When Gael and his younger siblings, Aaron and Hana, got into OCSA, he didn’t realize just how much was about to change.

The first thing was moving. His father, an internist, had a private clinic near their hacienda in Fallbrook, so it wasn’t an option to leave San Diego County. Instead, they looked for a place where Gael, his younger siblings, and his mother could live on the weekdays. They ended up buying a nice condo with a beautiful ocean view a little ways up in San Clemente.

In the middle of Gael’s sophomore year, his mother started a night nursing job. Gael had just gotten his driver’s license, so he and his younger siblings began living alone in the San Clemente condo. He’d drive them back down to Fallbrook every weekend, and they’d stay there on the weekends and school breaks. It was around this time when Gael started talking to Harper more often. A little after midterms, she’d asked him if he wanted to hang out during lunch, and he’d said, “Sure, I’ll bring some music to read.” Ever since then, they would meet randomly in D103 during lunchtime. It was never planned. D103 was usually locked, but they would both try the door from time to time. Harper would go whenever she felt overstimulated and stressed, and Gael would go whenever he wanted to sleep or get away from the rare drama in his friend group. Every once in a while, their individual visits would coincide, and they’d pass the time in different ways. Sometimes, it was eating in silence. Other times, it was talking about recent Tarisio auditions, which Gael kept track of religiously. Or, dozing off—Gael was always the one setting the alarm for passing period since Harper didn’t have a phone.

On the first Monday of their junior year (school always started on a Wednesday), they both went to D103. Gael had already been there for ten minutes, but Harper wasn’t really late, because they hadn’t planned the meeting. Harper took her backpack off, propped it against the wall, and sat down next to it. This way, they were facing each other. Gael was sitting against his own backpack, which was at the foot of the conductor’s pedestal. He was eating some home-cooked meal from a thermostat. Harper opened her backpack and took out a folder and a pencil case. She started on some work.

“Do you want to play a duet for chamber this year?” asked Harper.

Gael did want to, but he said, “Nah, I’m probably gonna ask Richie. I want to play in a larger group. D’you wanna join?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Harper replied.

So, for the fall chamber concert, Gael played in a piano quintet group with Richie, Jonathan, Isaac, and Jay. Harper played in a violin trio with two sophomores who were poor at masking their dislike for her. She, on the other hand, was good at masking her hurt, but Gael knew she always dwelled on their sharp words and glares.

On the first day of the spring semester, Harper again asked Gael if he was down to play a duet for chamber. This time, he said yes.

They were assigned a small practice room on the second floor of the DMS. It was a study in contrasts: it had a fairly new upright piano, a piano bench, only one battered chair, a stand vandalized in penciled “was here”s, and an utterly damaged plastic mirror—almost the entire plastic portion had been torn away, and large sections of the cardboard backing were gone, too. There were marks all over on what was left, places where fingernails and bow tips hadn’t quite pierced the plastic.

Gael set his violin case down in a corner, and Harper put hers on the piano bench. After a moment, she moved it to the floor and sat down on the bench. Gael slumped into the other chair. They sat there in silence for a few minutes. Gael felt like his mind hadn’t quite caught up to him yet. He looked at Harper and noticed how tired she looked. She didn’t have eyebags or dark circles under her eyes, so he couldn’t quite pinpoint what made her look so drained.

“How’s your day been so far?” Harper asked, after a while.

“When I said better topics, I didn’t mean small talk,” said Gael, deadpanning.

Harper gave him a strange look, and he suddenly regretted his sarcasm. It was the lack of light in her eyes, he realized.

"Can you turn off the lights?” she asked, softly.

Gael nodded and turned them off. Harper suddenly got off the piano bench and sat down against the wall. After hesitating briefly, he went and sat down next to her. He could hear her soft breathing; it was a little unsteady. He turned so he was looking at the legs of the piano bench rather than at Harper. But he was still listening, so he knew the exact moment when she fell asleep from the way her breathing fell into a natural rhythm unfettered by all that conscious stress.

Gael got up and left the room as quietly as possible. The door was heavy, so he had to stop it from shutting loudly. Ms. Tardif, who was walking down the hallway at that moment, saw him leaving the room. She looked at the dark window, and asked, “Where’s Harper?”

“Sleeping,” Gael said.

Ms. Tardif clicked her tongue sympathetically. “Migraine?”

“Maybe. She gets migraines?”

“Unfortunately.”

Gael didn’t go back inside right away. He stood there and watched Ms. Tardif round the corner, heard her heels clicking down the stairs. His hand was still on the doorknob. He could feel the cool metal under his skin but felt disconnected from the physical sensation. He thought about going back inside. He thought about sitting next to Harper again, listening to her breathe, waiting for her to wake up. But there was something about her silence—it wasn’t just fatigue; it was something that ate at a person slowly, from the inside-out, until there was only their metaphysical husk, wearing some vague smile, at best. He had seen it before, in his mother—tepid mornings when she came home from her night shifts and stood in the kitchen for too long, staring at the window, as if she could see past the closed blinds, past all that heavy fog swirling low and thick over the streets.

He felt the weight of the door pressing against his hand as he opened it, as quietly as he could manage. Inside, the air was still. He sank back down next to Harper. Even through his jeans, the linoleum felt nice and cold. The minutes stretched. He could hear the muted hum of someone rehearsing maybe two rooms over. It sounded persistent and technical; he thought maybe it was Jonathan, but then, he heard a lower pitch, and realized it was a violist. It wasn’t Kira—she was out of town—and it wasn’t Richard; he was in a practice room on the first floor. He wondered who it was, but only briefly. He tried to come up with something he could say to Harper when she woke up, but in vain. He was not one for grand gestures, nor the emotional vulnerability moments like this demanded. He could only hope Harper would somehow find whatever she was looking for, though he knew that was too general of a statement to mean anything.

Harper woke up a few minutes before the bell rang. Neither of them had unpacked anything, so they just took their things and walked down the stairs. There was already a loud crowd of students gathered by the door. More came, and it got even louder.

When the bell rang, most of the students spilled out into the DMS courtyard; others left in in the other direction, towards Main Street—Gael and Harper both went this way. The light was soft, almost gray. At some point, Gael lost Harper in the sea of students crossing the street towards the junior parking lot. He found his siblings waiting by their car, and drove them all home.

Gael was sitting on the couch on the first floor of their condo. It was almost dark outside. He had the window open, the aquatic air coming in like salvation, the faint susurration of waves in the distance, the hum of the fridge. It felt right.

Aaron was out, Hana was asleep, and the condo felt impossibly large.

He thought about Harper. They both had their own versions of exhaustion—Gael’s was just better hidden. He’d grown up wearing it differently. It was almost invisible, only showing in the way he never quite allowed himself any proximity. His ambition was private, smoldering, while the rest of the world went on its way, their wins and losses trailing gaudily behind them. Harper couldn’t contain her own ambition; it always spilled out over the edges. Most knew she was an achiever. She’d get her way in one way or another. But, for Gael, distance was security. This condo had become a metaphor for everything unsaid—there was too much space, too much time spent alone, too much of everything except what actually mattered.

His phone buzzed. A text from Richard, something about meeting up later. He ignored it. The screen dimmed, then turned black. The apartment was completely dark now.