Out-and-regretting-it comprehensive attendee Jayden Phillips turns his cast-iron plans for life upside-down by falling in love with private-school violinist Darren Peace, a sardonic boy with the craziest hair Jayden's ever seen.<br><br>But all is not what it seems, and Jayden's bullying problem becomes meaningless when he is confronted with what the music does to Darren. How do you stop a dangerous depression rooted in the same thing that makes someone what they are? Dark moods, blank apathy, and the undertow of self-loathing all simmer beneath Darren's dry and beautiful veneer, and Jayden feels powerless to stop them.<br><br>Then a mugging gone wrong takes the music forcibly away, and Jayden is finally given the chance to change Darren's life -- and, quite literally, his mind.

Vivaldi in the Dark

On Monday afternoon, at a minute past one, Miss West dismissed the fleet of boys who might have understood her lecture on centrifugal force, but by and large didn’t care anyway. At a minute and a half past one, two hands clamped down on Darren’s shoulders, each belonging to a different person.


“C’mon, Beethoven,” Ethan Summerskill said in his left ear. “Lunch in the back courtyard.”


“You have some explaining to do,” Paul Smith said in the other ear, and when Darren shrugged them off and turned, they were grinning identical grins.


Chapter 9