Everyone We've Been by Sarah Everett Read Free Book Online

But I know that even if he’ll never admit it, it’s not what he wants. He’s always been obsessed with planes like my dad, has dreamed of flying for years. But instead of doing anything about it, he stays in Lyndale, haunting parties and people he has outgrown.
    The only thing my parents agree on is crushing any bit of desire Caleb and I have to go somewhere, to move, to stretch the seams of our lives. It’s spearheaded by my mom, but somehow she always gets Dad to agree with her. She’s convinced she can protect us from whatever dangers are out there. I’m seventeen and I have freaking
parental controls
on my computer.
    As hyperbolic as Katy is about it, I know exactly what she means when she says she feels as if she was born for a place. I think I was born for the viola, to play music on one of the loneliest instruments.
    But I chose New York because I want something else. The fact that Juilliard is in the same city doesn’t mean I have to go there.
    I want buzzing lights and rowdy streets and the Philharmonic and Broadway and Carnegie Hall and artsy, passionate, vibrant people with places to go.
    I know it’s the biggest cliché, but I love the idea of a city that reminds you every day that you’re alive. I love that it is different and bigger than Lyndale in every way, and I want to believe my life there will be, too.
    I’ve worked so hard to keep my grades up, to stand a chance of getting into NYU.
    Now Dad pats my knee awkwardly.
    “Let’s think on it some more, okay?” he says.
    I nod—
Yes, let’s think on it some more—
but already I am thinking of all the things that could possibly stop me from leaving, and deciding that they are all things that won’t.

AFTER
January
    The next night, I practice longer than usual to make up for yesterday, when I was at my dad’s. As soon as I got home from the hospital on Sunday morning, I downloaded a version of Bach’s “Air on the G String,” and I listen to it now, falling in love again with the way it swoops, in and out, gently, insistently. The millions of stories I can imagine hidden in it. I’ve started trying to learn a viola version of the song, but it doesn’t sound as full and fantastic as it should. Instead of wistful and romantic, it feels desolate. Like someone waltzing alone.
    Giving up on it for tonight, I decide to work on our new orchestra pieces. I almost have “Alla Hornpipe” from the second movement of
Water Music
by Handel memorized, but according to Mrs. Dubois, there’s nothing worse than teaching yourself a flawed version of a piece. Mrs. Dubois has a theory about firsts: that the first thing sets the precedent for everything that comes after. The way you first learn a song, the way you approach the first note, sets the tone for the rest of that movement and the whole piece. The first piece in a concert sets the tone for the rest of the performance. She also says the first mistake you make in a performance—and how you recover from it—sets the precedent for all the other mistakes you’ll make. But since I’d rather not have any mistakes, I decide to play from the sheet music until I have it perfect. Except that I left my orchestra binder in my car, which my mother let me drive today.
    It’s only seven at night, but it’s dark and freezing out, so I throw my coat over my flannel pajamas and pad outside. I’m still humming “Air on the G String” to myself as I dig through my car and retrieve the black binder.
    I’m halfway out of the car when the sight of a person across the road, illuminated by a streetlight, nearly makes me slam my head against the roof. I climb out of the passenger seat and am waving my binder at him before I can stop myself.
    “Hey!” I say, watching as he registers my presence and a smile—that smile—stretches across his face. He is wearing the beanie again, but tufts of red hair stick out from under it now.
    “Hi!” he says, and then crosses the road between us so we are both standing in