Chapter Text
"Toni!" Martha bangs on the door. "It's already 9:30!"
"Toni!! We’re going to be late!" Toni cracks an eye open and is immediately punished for it. She forgot to shut the blinds before falling asleep last night, so the sunlight is now streaming through the windows with personal animus. Instead of answering Martha, she groans and pulls her blankets over her head.
"Toni, I'm coming in. You better not be sleeping naked again," Martha warns.
"Oh my god, it was one time!" Toni exclaims and throws back the blankets, flipping onto her side to face the door.
Martha opens Toni's bedroom door an inch and peeks in. "Well, it was one time too many for my lifetime."
"I'm not naked," Toni rolls her eyes, raising the blanket as proof. "You can come in."
The rest of the door opens, and Martha comes skipping in. She makes straight for Toni's bed, throwing herself on top of Toni with an "oomph."
"Ooo, are you trying to get in bed with me, Martha?" Toni teases.
Martha fakes a gag. "Please don't say stuff like that."
"You'd be lucky to have me," Toni scoffs, and sits up, shoving Martha nearly off the bed. Martha awkwardly rebalances herself.
"Yeah, lucky to be just one girl in that long line of yours with a revolving door."
"It's too early to take shots at me," Toni rubs at her tired eyes and reluctantly pulls her legs out of the warmth of the bed. "What time does it start again?"
"10, so we gotta go," Martha whines. "Didn't your alarm go off?"
"That would have been a miracle considering that I never set it."
Martha picks up one of Toni's sweatshirts off the floor and throws it at her head. "Just get dressed."
"Alright, well you better get out unless you want a second show!" Toni teases, pulling one arm out of her ratty pajama shirt.
Martha squeaks and runs out the door, leaving Toni laughing alone to finish getting dressed. She looks around for the rest of her stuff, and realizes that some of her music sheets had fallen off her keyboard overnight.
The keyboard is almost a decade old now, and certainly not up to par with the new fancy stuff coming out these days. But Toni has a soft spot for it since Martha gifted it to her when they were in high school. Martha had saved up secretly for months, filling in some extra shifts at the restaurant they both worked at. Martha apologized that she had to buy the keyboard used, but Toni still remembers opening the box and being overwhelmed with unbridled joy. She remembers turning away and wiping tears threatening to fall. Gone were the days of having to sneak into the band room to practice on the beat-up piano when nobody else was there.
Toni practiced on that keyboard every night for hours with her headphones on, so she wouldn't disturb her foster siblings sleeping just feet away from her. Those extra hours of practice were almost certainly the reason Toni was able to get into college at all, let alone on the scholarship she received. Now that they have access to the college’s practice rooms, she doesn’t use the keyboard nearly as much as she used to, but it’s nice to have it around anyway.
Toni mindlessly presses a few keys on the keyboard, leaning down to pick up the sheets off the ground so she can take them with her to the practice rooms. She's been working on this piece for weeks and it still isn't where she wants it to be. She knows it and her professor knows it too.
"It just doesn't feel like you're really getting this piece," Professor Young had remarked thoughtfully during their lesson. "All the notes are there--well nearly--I know your tiny hands are doing the best they can to keep up, but something's still missing."
"I know, I know," Toni had grumbled. "I'm working on it."
"I know you are. This isn't just anybody. It's Rachmaninoff. And his pieces aren't understood overnight. Just like they weren't written overnight. But I know you've got it in you. Keep at it."
And Toni has been, but sometimes the concerto just doesn't click with her, so last night she turned instead to other pieces.
"Whatever," Toni says out loud. "Who cares about Rach anyway."
"You do, dummy," Martha says from outside. "Are you done yet?"
"I'm coming!" Toni rushes into the living room. "We still have 15 minutes before it starts."
"You and I both know it takes 15 minutes to get there," Martha jumps up and down. She's already got her backpack on, and she's carrying her clarinet case.
"Then I don't really see a problem," Toni says, dodging a swipe from Martha's case. "I haven't even been awake for 15 minutes, and you've already tried to accost me three times."
"Let's go, let's go," Martha starts to push Toni out the door.
The two walk swiftly across campus, autumn leaves littering the paths through the buildings. The smell of fall making its annual return fills the air, along with the anticipation that accompanies the start of every school year. The wind chill is starting to bite a little fiercer, and Toni enjoys the sting against her face. But she’s interrupted as an obviously nervous freshman nearly knocks her over; she’s got a textbook in one hand and she’s looking at the campus map on her phone in the other.
Martha, however, seems to forget her previous rush and gently asks the freshman where she’s trying to head to. Toni kicks around some leaves on the ground and waits for Martha to give the freshman step-by-step directions to her science lecture.
