“I can’t tell you that, Lucius.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Can’t. It’s not just a matter of protecting the identity of a minor.” He pauses. “It’s a matter of who that minor is.”
Mr. Belle doesn’t realize it, but he’s just provided me with a valuable bit of information, something I didn’t know before.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If a person sits back and just watches, listens, rather than participating in all the noise around, it is amazing what a person will see and hear, what even a socially challenged person like me can piece together about what is really going on in any given scene.
“You don’t have to tell me anything else, sir. I’ll take care of this for you, for Aurora.”
I can tell he has no idea what I’m talking about, and yet he looks suddenly relieved, as though a great burden has been lifted.
“Why would you help us?” he still wants to know. I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud even as I speak the words, “Because I’m Aurora’s Gallowglass.” I pause. “Do you know what a Gallowglass is, sir?”
A smile breaks across Mr. Belle’s face and I think it must be the first smile he has allowed himself in a very long time.
“Why, yes, Lucius,” he says. “Yes, I do.”
Aurora
I look in the mirror, start to put my makeup on.
We’re all backstage, getting ready for the show.
A part of me is excited about performing—we’ve been working so long and hard for this moment—but I wish my dad could be here. He’s been forbidden to set foot on school grounds, so Mr. Wentworth, Celia’s father, drove me here with them. I tried to talk to Mr. Wentworth about it—how could he believe my dad would ever do anything so wrong?—but he said that under the circumstances he couldn’t discuss it with me. All the while, Celia stared out the window, as though not wanting to hear what we were saying.
Jessup passes behind me now, stops to place a hand on my shoulder.
“You’re going to be great,” he says. “Knock ’em dead.”
I’m still not sure how I feel about Jessup. I don’t really feel as though I like him like him, but I am grateful for how kind he’s been to me since all this trouble started with my dad. I suppose there are worse reasons for being with a guy. And maybe if I go on being with him, I’ll learn to like him the way he wants me to.
I look around the backstage area, relieved that the stage manager is nowhere in sight.
Lucius
I wait through all of Act One and half of Act Two before making my move.
Jessup-as-Danny and the other guys are onstage singing “Alone at the Drive-In Movie,” Aurora has gone to change because her next time on stage is still three scenes away, and I corner Celia coming out of the girls’ room.
“Out of my way, Hooks,” she says dismissively.
“No,” I say. I take my hooks, plant each one firmly on the walls beside her, effectively cornering her. “I don’t think so.”
“What are you doing?” she demands. She looks at me wildly, as though she expects me to try to kiss her.
As if.
Hey, look at me: I’m learning to talk like other kids.
“How did it all start?” I ask her. “Was it your idea, or did someone else put you up to it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, but her eyes say her mouth is lying. Her eyes say, How does he know???
“Of course you do,” I say. “And you’re going to tell me all about it, right now, or I’ll go right out onto that stage and announce to the whole school what you did.”
It is amazing how cowardly cowards can be.
Celia caves in the face of a greater force: me.
“It was all Jessup’s idea,” she says. “He made me do it. He said that Mr. Belle was a creep anyway.”
Jessup was mad the night he caught Aurora with me, and this has been his revenge. He hurt her greatly, and somehow—I’m not sure quite how he did this yet—destroyed my chances with her while at the same time granting himself the opportunity to pick up the pieces. It’s too bad I despise him so much in this moment, because if I didn’t, I would want to play chess with him. Of course, I would beat him.
“And why did you do it?” I ask.
“Because I like Jessup and”—her lip quivers here—“I thought that if I did what he wanted, he’d finally like me back.”
“But it didn’t work out that way, did it?” I point out. I could almost feel sorry for her, pathetic person that she is, were it not for the harm she’s caused to Aurora and Mr. Belle. It’s awful to plot destruction only to have it all blow up in your face. Of course, having it blow up in your own face is no doubt preferable to causing external destruction.
“No,” she says, “but by then it was too late. I’d already told my dad and he believed me.”
“But it was just your word against Mr. Belle’s.”
“But my dad is the vice principal.” She pauses. “And Jessup went with me, told them he saw what happened, that he came into the library but that Mr. Belle didn’t see him there.”
I can tell there’s something she’s not telling me. A master at leaving crucial bits of information out, I know when someone else is doing it to me.
“What else?” I say.
“And . . . and . . . and we spread the rumor throughout the school that you were the one who said you saw Mr. Belle trying to do something with one of the female students. Jessup may have been the one who told my dad he saw what happened, but then Jessup told me to tell Deanie it was really you. And Deanie, being Deanie, of course she went straight to Aurora and then everyone else in the play. So they got a different story than the one my dad got. They all think you helped destroy Aurora’s father.”
So that’s why Aurora struck me on the face that day, that’s why she turned away from me.
I can’t say that I blame her.
“Okay, here’s what you’re going to do,” I tell Celia. “You’re going to finish the play as if nothing’s happened.”
“As if nothing’s happened? But I can’t—”
“And you won’t breathe a word of our little talk to Jessup, not until after the play. I’ll know if you do and if you do, I’ll go right out on that stage and—”
“Okay, Lucius. I’ll do it the way you want.”
Five minutes later, Celia-as-Rizzo is onstage singing “There Are Worse Things I Could Do”—ironic title, since from where I’m looking at things, there really aren’t—when I take my stroll into the audience to locate Mr. Wentworth in the front row.
