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says, “before you make any decisions.”
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    DR. MADDEN SAYS I need rest and ibuprofen. If I’m still sick tomorrow, or if my temperature spikes, I should come in. Mom heads to CVS to get Advil while I sit with a banging headache and a phone still blowing up from Asher. Aren’t you going to answer me? At all?
    I don’t write back.
    Then: Hello? I don’t write back.
    Then: Lily, promise me you won’t hurt yourself again. Just promise me that.
    I don’t write back.
    Then: Lily, please.
    I get a text from Maya: Do u want me to get your homework or anything from yr locker?
    I reply: Im all set with HW thx just need sleep.
    The next one from Maya reads: I need 2 talk Asher is flipping OUT what happened
    I don’t write back.
    I give up and check the Oberlin site. They still haven’t updated my admission status.
    I’m also applying to Berklee, and the Curtis Institute, and the Manhattan School of Music, and the Peabody. If I don’t get into Oberlin I’ll survive, I know that. But there was something about that campus. I could imagine myself there, the green quads, the buildings with their red-tile roofs. For the first time, I could really see my future.
    I go downstairs, planning to kill time by practicing. Our home is very New England: all raw wood and exposed timbers and fireplaces. The only thing missing is a moose head on the wall.
    I like it—but sometimes I miss the bay.
    I sit down by the fireplace and get my cello out of the case. Drawing my bow across the strings, I close my eyes, and imagine waves crescendoing toward the shore.
    Then I play the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 and go where that music takes me. The first time I played cello, it felt like holding the body of a woman in my arms. Even as a little kid, I thought, Who is she? And the obvious answer: the person I’d eventually grow up to be.
    My fingers know this piece so well they move without my even thinking about it consciously. There are times when it’s like the cello is playing me, when I’m the instrument and the music is pouring through my blood.
    I remember the mist rising up from the water when we stood by Niagara Falls. The guide talked about people going over the falls in barrels. One kid who fell into the river north of the falls was washed downstream. He didn’t even know he was about to go over Niagara Falls until he was already past the edge and hurtling downward.
    According to our guide, he lived.
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    IT’S NOT A long piece, the Bach No. 1, maybe four minutes tops, but when I finally lift my bow I feel like I’ve been gone a long time. My head doesn’t hurt quite as much, and I’m hungry. I decide to make myself lunch when I hear the sound of someone whistling outside.
    I throw open the front door, and a blast of cold air rushes in. In the front yard is Dirk, who is the co-captain of the hockey team.
    For many reasons, I am not a huge fan of Dirk.
    But Asher is, and technically, without Dirk, I would not be dating Asher, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. “Dirk,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
    He stops whistling, as if he didn’t expect to see me coming out of my own house. “I heard you were sick,” he says. He looks at me like he’s surprised I didn’t call him to tell him all the details.
    “It’s probably just a virus,” I say.
    “I don’t mean to bother you,” he says. “I’m just— I’m kind of messed up.”
    A gust of wind blows his baseball hat off. The weather vane on top of the garage spins again, squeaking. Dirk scoops his hat up from the ground, flicks the snow off, and looks at it in his hand as if he’s trying to figure out if it’s too cold to put back on his head.
    I do not want to babysit Dirk. I do not want to be his confidante. I have enough problems of my own.
    “Messed up how?” I ask.
    He’s holding his hat by the brim with his thumbs and index fingers, suspending it like he’s a puppeteer and his Red Sox hat is his marionette.
    “Well, you know I got a likely