Lark appreciates that. The lack of pressure gives him space to think. Why he reached out for Oli, he’s not sure. There’s a block around the memory, a heavy curtain that draws closed when he tries to think about his feelings. The thoughts that do arise are angry and inward-looking: he should know better and act better, or at least have some explanation for the way he is. The weight of that is enough to silence any meaningful introspection.

Oli sits up next to him and smiles. Lark rubs his eyes.

“I didn’t mean anything,” Lark says. “I’m just—”

Oli cuts him off with a wave of the hand. “I know. Don’t worry.” Really, Oli isn’t sure what Lark wants to say. Touch-starved is probably the real truth of it. Lonely. “Are you seeing anyone?” Oli asks him.

Lark nods solemnly, and Oli understands that Lark thinks he means a therapist, not the significant other Oli had been trying to suggest, searching for a clue to Lark’s sexuality.

“You have local friends still?” Oli adds in an attempt to make his meaning more apparent, and Lark turns his face away to hide an embarrassed flush.

“Not really,” he says. He picks at the grass, pulling up two blades and tying them together with a simple knot. Tying another knot on top of that. “I’m not seeing anyone like that. Just Reed and Cassie. ”

Oli knows, before that day, Lark hadn’t spoken to either of them for months, but he doesn’t point that out.

“Maybe there are more people around. I haven’t felt up to calling anyone,” Lark admits. “I deleted my Facebook, got a new phone. It’s been a weird year.”

“It must be lonely,” Oli says.

Lark hasn’t thought of it that way, perhaps because he never feels alone. He is living with his parents, and they are very present. Their expectations pervade the house. Even when he isn’t with them, Lark feels the twist of their disappointment in the insurance bills on the kitchen table, the prescription pills in the bathroom cabinet, his coat on the pegs in the hall. Other, more distant voices crowd his head, too; his sense of failure dresses up in old friends’ accents as part of his internal rituals of self-flagellation.

Lark knows, still, that Oli is right. Something is missing from his life. He has always been guided by others, always moved forward only hand-in-hand with people he trusted. For better or worse.

Months of floundering without real friendship have not taught him independence, but they have left him aching.

Quinn, boasting about his master’s program and fully-funded bachelor’s degree, insisted on looking at my conservatory applications before I sent them off. He corrected my minor grammatical mistakes and grilled me on the finer points of my personal statement.

I’ve gotten into all these places twice, I reminded him. I have this bit down.

But you didn’t get enough money, so something needs finessing, he said.

My answer to his concern was hours and hours of practice when I wasn’t at work, and sending anxious e-mails from my phone to arrange lessons and masterclasses when I was. Pinching pennies to afford them. Quinn told me I was being naive while he poured over the financial packages and FAFSA forms at his kitchen table.

This isn’t about you, Lark. You know that, right? This isn’t a reflection on you.

I nodded, but Quinn could tell I didn’t mean it. There was nothing I could see standing between me and a full-ride but my own lack of talent. I kept my eyes on the brochures in front of me: glossy, smiling young men and women in clean-cut chinos and block-color cashmere; conservative haircuts and round cheeks; comfortable gatherings around the polished bulk of a full-size grand piano. I knew next to these model music students I’d look rangy and weird. I believed entirely the broken way I looked probably reflected a broken way I played, too. I was no metronome-perfect, Bach-playing golden child. I played Scriabin and my own messy impromptus in dark rooms in the middle of the night with my headphones plugged into my keyboard.

I thought: someone like me will never get a room with a wall-to-ceiling window to practice in, never feel at home on the shined wood of a concert stage. I could never make a sober and sincere classmate; no one would want to hear me critique their interpretation of Chopin’s Nocturnes.

Lark? You deserve this. You do. Quinn talked to me about the other pianists who were in the places that had been offered to me. Do you think you’re not as good as those waiting-list candidates? There are what—six other pianists getting what you wanted? Why?

Because I didn’t have the money.

No. Because those kids’ parents had the money, or they agreed to sign the piece of paper that got them a loan. That’s it. This is business, Lark. It’s not about you. It’s not about art.

I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

Quinn shrugged and told me to call my parents to try and get their signature on the FAFSA form. The problem, he said, was my dependency status. That—even though I’d lived on my own for over a year and got nothing at all from my parents—I still had to apply as a dependent.

They won’t sign it, I told Quinn. They don’t want me to study music.

Quinn sighed and tried to figure out if I could count myself as self-supporting and at risk of homelessness. If Dana would marry me. Either would change your dependency, he hedged when I laughed at the idea.

I wasn’t in the mood for Quinn’s scheming after a few hours of application forms and a day at the Salvation Army. It’ll be what it’ll be, I told Quinn. It will be fine.

He was typing furious questions into Google, banging out a checklist of things for me to try, forms to fill out, scholarships to pursue. I was grateful for the help, but in that moment, the long list of hopes to dash nearly brought me to tears. I covered my face with my hands, sunk onto the table.

You need to be angry, Quinn urged, shaking my shoulder as I sagged. Why aren’t you angry?