by Ron C. Nieto
I let the notes die peacefully and fade out. “It's a rhapsody, I think,” I said by way of explanation.
My father smiled. He understood.
“Do you want me to set aside your plate for later?” He also understood how important the creative moments were for me.
“No, I'll come,” I said, putting away the guitar and following him to the kitchen. Never mind that I'd skipped breakfast and had been playing for hours already, the truth was that, after the incident before Christmas, I preferred to spend time with my father when I could. Sunday lunch was an easy option.
Alice came to my place when the sun hit the horizon line. She found me and my dad watching an old Stallone flick and eating enough popcorn to feed an entire theater.
“Is it a bad time?” she asked with a smile that told me she knew the answer.
“It never is,” I said anyway, pulling her close for a moment.
She smiled and snuggled into the embrace. Her face was freezing against the crook of my neck, but her presence felt warm in my arms. A girl full of contrasts.
“Hi, Mr. Brannagh!” she said when she pulled back. Dad lifted his eyes from the screen long enough to check that yes, it was Alice, and yes, we still seemed to be together after what I had defined as a harrowing event the previous day.
“Don't take it personally. It's his favorite movie,” I said, taking her coat and walking the short hallway into my room.
“I wouldn't have guessed that. Stallone and your father? It's hard to wrap your mind around it.”
I knew what she meant.
“You know,” Alice went on when I just shrugged, “I'm almost jealous.”
“You don't think I'm cheating on you with Stallone, right?”
She laughed that laugh of pure delight that burst from her chest with no concessions toward form or propriety. The one I loved so much I had tried to capture in my new piece.
I'll have to make some adjustments. It needs a major scale.
“No, silly. About you and your dad. You're so close, like you're friends and actually enjoy hanging out together.”
“I do. We're close, I mean. Your family's pretty cool too.” The comment appeased her and I let out a breath of relief. I could talk to her about anything. I trusted her with all I had, but there were conversations I didn't want shadowing our moments together. I didn't want to talk about how I learned to love spending time with my one remaining parent, whom I didn't even know very well, after coming so close to losing him.
“About yesterday... You never told me you intended to go to a university,” she said, changing subject.
“We never talked about it, but why would it be such a surprise?” I smirked. “All your friends are going to college and I bet you didn't drop a spoon over their announcements.”
“It was a fork,” she huffed. “I guess I expected you to do something... wilder.”
I picked up my old guitar with a sigh and sat on the bed next to her. She shifted just a bit, just enough to let me see her expectancy and her thrilling enthusiasm, and I started to play some scales up and down the neck.
“Something like running off with nothing but the clothes on my back to escape all this?”
“Yeah.”
“It's because of the hair, right?”
“The eyeliner, actually.”
I shook my head. She got me better than anyone, but still, sometimes she was far off the mark. “Here, this one's new,” I said instead of arguing about career choices.
In truth, it wasn't. It was one of the oldest things I had composed, changed and revisited over time but still the same. I called it “Castle of Glass,” and it was the best answer I could give her—the only way I knew to explain that I didn't have the privilege of recklessness, of wild dreaming.
The music was fleeting, a sliver of hope enveloped in the mist of dreams, and it soared to reach a safe haven high in the skies. It hid among flying buttresses, peeked out of lancet windows, and rushed along spandrels and vaulting shafts. It built an untouchable fortress and watched the world from above. But slowly, the song lost its rhythm. The notes that had held her high fluttered and floundered about, spiraling down, more real than ever—so close to being tangible that it was impossible to remember their oneiric origins. The first time one of those notes dragged in the mud, it was almost an accident, nearly imperceptible. Then, the dirt added weight, too much weight, and the wings of the music broke, useless, leaving it stranded too far from where it belonged. The last notes were empty, indifferent and inert—in loneliness, it is too hard to care, to remember if it's worth it to fight the pull of gravity, even though there's always hope, always a nagging feeling that fought to reclaim a paradise lost.
Watching Alice's eyes as I played the old tune gave me a new insight into what every note meant. I changed the melody as I played it, delaying some sounds to let the hope flutter just short of taking flight, vibrating others to break the dreams my past self had, letting them fray at the edges to let her see the despair, and finally, the wonder that perhaps, just perhaps, I could get those wings to fly again.
Moments like this, sharing whom I was with her, made me believe everything was possible, even for a couple at odds like us, but then there were subtle nuances that reminded me it was not as perfect as I wished to believe. Moments when she shifted her eyes, letting her gaze drop, when she bit her lip, when her fingers would close in a tight fist. In those moments, she still felt the intruder, the spy under my window, the bad girl stealing pieces of a soul that didn't belong to her.
She still didn't understand the music had always been meant for her. That all that time I'd been talking to her the only way I knew how.
The song ended in an open question. It tasted bittersweet.
Chapter 5
Alice's elbow hit my ribs when we entered the school's parking lot come Monday morning. Her pointed glance directed mine toward Dave's car, already sitting in his usual spot, with Anna inside.
“So, you think they finally talked it out?” she asked with a devious grin.
