by Doyle, K. T.
Please accept my deepest condolences.
Yours,
A. Lincoln
Researching that time in our history and crafting that letter made me realize that I wanted to tell stories, write about the days when our country was young and volatile and the future was uncertain but full of promise. There’d be men in my novels with handle bar mustaches who wore top hats and walked with fancy canes. There’d be bustling city streets paved with dirt and full of manure from horses that pulled carriages. And there’d be women in hoop skirts shading themselves with parasols and fancy hats with flowers.
Those were the times and places and people I wanted to write about. But it all meant nothing if Kilmore couldn’t teach me how to do it.
I had heard Kilmore University had a good liberal arts program, so I asked the tour guide about it.
“The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is very strong here,” he said, pausing to fold his hands in front of him. “Forty-two undergraduate degrees available.”
He seemed to whip this number out of nowhere, without hesitation. I thought it odd that he would know the exact number of undergraduate degrees available. But then I realized he was probably trained to memorize all kinds of weird and miscellaneous facts about the college for parents’ sake. They’re the only ones who seem to care how many majors are available. Parents love knowing their kids have options.
After an hour our tour was over and the guide walked us back to the administration building where we parked. This is when he told us about the town of Kilmore, the tiny suburb that depended on the university to keep its economy strong. There were several restaurants and a few banks and a grocery store or two, plus a car wash and a hardware store.
“And there’s also a bowling alley, a movie theater and miniature golf!” he said enthusiastically.
This all excited my parents, who up until this point were only casual observers walking behind me and the tour guide, allowing me to run the show, letting me ask all the questions. My mother stated that maybe I could get a part-time job downtown.
As if I wouldn’t have enough on my plate.
“I don’t have a car,” I reminded her, glaring at her to see if she’d cave to the pressure and finally take me to get my license.
We were all quiet for a minute until the tour guide said, “Most freshmen don’t. But don’t worry. You’ll make lots of friends here. Friends with cars.”
I shrugged and said, “Maybe.”
The tour guide looked over his shoulder at my parents, and, sensing they were out of earshot whispered to me, “There are three bars within walking distance that are known to have a relaxed attitude towards underage drinking.” Then he winked, as if that was the icing on the cake, the biggest selling point he had to offer.
Not that he needed it. I was already sold.
I nodded. “Good to know, thanks.”
The tour guide said goodbye and left us in the parking lot. I stretched an arm around my father’s neck and began fake sucker punching him in the gut as we walked the rest of the way to the car. He took his fake beating like a man, pretending to reel back with each blow that didn’t hit his stomach. I released him when my arms grew tired and when I thought he had had enough.
“So, you like Kilmore?” my mother asked.
“It’s pretty cool,” I said.
She agreed. “Yes, I think it’s pretty cool too. Rad, even.”
My mother always knew the language du jour of teenagers. It must’ve been the school nurse in her. She spent her days surrounded by teenagers, taping sprained ankles, wiping bloody noses, bandaging cuts and scraps and burns. So how could she not pick up a few words and phrases here and there from the students? Once in a while she’d try them out on me.
As if.
Whack.
Bitchin’.
Now it was rad.
So while she always knew the current teenager vernacular, she always sounded so uncool trying to speak it. She must’ve known how ridiculous she sounded this time, trying out rad for the first time, because she shrugged her shoulders as if to say she gave it a shot and knows she failed.
My father laughed at her. “Nice try, dear,” he said, rubbing her back with a calloused hand.
My father’s hands were always calloused, usually rough, his fingernails sometimes bruised. Comes with the territory when you’re a carpenter.
My father liked to build wood shelves for my mom and hang them around the house so she could display her knick-knacks and figurine collections. He always seemed to get hurt in the process, though, and oftentimes came home from work with minor injuries—wood splinters, mostly, or sawdust in the eye, or a nicked finger from a close encounter with a table saw. Once he came home with a nail in his foot.
My mom the nurse was always prepared to care for him, ready to dole out whatever line of first aid was needed. She treated him out of love, I’m sure, but when you get down to it, I think she was paying him back for all the shelves. Either way, their respective lines of work complimented their marriage perfectly.
He made a birdhouse for me once, when I was perhaps five or six years old. It was the first thing I saw him build. Four simple pieces of wood, a few hand movements, and it suddenly appeared. It was like magic. My father was a modern-day Merlin. The next day I hung the birdhouse from the maple tree in our front yard, where it stayed for many years.
From then on I spent a lot of time with my father in his basement workshop, watching him build tables and chairs and more shelves for my mom, and learning to identify the tools of the trade: Standard and Phillips head screwdrivers. Straight and curved claw hammers. Pincers and chisels and carpenter’s squares. The various grits of sandpaper. Circular saws and table saws and reciprocating saws and band saws. A million different sizes of drill bits.
