by Laura DeLuca
“Joseph Buquet could not hold his tongue.
So his neck had to be wrung.
Now his silence I guarantee.
As his soul drifts into eternity.”
So many times she had heard Justyn say those words. So many times she watched as his face twisted in feigned anger. She thought it was only the brilliance of his acting ability. But could there be a real darkness, a real evil, lurking below the surface of the man she was falling in love with? Perhaps there a side of him she didn’t know. Could the voice on the message belong to Justyn? And if it was Justyn, could she possibly stop herself from feeling these emotions she had never wanted to feel in the first place?
Either way, she had to know. She listened to the message again, and again. Three times. Five times. Ten times. Maybe more. Before she had played it for the final time, before she had given herself a moment to think beyond who the caller was and to consider the implications of the words, her call waiting announced that another call was coming through the line.
There was a moment of dread before she realized that this time a name flashed across the small screen. It was a name she knew well and was even relieved to see. She needed a friend, someone she could talk to about all this before she drove herself completely over the edge to the brink of insanity. She switched lines without even taking the time to delete the message.
“Carmen?” she whispered.
“Becca? Becca, it’s so horrible!”
Carmen was crying, hysterically sobbing. She heard it in the tremble of her voice. Fear paralyzed Rebecca. Carmen never cried. Never once, not even in kindergarten, had she ever seen her friend shed a tear. She knew something horrible must have happened. Something unthinkable. And something, she realized with that ever-growing sense of eerie premonition, that was directly related to the awful message.
“Carmen, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She knew what her answer was going to be even before she said it. Rebecca didn’t need to be psychic to figure it out. It only made sense once she thought about it with a strange and sudden calm. The mystery caller had spoken of the murder of Joseph Buquet. Jay played the part of Joseph in the show. Another scene from Phantom was about to turn into reality. Rebecca felt her stomach churn as her friend verified her worst fears.
“It’s Jay,” Carmen sobbed. “There was a terrible accident. And Jay . . . Oh Becca, Jay is dead!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Is Tom home?”
Mrs. Rittenhouse stood in the doorway pale-faced and serious, and looked Rebecca over with a little uncertainty. After all, hers was not a face that she was used to seeing on her porch steps under any circumstances. It must have seemed odd for her to show up unannounced when their whole family was obviously grieving over the loss of a close friend. She put her hands on her wide hips and pursed her lips together in annoyance.
“I don’t think Tom wants to see anyone right now.”
“Can you just tell him that Becca’s here? If he doesn’t want to see me, I promise I’ll leave. No questions asked. But just please let him know I’m here.”
Tom’s mother still appeared a little suspicious. But Rebecca wasn’t above begging, and her desperate pleading was too hard to ignore. Mrs. Rittenhouse disappeared up the stairs with a shrug of her shoulders.
Rebecca tried not to pace impatiently in the foyer as she waited for her to return. She was worried about Tom. She had called his cell phone more times than she could count. She had left voice messages, sent text messages, and emailed him like crazy from the second Carmen had told her the news. Tom seemed to be avoiding all forms of communication with the outside world. And he had every reason. His best friend, his confidant, his ever faithful sidekick was gone. Jay was dead. They had been two halves of a strangely fitting whole all through high school. One existing without the other seemed almost impossible.
Rebecca knew that concern for Tom’s emotional well being was only part of the reason why she had driven halfway across town to his house. It was his physical well being that really concerned her. She hadn’t slept all night, thinking about the message, wondering who might be next on the would-be killer’s hit list. Rebecca wanted to warn Tom. Even if he thought she was crazy, even if it was an unnecessary precaution, she thought that he had to know about the call.
“Hey, Becca.”
Rebecca jumped at the sound of her name. She was surprised to turn and find Tom standing at the bottom of the stairway. She hadn’t really expected him to come down. She immediately forgot the real reason why she had come. She forgot everything when she saw how utterly wretched he looked. All she knew was that she felt obliged to make some kind of effort at comforting him.
Tom had aged ten years since she had seen just days ago. She didn’t think it was possible for someone to look so different after just two days. His once youthful, carefree face was lined with grief. His blue eyes had lost all their sparkle, and were red and swollen. He was so pale that he could have actually given Justyn competition for the role of school vampire. Rebecca couldn’t look at that kind of torment and just turn away. She was propelled forward by her compassion. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t in love with him or that she was pretty sure she was in love with his arch nemesis. It didn’t even matter anymore that she was afraid there might be a murderer on the loose. Tom needed comfort and she couldn’t deny it. Rebecca flung her arms around him with reckless abandon.
