by Ron C. Nieto
“There's cereal,” she said, recovering quite fast. “And you're too late for toast. We're running behind time already. I'll drive by your places before going to school, so you can get your own snacks if you want.”
“You're driving us home?” The idea was nice. So much so it shocked me into dropping the milk carton I was holding. It took some fast juggling, but it didn't hit the floor—although judging from Lena's scrunched-up nose, the offense was just as big anyway.
“Well, duh. You don't want to wear the same stinking clothes as yesterday to school, right?”
In the end, the three of us crammed into Lena's Cabrio with our stomachs empty.
“By the way, you still haven't told me how you snuck onto the property last night,” she said when we drove past the security checkpoint.
Alice and I exchanged a look and, with a sigh, she began to explain how the sudden appearance of something that might or might not have been a cat had allowed us to slip past the guard with invitation included. While they bickered about whether the cat had been real, a ruse from Alice, or a raccoon, I allowed myself to look out the window and dwell upon that small detail.
For the most part, I hadn't questioned that Sparrow had some skills I lacked, but I had never stopped to consider what they meant—or what it meant that we were counting on them to keep us safe. I supposed that cats were considered magical creatures by many, and black cats got either the best or the worst fame, depending on whom you asked. But Sparrow's behavior with this crisis had become hard to explain even so. He'd never been anything that special, not since the moment we picked him up a few years back, and suddenly he acted way too... human. Instead of the street smarts he had always displayed, there was a certain keen intellect and purpose behind his actions. From the way he had reacted when I first played the song, to his initial mistrust of Alice—who was, after all, part integral of the current mess, to the way he had sent Alice to the Nightray's the night she saved me and the convenient appearance yesterday night, everything seemed way too coincidental to be dismissed and way too strange to relate to a normal cat.
“Alice,” I called out while Lena drove us down the road to our neighborhood. “I think we need the snow globe in your library.”
She twisted around to look at me with a furrowed brow. “Why?”
“Because Sparrow had an interest in it,” I said. Lena snorted and double-checked in the rearview mirror to make sure I was being serious.
“He also took an interest in converting my room in disaster area and kept stealing from my jewelry box. That only means he's a...” She stopped, reconsidered. Letting go of my hand, she fumbled at her wrist and retrieved her grandmother's bracelet. “This could be another anchor.”
“Start making sense back there, you two,” Lena said, annoyed.
“The cat's really good at feeling out Beatrice's presence,” Alice simplified. “And recently he had a crazy interest in this bracelet. And on a snow globe that's at home.”
Lena spared a glance at the bracelet and nearly missed our exit because of it. “Well, grab the snowball when you change clothes. We'll think about it later.”
Alice didn't look happy to be receiving orders, much less from Lena, but she nodded. We stopped by her driveway first and she jumped out of the car. The moment her front door was cracked open, a dark shadow streaked out of the garden and scurried into the house. Sparrow had somehow escaped her room the previous day and spent the night outside, and it made me wonder if he had been the cat of yesterday night after all. Alice saw it and turned to give me a meaningful look. Then she followed the cat more slowly, leaving me to wait in the car.
There was an uncomfortable silence, but I didn't break it. I had a lot of practice with awkward silences and cold shoulders, so it didn't bother me nearly as much as it bothered Lena. In the end, she caved in.
“For the record, I didn't pick you for anything personal.”
“That's a relief,” I drawled.
“It doesn't mean I like you.”
“I wouldn't expect you to.”
“But I'll play nice from now on.”
I sought her eyes in the rearview mirror. It shocked me, but she was sincere and determined.
“Because you really plan to stop her, right?” she added when I said nothing.
I nodded. “There's a way and we'll find it.”
“Exactly.”
We lapsed into silence again, but it was less tense this time. When Alice came back, she might've noted the almost companionable atmosphere, but she said nothing.
“I got the snow globe,” she said instead when we were moving again. “It doesn't look threatening.”
“Let me see,” I said, reaching out a hand.
“Nope. We're at your place,” Alice replied, pointing out the window. “Go and change. We're running late.”
We did run late. It was totally worth it, though.
Lena pulled into the parking lot, driving as if she were the sole mistress of the lot and sure enough, her usual parking space waited for her. It made her smirk a little in self-satisfaction, and then the three of us were getting out and mounting the stairs to the front door.
If people had been shocked before by anything that had happened in the social sphere of the school in the current year, they were frozen when they saw Lena, Alice and me walking up the stairs and then down the corridors in perfect camaraderie. That rumor spread faster than we walked—so much so that by the time we reached the lockers, people were actually spilling out of the classes to look and see for themselves.
I noticed someone from the corner of my eye catching us on video with a high-end cell and I had to laugh.
“What's so funny?” Lena and Alice said at the same time. Both of them had spent years being the best the school had to offer, the girls everyone else wanted to be like—or simply wanted. For them, this kind of attention was unsettling because it was not framed with admiration or jealousy, but just flabbergasted surprise. Alice dealt with it better, since she had taken a lot of chances in order to be with me, but old habits die hard and the both of them were uncomfortable with all the attention and its possible consequences.