I figured my father the magician needed a trusty assistant, and since I wanted to know it all and I wanted to learn from the master, who better to fill the role? Considering my size and my clumsy little fingers, I was never much help to him, though, but my memorization skills enabled me to hand him most any tool he needed. And I did succeed in keeping my father company. I think that’s all he really wanted anyway.
I rolled my eyes at my mom when she whipped out the word rad during the walk back to the car after our tour of Kilmore University. I hadn’t the patience for her annoyingly cute ways at the moment. I was still mad that she said nothing when I mentioned getting my license. But that was soon overshadowed by the excitement of telling my boyfriend Bobby all about Kilmore University.
As I got in the car and strapped myself in, I thought about how cool it would be if Bobby went to Kilmore too.
CHAPTER 3
I.
The front door was locked so I sat down on the curb and waited.
I was early, as usual. I am always early for everything.
The moon was low in the darkening sky and a nippy autumnal breeze whistled in my ear.
I looked up at Kentmore Hall, its brick exterior, its large, dark windows, the clock tower that pointed up towards the sky like an arrow. A bronze plaque mounted next to the large wooden front door declared the building was built in 1874.
I didn’t know much about this building, other than it must be one of the oldest buildings, if not the oldest, on campus. I didn’t remember touring it that day with my parents more than a year ago, but we might have. We saw so much that day, had received so much information. The tour guide might’ve mentioned something about it in passing, but at the moment I couldn’t recall.
Moments later, a young man rushed up to the door. I watched as he dug a hand deep into the front pocket of his jeans. He noticed me, smiled quickly, and then looked away to unlock the door with the keys he had pulled from his pocket.
“Waiting for someone?” he asked.
After several tries the lock clicked and he shoved the keys back into his pocket.
“Matthew Levine,” I said.
He gazed at me in surprise. His eyes were deep green and reminde
d me of pond water: dark and dull, yet alluring. He had a thick heap of almond-brown hair and a pale face flushed pink with cold. Sitting there watching him from ten feet away, I decided that he was beautiful.
“I’m Matthew Levine,” he said.
…
The first few weeks of college were hard. I got lost on campus. I had trouble sleeping. I worried no one would like me. The food took some getting used to. So did sharing a room.
At times like those, when I was anxious or scared or embarrassed, I thought about Dr. Cramer. He would tell me to give no mercy to my negative emotions, face them head on, and send them packing. Then he would tell me to get a hobby.
I decided that’s what I needed to do: take up a hobby.
But there were so many student organizations and activities on campus. How could I possibly choose?
The answer hit me unexpectedly.
I was in Psych 101, sitting in a cavernous lecture hall, waiting for class to begin. This girl named Heather two seats to my left was bragging to two other girls about how her boyfriend played in the university orchestra. She was spouting loudly for all to hear about how good he was with his “instrument.” As I sat there scribbling in my notebook it hit me: I should learn to play an instrument. The instrument I wrote about in my diary.
I leaned over the empty seats that separated me and Heather to ask if she knew anyone who played the guitar. She told me about a freshman who played rhythm guitar for an all-student rock band. He gave lessons on Monday nights.
His name was Matthew Levine.
That’s how I found myself sitting outside a locked building one Monday evening, early for a 7 p.m. guitar lesson, trembling on the outside from the cool October weather, shaking on the inside from having left the emotional comfort of my dorm room to face the unknown.
And that’s how I found myself face to face with a beautiful stranger.
I stood up from the curb and approached him. “You’re Matthew?”
He nodded and extended his hand. “Call me Matt.”
I took his hand. It was warm and firm around my fingers. “Alexandra,” I said. “Call me Alex.”
“All right, Alex. Come on in.”
He held the door open for me and I walked through into a large, empty room with a high ceiling. There was no furniture and the walls were bare. A musty smell hung in the air. There was a brick fireplace blackened by soot, and the carpet showed signs of age and years of foot traffic. But otherwise there was nothing, no indication as to what this place had been used for.
Matt flipped a switch and a dusty chandelier above our heads sprung to life.
“What was this place?” I whispered.
“I think it was the original cafeteria,” he said.
Now that I had seen the inside, I was sure I hadn’t toured this building. The tour guide must’ve skipped it for a reason, maybe because it was abandoned and in disrepair and in need of a new purpose. The building seemed like it had a rich history begging to be discovered.
I was instantly intrigued.
I looked around the room again and then set my eyes on Matt. He was looking at me.
“So what I can do for you?” he asked.
“I’m here about the guitar lessons. You give lessons on Monday nights, right?”
“Yep.”
“Are you still accepting people? I mean, can I join?”
“Sure.” He stood silent for a moment, watching my eyes, as if waiting for me to ask more questions. Maybe he was waiting for me to explain why I had arrived empty-handed to a guitar lesson.
“I don’t have my own guitar,” I said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s just that I’ve never played before.”
“No problem.”
“So you have loaners?”
“Yep.”
I waited for him to lead the way, to show me where to go. But he continued to look at me, sizing me up, perhaps, and I suddenly grew uncomfortable.