I squat down beside his seat, whisper a story in his ear, a tale of love and betrayal.
At first, I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
“Ask her yourself, sir,” I say, “right after the show, her and Jessup too. She’ll tell you.” I almost pity him as I add, “Kids are capable of doing terrible things.”
Then I tell him to call Mr. Belle at home. If Mr. Belle hurries, he can make it to the auditorium just in time to see his daughter close the show.
I stand in the wings watching the final song: “We Go Together.” It’s a silly song, but I have learned to enjoy the catchy beat.
Peering out into the audience, I see my parents and Misty in the middle of the auditorium, and I think I catch a glimpse of Mr. Belle standing behind the back row, tie perfectly in place. But maybe I just see it because I want to see it.
I turn my eyes back to the action on the stage.
I’ve made sure that no one has said anything yet, because I don’t want to spoil this night for Aurora.
And even though it galls me to watch Jessup kiss Aurora one last time as the curtain comes down, I allow her this moment of acting triumph onstage, this last moment of innocence before what must surely come after.
Aurora
I see my dad. I can’t believe he’s here! But how . . .
My dad gives me a bouquet of roses and a long hug before letting me go.
/> “How did—” I start to say.
But my dad simply smiles, juts his chin toward the wings of the stage where waits Lucius. Lucius?
My dad is trying to tell me that Lucius has achieved this miracle? Lucius? But how?
I don’t see the details, not yet, but I do see that it is true. And I also see quite clearly what Lucius has always been.
Back when my mom was sick all those years, whenever she’d have chemotherapy and in the awful days following, I’d read to her from the encyclopedia to take her mind off the pain. It was always the encyclopedia, because she was obsessed with learning everything there was to know in the world before she died.
We only made it up to G.
But under G, fairly early on, there was an entry for Gallowglass. Centuries ago, Gallowglass were elite foreign military soldiers. Really, a person couldn’t do better than to have a Gallowglass for a bodyguard, because they would suffer greatly themselves to protect those they served, they would die if need be while upholding honor.
Lucius may be a flawed human being—as am I, as are we all—but he is my Gallowglass. He has been since the moment I first saw him.
In the instant I realize this, I see Lucius turn away, his back to the stage; and in the next, I see Jessup run out from the wings on the other side, stopping only long enough to snatch up a prop from the play.
It is a tire iron, the one used during the scene where the Burger Palace Boys pretend to do work on the T-Bird that forms the centerpiece of the set: Greased Lightning.
Lucius
I hear the threat, the sound of footsteps pounding with only a slight pause in their progress across the stage, before I see the source. Since everyone else has disappeared from the wings, those angrily rushing footsteps can only be coming for one person: me.
The plastic arm of my prosthetic becomes the perfect blocking device as I whirl to face my attacker, my shoulder recoiling as it absorbs the percussive force of the tire iron.
“You sonofabitch!” Jessup shouts at me, swinging the tire iron at my other side.
“Actually,” I say, deflecting the tire iron with the plastic arm of my other prosthetic, “my mother is a fine woman.”
I don’t even mean it to be funny. But if I am to die tonight, I will not have this cretin defaming my mother before fate and circumstance turn out the lights on my life. My mother is a fine woman, who has only been hurt by me. Really, most of the people in my world are fine people, also hurt by me.
Jessup is swinging wildly at me now.
“This is all your fault!” he says. “If it weren’t for you—”
“If it weren’t for me what?” I continue to deflect each blow, no matter how quickly they come. “If it weren’t for me, you would be a better person than you are?” Really, I am so good at deflecting, I think maybe I should give up pool and take up martial arts. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t do terrible things?”
Jessup lunges at my stomach with the tire iron and I leap backwards.
“We are all responsible for what we do,” I tell him. “If I didn’t exist, you would still be you.”
This time he comes down straight toward my head, and this time when I deflect, I do so with such force, it knocks the tire iron loose from his grip.
He looks so vulnerable without his useless weapon.
In that instant, I hate him for all the unnecessary harm he put Aurora through. I could kill him for that, even make a menacing step in that direction. But in the next instant, I take in the sound of Aurora’s voice. She’s yelling something, yet all I can make out is the sound of my own name. And when I look over, I see her straining toward me. She is struggling to get free from the arms of Mr. Belle, who is holding her tight from behind. I don’t blame him for this. It is exactly what I would do: protect Aurora from any and all harm.
The fight leaves me then.
I no longer want to kill Jessup.
I no longer want to be a monster.
Bending, I pick up the tire iron with my hook, offer it to Jessup. I am thinking I should have died in that explosion. I am thinking, if he wants to kill me, this is a fine enough night to die. I would rather be killed than to kill.
“Go on,” I say.
But apparently the fight has gone out of Jessup too, because all he does is stare at the tire iron in my hook, horrified at the sight of it.
“Come on, Jessup,” I hear the voice of Mr. Belle, speaking with more gentleness, grace, and forgiveness than I would be able to muster were I him. “You need to get some help.”
Then they’re gone. Everyone, save one person, is gone.
In this light, my Dark Angel looks amazing.
In any light, really.
Aurora
I kiss the boy.
Lucius
I kiss the girl.
About the Author
LAUREN BARATZ-LOGSTED has written books for all ages. Her books for children and young adults include the Sisters Eight series, The Education of Bet and Crazy Beautiful. She lives with her family in Danbury, Connecticut.
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