of water with a grin, not worried at all for my wellbeing. After I gather my composure, I glower at him. "Band is not one of her priorities this semester."

"I'm not talking about band," he says. "You need to get her back."

I flinch. Does Quen know? How much does Quen know? I observe his pale face, intelligent dark eyes. Maybe my evasive behavior in Pittsburgh clued him in, or maybe it was my mood swing in Bay's absence, or maybe he is testing a hypothesis as we speak and my response will prove or disprove it.

"I don't know what you mean," I say carefully.

Quen is unconvinced, which makes me think he knows way more than I ever elected to tell him. "Be like that, if you want," he snorts. "But I've watched you guys for four years and you're always your most miserable when you think Bay doesn't like you. And that didn't just start last marching season."