I couldn't care less about it. Since I came back and began attending school, people had reacted to me much this way: like an animal in a zoo at best, like a source of experimentation and amusement at worst. But now the best girl in school and the very definition of Queen Bee walked around with me—apparently friends again after their recent fallout, which put me firmly into the Golden Crowd and turned the world upside down for them.
It was kind of fun to watch them scramble to keep up with the changes.
It didn't faze me at all until I saw Anna's face mixed with the crowd. The same look of surprise everyone wore was reflected in her eyes—understandably, since just a couple of days before we'd both been at Lena's throat—but there was also a little bit of hurt.
She wasn't as close to me as she was to Alice, of course, but I still liked the girl. She had attitude, personality, and she was classy. Part of me felt bad for not having told her what was going on, for not letting her in, but I knew it didn't work like that. Dragging people I cared about into the mess was a bad choice to trump all others.
Besides, Anna had always been there for us as a couple and had proved a friend to me, but she wasn't willing to cross the line into ghost stories. She had proved that when we asked her about the house—a house she didn't remember visiting, and it was a line of questioning that had her giving us weird looks for the better part of a week afterward.
Still, something had to be done. I exchanged a glance with Alice, who nodded in turn. She had also seen Anna and Alice was obviously feeling worse about it than I was. “Lunch break,” she mouthed to me.
I gave her a small nod and hoped things would go over smoothly during break. Dealing with a ghost was hard enough; I really didn't need to add the worry about hurting the feelings of the only people resembling friends I'd had since element
ary.
Chapter 21
When lunch period came, I went for the cafeteria wishing I had had a less interesting morning. If the classes hadn't required my attention, I might have been able to fabricate some kind of story to tell Anna and Dave. It definitely wasn't my forte, and I'd probably have ended up telling them some skewed version of the truth with no heads or tails, but winging it didn't seem like a good plan.
Avoidance would've been better, but as soon as I stepped in the cafeteria, I felt the eyes of my friends tracking my moves.
Here we go... without Alice in sight. Just great.
“Hey,” I said, dropping in my usual seat. “What's up?”
Dave chuckled and Anna pointed her fork at me. “I should be the one asking. What the hell were you thinking, showing up at school with Lena? What happened?”
“And don't even try to deny it. There's YouTube footage showing you getting out of her car,” Dave added with an amused smirk.
“You're kidding.”
“Wish I was. Check the school's newspaper channel—it's right there.”
“St. Francis really needs something to happen so that they can talk about it.” I groaned, burying my head in my hands. I felt bad almost instantly, though, because the gossiping prospects right now weren't cheery, unless we found out exactly what was tethering the ghost in place.
“Yeah, well, it's not like you're a stranger to being the hot topic of the day,” Anna said, referring to the upheaval when Alice and I had started dating. “So don't worry about it and give me the juicy details. Did she coerce you? Kidnap you?”
Where was Alice and what was taking her so long? “It's...complicated,” I tried.
“You have our undivided attention for an hour and a half. If that's enough time to learn logarithms in class, it's enough to explain your story. Talk!”
I glanced toward Dave. The smirk was still in place and there was no help coming from that side, so I took a bite to earn some time.
“It was because of the girl fight the other day,” I said when I ran out of excuses for holding my silence. “Sara apologized, so we kind of figured Lena had put her up to it.” That much was the truth... More or less. “So yesterday, we went and confronted Lena about it, and it kind of went downhill from there.”
“You don't mean to say you confronted her at school, do you?” Dave asked.
“Her place.”
The admission made them both stop chewing. Perhaps I'd been a bit more forthcoming that I should have, but... I wasn't a good liar. I have never claimed otherwise.
“Like, all the way out of town her place?” Dave clarified.
“Yeah. That fancy development on the north road.”
“Which part of that felt like a good idea at the time?” Anna asked, recovering and resuming her chewing.
“None. But it was an only idea sort of thing, so... we decided to go with it.”
“Let me guess.” Anna shook her head. “She called the cops, you spent the night in jail, and this morning she finally made a statement to release you after having taught you a lesson—hence your coming together to school. Am I close?”
I laughed. “Close by a couple of miles or so. That wasn't it at all. The truth is that after much... discussing and arguing, it got really late and, as you said, she lives pretty far out there. And both Alice and I are short on the driving department, so that made for one hell of a long, uncomfortable walk at night. We stayed over and then got a ride to class today.”
This time, not only they stared at me with their mouths hanging open—they even dropped their cutlery, attracting a few curious glances.
“You've slept at Lena's?”
Too many people were looking at us, so I gestured for her to lower her voice. “Don't make a big deal out of it. The house was empty, it was late, and offering to let us stay was the only decent thing for her to do.”
“Well, yeah,” Anna said. “But what about her makes you think she's decent?”