“I don't know. Anna drank too much. Dave was clueless. Not sure that's a winning combo.” I shrugged. “But I'd like to see them figure it out.”
“Yeah, they'd make the best couple.”
“Second to best,” I chided her, one arm wrapping around her waist to embarrass ourselves and to get a glimpse of her special smile.
She laughed, her messenger bag hitting my thigh when she twirled into my chest. Her hair tickled the side of my face, her lashes fell, batting against her cheekbones and I... I just wanted to embarrass ourselves even further.
I don't know what made me look up, away from the inviting smile. It was just a fraction of a second before the brakes screeched, and then the whole of the student body was watching as the old mustang careened off the road and into the lot without slowing down.
Straight at us.
Every instinct I had kicked in and I grabbed Alice, jerking hard back and to the side. There wasn't time, the car was too fast, but at the last moment, I saw it swerve, the driver-side passing us a couple of feet away.
The driver got out and slammed the door shut hard enough for the alarm to go off. The screech was cut short by a well-placed kick from the crazy kid, but it seemed to awaken people from their stupor and a cacophony exploded all around us.
“Man! What the hell?”
“Oh my God, is someone hurt?”
“What happened?”
I tuned them out when I heard Alice's shaky voice, so unlike herself. “Keith? Are you... are you okay?”
I nodded and relaxed the steel grip I still maintained on her. “Yeah, I'm fine.”
“What's wrong with that idiot?” she asked, letting out a laugh that was half hysterics, half stunned amazement. “He could've killed us.”
For a moment, I wondered if that hadn't been his intent. There are some subpar drivers out there, but no one had ever pulled such an entrance in the school's lot. Wre
nching my eyes away from Alice, I sought out the boy who'd been behind the wheel. I found his stare focused on me—on us. There was a vacant smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth and his eyes glinted with a resentment that wasn't normal, especially from someone I didn't even know. It took a personal investment to muster that much contempt, such a deep dislike of another being, and I wasn't aware I had done anything to deserve his.
More weirdness. I felt the cold fingers of paranoia dancing up my spine in a sinister caress.
“Wyatt. Wyatt Reynard,” Alice said.
“What?”
“That's his car. I think he actually tried to kill us.”
I hugged her close, feeling her tremble under my own shaky hands. “I'm sure it was an accident. The brakes didn't work or he hit a spot of ice or something.” She relaxed. The experience was still too raw for her to be comfortable, and her own instincts were probably screaming “enemy” as loud as mine did, but the accident theory was better than believing a classmate had turned psycho and she chose to accept it.
At that moment, Anna grabbed Alice, followed by Dave not two paces behind.
“Thank God you're alright! I didn't see the car until it was on you and I thought it would hit you for sure! I'm so glad nothing happened to you... To any of you,” she added with a glance my way. “Come on. Let's get inside... perhaps visit the nurse's office or something.”
That was what I liked most about Anna. She looked flighty and superficial, but she genuinely cared. She had this mother hen personality tucked inside that came out when her friends needed someone to stay calm and herd them along.
Alice kept to herself whatever she'd been about to tell me and let Anna help her along. She lingered, waiting, but I nodded for her to go ahead.
“Hey, Dave,” I said, letting my eyes drift to the growing cluster of students. “Do you think the car hit ice or something?”
He frowned. “It's not too late in the winter for ice, I guess... But I don't think the day's cold enough for it.”
“That's what I thought.”
Weird things. Oh, how I hate weird things...
“So, who's Wyatt?” I asked Alice when we finally found a moment alone during lunch.
“Obviously a jerk,” she said, not missing a step as we made our way toward our still-empty table. “Either a murderous one or an attention-grabbing one.”
The morning incident had kept the principal, most teachers, and a local patrol car busy through the whole morning. It was good in that it gave us plenty of free study time. It was also bad because it gave us plenty of free study time, and that allowed me and my recently acquired paranoia far too much thinking time.
“Okay. Why do you know him then?”
“Everybody knows him. He won a county prize last year, some fractal art stuff.” We sat down and she looked at me with a small smile. “Let me guess. You had no idea?”
“Of course not,” I said, putting on a fake offended front. “Knowing who is who would damage my outsider status.”
“I only tolerate those jokes when they're coming from you, you know that, right?” she said, filching one of my fries.
“I know.” I stole back from her plate, something random. My attention wasn't in the food. “Fractal art, then? And he was good at it, or was it a prize-to-thank-your-daddy thing?”
“It was pretty.” She shrugged. “It's not like I understand much about it, though.” She froze, another of my fries halfway to her mouth. “Keith... is there a reason for that question?”
“Call me apprehensive,” I said. It wasn't a reply, but she didn't need it. The way she paled, the tone of her question all said she knew exactly what I was gunning for. I reached out and covered her free hand with mine. “Hey, I'm sure we're going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. I'm probably too jumpy about anything coming close to strange behavior.”
“Or perhaps you're right,” she said, dropping the food and taking a gulp of soda. “Something weird on Saturday, something weird today.”
