by Ron C. Nieto
“What if you still love the idea?” she asked, a little breathless.
I barely had to move to kiss her. Her lips were just a fraction of an inch away, warm and trembling. Keeping the contact light and tender when all I wanted to do was crush her to me and show her I was hers was torture of the sweetest kind. I felt her smile a little as she tried to hold still, as we tried to explore and caress without hurry, as two lovers captured for eternity in a marble statue destined to tease and long for one another.
She pulled her head back with an effort, words dancing on the tip of her tongue for a full minute before she gathered her thoughts and gave them form.
“What if you still love the idea?” she asked again, a note of fear in her voice.
“The idea wasn't half as bitchy as you are, my Princess,” I said. The huskiness in my voice surprised me and her pupils, already dilated in the falling night, engulfed her eyes.
I dropped the bag. The metal jacks and other bits and pieces made a racket upon impact, but at that moment, I couldn't care less about breaking something. I wanted her.
Her arms went to wrap around me and I felt her indignant huff when the guitar's gig bag on my back got in the way. Instead, her fingers curled, digging into my sides and pulling me as close to her as was physically possible, her head tilting to the side to let me kiss her and to kiss me, her mouth dancing against mine.
I wanted her.
“Takeout,” I gasped, managing to tear myself away from her lips.
“Keith, if you're thinking about cheap Chinese right now, so help me...” she breathed out.
I was too worked up to find it funny. “Your mom,” I said, not stopping to wonder if thinking about her mother was better or worse than thinking about Chinese. “She's waiting for it. At your house.”
She made a small whining noise and I felt myself inching toward her again. Homes were warm and comfortable places after all. People could wait in them for a long time.
A car drove by us, its headlights not quite managing to break the moment, but allowing us to, reluctantly, do the right thing. The sudden light also allowed me to see her flushed cheeks and swollen lips as we began to walk once more toward the bus station.
And I still wanted her.
Chapter 12
Much, much later that night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and remembering the touch of her lips. The rest of the evening had been uncomfortable in a way, sharing it with her parents who were almost as enthusiastic as if they were my own. There even was a moment where her dad's ever distrustful look eased back some—a mere punk was not to be trusted, but there was something about a rock star, after all. Money, and lots of it.
I didn't want to think about my meeting with Stuart at the studio. Things on that front would go as they would, and I'd be grateful for every chance to play I was given, but I couldn't build my whole future around that possibility. Not yet, anyway.
Besides, thinking about my playing led to thinking of what happened afterward, of Alice finally, finally, understanding. Of her fingers clawing my sides as she held on and refused to let go. That line of thought led nowhere I could physically go at that moment, so I tried to avoid it. I tried to fall asleep, which is what normal people do at two in the morning on a school night.
My room was much too silent, though, and I still had too much adrenaline in my blood. Plus, Sparrow wasn't around and that cat was the only thing that could lull me to sleep when I had this sort of mental overdrive.
With a sigh, I gave up. There was the one thing that would keep me plenty occupied in spite of the hour and didn't involve Alice. Or at least, didn't involve her in quite that way.
Beatrice, the song, and our schoolmates. There had to be a link, and I had a fair idea about which one it was. There was a chance it would be nothing but my acquired dislike talking, but Lena had been close when two of the incidents happened. I was willing to bet there was something between her and the fractal artist kid too, even if it was only Wyatt's desire to get closer to her. The “who,” unfortunately, wasn't the only question to throw around. There was the “why” and there was the “how.”
Lena was a bitch, sure, and I had a hard time picturing her being any sort of good person, but I was reluctant to call her a murderer for the sport of it. Perhaps she wasn't pulling any trigger or sucking any soul, but if she was involved, she was as guilty of people's death and madness as Beatrice herself, so there must be a reason.
That line of reasoning made me get up and rummage around until I found the crumpled print with the pretty design in it. I had to figure out exactly what was happening and how to stop it, or I'd be guilty of just letting it happen too. When it has your life and soul on the line, you get pretty harsh and definite ideas about the people who are on a ghost's side, and the need for action becomes nearly overwhelming.
The piece of art was pretty good. Most likely, Wyatt had done the basic design since he was the one with the more thorough knowledge of the mechanics behind fractal. Then, Perkins must have modified it, adding to the complexity of shape, and Wyatt must have implemented those modifications. It was safe to think I had an example of both guy's psyche, and that Perkins would be more prominent on the form while Wyatt surely kept control of color. Unfortunately, good as this clue was, it didn't say much to me. I might have been able to explain a few concepts to Alice, but that was as far as my knowledge went.
Think analogies, then. How did it work for me?
My music had always been special. I knew that much. But Beatrice had changed it, making my playing evolve in different ways, making my style more aggressive, almost baroque. Later, once freed from her influence, most of those changes had blended in with my true style, but I couldn't deny what I had played in the studio was something I wouldn't have been ready to perform before the incident. I wouldn't have dared to tell my story so openly. Was this fractal print in my hand more open than it usually would be?
