* * *
The band room smelled like valve oil and two hundred and eleven teenagers in polyester. Somebody had a Bluetooth speaker going under a music stand. Somebody else was crying, happily, into a friend's shoulder. Mr. Abernathy from the math department was walking the line with a clipboard and a face like a man trying to load cattle onto a ferry, saying, "Alphabetical, people, the alphabet has not changed since this morning."
Nora Lindqvist stood against the wall between a rack of tubas and a poster about embouchure and held her speech in both hands so no one would see them shaking.
"You look like you're going to throw up," said Jess Tran, who was salutatorian and her best friend since the second grade and had never once in ten years softened anything for her. "Are you going to throw up? Because if you throw up on the stole they'll make me do both speeches, and I only wrote one."
"I'm not going to throw up."
"Your face is green."
"It's the lights."
"It's not the lights." Jess leaned in. "Did she come?"
Nora shook her head. Then, because it was Jess, she said, "Renee tore up the card."
Jess's mouth fell open. "She what?"
"I saw her. I went out to check the seats." Nora's voice was very flat; she was hearing it as if from the next room. "She just pulled it off the chair and tore it up. Like it was junk mail. And then she put it in her pocket."