Hi, Sparrow.” This time Dr. K seems to have grasped the concept of Skype. She’s not yelling through the screen anymore.

“Hi.” I feel out of practice. I feel like a hundred years have gone by since my last session. I don’t have anything to say. I just wish I could carry her around in my pocket; that way I wouldn’t have to talk. She would have seen and heard all of it already. She would already know.

“I was almost late to get here,” I say, a pathetic attempt at a conversation starter.

“Oh? What held you up?”

“Class. I was playing and I lost track of time.”

“Did they give you the bass?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s in your band?”

“Lara’s on drums; Tanasia plays guitar. I know her from school. Spike, of course, she’s on vocals, and me.”

“You know Tanasia from school?”

“Yeah.”

“How well?”

“I don’t know. Well enough. She sat at my table in English. We were going to be friends, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now,” I say, frowning a little.

“What happened?”

“She got tired of waiting for me.”

“She wanted to be your friend.” I nod. “But you couldn’t let her?”

“I was going to. I just wasn’t ready. Now she’s mad. I blew the only chance I had at a friend.”

“Have you tried to explain?” I look at her, pursing my lips like, How dumb are you? “Just a question!” she laughs.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You might.”

“Sure.”

“And how is clicking with your other bandmates going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you like any of them?”

“They’re fine.”

“Do they live on your hall?”

“Spike, does obviously. Tanasia lives on Palmolive, and Lara lives on Yoko.”

“Where are they from?”

“I don’t know. I mean, except for Tanasia.”

“Why did they come to camp?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay, well, find out and tell me when we talk next week. Think of it as homework, Sparrow. You’ve got to practice, just like for bass. Do you like the bass?”

“I love it.”

“What do you love about it?”

“It makes me feel like I’m not invisible, but not in a bad way like when people sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you in public and you want to drop through the floor. It’s like this heartbeat; it’s where the music is stitched together. I know the drums do that too, but the drums are so hard and loud. They’re like the needle; the bass is more like the thread. Done well, you don’t even know it’s there. Miss it, and the whole thing falls apart.”

“Have you been going to meals?”

“Yes.”

“In the cafeteria?”

“Yes.”

“Good work. What time are you getting up?”

“Well, it’s better, I’m getting up at six. I’m sorry, I just can’t get with the group teeth brushing and showering and singing and togetherness. But I’m not hiding in the bushes, so that should count for something.”

“Indeed. Who are you eating with?”

“Week two, start of a new hell. We eat all our meals with the band now, like it or not. It’s perfect. Tanasia isn’t speaking to me, Lara is in love with her ice cream, and I can see Spike’s eyes darting around like she’s just longing to be with her friends and be finished having to sit with the loser roommate and these strangers. It’s like six kinds of awkward at once.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t be looking around if the people she was sitting with were talking to her.”

“It’s okay. Lots of times, there are performances at lunch or sing-alongs at dinner. That takes the place of a lot of the talking.”

“Do you sing along?”

“I’m not very good.”

“I don’t think good’s the point.”

“It’s not. Every morning we sing as a hall before breakfast; I didn’t tell you about it before because I didn’t know because—”

“Because you were hiding in the bushes.”

“Right.”

“Funny what you miss that way. What’s the song?”

“Every hall sings a song from their musician before breakfast. ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.’ ”

“That’s a pretty perfect song.”

I smile a little. “I mean, the lyrics, though. I wish I could be like a bird in the sky? This song is my anthem!”

“Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas, it’s like they wrote it with you in mind.”

“Literally. We all had to pick anthems, and this is mine. Ren told us to pick a song as our anthem, to carry it around in our heads, let it change how we walk, how we talk, how we feel. To pick it up when we feel lonely, to turn it up when we feel happy, to let it be our witness. I like the idea of Nina as my witness. I googled her. She had such a sad life; did you know she was crazy?”

“Crazy’s just a word. Nina was a lot of things.”

“Yeah. It makes me sad that she never got to be as free as this song.”

“Go find out some things about your bandmates. Stop wishing you could do all those things that you can do and go do them. And talk to Tanasia. She might not be quite as done as you think she is. For Nina, if nothing else.”

“I’ll try.”

“See you next week.”

The next day at lunch, they show a music video. It’s Janelle Monáe’s “Q.U.E.E.N.” I love her style. It almost makes me consider trading in my hoodie for a tuxedo. I love her voice. I love that bass line. The crowd literally goes wild after lunch; we’re shouting, “ENCORE, ENCORE!” and they play it three more times before they can get us to head to practice.

