We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach Read Free Book Online

technically grounded her, but that would be scant defense when she got home.
    She drove slowly past Swedish hospital and down into the city, windows open even though it meant drops of rain prickling her arm. Esperanza Spalding was playing all this week at Jazz Alley, and Anita was going to go see her. Anita knew about Esperanza from YouTube. She’d been a musical prodigy, teaching at the Berklee College of Music by the age of twenty. Now she was a star.
    The crowd at Jazz Alley was older, mostly in their forties and fifties. Anita took a seat at a small round table and ordered a Shirley Temple.
    She’d hoped that watching Esperanza perform would fill her heart with resolve and inspiration, but as the show went on, she only got more and more depressed. Here was this ridiculously talented artist living her life as loud as a bullhorn. And here was Anita, watching from the darkness, destined for an insignificant and utterly silent existence. At the beginning of application season, Anita had suggested she might apply to a couple of music schools alongside all the Ivy League universities her father was so excited about. The resultant tantrum had been so huge that Luisa later swore she’d picked up the phone and dialed the first two-thirds of 9-1-1.
    When Anita got out of the club, she realized she hadn’t looked at her phone in hours. Sure enough, there were two dozen missed calls and almost as many messages, all from HOME . She listened to one, but stopped it after the first few furious words and cleared her in-box with a tap.
    It was a weeknight, so there weren’t many people out on the streets. Anita wandered down toward the water, into the heart of homeless Seattle. Cardboard boxes and sleeping bags. Unkempt hair and ­hollow faces and clothes the color of pigeon wings. From under the bench of a bus stop, a white fragment of eye followed her across First Avenue. She went all the way down to the wrought-iron fence, bent into curlicues and spirals, beyond which Puget Sound sparkled blackly, and grabbed hold of the smooth metal bars. She lifted herself off the ground, imagined rising up and up and over the topmost prong and out into the water.
    â€œHey, sister.”
    She turned around, for some reason expecting to find a friend. But the man standing behind her was a stranger, tall and black, with a long scar snaking across the bottom half of his face.
    â€œHey,” she said.
    â€œYou looking for someone?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t be alone out here this time of night. It’s not safe.”
    Before she could say anything else, there was the sound of a car door slamming, and a cop was making his way toward them with a long, aggressive stride.
    â€œThere a problem here?” he asked.
    â€œNo problem,” the stranger said.
    The cop looked at Anita.
    â€œNo, sir.”
    He didn’t seem to believe it. “Why don’t you come along with me, miss? As for you”—he pointed at the stranger—“you stay there. My partner wants to talk to you for a minute.”
    â€œWhatever, man.”
    Anita and the cop walked across the street, past the festive flicker of the cruiser.
    â€œWhat are you doing on your own down here, young lady?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œYou need a ride?”
    â€œMy car’s just up the street.”
    He put a hand on her shoulder. “You go straight there, okay? Pretty girl like you should be more careful.”
    â€œThanks.”
    She climbed back up to First Avenue; the incline was so steep that it bent her backward, pointed her at the sky like a telescope. A lone blue star floated out among all the white ones, like a mutation. Anita felt pinned in place, caught between the dead eye of that star and the cold care of the police officer behind her. She didn’t want to go back to the car, but she didn’t want to stay where she was, either. She would have been happy just to disappear.
    Whatever it is,