“What happened to ‘we’re going to be late,’” Toni raises her voice a couple pitches, knowing Martha sounds nothing like that.
“She was lost! You remember what it’s like being a freshman.”
Toni just rolls her eyes in response. Martha is always trying to help every person and animal she finds. Their apartment occasionally turns into an animal shelter, when Martha comes home from a late night orchestra practice, cradling some dirty kitten she found in the bushes. Toni has long given up protesting Martha's goodness. She knows Martha only ever wants to save the world. And with all the other fucked up shit out there, who is Toni to stop her from trying to make the world a tiny bit better? Toni herself is living evidence of Martha's project, honestly. If Martha hadn't decided to be friends with her in the 4th grade, Toni isn't sure where she'd be right now. Not in college, certainly.
The two finally slip into the lecture hall at 10:03 exactly. Martha looks around and sees their friends sitting in the back right corner. She nudges Toni along to them.
“Hey,” Rachel nods at them and moves her violin so they can sit down.
“Hi Rachel! Did you have a good summer in Italy?” Martha takes a seat and absent-mindedly pats the aisle seat next to her for Toni to sit. Toni sits, eyeing the crowd. Mostly people she knows. The music department is small enough that everybody generally knows of everybody, even if you don't know them by name, but she does see a few faces she doesn't recognize. Undoubtedly, some of them are freshmen.
Rachel shrugs. “The professor was great, but the orchestra was shit.”
“At least you took something away from it?” Martha offers hopefully.
“I better have. I’m not trying to be beat out of concertmaster for the third year in a row.”
“This’ll be your year,” Martha claps her hands. “I can feel it.”
She’s said that every year, Toni thinks. She kicks the chair in front of her, recognizing those giant hoop earrings anywhere, accompanied by the obnoxiously hot pink cello case in the aisle. “What’s up, bitch?”
Fatin turns around and yanks her AirPods out of her ears, shooting Toni a death glare. “What the fuck, dude?”
Toni laughs, “just saying hi.”
Fatin flips her off.
The conversations in the lecture hall die down as a woman steps onto the stage. She taps the mic she’s holding a couple times, but nothing happens. She looks around and decides to just hold the mic uselessly at her side.
“Hello everybody, and welcome to a new semester. I wanted to take this time to introduce myself since I’m new here. I’ll be counting on you all to show me the ropes. My name is Gretchen Klein, and as you may have heard, I was recently appointed as the new dean of the music school.”
Gretchen pauses for a second, as if she were expecting applause but nothing happens other than a few coughs.
“Anyway,” Gretchen continues awkwardly, shifting her weight back and forth between her feet. Toni stifles a laugh. “I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you this year, and I hope you do stop by my office some time to say hello.”
Gretchen continues to run through the changes in some of the class structures this year, changes to units allotted to certain classes, and the addition of a few new faculty members.
Toni gets bored and starts scrolling through her texts,, deleting a text from a girl who accused Toni of ghosting her. So what if she did? She never implied that she wanted anything more than a hookup when they met at the bar.
"Finally," Gretchen says, "I’d like to welcome all the new students to the department. Could the freshmen and transfers all stand up please? We would like to welcome you to the fold.”
For a few seconds, nobody stands up. Toni can’t stand the awkwardness, looks down instead at her feet. Then she hears a voice projecting into the hall.
“Nice to meet y’all!” A heavy accent that is definitely not from around here makes Toni look up. “My name’s Shelby, Shelby Goodkind. That’s spelled G-o-o-d-k-i-n-d, like good and kind.” Toni finally locates who’s speaking--it’s some blonde girl up in the very front row near the stage. Her hair is up in a high ponytail, tied so tight that it gives Toni a headache looking at it. She's wearing a denim jacket, a jacket clearly not suited for the weather in these parts. She won't last long in that once winter begins.
“I just transferred here,” the interrupter continues talking, and turns around to address the rest of the hall now. Toni’s first unwilling thought is that Shelby is stunning. In an extremely “girl next door” way, with her blonde hair and classic good looks. Her smile is plastered across her face, clearly practiced.
“I’m a voice major,” Shelby continues, still smiling widely, teeth on display for everybody to see. Of course, Toni thinks. Only a voice major would smile like that. And have the balls to do an intro that nobody asked for.
“In case it isn't obvious from my accent, I’m originally from Texas, and three fun facts about me are: I do family, I do Jesus, and--"
Toni can’t take it anymore and yells out, “Nobody asked, blondie!”
