Monday 8 August

The other player is you. I am the other player. Oliver and I sound good together. We (maybe) sound good enough to win the scholarship. At least we sound good enough to try.

I spent the weekend pretending to study but researching Iceland and the Harpa Academy and calling Oliver to see if he could send me a sound file of himself so I could play around with some mixing.

He didn’t return my calls, so I walk into orchestra this morning wondering if maybe the CD was just a sympathy thing after all. Maybe he wanted me to feel better about how I played after being so humiliated on PSST.

‘You called?’ he asks, as I sit next to him.

‘Did I?’

‘52 times, in fact.’

Fuck it, I’m clearly past the point of lying. ‘I’m obsessed with the audition.’

‘So am I,’ he says immediately. ‘I was at my aunty’s wedding in Avoca. I spent the whole night on a dark hill trying to get reception.’

I like how Oliver’s not into pretending. He is what he is: completely and absolutely obsessed with music. He takes out a slip of paper that he says is a rehearsal timetable, but I don’t get to read it because Mrs Davies starts the practice.

It feels like Oliver and I are playing together this morning. Alone, among the other cellists. He plays the double stops and I can feel him nodding next to me as I play them, too.

‘We could win,’ he says, businesslike, while we pack up. I open the schedule and read the amount of times he wants to practise: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; Saturday and Sunday when possible.

‘I hire a studio on Wednesday,’ he explains. ‘On the other nights we can practise at my place. I have a sort of studio in my backyard.’

‘I can’t do all these times,’ I say. ‘They won’t let me out every night, for a start. I have to get full marks on the St Hilda’s scholarship exam, so Wednesday is definitely out.’

‘Then we won’t be ready,’ he says. ‘And there’s no point. So make a choice.’

I have made a choice. ‘All I’m saying is you need to ease up on the schedule a little.’

‘Wednesday is a deal-breaker.’

‘It’s a deal-breaker for me, too, so maybe we could compromise.’

‘Compromise doesn’t get us to Iceland,’ he says.

I know it doesn’t get us there, but all I can offer is compromise.

I fold the schedule. ‘I need to ask my parents.’ If I don’t ask them, then I’ll have to lie to get passes for all the times he wants to meet.

‘I can wait till Sunday for the answer,’ he says, and I know it’s a definite deadline.

Dr Malik reads us Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ in Wellness this morning. Mum’s read the poem to me before, and we studied it in English last year, but today it means more.

I feel the yellow wood, the grassy road that wants wear. I feel the pull towards things I want. I feel the pull towards Oliver and Iceland, towards that strange new road I heard on the CD. I wonder how we get to where we want to go, if where we want to go keeps changing?

Dr Malik tells us our exercise this week is to think about the roads we choose. The other task is to create an artwork in response to the poem, and I know, as soon as he said it that I have been doing exactly this since I heard Frances Carter. I have been sitting in that pool, composing new roads. The old ones are perfectly fine. But they’re not the ones I want.

I want to take the other road.

But I need permission to take it.

Mum sounds tired when she answers. Or maybe I’m reading things into her voice.

I’ve had several conversations with her in my head, trying to work out how to tell her that I want to ditch my scholarship tutoring sessions to play experimental cello with a boy she’s never met to apply for a scholarship to a summer in Iceland that I’ve never told her about. And by the way, could I borrow the money for the recording studio so I can offer to pay Oliver half?

Now that I’m on the phone with her, I can’t read the speech I’ve written out. I stall, and ask her how she and Dad are doing.

‘Same, same,’ she says, and she sounds more than tired. She sounds defeated.

‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Maybe I can help?’

‘All we need is for you to keep studying and get the scholarship. You don’t need to worry about us.’

‘What if I don’t get it? What if I can’t?’ I ask. ‘After all the money you’ve spent on me?’

‘You will,’ she says. ‘And then all the money will be worth it.’