Read Online Consent by Nancy Ohlin - Free Book Online Page A

half Korean and half Ukrainian and zero Italian. But he’s so jovial and nice that I don’t mind any of it. “Fine, thanks, Mr. Sorenson. How is your work?”
    â€œI’ve been commissioned to design a new museum in Los Angeles. I’m thinking of using paper tubes as building materials. Of course, they all think I’m crazy.”
    â€œYou are crazy, Daddy!” Plum says with an eye roll.
    â€œLars, darling! You’re going to miss the big scene!” Mrs. Sorenson trills from the living room.
    â€œI believe that’s my cue! I bid you adieu, ladies.”
    Mr. Sorenson drifts back into the TV room, munching noisily on popcorn. Plum hooks her arm through mine and drags me up the stairs.
    Once we are in her room, she closes the door and turns to me with an expectant grin. “So?”
    â€œSo. I don’t know. It was . . .” I drop my overnight bag on the floor and sink onto the bed. “He, um . . . there was this moment.”
    â€œWhat sort of moment?”
    â€œWell, we were having this kind of intense conversation about music, and I got up to go, and he grabbed my wrist.” I demonstrate. “For a second I thought he was going to kiss me or something.”
    â€œ Did he?”
    â€œNo. It got awkward, and then he left.”
    â€œIt was a date, then!” Plum cries out.
    â€œShhh, your parents will hear you.”
    â€œIt was a date, then,” she repeats in a hushed voice.
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œTeachers don’t just go around grabbing wrists and acting awkward and so forth.”
    I lean back against a mountain of mismatched pillows: green velvet, orange silk, Chinese calligraphy, Hello Kitty, a stegosaurus. “Maybe I misinterpreted.”
    â€œHe’s not married, is he?” Plum asks.
    â€œNo. Or at least I don’t think so. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”
    â€œWhere does he live?”
    â€œNo idea.”
    â€œWhere is he from, then?”
    â€œEngland, maybe? He has a British accent, and he said this thing about Tootsie Rolls.”
    â€œTootsie Rolls? What? Wait, you haven’t Googled him yet? Beatrice Natalia Kim, what is wrong with you?”
    â€œEverything?”
    Sighing, Plum grabs her laptop and plops down on the bed next to me. “Okay. All right. What’s his first name?”
    â€œDane.”
    She begins typing furiously. “Dane . . . R-O-S-S-I.”
    After a moment she slants the screen toward me. “There’s a Wikipedia page on his family. Oh, and he’s one of those middle-name people. His full name is Gabriel Dane Rossi.”
    â€œWhat? Really? Let me see.”
    We read the page together, our heads bent close. It says that Dane’s parents and also his sister are professional musicians. His mother, Dominique Kessler, plays violin with the London Philharmonic. His father, Gabriel Aldo Rossi, is a cellist and a member of the Bella Musica Quartet, which has won a bunch of Grammys. His sister, Lisette Rossi, is an opera singer in Paris.
    Holy cow.
    There is a small mention of Dane: that he was born and raised in London and that he earned his bachelor’s at Juilliard as a student of—I startle—Annaliese van Allstyne. Seriously? She is a famous pianist. I had no idea that she was also a professor.
    The brief bio on Dane goes on to say that after Juilliard he taught here and there—private lessons and also at a prep school outside of New York City called the Greenley Academy—and gave a dozen or so concerts, mostly in Europe, mostly in places I’ve never heard of.
    And now he’s in Eden Grove.
    I do some quick math. He’s twenty-seven—so, ten years older than me. Nine, if you consider the fact that I’ll be eighteen in December. We’re not that far apart, really.
    Plum points to the Greenley reference. “I know someone who goes