Chapter Text
Brettany doesn’t know when it started. But she does know when she finally realized.
—
It’s mid March, between their birthdays, and Brettany feels weary, like a tired old woman with her eighteen years. Compare that to Edwina, who is still only sweet, sweet sixteen and has no clue what to do with her life. Brettany on the other hand has it all figured out.
There are several long lists in her notebook. Pieces to practice. Technical skills to improve. Violin competitions to enter over the next three years. She has mapped out her entire future, but right now, it just looks like a gigantic mountain she will have to climb..
She has been waiting so long for this! Between boring lessons and lonely lunch breaks, going home to her violin had been the one thing she had looked forward to all day for the last few years. And now that her time has finally come, now that she will be able to spend all day with her violin for the next four years? No joy, no excitement. Just a vague feeling of dread.
“What can I get for you?”
It’s the bubble-tea shop guy that interrupts Brettany’s thoughts. She has a quick look around, but Edwina was nowhere in sight.
“Two large milk teas, 50% sugar, less ice, with tapioca pearls.”
It is their standard order, and if Edwina wanted something else, she should have been on time. For once.
Brettany sighs and starts walking towards the small park a few streets away. The bench there is usually empty, and Edwina will find her there. It is their refuge from noisey siblings and overbearing parents, a place to have bubble tea in peace.
And that’s when it happened.
Edwina is walking towards her, and she is, well, radiant. It is her hair, partly. Instead of long, flat and black, as it has been since Brettany has known her, it was now white blond, arranged like a halo around her face.
But it is also everything else. The way she smiles, and walks and looks at the world as if it belongs to her. Brettany looks at her, and Handel starts playing in her mind. The arrival of Queen Edwina.
“It’s decided,” Edwina says to Brettany. “I’ll do it.”
Brettany takes a sip of her bubble tea, buying herself some time. Where is the girl she visited last Sunday afternoon, who could not imagine herself as a doctor, and could not imagine disobeying her mother, and could go nowhere but into her room and into her head and never come out again?
The person in front of her seems to be someone completely different, and it is only when she sees Edwina’s crooked teeth that Brettany’s brain finally manages to reconcile her image with that of her best friend.
“You’ll do what? Go for the entrance exam for the con? Or try to get into med school?”
Edwina spreads her arms wide.
“I’ll do it all. I’ll sit the exam and get into med school, and I'll apply for the con, and then I’ll go there and make music, not because I have no other options, but because it’s my choice and it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
She is looking at Brettany, clearly expecting some kind of reaction that is not forthcoming.
Brettany is too stunned to react. She can’t even look at Edwina. Who can look up to the bright, scorching Australian sun in her full midday glory? And everything she touches is bright and brilliant in her light. Even Brettany. Even Brettany’s future.
So she throws herself at Edwina instead, hugging her, holding her tight, tight, as tight as she can, the bubble tea lying forgotten on the ground.
—
Yeah. That’s when Brettany had realized. Nothing made sense without Edwina. Not even music. Not even the violin.
It was also when her family, who had until then welcomed Edwina like a third child, suddenly seemed to stop liking her.
—