Exactly my thoughts.
“Let's give it some time,” I said instead. “See if anything else happens.”
“That's not what you really want to do,” she said, challenging me with a small smirk that reminded me of her Princess days.
“I'm hoping that denial will make it go away,” I admitted, tightening my hold around her fingers. “And I'm hoping to avoid looking like a lunatic if it really is a coincidence.”
Her fingers squeezed mine. “It's not as if we're going to investigate. We'll just keep an ear out for the rumor mill.”
And we both knew that when it came to that, she had her ear to the ground better than any Apache Indian ever would.
“What about the rumor mill?” Anna asked then, plopping down in front of me.
“You're not worried about rumors again, right?” Dave grinned, claiming his place beside her.
“About me and Keith? Of course not!” Alice looked offended.
“No.” Dave laughed. “About how unstylish you were with that deer-in-the-headlights look this morning.”
Alice blinked. Then she groaned into her hands. “That must have looked pathetic!”
“Hello? You were nearly squashed. There's no cool way to do that,” Anna said, smacking Dave's arm for bringing it up.
“Did you see anyone taking pictures or anything?”
“A kid took a video. Freshman, I think. The cops took it as evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Alice, he's just messing with you,” I told her, the others snickering in front of us. Sometimes I couldn't believe she didn't see the way Dave liked to bait her.
Then again, perhaps she did see it and took it anyway, just to make us all laugh.
“Ha. Ha. So funny,” she said, but she was grinning. “So, Dave, since you're Mr. Informed here... what the hell happened? Ice on the road?”
“No.” A yes would have been the easy answer. I hadn't dared to hope we'd get it. “The brakes were just fine, too. It seems he just kept accelerating.”
“Perhaps he got the pedals wrong,” Anna said. “Isn't there someone famous who did just that?”
“It was an excuse for drunk driving,” Alice snorted. “Oh, wait. Was he drunk?”
“Do I look like a cop?” Dave protested.
We all stared at him.
“I don't know, okay? He was kind of weird, all... spazzy, but alcohol and drug tests are kind of confidential.”
“Spazzy,” Alice said, turning the word over in her mouth. “We'll take that as a yes.”
“I didn't say that!”
“It's okay, darling,” Anna said. “That's why it's called the rumor mill and not the news report.”
I nudged Alice's knee under the table. “Darling,” I mouthed to her. She grinned.
There were some good things going on, after all.
Chapter 6
At the end of the day, I waited for Alice in the parking lot in our usual meeting spot. Some days I liked to pick her up from class, but when I got out early, I preferred to avoid the jostling of hundreds of kids trying to escape the building at the same time.
The black tarmac had been burned with marks of blacker rubber where the car had careened in this morning about three paces away, and I kept staring at those tracks like they held the answer to all my questions.
“You should've been there,” a voice said, bringing me back to the present with a jolt. Lena was just walking past me.
I blinked. She strutted along, her eyes straight ahead, her blond hair swishing behind her with every step. She didn't look like she had just taunted me, but there was no one else around. The rushers were just beginning to swarm the lot and the rest of the school would follow later. The voice had sounded strange, too, not quite like Lena's—and I should know, since it wouldn't be the first time I'd heard her bitchy taunting. But at the same time, the tones had been utterly hers.
A shiver ran down my spine just as
Alice collided against my back.
Losing balance, I struggled for a couple of steps before regaining my footing. Her weight clung to my shoulders and her laugh screeched by my ear.
“What was that?” I asked with an amused snort.
“I always found it awfully ridiculous and embarrassing when Anna would jump on Ray back in the day,” she said with a shrug as she clambered off my back to stand in front of me. “I wanted to try it to see if it was different from the lovey-dovey side.”
“And?”
“Nope. Still ridiculous and embarrassing. But you should have seen your face!”
I didn't need to. I could see hers. “Want me to show you something embarrassing?”
“No!” she squealed, but I had picked her up even before she could get that one word out. She was nearly as tall as I was, and what little difference there was disappeared with her heels, but I could still lift her, her chin against my temple as I spun her round and round, fast enough to make both of us dizzy.
I stopped when I felt we were about to fall and she was all flushed and happy, her perfect hair in disarray and her eyes shining like a child's. People were staring at us with various degrees of amusement or disgust on their faces, but their expressions were all blurry and the parking lot seemed to tilt around us.
“You know,” she said, her hands locking behind my neck, “there might be something to this embarrassment factor after all.”
It was a little late when I got home, and I knew I had school projects to work on, chapters to read, and historical events to research. I dumped everything and rooted around the table until I unearthed the ongoing transcription I was working on.
My father wouldn't be home until much, much later and I had time to play a little before I had to be responsible.
Sparrow let me know he disapproved of my behavior with a long, unnerving stare, but he didn't try to scratch or bite me. It made me feel better, safer. When the song had been ensnaring me, Sparrow had felt it and had tried to keep me from playing it or had fled the room altogether. To have him sitting by my side while I plucked the old notes, trying to get them right once more, looking displeased but present, was a small safety blanket.
