“Nope, no big deal, I don’t have any hopes to get up!” I wiggled away and kept climbing without looking at him. “I already knew, I already . . .” I swallowed down something sharp. “I’m not Florence Foster Jenkins, okay? I just daydreamed. For two seconds and I shouldn’t have and—I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

Somehow, him saying it made it true—made every dark thought I’d been shelving for later perusal tumble around me, papers flying, ground giving way.

“I . . .” I spun around, laughing wildly. “I don’t know what you see in me. We are not equals. I am at a serious disadvantage in terms of what I offer to the universe. And I’m counting down the hours until you figure out how pointless I am and move on. But it’s fine—when that happens, I’ll be fine!”

“What?” He reached out for me. “Ruby, you’re being crazy.”

“Oh, now I’m crazy too! Ha-ha, awesome, yay.”

I took the last flight two steps at a time and shut my bedroom door and sat at the foot of my bed and took a few breaths—from the diaphragm, whoopee—and here it came. Tears. I’d cried in the lead-up to my Amberley audition, little jags of stress and worry and frustration—but not afterward. Not once I knew. I’d thought I was strong, but I must have been storing the tears up for months, because now they were spilling down my cheeks in great, hot gushes. They left me drained, like I was bleeding out. It was too much, too all at once.

Stop crying. Stop!

“Ruby?” Oscar murmured from the other side of the door. “You can be an opera singer if that’s what you want to be. I’ll support you one hundred percent. You can do anything you . . .”

Boyfriend-talk. He sounded like he was reading out something he’d found on the Internet. It didn’t mean anything. I knew now, I knew. I just didn’t know how I could have been so stupid. So recklessly hopeful.

I’d been doing it all my life, though, hadn’t I? When I’d asked Mom if she thought I was good and she’d said that good was an unhelpful term and I hadn’t pressed her further. When I’d asked Dad why he didn’t want me to enter competitions yet, and he’d said I should wait until I was older so I could make a big splash, never mind that Alice had been competing internationally since she was eight. When Mrs. Swenson said how much she enjoyed our lessons and I’d thought she meant it as a reflection on my playing rather than my company. I was brilliant. Or I was going to be, any day now.

I’d never wanted to know.