My fingers are shaking as I sit in my backyard under the cherry blossom tree, my border collie, Penny, sitting beside me. Her tongue is hanging out of her mouth, and she's panting hard after our walk. I'd checked the mail right before we left, but it must've ran while I was gone. And now the letter is sitting in my lap, and I know my future is waiting inside the envelope. My parents are out of town for the weekend, taking a small spring vacation before school starts again. So I'm completely alone at my house. No matter what the letter inside the envelope says, I won't be able to share the news with my parents until tomorrow.

Penny nuzzles me with her nose, and I know she wants pets. But it feels like she's pushing me, trying to coax me into opening the envelope. But all I can do is stare at my name. Lauren Page, sitting above my address in Times New Roman font, and it's like it's calling me. I take a breath and decide, finally, to just do it. To tear it open. Rip it off like a band-aid, as my best friends Claire and Sam always say. So I slide my shaking finger under the fold and rip open the top. Then I pull the letter out of the envelope, unfold it, and scan the words on the page.

My heart is racing so fast, and the first word I see is the only one that matters: Accepted. Tears burn my eyes, and I hold the letter to my chest like a talisman and lift up my head to the sky. Penny whines beside me. I wonder if she can feel my relief. It's been months since my audition, and the lack of contact was beginning to make me nervous. But there's no need to be nervous anymore. It's done. I did it. I got into Juilliard. My dream school. The only school I cared about. The one I wanted to get into more than any other. And I did it. I got in. ACCEPTED.

And no one is home. I consider calling Suzie, my music teacher, to tell her, but I know my mom will be upset if she's not the first person to know. So I decide to sit on my news until my parents get back. And then I will tell everyone at once. I scratch Penny, who's still whining, behind her ear and get to my feet. She jumps up and follows me into the quiet house. The only sound I hear is the refrigerator running, and I find the silence unsettling. I'm so used to having a house full of people. My brothers, even though they've all been moved out for a while, usually stop in several times a week. But they must have plans too. I hate being alone. Especially with such fantastic news that just can't wait to be shared.

Claire and Sam are also out of town. Claire is visiting her grandma in Detroit, and Sam is doing some tour thing at UCLA, the school she got into just a week ago. So I have nothing to do. Penny runs to her water dish as soon she she can, and I head upstairs to my bedroom to practice my speech for my senior project. But try as I might, I just can't focus on it. The silence is too loud. It's distracting. So I pull out the letter from my pocket and read the words again, this time soaking them in. It feels too good to be true. And as I read the letter for the second time, I feel like someone has placed a cool hand on the back of my neck.

I rub my neck, and the coolness goes away. Must've been a draft. I run back down to the living room and sit on the baby blue couch, setting the letter on the round oak coffee table and turning on the TV. I don't usually watch TV, but the silence is deafening now, and I need something to drown it out. I put on an old rerun of my favorite show, Medium, sit back, and relax for a bit. About halfway into the episode, I start thinking about the letter again. And again, I feel that strange coolness on the back of my neck. I try to rub it away again, but this time it doesn't go away. Two episodes later and it's still there. I check the time, and it's getting close to dinner.

My mom left me money for pizza on the counter, so I order a small combination pizza with a bottle of diet pop and a mini chocolate lava cake. The cake is to celebrate my acceptance, since no one else is around to celebrate with me. The pizza arrives and I eat most of it in one sitting. I'm hoping that eating will help with the coolness, but it doesn't. If anything, it makes it worse. After a couple more episodes of Medium, I head on upstairs to get ready for bed. It's only nine o'clock. Way too early for me to go to sleep. But I'm getting the feeling I might be coming down with something. So sleep might be just what I need.

I brush my teeth, change into my pink flamingo patterned pajamas, and crawl into bed, expecting to fall asleep almost immediately. But the silence is loud again, and the coolness on the back of my neck is starting to spread down to my chest. I toss and turn, and at some point in the night I hear Penny lay on her bed next to my open closet. She falls asleep in minutes, and I envy her. Several hours go by, and I still can't sleep. The cold is now weighing on me like a block of ice. I cover up with my blanket, but it just gets worse. So much worse.

I'm shivering, and now I feel my chest start to constrict. At first I think maybe I'm having a reaction to the pizza. But then I remember that the cold started earlier. Another glance at my clock. It's almost one in the morning. Tears are stinging my eyes, and I close them tightly, as if trying to force myself into a state of relaxation. Penny shuffles in her bed, and I hear the fan on in the bathroom. But that's all I hear. Everything is so terribly quiet. How is it possible for silence to be so loud? Is this how it's going to be when I move to New York?