That prompts a well-aimed elbow from Martha in Toni's side, and a hiss for her to shut up. Fatin, on the other hand, lets out what sounds like a choked laugh.
Shelby stops mid-sentence, eyes wide. Her smile falls for just half a second, and she blinks rapidly a few times, but with the subtlest of head shakes, she plasters a new and somehow even larger smile on. "Just wanted to give a brief ‘about me,' folks. Sorry for taking up your time! Glad to be here!” Shelby sits down abruptly. And the moment is over.
Gretchen clears her throat and thanks Shelby for the introduction. She then proceeds to ask again for the other freshmen and transfers to stand. After some persuading, a handful of people stand up begrudgingly, and Gretchen encourages some half-hearted applause from the lecture hall.
"Well, Martha, I hope you're happy about rushing me this morning," Toni complains on their way out of the hall. The group wants to go get coffee before they start practicing, and Toni never says no to coffee.
"I thought it was interesting!" Martha defends.
"Yeah, Blondie was real interesting," Fatin laughs. "Right, Toni?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Toni demands.
"Tell me you don't feel the need to fuck the Jesus right out of her."
Martha makes a small noise and runs a little farther ahead of the group. She never likes it when Fatin gets too explicit.
“Jesus Christ, Fatin.”
“Jesus Christ, Toni,” Fatin says in a terrible southern accent.
"Whatever, dude. Fuck her and her Westboro Baptist shit."
"To be fair, she never said anything about being in Westboro Baptist," a giant bass rolls up beside Toni and Fatin. From behind the bass, the voice continues, "in fact, only fewer than 100 members are a part of Westboro Baptist, so the odds really are quite small."
"Hey Nora," Fatin says, bemused. Nora's head pops around the bass. "Hey," she says back curtly. "Would you like more information about Westboro Baptist, Toni?"
"No thanks, Siri." Nora is Rachel’s twin sister but the two could not be any different. Nora just seems to exist in her own world and doesn’t care what other people think about her, but Rachel--Rachel wants and needs everybody’s approval.
The three of them follow Martha to the music school's local coffee place. Rachel, of course, is nowhere in sight because she's already in the practice rooms.
They find Martha waiting by the door, anxiously wringing her hands.
"Guys, there's a new barista and he's really cute and I don't think I can focus enough to order," Martha starts to bounce up and down on the balls of her feet. She peeks into the glass window, and presses her face up against it in a way that certainly the baristas on the other side of it can probably see.
"Girl, stop creeping and get it together, it's just a boy," Fatin yanks the door open and ushers Martha in unceremoniously. "And more importantly, he's got the goods."
Martha is much too shy to order, so she makes Toni order for the both of them. Toni rattles off their usuals, and notes the nametag on the barista's apron, Marcus. She makes a note to tell Martha.
As Toni waits by the counter for their drinks, she notices the blonde from the lecture hall also ordering a coffee. After she pays, she turns around to scan the shop, and Toni immediately pulls out her phone to avoid having to make small talk. Apparently, it doesn't work because she hears a "hello" a few seconds later.
"Hey," Toni says gruffly. She barely looks up. She's not interested in engaging with any kind of Jesus freak (Westboro Baptist or not), and especially not a vocal major. Toni almost can't decide which one offends her more.
"You were in the hall earlier, right?" Shelby prods.
"Is that your way of asking me if I was the one that heckled you?" Toni asks, still looking at her phone.
"I was just trying to see if you were also a music major," Shelby says, and Toni can just tell that she's got her fake wide smile on again.
"Obviously, Texas. Why else would I have attended the talk from the dean of the music school?"
Shelby ignores the nickname. "What do you play? Or do you sing?"
"Don't insult me like that. Piano."
"Is it insulting to be a singer?"
Before Toni can begin her rant against the obnoxiousness of vocal majors, and everything she hates about them, including that she’s never once met a vocal major that she’s liked, that each and every single one of them are divas either by nature or career, and that she hates the way they warm up in the halls instead of in their own goddamn practice rooms (better acoustics in the halls), Marcus the barista calls out Toni's order.
And to her shock, Shelby moves for the counter at the same time, reaching out for the coffee cup the barista has just placed.
"Blondie, you better not be reaching for my coffee," Toni snaps.
"But it's my order, black coffee with no room," Shelby says confusingly, reaching for the cup nonetheless.
"Do not touch that cup," Toni warns and almost reaches out to slap Shelby's hand. "That's my order."
Marcus resolves the fight before it continues, placing Martha's coffee right next to the first cup, calling out Martha's order, a vanilla latte. Toni has been trying to wean Martha off of lattes for years, to no avail.
