Backstage · The Long Way Down to Morning · Pulse Beat
The green room smelled of rosin and cold coffee. Anika sat with the violin across her knees and listened to the hall fill through the wall: a murmur, a cough, a cello being tuned somewhere far off…
The green room smelled of rosin and cold coffee. Anika sat with the violin across her knees and listened to the hall fill through the wall: a murmur, a cough, a cello being tuned somewhere far off.
She was twenty-three. Tonight was the semi-final; tomorrow, if she played tonight as she had played all week, the final. She had not told anyone how much she wanted it, because saying it aloud made it a thing that could be taken.
She lifted her left hand and spread the fingers against the air, a habit, a small ritual. First, second, fourth. The third did not spread. It curled in toward her palm like a leaf near a flame, and when she pushed it open, it shook.
"Rao?" A man at the door with a clipboard. "Five minutes."
She flexed the hand until the blood came back. It was nerves. It had to be. She stood, and the finger uncurled, and she walked out into the light.