I grabbed a sweatshirt because it looked like I wasn't going back to bed anytime soon and fired up my laptop. It took a few moments to get it in working order since it wasn't new any longer and was pretty saturated with recording and composition software, but I got the browser going. The guy I was looking for had won a competition, so it should be easy to get some samples... and pretty inconspicuous should my father need to use a computer at home and happen upon the search history.
When I typed his name, an old article came up, along with some official shots of the award ceremony. But even better, Wyatt kept a personal blog. For an artist, the design was pretty complicated to navigate and a bit confusing when trying to figure out exactly what he was supposed to be blogging about, but one thing was clear: mandalas. There were dozens of them from simplistic models to extremely complicated designs that could be used for meditation practice. The variety of colors was wide, but mostly he kept to a sharp contrast and liked to experiment with flower-like results.
I straightened out the print I had and tilted it for a better look. In comparison, it looked like a galaxy exploding with a thousand different worlds captured in its waves, the whole thing an exercise in gradation and saturation.
I wouldn't have guessed it was the same artist.
There was something very interesting about the design, too. Something that had escaped me before. I remembered what Alice had told me about Sara and the rhythm of the song she danced to—that it was familiar.
The idea was ridiculous. But it was nearing on three in the morning, and I was too riled up to sleep anyway. Anything seemed like a great idea if it shed more light on the issue, so I went along and began to tap my fingers against my thigh.
Tap, tap, tap... Tap, tap-tap, tap...
Angle, angle, curve... Angle, overlapped curve, curve...
I hardly had to concentrate at all—after all, I'd been working on changing that stuttering pattern for a long time. Without really trying, I let my tapping shift from its broken arrhythmic pace to the remastered version I had transcribe
d. The unbroken version.
I glanced at the clock. Three thirty in the morning. I texted Alice anyway because she needed to know.
Angle, curve and overlap, it synched movement by movement with the fractal print.
Chapter 13
The next morning I left home early and, instead of meeting Alice in our usual mid-way corner, walked over to wait patiently on her front lawn. A burst of good luck had her the first to leave—I didn't want to wonder what might've happened if my face had been the first thing her dad saw when stepping out of his door in the morning for almost the second day in a row.
“Keith! Nice surprise visit,” she said, jumping down the front porch steps and placing a chaste, good-morning kiss on my cheek. “You look like crap, but somehow seeing you waiting for me still makes my day. Incidentally, it might have saved your cat's life, too.”
“What did he do? Wait, it doesn't matter… Have you checked your cell yet?”
She reached into her bag and pulled it out. Sure enough, there it was, my unread message blinking on the screen. “Sorry…” she said with a wince. Then she looked at the details. “Three in the morning? What happened? Are you okay?”
“Half past three,” I corrected. “And yeah, I'm fine. It's just I found something out and thought you'd want to know about it.”
“Do I want to know why you were ‘finding out stuff' at those hours?”
I shrugged. “Couldn't sleep—which was your fault, by the way. Decided to try to do something useful. What were you doing at those hours that a new piece of gossip flew you by unnoticed?”
She punched my shoulder once before threading her fingers through mine and starting to walk along her street toward school. “I'm not that bad,” she said, faking a sullen look. “And I was out like a light because I'd spent all my energy fixing your cat's mess and trying to keep my parents from noticing... Then I spent a lot longer being told off because, of course, they went and noticed. Next time you say it's a well-behaved cat, I'm going to.... do something unpleasant that I'll think about later.”
“Okay, out with the details. You're not going to listen to me until you've vented, anyway,” I said with a smirk.
“Everything seemed fine when we got home yesterday, right?” She didn't bother denying the comment. “Well, when I went to my room after you left, the place looked like a warzone. I don't know when he did it because we heard nothing while we had dinner, right?” I nodded. “That's what bothered me. We didn't hear the little, oh, the fat devil and he turned everything upside down. Why didn't you tell me that he could open cabinets?”
“He doesn't do it often. And most cabinets are closed too tight for him anyway... I thought it was safe.”
“It wasn't. He'd been... I don't know, but I found clothes under the bed and hanging from the light!”
“Desktop lamp?”
“No, Keith. The light.” She pointed up to stress her meaning. I had to suppress a laugh when I pictured Sparrow going on a spree among her trendy tops. “He scattered all my homework, threw around my stuffed animals, turned over my jewel box and lost—or ate—at least two earrings. He almost destroyed my grandma's old bracelet too, and that's the only thing of hers I own. He had no right to look smug when I came in!”
“You screamed so hard your parents were drawn to the disaster zone?” I asked, partly amused and partly worried. Sparrow had never behaved like that, except on one occasion, and I didn't care for Beatrice hanging around Alice's place.
“No, I managed to get everything either in place or out of the way. But he must have thought it was a game or something, because when I was done, he jumped the jewel box again and made off with the bracelet, after losing another earring, by the way. The third time he did that, I had to chase him all the way to the living room. I cornered him against the library door, but by then Mom and Dad were looking at me like I was possessed.”
