Wildalone Read Free

weren’t: feta cheese turning out to be tofu, cilantro disguised as parsley. No matter how odious the taste, I couldn’t just spit it out in front of everyone, now could I?
    But worst of all were the mornings. For a while, I woke up convinced I had heard my mother’s voice from the kitchen. Then one day the sound of the alarm carried nothing except its own voice, and it hit me for the first time: the distance from home and the panic that comes with it.
    When the word America had first dropped from my lips the previous summer, my parents warned me not to even think about it—without an explanation, or a hint that their voices hid much more than fear of sending an only child away from home. We argued for months. But to study abroad had become my dream, and they gave up once I threatened not to apply to college if they forced me to stay in Bulgaria.
    That fall I took exams, wrote essays, filled out financial aid forms—all my friends were doing it. Lucky to have been admitted to the most elite high school in the country, we had spent years studying English, being taught in English, virtually drowned in English from the moment we entered the classroom. And with it came a craving for the real thing, for a life in that magnetic continent across the ocean where not just the language but everything else we saw on TV and read about in books would become ours—real, tangible, natural like breathing.
    Now I was already here. But nothing felt natural about it, and to even catch my breath seemed a luxury. Within a week of arriving at Princeton, I was drained—from lack of sleep, from stress and the incredible speed of everything. Then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.
    â€œTheodora Slavin, yes? Pleased to meet you, very pleased—our new piano prodigy who is loaded with talent like a machine gun. I don’t envy anyone who stands in your way.”
    Guns were an odd topic for a welcome reception at the music department, and the man who brought them up (blue velvet jacket, unruly hair, theunshaven charm of a boy refusing to grow up even in his fifties) didn’t exactly fit my idea of faculty. Yet he knew about my piano background and had to have seen my file, so I ran with his metaphor:
    â€œIs Princeton really a battlefield?”
    â€œYes, and not only Princeton. But don’t worry, you’re uncovering the rules of combat as we speak. My job is to make sure you strike with every shot. Your job”—he winked as if to soften the impact—“is to resist the urge to do the opposite of what I tell you.”
    I still couldn’t figure out who he was, but luckily he reached out for a handshake. “Nathan Wylie, your music adviser. Do we call you Theodora, or is there a shorter version?”
    â€œJust Thea. Pleased to meet you too. Although I believe I am assigned to Professor Donnelly.”
    â€œCorrect. Sylvia is your go-to for all things academic; she can propel you at school better than anyone. But in terms of stage track record, we figured you’d need a villain more than a fairy godmother. By the way, here she is—”
    He waved a woman over just as she was stepping through the door. Even if the halo of short brunette curls and the red lipstick might have fooled you from a distance, everything else about Sylvia Donnelly—the composure of her heavy walk, the inquisitive eyes that scanned the crowd without hurry, the strain of authority in the air while she waited for one of us to speak first—made it clear that she had been teaching much longer than Wylie, possibly even longer than any other professor in the room.
    He introduced us and turned to her. “Perfect timing, by the way. I was just telling Thea that you and I have agreed to share custody.”
    â€œThen it bodes well for us that she isn’t running for the exit already. I can imagine what other things you must have told her.” After a thorough