Six Months Of You

LENA

"Be my girlfriend."

I look up from my cello.

Landon Cross is standing in the doorway of the third floor music room and he is looking at me like he has been here before, like he already knows the layout, like he did not wander up here by accident. Brown hair. Green eyes. The Westbrook varsity jacket that this school treats like a religious garment.

I have said maybe twelve words to this boy in three years. None of them were kind.

"Wrong room," I said.

"It is the right room." He steps inside and closes the door. He pulls a folded paper from his jacket and sets it on my music stand without asking.

"Read it."

I read it because I want to know what I am dealing with, not because he told me to.

Typed. Clean. Terms of Agreement at the top. Six months of fake dating. Public appearances, his jacket at games, my presence at school events. Fifteen thousand dollars split into two payments. A confidentiality clause. No physical contact beyond appearances.

I set it down. "No."

"You have forty seven dollars in your checking account," he says. "Leo's surgery is in three weeks. The deposit is due before that. You are short by more than seventeen thousand dollars."

The music room goes quiet in a different way.

I keep my face still. I have been practicing that since I arrived at Westbrook Academy on a scholarship at fourteen, the only girl on the third floor who takes the bus home. I have gotten very good at showing nothing.

"How do you know about my brother," I asked.

"I looked into you."

"You looked into me." I set the bow down slowly. "You went through my financial records."

"I know people. It was not difficult." He says it without apology. "Fifteen thousand now. The rest at six months. That covers the surgery and then some."

I study him. He is standing near the door, not crowded, giving me space like he thought about the geometry of this conversation before he walked in. That bothers me more than the money. This was planned carefully. All of it.

"Why me," I say. "You could buy any girl at this school a nicer offer than this."

"I do not want someone who wants to be bought." He meets my eyes. "My father is arranging things. Who I am seen with, who I end up connected to. It is about his business interests and his image and it has nothing to do with me. If I show up with someone outside his plans, someone he cannot fold into them, it buys me time."

"Time for what."

"To get out from under him."

I look at him for a long moment. There is something tight under his jaw. Something that is not performance. Whatever his father is holding over him, it is real weight.

"That still does not explain why me specifically," I say.

He is quiet for a second. "Because last spring you played a showcase in the east parking garage in the rain and you played it like it was Carnegie Hall. Everyone else was embarrassed. You were not." He pauses. "I needed someone with that kind of backbone."

I do not let that land anywhere it is not supposed to.

"I need to think about it," I said.

"Twenty four hours." He moves to leave.

"Cross."

He stops.

"If any information about my family gets used outside of this arrangement for any reason," I say, "I will make sure every person at this school knows exactly what you did to get me to agree. I do not care about your jersey."

He looks at me for a moment. "Fair," he says.

He leaves.

I sit with the contract on my stand and my grandfather's cello in my hands. The case is held together with duct tape. The velvet inside is worn smooth. I lift the instrument and try to play and my hands shake on the first note.

My phone rings. My mom is calling, I answered.

The surgery got moved up. The deposit window closes Thursday.

I hung up. I look at the contract.

I text the number on the card tucked inside the fold.

I will sign. But I have conditions.

His reply comes back in under a minute.

Library, East wing, Tomorrow at eight, Bring a pen.

I put the phone down, I pick up my bow. I played Bach all the way through without stopping. When I finish the last note I sit in the silence and I think about what my grandfather used to say. He said every piece of music asks you to trust a note before you know where it is going. He said the bravest thing you can do is play it anyway.

I think he meant something more poetic than a contract with the school quarterback.

But Leo's surgery is in three weeks.

So I play the note.