“So…are the lessons here, in this room?” I asked.
“They’re upstairs,” he said, finally peeling his eyes away from me. “I’ll show you.”
Matt led the way to the back of the building, just beyond the chandeliered room, to a flight of steps that was to the left of a swinging door.
“What’s in here?” I asked, reaching out to push the door open.
Matt stepped in front of me, blocking the door. “That’s the kitchen.”
“Can I see?”
He pushed the door open slightly for me to look in. I caught a glimpse of dark shadows and felt a brief chill of cold air and then he quickly let the door swing closed. “Nothing in there.”
“Creepy,” I said.
Matt smiled faintly and started up the stairs two at a time. “So how did you hear about the lessons?” he asked, not attempting to turn around or look back in my direction, forcing me to talk to the back of his head.
“This girl in my psychology class. Heather something. I don’t know her last name. Her boyfriend plays saxophone in the university orchestra. I heard her talking about him one day and—”
“What’s his name?” Matt interjected.
“I think it’s Rob. He’s got a weird last name.”
“Rob Fenistrino?”
“That sounds right.”
“Yeah, I know Rob.”
The flight of stairs seemed to go on forever, the sound of our sneakers squeaking up the steps magnified to the point of annoyance. Where the hell was this practice room?
“Heather mentioned you have your own band,” I said. “That’s awesome.”
Matt twisted around and flashed me a crooked smile, the first of many crooked smiles, a close-lipped grin that meant a hidden thought or two lay just beyond his pretty lips.
Finally we reached the top of the stairs. Matt led me into a small room to the left. Music stands, folding chairs, speakers, amplifiers and microphones were strewn about. There was a tall cabinet in the back left corner. A grand piano took up the other corner.
“This is where the guitar lessons are,” Matt said. “And this is where my band practices.”
I looked around the room again and noticed thick foam pads on all the walls and on the back of the door. “What’re these things?” I said, poking one of the foam pieces with my finger.
“Acoustical panels. The room is soundproof.”
Voices floated up from below, becoming louder as footsteps started up the stairs.
“Take your coat off and stay awhile,” Matt said. He shrugged out of his jacket and let it fall to the floor in a heap. He pushed it off to the side with his foot.
“So who else practices here?” I asked, hanging my coat on the back of a folding chair.
“Just us.”
“You mean, just your band and the people in this class?”
“Yep.”
“What about the other musical organizations? Where do they practice?”
He shrugged. “The main auditorium, I guess.”
“They’re not allowed in here?”
“They don’t have a key,” he said, grinning.
“So who else has a key?”
“Just me.”
“You’re the only person on campus with a key?”
“Well, Maintenance has one too.”
“So the university lets you have exclusive access to an abandoned building?”
He thought about it a moment. “Yeah.”
“How’d you swing that?”
“My father pulled some strings.”
Matt didn’t offer more of an explanation. He just stood staring at me, or through me, I couldn’t tell which, like he did moments ago in the chandeliered room, as if waiting for more questions.
“Are these lessons free?” I finally asked.
He motioned with his head to the small group of people filtering into the room. “For them, no.” He leaned in towards me. “But for you…yeah.”
I laughed nervously and stared at the carpet to
hide the sudden warm blush in my cheeks. “You charge them a lot?”
“Nothing they can’t handle.”
“From what I hear you’re pretty good.”
He smirked and said nothing.
I turned my head and caught a glimpse of the other people in the room with us. Six young men. I was the only girl.
“Like I said, I’m a beginner,” I said, breaking the silence once more.
He raised an eyebrow and grinned at me. “I can help you with that.”
Our eyes caught again and I was suddenly aware that Matt was staring at me, not through me, hanging on every word, every breath. I stared back into his dark green eyes for as long as I could, for what felt like minutes but was really only seconds, while the other people in the room continued to talk amongst themselves, their voices indistinguishable words and murmurs, until the door creaked closed behind us and shut with a thud. It brought me back to attention and I broke eye contact and stared at the floor.
Matt led me to the tall cabinet and opened the door. Guitars of all shapes and colors and sizes were stacked neatly inside on hooks. He pointed to one of them. “That’s a Gibson Signature Series six-string electric guitar. Mahogany body and neck. Rosewood fingerboard, nickel hardware, and satin lacquer finish in dark cherry.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering if he realized none of that meant anything to me.
“That one’s off limits,” he continued. “But you can play any of the others.”
He reached inside the cabinet and gently pulled out an acoustic guitar. “Back and sides are made of maple. The top is spruce.” He flipped and rotated the guitar several times for me to get a good look at it. “Mahogany neck and rosewood fingerboard.” He held it out to me.
I secured the strap around my neck and grabbed the neck of the guitar with my left hand, struggling to find a comfortable position.
“How’s it feel?” Matt asked.
I pretended to strum the guitar. “Okay,” I lied.
“Come on. Let’s start.”
