In Harmony Read Online Free Page B

reading! I knew this stuff! I just couldn’t—
    “Go on, then,” Geisler told me.
    I could feel the panic rising inside me, leaving no strength in my legs and drawing all the blood from my face. I knew I was going to either burst into tears or bolt for the door—probably the second one. Then I’d have to lie and apologize and say I’d been ill. I couldn’t afford to fail another class!
    “Bar 231,” said an Irish voice from the front, and everyone laughed.
    “I was asking someone else,” Geisler told Connor, pointedly. “But yes.” And he launched into a long explanation, nodding at me to sit down almost as an afterthought.
    I collapsed onto my seat and let my lungs slowly re-inflate. I’d been rescued, by the least likely person I could imagine. I risked a look at Connor, but he wasn’t looking at me—probably, he’d just been bored, and saving me hadn’t come into it. How had he known the answer, though? From what I’d just seen, he never even took notes!
    That’s twice in one day he’s saved you, a little voice inside me said.
    I looked down at Connor. The blonde oboist next to him was grinning and squeezing him around the shoulders in my hero sort of a way, with more body contact than was strictly necessary. That’s why he did it. To impress her.
    I focused on Geisler. I couldn’t afford any more distractions.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
    That evening, as I pushed through the main doors—carefully, this time—and plodded down the steps, I felt like my brain had been stretched out and twisted into a pretzel. Three hours of lectures and then a long afternoon of practice, working at the Brahms until I swore I could hear it playing in my head everywhere I went, had nearly broken me. My eyes were bloodshot and sore from staring at music and my spine was a knotted mass of pain.
    I need a billionaire to give me a massage. Maybe Natasha will loan me Darrell.
    Footsteps behind me. A clatter of heels and then, with a rush of perfume and a silken swish of long, auburn hair, Jasmine was snuggled up against me, an arm around my shoulders.
    I stopped my trudging and looked back at the icy steps in disbelief. I’d had to be careful even in my sneakers; Jasmine had just bounded down them in three-inch heels. How did she do that? I could barely even walk in any heel over a couple of inches…which was a shame, because they would have helped my height.
    “Can I get changed at your place?” Jasmine asked.
    “Changed?” Then I remembered we were going out. I was exhausted. “Actually, I think I just want to go home and pull the covers over my head.”
    “Nope. Not an option. We need to get you out, before you disappear into a practice room and we lose you forever.” She pulled me forward and I started walking.
    I really didn’t want to go out, but I’m not good at saying “no” to people. Especially Jasmine. Out of all my friends, she’s the most like a sister—or how I imagine a sister should be, since I’m an only child. A junior year actress, she looks like she was born for the screen. I don’t just mean she’s beautiful—she is, but that isn’t it. It’s that she’s eye-catching. When she walks into a room, you can’t not look at her—men and women alike. For starters, she has thick red hair almost down to her waist that she either wears in big, pre-Raphaelite curls or in a super-sleek straight curtain down her back. Secondly, she has these huge green eyes that can be innocent and shocked or incredibly filthy, depending on what she’s saying. And finally she has the body. She’s curvy, and I don’t mean that as a euphemism. She has an honest-to-God hourglass figure and she makes the most of it. Guys in particular stop and stare.
    I sometimes busked for charity as part of a string quartet in Central Park. One Saturday the previous summer, we were having an okay day with maybe fifty dollars in the hat. Jasmine showed up in a green summer dress