"Told you it was mine." Toni snatches the two cups off the counter. "You're not the only one who likes coffee black." She turns around before Shelby has the chance to say anything in return, and heads to the corner where Martha, Fatin, and Nora are gathered in some armchairs.
She hands Martha her latte. "Jesus freak tried to take my coffee."
"Maybe she was trying to initiate a meet-cute," Fatin laughs. "You never know with those types. They're either completely homophobic or completely in the closet."
"Or both," Toni mutters, sipping the coffee that nearly ended up somewhere else. "Also, there was nothing cute about it."
"Well, it looks like you've scared her away," Fatin nods towards the door. Toni catches a glimpse of a blonde ponytail exiting the store, sees Shelby clutching her own black coffee with both hands.
The group catches up on their respective summers. Toni didn't have the chance to go to a music festival like the others, she couldn't get a scholarship and couldn't afford it otherwise, so she listens to the others talk about their festivals with envy. Festivals are almost a norm for musicians on the summer breaks, it's the chance to travel abroad, and mix and mingle with other talented people their age. It's the chance to create music in some picture-perfect land, sometimes land where the music they're playing was written.
Toni has only ever had the opportunity to attend short local festivals because she didn’t need to pay for travel or lodging for those. It’s better than nothing, but it's just not the same. Toni always passes by the international pamphlets in the dean's office and eyes their picturesque covers, but can never bear to pick one up. She knows she'd never be able to afford it.
Martha once tried to offer her some money to help pay for a summer in Austria once. She couldn't do that to Martha though. She knew Martha was saving up for a nicer clarinet, and knew that accepting that money would set Martha back a couple months.
So, Toni listens to Fatin's festival experience in Italy. (She went to the same one as Rachel and half of her stories involve Rachel freaking out during chamber practice. Apparently, during one particularly frustrating rehearsal, Rachel had thrown her pencil at their pianist. Fatin swears that but for her intervention, Rachel would have thrown her bow next.) She listens to Nora's festival experience in the Czech Republic. And she listens to Martha's festival experience, even though she already knows all about it. The two don't go a day without at least one FaceTime call.
Toni has always promised herself that she'll make it to an international festival one day. But as her college years fly by, she knows she really only has one summer left to experience it. Maybe this will be the year. Martha has been begging for the two of them to attend one together. She always cries when she has to leave Toni for the summer, and cries again when she comes back.
Finally, the group decides they can't put off practice anymore and they finally make it to the practice rooms. A cacophony of sound echoes through the halls, like it always does during the day. Toni hears Rachel practicing; her violin standing out from the rest in its own dominantly Rachel way. Somewhere nearby, the calls of a trumpet. And somewhere in between that, she just barely hears it, but she hears the faint sounds of a pianist warming up with scales.
The chaos really only quiets down in the middle of the night. Toni likes to practice then the most. Nobody around, the darkness that envelopes the building, the stillness in the hallways, and there's nothing except the black and white keys on the piano and Toni's fingers flying across them.
But sometimes Toni practices during down time between classes too. Today she has some time, so she roams the halls looking for a free room. Eventually she and Martha agree to share the last one since there are no more rooms left. Martha lets Toni practice first, and breaks out her music history textbook to prep for their class later this afternoon.
Toni dumps her stuff under the piano. The piano in this room isn't her favorite, it's got a wonky key in the lower register that the pianists have been calling to have fixed for months, but bureaucratic school red tape moves at the speed of...well, adagio.
She doesn’t even bother pulling out her music from her backpack. She knows what she wants to practice. It’s the first eight bars. It’s always the first eight bars.
After her usual 30-minute scale warmup, Toni takes a breath and presses the first chord. And immediately recoils. It’s the right notes, but the wrong tone.
She tries a lighter touch. It’s better, but just marginally. She tries to imagine the bells tolling. The first eight bars always sound like bells to her.
“Rach 2?” Martha asks, somewhat distractedly. She’s already deeply focused on the text in front of her. She knows Toni’s repertoire almost as well as she knows her own.
“Rach 2,” Toni confirms. She presses the first chords a couple more times. She thinks about standing in a bell tower as the bells chime, and how cavernous the reverb would feel, with the slight echo of a note. She imagines the reverb happening inside the grand piano, the hammers striking the strings. Each chord progressively growing in strength.
She tries again and again, never proceeding beyond the first eight bars. Somehow, her image of the bell tower transforms into a church bell tower. And with that, she starts thinking about Christians, and that leads to the annoying would-be coffee thief again. And now, everything is wrong.
