roberto & nia

07. robert+nia

cadence marshall's house is swollen with sun; all open windows and jars spilling with light set on windowsills. the lawn is glass vases filled with spices and flowers sprinkling onto the grass. robert feels he's walking on thin ice; any misstep, and it would all shatter beneath his feet.

and nia has still not let go of his hand. he thinks: this is friendly. friends can always hold hands, even when they are both sixteen and this is when all things that happen feel monumental and one of the friends is beautiful and nice and other friend has a girlfriend who is an angry angel and he loves her still.

before he can change his mind, nia loosens her grip and releases. she uses the hand to knock three times on the door, which opens upon the third knock, fluid and swift.

"magic," robert says in fascination. a magic girl.

"no, sensors," she replies, stepping inside. "cadence's daughter is a technology freak, she's got the whole house wired. i appreciate the sentiment, though."

the foyer of cadence marshall's house is bare. there's four plastic white chairs around a small wooden table a couple feet away from the doorway, with green . a pure white carpet runs from the door and down hallways on the right and left side. it turns deep, dark blue when it gets to the staircase.

nia gestures with her hand and together they plod up the stairs, the double bass thudding heavily behind her, leaving sandaled footprints on the pure wood.

(everything is taking too long. walking, looking, waiting. the radiation from his cellphone is probably burning holes through his flesh. maybe he'll die in his sleep, so he won't have to talk to catherine tomorrow. maybe he'll die in an hour. it's easy for him to be hopeful when things are tragic like this.)

when they reach the top of stairs, nia stops hard in her tracks. she grabs robert's wrist and takes him down the hallway leading to a pastel pink door.

"this," she announces dramatically, "is the official, one-of-a-kind, grace russel amphitheater for musical performance. it's where her symphony practices on off-days and where i practice and take lessons. i basically live here."

she flicks the silver knob with her index fingers and the door opens at her touch–and immediately, robert believes it–she does live here. everything smells like flowers. there are rows of seats with gold tassels around the arms. a lauryn hill portrait stands stoically beside a sketch of cello. the walls are maroon, lined with black music notes going in different directions, left to right, up and down, across and intersecting into one jumble of unintelligible mush.

"i'm so stupid," he mumbles. "i mean, i feel dumb. i don't know what any of this means."

"no room for stupid here," she says, pulling him inside. "this is a sacred place. only good stuff can exist here. cadence lets me spray rose water before every performance. wards off bad things. and you're not stupid. you're just uninformed."

robert nods, and wills the stupid off him. wills the catherine creeping around his shoulders, leaking like blood in his skull. i'll be waiting for you.

"hey, nia?" he begins. he watches her bounce around the room, pulling paper from random drawers and clothes out of a tall, white closet.

"mhm," she hums. her fingers twitch as she moves. muscle-memory. robert wonders what it feels like to know something so well.

"how long is this going to take?" he asks nervously. "i'm not trying to, like, rush you, or anything. it's just..." he pauses, looking for the right way to frame his situation. i'm afraid that if i call my girlfriend to cancel our plans that i will break her heart, and she will hate me and she will yell, and the thought of her yelling makes my head hurt and my stomach ache and i would rather be shot or stabbed or hang from a tree or break both of my legs than hear her say i hate you again.