Page 124 of The Other Side of Green

Never would be near me again, she’d made that much clear.

I forced myself to forget the Lyra Lennox who wouldn’t let herself shine in case her own mother laughed in her face. I forced myself to forget the Lyra who used to sing in church knowing the whole damn town was only clapping me out of respect for Grams.

I forced myself to forget every defining thing about myself. My parentage, my violin, my voice, my color, who the hell I was that I still didn’t know… didn’t know if I ever would.

I became nothing more than a note and the fresh air it caressed as it hit the starlight.

Stepping up to the mic Evan had somehow wired into an outside plug of Blue’s Bar—Ha! Served them right for not switching off the electricity—I held onto it with one hand and looked out at all those who were standing and watching. “Thank you so much for coming out and standing here, it’s a chilly one.”

A scatter of applause met my words. My knees wobbled and I scanned the crowd closest to me, searching for the face I needed to see. Jack. He nodded and gave me a smile that told me he adored me. It bolstered my nerve.

“So many people the last couple of weeks have spoken up on my behalf. More than spoken up, they have walked on my behalf, insisted on equal rights for every student, that every child in this country should get the same opportunity no matter where they come from.” I glanced at Jack again, to find his jaw tense, his focus on the ground for a second. I swear I could feel the emotion rolling off him.

“You see the truth is I don’t know who I am, and until recently, it’s never bothered me. I’ve never needed to know, always been happy to just be me; the support of my brother and my grandmother telling me that anything that was said about me couldn’t hurt me unless I let it.

“I come from a small neighborhood in New Orleans. Down South we like to sing, we like to make music, but we also fight a lot of injustice, a lot of bad press, a lot of you can go there, but be careful at night.”

I took a breath and grinned out into the crowd.

“Yet here we all are standin’ and freezing our behinds off down a back alley in Boston. I’m tellin’ you now, it sure is warmer in New Orleans.”

God, I’d even started to talk like Grams.

It felt natural, like I could be her, be the person with the soul.

Lifting my violin, I nodded at Evan. Not ideal without a piano we’d agreed to make the best of it. “This song is my wish for our society.” We launched into a gentle rendition of Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ and I knew the string arrangement on it could melt the hardest of hearts. On the final verse I lowered my violin, blood rushing in my veins, heart pounding, and I stared at Jack as I sang out the last words.

I had to believe we could fix one another and the awful mess we had made.

The thought of anything less was unacceptable to me now. Now I knew what Jack and I could be together.

I dropped my head, tears stinging my eyes as our small impromptu two fingers up at the Collins show ripped the night sky apart with applause.

Chapter Thirty

Jack

We sat in the back of Evan’s car, her fingers curled in mine. I’d wanted to take her back to the dorm, but she’d insisted on coming back to Evan’s. Now her head rested gently on my shoulder and a wayward curl tickled the end of my nose. I didn’t brush it away, it served as an almost annoying perfection to focus on during the ride.

She’d spoken out. Been so damn brave. How the hell could I tell her now what the Collins wanted. One way or another, her, me, or both of us were doomed.

One way or another my time at Berklee was up.

Without my job I couldn’t afford the PhD fees, and I wouldn’t get to keep my job. Not that they’d allow me on the PhD if I was accused of having sex with a student while a teaching aide—real or imagined.

Evan was humming to himself like a cat that had got the canary. “Will you shut it?” I grunted, trying not to wake Lyra. “What are you so happy about anyway?”

“The world is a beautiful place, Jack, don’t you think?”

“No. The world is full of assholes. Especially those that hum.”

Rhian turned from the front seat and smirked at me over her shoulder. “You two are so cute together.”

“Bite me.”

I found myself grinning. The fact we’d got to a point when someone could acknowledge how cute we were felt like it had taken a million years.

I guess in a way it had taken our entire lifetime.