It’s never hard to get me to practice, but we’re supposed to be working on songs for our individual bands, and since we can barely speak to each other, my band obviously hasn’t been writing a lot of songs together. I pretend to fiddle with the tuning, but Ty figures out that I’m stalling.

“No songs yet?” he asks.

“None.”

“Hmm. So, what are you going to do about that?”

“We’ll work on it.” Famous last stalling words.

“Okay.” He sounds doubtful. He should be; I am.

“Can I work on another song today?”

“Yeah, okay,” he says, trying to hide a flinch as Sienna gets too close to her amp.

I put my headphones on and start playing “Q.U.E.E.N.” over and over until I can hear the bass and then more until I can hum it. I unplug and play through the song with my fingers on the frets. The afternoon goes by in a flash. All I want to do is master this song. I want to be a girl in a tux playing backup for Janelle. A Monette. A whatever as long as I can be in the same room as that music.

There’s open studio time tonight after dinner for bands to practice together; ours has elected not to (duh), but I go over to ESG, where the practice rooms are, and I find an empty one. I stand in the corner with my back to the door and I play “Q.U.E.E.N.” until my hands are tired and there are lines on my fingers where I’ve been pressing the same strings over and over. The beginnings of calluses. I play until all the lights in the other studios are off and then I keep playing.

“Sparrow.”

I spin around, pulling my headphones off of my ears and dropping my hands from the bass at the same time.

“Hi,” I say to Ty, who is looking at me with a lot of concern. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that it’s ten fifteen and you were supposed to be on the hall thirty minutes ago and no one knew where you were.”

“I’m sorry; I lost track of time.” It’s true. I have no other excuse. There’s a clock over the door, but I’m facing away from the door. There’s a clock on my phone, but it’s been in my pocket since I set my music on repeat. Ty sighs, long and deep but not angry. “I’m glad you’re safe. You know, if you’d talk to a few more folks, they might have been able to tell me where you were.”

Ah, yes. The talk-to-people-Sparrow lecture that I’ve been hearing since forever. I nod. I find that most adults take a nod for agreement when really all I’m saying is Yes, I hear the words that are coming out of your mouth. Still, it works for them.

“You can keep your nod, I know you’re not going to do it. I’m just saying, you might try to let some of these girls get to know you. They’re not so bad.”

I don’t say anything. I busy myself putting away the bass and unplugging the amp.

“Why did you come here, Sparrow?” Ty asks as we walk out the door.

“To practice.”

“I don’t mean here tonight, I mean, why did you come to GNRC?”

“I wanted to learn how to play bass.”

“Ha! Well, you’ve certainly done that in record time. But I think you wanted something else too. If you let a few folks in on what’s going on in that big head of yours, you might get that something else. It’s not as out of reach as you think. Bighead.” He knocks my head gently and laughs.

We’ve walked most of the way between ESG and Nina. The moon lights the sidewalks, and the night air feels good on my face. I roll the sleeves of my hoodie down and look up at Ty.

“Yeah, maybe,” I offer.

“I’ll take a maybe. You were pretty in the zone back there. What were you working on?”

“ ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’ ”

“Ah, Janelle Monáe, the reigning queen of blerdom.”

“What-dom?”

“Blerd, you know, like you and me.” I look at him blankly. “Black nerd, bighead.”

I smile. “I didn’t know there was a word for it.”

“For you? There’s way more than a word, but that’s one of them, for sure.” Blerd, I think to myself. Anything that puts me in a group with Ty and Janelle Monáe is okay with me. I wonder if Tanasia knows she’s a blerd too.

“How do you like Nina?” Ty asks as we approach the dorm.

“The woman or the hall?”

“Well, both, but the singer.” He pushes open the door to the hall.

I look him straight in the face. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Hang on.” He ducks into the counselor suite near the door and emerges with a record, an actual old-school vinyl record. “Here, it’s her concert recordings. She was amazing live, so honest, so pained. She was glorious. Take it.”

“I can’t accept this; it’s too much. Besides, I don’t even have a record player.”

“Huh, that’s true, you don’t, do you? I’m trying to think where you could possibly play it. If memory serves, Spike seems to have a record player in that room of yours. Maybe you can open your mouth and ask her if you can use it. Hell, maybe the two of you can even listen to it together.” I twist my mouth into one corner, like I’m trying to decide whether I want to smile or scowl.

“Nice trick,” I say.

“I thought so,” he says.

“You think I love Nina that much, huh?”

“I think you love Nina way more. Go to bed.”

I walk down the hall holding the record in my hurting hands. For the first time since I got here, I think this hasn’t all been a big mistake.