Page 77 of The Other Side of Green

Closing my eyes, I considered the prospect of playing without Jack. Right now, I didn’t know if that would ever happen again.

After one plane ride, a shitty sleep from hell and a stomach full of knots, I waited outside Greene’s office.

Straightening my back, I rapped on the wood. I only had one chance of finding out if I was still welcome at Berklee and that involved walking through this door.

“Come in.”

Okay so maybe I’d need someone to actually push me through the door. I should have bought Eva as backup.

Remembering the signs of the demonstration I’d seen when we arrived back in the early hours of the morning, I forced my hand on the handle and turned it.

“Lyra!” Professor Greene got up from behind his desk and for a moment I thought he might hug me, which almost made me trip over. Instead, he held out his hand for a firm and warm shake. “It is good to see you again. We’ve had a bit of excitement on our hands since you left.”

I nodded, my tongue too useless to put words together. My insides gnawed like a rat cleaning a bone.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, although it felt wrong to be apologizing.

Greene’s lips curled at the edges. “I think that’s us who should be saying that to you. I promise you, Lyra, we had no idea of what was happening with the Collins Foundation, or their admissions criteria.”

As he said ‘we’ I became aware of the other person in the room. I turned like a marionette on a string only to find the dean sat with a china cup of tea on his knee. “Please sit, Lyra.”

Automatically my knees folded.

This was it.

I’d caused too much trouble.

The funding had been lost.

Was I relieved? Maybe a little disappointed? Was I anything other than a mechanical machine without a heart—apparently not.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your…” Say meeting, say meeting… “Tea and cake.”

Oh my god.

The dean chuckled and reached forward to put his cup down on a small antique-looking side table. “Are you a fighter, Lyra?”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Was I? Well perhaps for things that didn’t mean anything to anyone else.

“I think so,” I answered honestly enough.

“Good. The whole world is watching us right now.”

My cheeks flamed. “Berklee has been a Mecca for musicians for generations. We’ve created some of the best talent, some of the most successful and forward- thinking producers of recent times. We aren’t all about the violin.”

Oooh. I cringed small in my seat. “Well, I’m not all about the violin either.”

“So I hear.”

I shot a sharp glance at Professor Greene—he’d told me not to sing, all too clearly, in this room, only a couple of weeks ago.

“Shall we cut to the chase? Have I still got funding? I can’t afford to be here otherwise.” I sat up a little straighter, hearing Grams grumble in the back of my head that I needed to pull my shoulders back.

The dean nodded and smiled. “And we can’t afford for you not to be here.”

A strange, whooshing sensation swept through my chest. Strange because it almost felt like relief, which was weird considering I didn’t know I even wanted to be here.

“I would like to make it clear that I never wanted to be part of any race row. My application to the college was made because my grandmother wanted me to play more than anything in the world. I hate to think what she would say if she knew I’d been given my funding just because I was the first bi-race applicant on the list.”