Dave nodded. “It might look normal for you, but this is big, Keith. She'd rather toss unpleasant people to the streets than offer them a roof for the night. Trust me. What did you argue about to get her into such a cooperative mood?”
I shifted in my seat. I knew Lena and hospitality didn't go together in one sentence, but I had hoped they'd let it slide because I had no idea what I could say to appease their curiosity. Talking about family grudges? Discussing why Alice and she hate each other so much? Wondering who'd die in the next few weeks?
“Just, you know, about the incident.”
“The incident with Sara?”
“Sure.”
“Uh. You know, it's hard to imagine that calling her out on that would somehow lead to her offering a room...”
Agreed. Wholeheartedly.
“Keith!” Alice's voice called behind me. I heaved a huge sigh of relief... until I turned around and saw her walking abreast with Lena. “Hey, guys,” she added when she arrived to the table. Lena said nothing, not even hello, and Anna looked at me with an arched eyebrow, as if saying “See? I know she's not nice and I know you're hiding something...”
I busied myself polishing off my plate.
“Keith, can you come with us for a second?” Alice said after an uncomfortable pause. “I need to show you something.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to be natural. She gave an apologetic look and then said good-bye to our friends before hurrying me outside to the quad.
“So much for smoothing their feathers,” I muttered.
“Yeah, well they'll have to wait because we have something kind of important going on here,” Lena said, motioning around with a sneer.
“It'll get more complicated to evade them than to sooth them.”
“It doesn't matter!” Alice cut in, speaking over the opening of Lena's sentence. “We found something in the snow glass,” she added, showing me the item.
I examined it, but nothing out of the ordinary popped up. I glanced up questioningly.
“Wait, you've got to shake it up. It's under the bridge,” Alice said, taking the ball from my hands, shaking it with vigor and shoving it back at me before the fake snow had a chance to settle.
I noticed something engraved on the model's floor, right under the bridge. I shook the globe again and angled it for a better look.
Love eternal. A. Stafford.
“This belonged to him?” I wondered. “Did snow globes even exist back then?”
“I think this proves that they did,” Alice said. “Do you think that could possibly be the name of the song?”
I recalled the melody, both its original incarnation and the version I had made of it. That it was a love song was for certain, and the eternal part could fit too. Death was always associated with infinity, and a good two movements of the whole thing talked about death and loss mixed in with love.
I nodded. “Could be. Impossible to say for sure, but it's a good name.”
“So we have a title. How does that help us?”
“We don't have just a title,” Alice protested. “We have proof that there's more than just the creation of the song linking our families together.”
“Do we?” Lena looked dubious.
“Why else would my grandma keep a London trinket with the song's name in it?”
“Because she was an old lady who hoarded meaningless and tacky stuff?” Both Alice and I gave Lena a harsh look and she shrugged. “It was just an idea.”
“There's something I've been thinking about,” I said, giving the globe back to Alice.
“Just the one thing?” Lena smirked. I ignored her.
“She used the song to draw in... souls, life force, whatever. Now, because of Alice, the song is broken and she can no longer use it to suck energy in, but Lena says Beatrice will kill her with or without the song because of the blood connection. How can we prevent that when we can't break the connection, like we did the song? That's the main reason Lena doesn't think we
can help at all, right?”
“Yes, Sherlock. Most sharp of you,” Lena mocked.
“Well... here's how. If the song gave her strength to manifest in the first place, then the song can also take it away.”
That kind of solution was what we had been thinking about the night before, but we had been too tired to see. I still wasn't seeing it clearly, but something had to be done and it was a starting point.
“You think you can... reverse the song somehow?” Alice asked after a moment.
“No. Just like I couldn't change it in the first place. But”—I pointed at her bag, where the globe was hidden—”you can.”
“Whoa, wait, wait, wait. That's a huge leap,” Lena said, holding up her hands. “She said yesterday you changed the song, and she can't play a musical instrument to save her life so... what are you talking about?”
“I changed it because of her,” I clarified. “I'm pretty sure things would've been different if she hadn't shown up.” Or if she hadn't kissed me when she did. “We might be able to reverse it too. Rather, she might be able to do it through me.”
“What does it take to reverse a killing song?” Alice said. “Besides, if that was possible, wouldn't it have been reversed by now? I promise, I wanted to get rid of the ghost the last time, so if it didn't happen...”
I looked at her and nodded encouragingly. I had no idea about whether I was right or wrong, but it was worth a try. “Think of the situation as a puzzle,” I said. “We've to put the pieces together, but we have to use all the pieces. So if it didn't work...” I let the sentence trail off and watched realization dawning in her eyes.
“The anchors. The portrait and Lena's ring and perhaps my grandma's globe... Those are acting as safeguards.”
“You two watch way too much television,” Lena said.
“Come on, Lena,” Alice said, excited. “Think about it. If we accept that the logic behind this whole thing is warped to begin with, then what we're suggesting isn't such a leap. Beatrice's ghost is like a.... balloon, tethered by a lot of strings. If you don't cut off the strings first, you can't get the balloon to fly anywhere.”