Maybe it’s not bells. Maybe, what if Toni tries imagining the slow roll of thunder approaching. She tries again, and she likes it better. Maybe the quiet beginning isn’t the serenity of bells. Maybe it’s the quiet before the chaos.
Toni squeezes her eyes tightly shut and sees a flat field, shrouded in fog. Beads of moisture cling to the plant leaves in the field, or are they branches? It doesn’t matter. She imagines the horizon, just barely visible, gray clouds, heavy with moisture, heavy in weight. She can see them approaching the valley. She hears the roll of thunder.
She presses the first chord. And she keeps going. It feels better. It’s just a prelude, just a preview of the incoming mess. She feels better, and then right before, just right before the piece picks up in the ninth bar, there’s a knock on the door. Toni’s eyes snap open, annoyed beyond belief.
“Who the fuck?” Toni asks nobody in particular.
Martha also looks curiously up from her chair. “Who’s that?”
“I’m not expecting a guest in my practice room, are you?”
"No," Martha gets up and opens the door. "Hello?" she says to a person out of Toni's sightline, in the hallway.
"Hi there!"
No fucking way. Toni would recognize that jarring accent anywhere now. It's imprinted in her memory, unwillingly. But it stands out because nobody else around here sounds anything like that.
"Hi, Shelby right? I’m Martha. Sorry, but we're using this room," Martha says brightly. Much nicer than anything Toni would have said.
"Oh, but I signed up for this room at this time though," Toni hears. She cannot be serious. Before Martha says anything in response, Toni pushes the piano bench back, scraping the floor so loudly that Martha looks back alarmed.
She strides over to the door, annoyed that once again, Shelby is pissing all over her day. Toni body slams the door open so forcefully that Shelby almost gets whacked in the face with it. Shelby sees that it's Toni, and the smile she had on for Martha twitches--is it in fear? Annoyance? Amusement? Her eyes flicker to Martha, as if for help.
"Look, I don't give a fuck if you signed up for this room at this time. That's not how it works here. You just pick a room that's empty and practice in it. Or in your case, scream in it."
"Toni, come on," Martha tugs at Toni's wrist. "You know she's right. That's technically how it works."
Toni shakes Martha's grip free. "That's not how it works practically, and Texas here needs to know that."
"I have a name," Shelby finally snaps back. She almost seems to regret it because she bites her bottom lip and Toni can tell she's resisting the urge to say more by the way her lips purse.
"Tell it to somebody who cares," Toni snorts.
"Toni, come on. It's almost time for class anyway," Martha doesn't try to touch Toni this time.
"No, it's not. And she can wait until I'm done."
"Fine." Shelby crosses her arms, her smile has finally decreased a couple watts. "I'll wait here until you're done."
Then the door to the practice room next to them suddenly swings open. The trumpet player Toni heard earlier looks alarmed to see a standoff in the hallway, but keeps his head down, clutches his case tightly to his chest, and squeezes past Shelby.
"There you go, that's your practice room," Toni dips her head to the right.
"No, this is my practice room, I signed up for it, and I'm going to wait right here until you're done." Shelby takes off her backpack and places it on the ground, sliding down against the wall to sit cross-legged right across from Toni.
Toni just stares blankly back, completely flabbergasted. Shelby starts pulling out a book from her backpack, as if she is fully ready to wait Toni out for hours. This girl just does not know how to back the fuck down, and Toni is at a loss.
“Fuck you, you’ve thrown me off anyway. Take your dumbass room, the piano is fucked anyway. Martha, let’s go.”
Toni grabs her stuff, and storms out of the building so quickly that Martha is forced to scurry to keep up with her.
“Toni, what’s going on? Do you not like Shelby?” Martha asks timidly in Toni’s wake of anger.
“She just pisses me off,” Toni grumbles. “She’s a Bible thumper, and you know how they feel about me.”
“You never know,” Martha offers tentatively, “she could be nice! You know, good and kind, like she said?”
“Please. Those people are good and kind until you’re a lesbian. Then it’s ‘burn in hell.’” Toni has already been subjected to many a homophobic remark back in high school. She and Martha didn’t grow up in necessarily the most liberal of areas, and Toni was never one to hide who she was, which only ever caused her more trouble. And because she had to fight back, she always had to fight back, she just got in more trouble because of it.
College is mostly different because it's in a major city, but Toni still wears the scars of homophobic hate, and she knows Shelby’s type. They’re all love and warmth until they think you’re going to hell. Then it becomes some form of twisted white savior complex combined with hatred and pity and sympathy.
Toni is tired of the hate, and she doesn’t want any part of it anymore, doesn't need any of it. She vows to avoid Shelby Goodkind for the rest of her college years.