He seemed surprised at first. His arms stayed limp at his sides for a full minute, even as Rebecca pulled him close against her. Then finally, he woke from his half trance and returned the embrace. His arms wrapped around her waist, squeezing her so tightly in his desperation that she could barely breathe. She could feel him trembling in her arms, and before long she felt his tears soak through the thin layer of her sweater as his body racked in silent sobs.
“Becca, I . . . I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
There wasn’t really anything she could say. Telling him that Jay was in a better place was ridiculous when all Tom wanted was for his friend to be alive again. Saying that everything happened for a reason was equally mundane and cliché. What reason could there possible be for a seventeen-year-old boy to have his life cut so dramatically short? And what words could possibly ease the pain that Tom must be feeling? Instead of saying meaningless words, Rebecca just let him cry. All the while she patted his back, and ran her fingers through his hair soothingly. It seemed to help calm him down. Eventually the heart wrenching sobs settled into gentle hiccups. When Tom finally lifted his red-rimmed eyes, he even managed to give her the smallest hint of a smile.
“Wow, not much of a tough guy, am I?”
“Grieving for your friend doesn’t make you any less of a man, Tom. It’s okay to be sad.”
He nodded. “I know that. But I guarantee you that wherever Jay is right now, he’s looking down on me, rolling his eyes, and calling me a whole bunch of unflattering names.”
Rebecca had to smile. Knowing Jay, that was probably true.
Tom did this best to collect himself. He wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his shirt before leading Rebecca into the kitchen. He poured a couple of glasses of ice tea, both of which sat untouched and glistening with moisture on the table as they stared off into space, each lost in their own thoughts. After several minutes of deafening silence had passed, Tom finally spoke.
“So, how did you find out? I didn’t expect the news to spread so quickly.”
Tom wasn’t taking into account that besides living in a small town where everyone knew everyone else’s business, Rebecca also happened to be best friends with the queen of gossip. If there were news, good or bad, exciting or mediocre, Carmen would be the first to find out. And ultimately Rebecca was the next to find out whether she wanted to or not.
“Carmen called me last night. Debbie’s dad owns the tow truck company that . . . um . . . .” She had to clear her throat. “That took the car away.”
Tom nodded. He voice was controlled but
his face had turned a few different shades of green. “So you know what happened?”
“I know there was an accident.”
“An accident?” He laughed, just a little bitterly. “Stupid, reckless moron. Jay was always driving like a maniac. I should have known that eventually he would drive my truck straight into a telephone poll. You know, it’s funny. I can almost hear his voice in my head, giving me a whole bunch of lame excuses about how it wasn’t his fault. Like, ‘Dude, an entire family of cattle ran out in front of me’. Or, ‘I was blinded by the lights of this giant UFO.’ Sure, I would have been angry as hell at him for totaling my truck, at least at first. But I would have forgiven him eventually—especially once it hit me how lucky he would have been to be alive. I mean, who really cares about some stupid car, right? I’d never drive again if it meant that Jay . . . that he was still . . . .”
Tom lost it again. All trace of the composure he had fought so hard for was gone. He buried his head in his hands to hide the tears he had thought had finally run dry. Rebecca reached across the table to gingerly touch his hand, unsure that he even remembered that she was still there or if he wanted her to touch him. She didn’t even realize that tears were trickling down her cheeks as well until she watched them slip onto the table and absorb against the cloth mat.
“Tom, I’m so . . . so sorry.”
“It was my truck. It should have been me.”
Rebecca was horrified by the thought. “Don’t say that! This wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault. It wasn’t you . . . it was . . . .”
Tom looked up at her with grateful, watery eyes, and Rebecca couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t tell him whose fault she thought it was. She couldn’t tell him the main reason she had come was because she suspected that Jay’s accident might not have been an accident at all. And it wasn’t only because she was unsure of the killer’s secret identity that she held her tongue. She couldn’t give Tom anything else to torture himself about. He had enough to deal with.
Besides, maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was another coincidence in a long line of coincidences. Maybe the caller had heard about Jay’s accident through the grapevine and had worked in into their threats to make it scarier. Surely if there had been foul play involved, the police would have realized it. Right? There would have to be some trace of tampering or some proof that someone had run Jay off the road. Didn’t they always find a dozen clues to lead them to the perpetrators on detective shows like CSI? Real life crime scenes couldn’t be any different. It must have been nothing but an accident. A horrible, horrible, accident.
It seemed like the logical conclusion. But there was nothing logical about the panic stricken tightening in her chest every time she remembered the threatening voice. There was nothing logical about the pain Tom was feeling over the loss of his best friend. The whole thing was a terrible situation, whether Jay’s death had been intentional or not.
“It really means a lot to me that you came here today,” Tom told her.
