I tell Jenny everything and it all sounds so ridiculous when I try to explain. I tell her how the clarinet always put Reid and me in opposition, and the circumstances that brought us together to make Melted. How working together changed everything. How I thought this audition was going to ruin everything. Because no matter how close we are, history can’t be erased, and I jumped to the worst conclusion.

I tell Jenny it wasn’t about Reid. It was about me.

“Wow. Okay,” Jenny places her empty mug on her desk. That’s how long I’ve been talking—a whole hot chocolate experience’s worth of time. “That is a lot.”

I exhale. “Yeah.”

“You have his audition materials?”

My eyes widen. “Yes!…” I unzip my backpack and pluck my hard drive from it. “Here. It’s all right here.”

“I’m not making any promises,” Jenny says. “But this seems to have been out of Reid’s control, so I will listen.”

“Thank you!”

“No promises,” Jenny repeats, before pressing play.

Hearing Reid’s Melted medley again? It evokes the same exact feeling I felt the first time I listened in Dad’s studio. It’s perfect. Reid gets it. Reid gets me. And I just… didn’t get him. For so long, when I looked at Reid I could only see the boy who stole from me. Stole music, stole my dad, stole my best friend. No matter how many prank wars I initiated and won, I could never take back everything Reid stole. But that was never the truth.

If I can’t fix this, well, I’ll be the one who stole. A horrible, unforgiveable steal.

The music fades and Jenny’s expression is perfectly neutral, considering.

I have no idea what this means.

I count and it is the most stressful twenty-two seconds of my life.

But then her expression shifts. “I think I understand the reason you drove all this way. They’re remarkable pieces—both for someone his age and someone with no training at a private conservatory.”

Remarkable! Reid is remarkable!

“Reid can audition in-person. Day two is booked solid before our deliberation, but we can squeeze him in at the end of day one. February sixth. It’s the best I can do.”

I jump from my chair and wrap my arms around Jenny. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means.”

Jenny laughs. “I do. I can’t wait to meet him.”

I pay the audition fee and thank Jenny a million more times before we say goodbye and I am floating because I did it. Reid is going to audition. He is going to kill his audition and spend his summer here, living in Mozart during the day and sleeping in A Major, or whatever the dorms are called.