“The cat has something against your library,” I said. I was beginning to wonder whether we shouldn't have an issue with it, too. “Did he always grab the bracelet?”
“Yeah, but the first time, he grabbed everything, Keith. I think he has an obsession with pretty, shiny things,” she huffed. “Look, I had to put on my favorite pieces to make sure he didn't do away with them while I wasn't home.” She showed me two necklaces, a pair of earrings that must be her last surviving pair and three bracelets around her left wrist. It was easy to figure out which one was her grandma's, since it was a sober old gold cord against the hanging trinkets of the two other pieces.
“If you so much as think that I look like a Christmas tree with all this things hanging off me...” she threatened, narrowing her eyes when we mounted the school's front steps.
I held out the door for her, laughing, but someone called to her from behind.
“Alice? Do you have a minute?” Cheerleader girl was there. She looked a bit out of it, perhaps, but mostly it was self-consciousness and her averted face what made her look so unlike herself.
Alice locked eyes with me for a second and then the both of us stepped back to avoid a student traffic jam at the doors. “Sure,” she said, taking a couple of steps down the stairs toward the girl. “What's up?”
“I wanted to apologize for the other day. I...” She clearly wasn't used to apologizing. “I don't know what happened. I didn't want to get into a fight with you, I promise. I don't even remember how I hit you.”
She looked nervous, and she had every reason. Assuming she truly wasn't responsible, which I was ready to believe at this point, it sounded too ridiculous to say, “Hey, sorry. My hand slapped you without asking permission, but we're cool, right?” I'd have been embarrassed too.
“It's fine,” Alice said, willing to let her off the hook easier than I'd have. “Nothing serious happened. It was an accident.”
The girl looked at her and then me. The three of us knew it hadn't been an accident, but it was an easy-to-accept explanation and she wanted to get rid of responsibility as soon as possible, so she gave Alice a tentative smile.
“Yeah, that was it. I'm glad we cleared it up.” With a small wave, she rushed past us and into the building.
“That was...” I said.
Alice gave me a meaningful look. “I told you she was nice... for a friend of Lena's anyway.”
We didn't comment on it any further, though. Speaking freely on school grounds wasn't a smart move, and between one thing and the next, we were almost late anyway. The locker corridor was still filled with lingering students, but the bulk of the crowd had already moved on to class.
“We need to talk after class,” Alice said while she pulled a few books out and shoved her whole bag into her locker. “You didn't get to tell me more about your message. Want to go get some coffee later?”
I started to reply, but out of the corner of my eye, one student broke apart from the crowd and headed straight for us. Hurriedly, I closed Alice's locker—I knew all too well what an open one could be used for when there was a scuffle—and nodded my head to the approaching boy. It was Wyatt, once more careening toward us.
Alice followed my line of sight and frowned in confusion at his thunderous look. “Hey,” she started to say.
Wyatt's fist collided against her locker, leaving a decent-sized dent for a guy who didn't look very sporty. Discreetly, trying not to be confrontational about it, I pulled Alice back and to the side, so that she was still the one conducting the conversation, but I could get in the middle of any future flying punches.
“You've messed up everything,” he snarled in a low voice. “It was going to be perfect and now it's… it's... and it's your fault.”
“What are you talking about? You don't sound normal, Wyatt.”
“Normal?” Wyatt laughed. “Funny you should bring that up. But I'll show you just how normal I am. Wait and watch.”
He pushed off the locker and stalked down the corridor. I cast a quick glance around us. A few students had dared the tardy bell for the show,
and they were staring and whispering. None of them were close enough to have heard the exchange, though.
Alice's hand reached for mine and her voice shook a little when she spoke next. “I think I'm starting to be a little scared again, Keith.”
I nodded and lifted our joined hands, kissing her knuckles. “It's going to be fine. I have a theory. That's what the text was about last night.” Or this morning. “We'll talk about it after class at my place.”
She smiled a little and seemed a bit more reassured when I dropped her off in her class, right on time to avoid her tardy. Mine came and went while I stood in the hallway, ignoring the students running flat-out past me. I checked my watch. A teacher would surely make a round soon, but I had time to hide in the math lab during my first period. It wasn't the responsible thing to do, especially since I needed the good grades and I actually liked the class, but there was one last thing I wanted to see for myself.
The lab door was open ajar. Someone had come in to fire up the computers, open the blinds and adjust the AC. I scurried in and closed the door behind me—it would buy me time to hide what I was doing if someone came along.
I sat down in front of one of the computers and typed my access key and password. That was not the first move of a professional hacker, and I was light years from being even close to an amateur hacker, but I hoped that what I looked for would not be too well hidden.
In fact, I was counting on an ace tucked up my sleeve. Adam Perkins was a guy, and as such, he was likely to forget his flash drive whenever he worked at school. The obvious solution in such cases was e-mailing oneself, of course, but if he was a little bit paranoid about losing his material, then he'd not delete it. If the mailed file turned out to be corrupted, chances were you could recover your school file without too many issues.