He squeezed her hand. Then suddenly and without warning, he leaned over the table and kissed her. It took her by surprise, and she knew she should have pulled away. She knew she was giving him false hope. But he was already hurting. How could she deny him this small bit of human comfort? How could she hurt him even more by turning away from him in his time of need? The answer was that she couldn’t. Rebecca let him kiss her, and told herself it would be for the last time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was strange how life just went on, even when it seemed only natural for the world to stop spinning on its axis. It didn’t seem right for things to continue like nothing had happened—for schools bells to ring, for people to laugh in the halls, for play practice to continue as scheduled. Yet, things did go on just like it was any other day, even though Jay was no longer a part of their lives. Life went back to its normal routine as soon as everyone dried their eyes after the memorial service. Even Rebecca was falling back into the daily humdrum of classes, and was surprised when she found herself looking forward to seeing Justyn. She hadn’t talked to him since their date, and she missed him. As the day wound down, she couldn’t help feeling a little excited flutter, even though she was still sad about Jay.
It was also strange how quickly her thoughts about Justyn kept running the gamut from the romantic to the somewhat disturbing. Talk about an emotional roller coaster. One minute she was sure he was a cold—blooded killer, and she was terrified of him. The next, she was imagining herself walking down the aisle at their wedding. Both scenarios were equally ridiculous. She decided she wasn’t going to let her irrational fears or her silly fantasies get the better of her. Instead, she was going to try to take the blossoming relationship one day at a time. Starting, hopefully, that afternoon when she would tell him that she had made her decision once and for all. She would just have to leave out the part about how she sometimes doubted his sanity and thought he was a murderer. That might ruin the moment.
There were only a few weeks left until opening night. The props had come a long way in the last week. The stage crew had truly outdone themselves with their amazing backdrops, from the graveyard scene to the phantom’s underground lair. Rebecca found it much easier to move through the scenes surrounded by the artwork and antique style furniture. It gave the play more realism. She was especially impressed with the scene shifting for the Don Juan scene.
The Don Juan act was one of Rebecca’s favorites. Not only because it was the climax of the play, but also because the duet was the most beautiful song that she and Justyn shared. In the scene, the phantom kills the lead baritone of the opera house and takes his place on the stage. Christine realizes instantly who he is and what he must have done, but she’s still drawn to him by his passionate singing. They come close to sharing a forbidden kiss. But instead, at the last moment, she removes his mask, revealing his deformity to the horrified audience. More than once, especially with Justyn in the role of the phantom, Rebecca was tempted to rewrite history and have Christine run away with Erik, leaving Raoul behind.
The scene called for a high platform with a stairway on either side. Erik and Christine would each climb one end of the stairway as they inched their way closer and closer to one another, finally coming together in the center of the high bridge. Beneath them were half a dozen large wooden cutouts, cut and painted into the shape of red and orange flames to represent the blazing inferno of Don Juan’s territory.
It was the first time they had the fancy platform available, and Rebecca was a little nervous about making the treacherous journey up the narrow wooden steps. She had never been very good with heights. She looked up at the platform, and thought that fifteen feet suddenly seemed dangerously high. Just looking up made her feel a little woozy, but she did her best to overcome her irrational fears. What could possibly happen?
Because of the new props, and because the scene involved an elaborate dance routine with the chorus, Miss King had decided to focus on that scene for the better part of the afternoon. Of course, after the events of the weekend, no one was overly enthusiastic about performing at all. Even the teacher seemed a little less animated than usual as the stagehands moved the backdrops into place.
“I realize that this is a difficult time. We’ll all miss Jay, especially his unquenchable sense of humor.” Miss King had to stop to wipe a tear from her eye. “But as cliché as it might sound, the show must go on. So let’s make this play the best performance this school has ever seen! And let’s dedicate it to the memory of our friend and co-star, Jay Kopp.”
If Miss King expected a hearty round of applause or exuberant shouts of agreement, she must have been disappointed. Most of the cast barely lifted their eyes during the speech, and a few even snickered at the melodrama.
Rebecca stole a glance at the front row of chairs where Tom was sitting with his arms crossed. His face had gone eerily blank. She somehow found that empty, zombie-like stare much more disturbing than the open emotion she had seen him display
just the day before. Rebecca decided she had to go see if he was all right before they started. After all, despite what he had been through that weekend, he had still made sure the newspaper article about Wendy had been released. He had cleared Rebecca’s name and bravely faced the wrath of Wendy, who didn’t spare him out of sympathy for the loss of his friend. For the first time in Mainland Regional history, people were too busy laughing at Wendy to pay any attention to anything that she said. For once, her malicious plans had backfired.
Rebecca jogged over and plopped down in the empty seat beside Tom. He didn’t even notice her until she cleared her throat, and even then he didn’t look up in acknowledgment.