The tears begin to fall now as I start thinking about Juilliard, and what the acceptance means. Yes, it means the start of a new life. But it also means saying goodbye to my old life. To my parents. My brothers. Suzie and my friends. I knew I would eventually have to leave them, but now that I have full confirmation that it's happening, I feel scared. Terrified, really. The coolness spreads further, and it's like someone has my lungs in their hands and is squeezing all the air out of them. I cry for so long it feels like my tears are turning to blood. My head is pounding, and it's three in the morning now and I still can't sleep.

I need to warm up, so I quietly slip out of my bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom. I turn the water of the shower on, wait until it gets hot, and then peel my pajamas off my body like a piece of shed skin before stepping into the searing hot water. I'm expecting the water to help with the cold, but it doesn't. It's like the cold is coming from inside me. My tears mix with the water, and I didn't think it was possible to cry so much. All I can think about is being alone, and the excitement I felt about the acceptance letter is slipping down the drain with the water. I stay in there until it goes cold, and then I just sit on the shower floor, letting the water hit me like rain on a cold fall evening.

My breathing is coming out in ragged gasps now, and I'm seeing little black spots in my vision. What is the matter with me? I put my head between my knees, hoping it will help. But it doesn't. Nothing seems to help. I turn the water off, wrap myself in a towel, and sneak quietly back into my bedroom, hoping not to wake Penny, who is still sleeping soundly in her purple dog bed. I sit on my own bed and stare straight ahead, trying to think up other ways to get rid of this godforsaken cold. And then my eyes spot my black violin case, and I realize that's it. That has to be the answer. The silence is too loud, and the cold is suffocating. The only thing to do is to drown it all out with music.

I wrap myself up in my red bathrobe and grab my violin case. Then I tip-toe downstairs and into the garage. These oil stained floors and tool covered walls have been my middle of the night practice spot for years, with my dad's Firebird being my only audience. Every so often he comes out here to work on the car, even though he never drives it. My mom begs him to sell, but he refuses, saying that he'll drive it when it's ready. But somehow it never is ready. He's always working on getting it perfect, but it's always dusty or needs a new part. It will never be good enough for him.

I slide my violin out of the case and set it under my chin. Then I take the bow and tighten its horse hairs the way I was taught when I was five years old. I take a breath and slide the bow against the strings. The music drowns out the silence. I play the piece I chose for my Juilliard audition: Paganini - Caprice No 24. It's one of the most technical violin solos ever, and I'd practiced it for months before the actual audition. Making sure I'd gotten every part of the piece just right. Juilliard would only take perfection, so there could be no mistakes. And on that day there were none. I'd even impressed myself with how good the solo had sounded. Not just good. No, that's just me being modest. How great it sounded. Fantastic, even. I had never played that well in my life, and I'd had a lifetime of violin solos to compare it to.

But something is different about tonight. I slip up several times, and even manage to forget some of it. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then try again. And somehow I sound worse than the first time. I play and I play, keeping my eyes shut tight and hoping that I'll be able to get this right. But I keep screwing it up. And now I'm crying again, my tears slipping onto the instrument that for so many years has been like my closest confidant. But now it's like it's betraying me. The music has left me. No, not the music. The spark. The spark that lives in me. I can usually feel it when I play, like a small ball of light that dances in time with the music. But tonight, it feels like the spark has moved out. It's gone. Totally gone. And I hate myself for feeling this way, and I play and I play, but I just cannot get it right.

I play until the sun comes up. Until I'm too exhausted to stand. I put my violin back in its case and go back upstairs. The cold feeling is still there, but sleep is winning now. I rest my head against my pillow and crash. In my dreams, I keep trying to play my violin on a stage in front of a large audience of people. But try as I might, there's no sound. It's like someone has hit the mute button and silenced my instrument. Permanently. I wake up, still feeling cold, to the sound of a scream from downstairs. A few seconds later and my mom is bursting through my bedroom door, her eyes aglow with joy and tears of her own.

"You got in?" she asks, and it takes me a moment to remember. And then I see the letter in her shaking hand, and I realize I left it on the coffee table the night before. She doesn't even let me respond before she runs up and throws her arms around me. "Oh my goodness, Lauren. I'm so proud of you. I never doubted that you could do it!"

I've never seen my dad cry before, but when my mom tells him I got into Juilliard, he breaks down into happy tears. They throw me an impromptu party, inviting over my brothers, Suzie, and Sam and Claire, who have also just returned from their trips. They all give speeches over dinner about how proud they are of me, and about my accomplishments and my future. And I smile throughout the whole event, being gracious and humble the way I was taught. But the silence still lingers in the back of my mind like a ghost, and the cold is still pressing in upon me.

And the spark is still gone. I feel its absence in my chest like a gaping hole in my heart. And the truth of the matter is I don't know who I am without it.