"Yes," Naomi said. "He is."
Connor visited twice that summer with a basketball and an awkwardness that melted into video games. He never said Mr. Briggs's name. Once, on the landing outside Naomi's apartment, he told her he still had dreams about the podium. Naomi thanked him for the text that started everything. Connor shrugged and said his mom told him you don't watch something wrong and call it none of your business. Naomi decided she owed Denise Blake dinner for the rest of her life.
Emily Dawson sent a card in August. It was plain and unsigned by her parents. Inside, in careful handwriting: I'm sorry I didn't say it louder. I hope your new school is better. Isaiah taped the card inside his closet door where only he would see it.
Northside Middle School smelled like floor wax and ambition. On the first day, Naomi walked Isaiah to the main office even though he asked her not to, then waited in the car until he texted okay. Ms. Camille Ortiz met them at band orientation that evening—tall, Black, mid-forties, with locs wrapped in a scarf the color of copper and a voice that could quiet a room without raising itself. She shook Isaiah's hand as if he were a colleague. She showed him the clarinet section and said chairs were earned by preparation, not by fear. When other parents clustered around her with questions about the competition schedule, she held up a finger and finished her sentence to Isaiah first.
Naomi watched from the back row and felt something in her chest unclench that had been clenched since March.
In October, Northside's fall showcase included a clarinet duet. Isaiah was not ready for a solo. Ortiz paired him with an eighth-grader named Priya who treated nerves as a technical problem rather than a moral failing. They practiced through lunch. Naomi sat in the audience on showcase night with Ruth and Jordan and Marta, who had canceled a dinner to come. When Isaiah walked onstage, mustard cardigan replaced for the night by a white dress shirt and black pants, Naomi's hands went cold. He lifted the clarinet. He played. The notes were not perfect. They were alive. When he finished, he looked once toward the place in the seats where he knew she would be, and he smiled the small, private smile he had smiled after "Hot Cross Buns" years before.