Ghost Hold

by Ripley Patton

  “Come on,” Samantha said, ushering Passion and me out of the office. “I want to show you the music wing.”

  14

  A MUSIC FOR PASSION

  The entrance to the James Memorial Music Wing was up several flights of stairs and down I-don’t-know-how-many non-descript hallways. The plaque on the wall outside the Samantha James Music Hall pretty much explained why the secretary had been so agreeable to Samantha’s demands. Money talks. And throwing that money around shuts everyone else up.

  Samantha had continued to ignore me and chat up Passion all the way there. And Passion, shy as she was, had done a pretty good job of holding up her end of the conversation by asking Samantha the occasional question about herself and her music. I had given up trying to do anything but be invisible.

  Samantha proudly gave us a tour of the music wing, showing us the red velvet seats of the performance hall, the various instrument rooms, and the trophy cases filled with musical awards and trophies, mostly with her name on them. Everywhere we went there were students, lots of them, casting admiring glances at Samantha and envious glances at Passion.

  I followed the two of them, biding my time until the three of us were alone so I could show Samantha my ghost hand. But I got the feeling she wasn’t going to be that impressed. And maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Marcus had wanted us to find an in with Samantha, and it looked like Passion had done that just by being Passion.

  “And these are the practice rooms,” Samantha said, leading us down a long carpeted hallway with white doors on either side. “They’re soundproof and very private.” She stopped in front of a door with her name on it and pushed it open.

  Inside was a large room with a white baby grand piano in one corner, a couple of armchairs, and a clock on one wall.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Samantha said almost shyly to Passion, “but I’d really like to play you something.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful,” Passion said, “but don’t we need to get to class?”

  “Second period starts in five minutes,” Samantha said, glancing at the clock. “And I signed you up for Music Symposium, so this is your next class.”

  “Well then, sure,” Passion said, smiling. “I’d love to hear you play.”

  “Good,” Samantha said, looking at me and nodding at the door. “You want to give us some privacy?”

  It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me, because she hadn’t. Ever.

  “Excuse me?” I said, staring at her.

  “Oh, no.” Passion jumped in. “Anne loves music. She’d love to hear you play too.”

  “Yes, I love music,” I said, grinding the words past clenched teeth. No way was I leaving Passion alone in a sound proof room with this narcissistic, woman-eating bitch.

  “But it’s a special piece. Just for you,” Samantha said, looking at Passion.

  Like the theme to Psycho? This girl was getting seriously creepy.

  “I—wow—that’s so nice,” Passion said. “But I want Anne to hear it. We’re really close. We share everything.”

  Samantha stared at me, appraising, weighing my worth, and I could tell she wasn’t impressed.

  I held her gaze, barely resisting the urge to flip her off.

  “Okay,” Samantha said, looking back at Passion. “If you’re close, it should be fine.” She strode to the piano and sat on the bench. “Pull the chairs up to the piano,” she directed us, and Passion and I moved them to the right of the bench, with Passion closest to Samantha.

  “Now, don’t be afraid,” Samantha said to Passion, which seemed like a really odd thing to say right before you serenade someone. Then, she put her long, thin, fingers on the keys and began playing the most haunting, mournful, beautiful piece of music I had ever heard.

  Contrary to what Passion had claimed, I was not a huge music fan, especially when it came to classical piano. My tastes ran more in the vein of punk and grunge, with their hard sounds and harsher vocals. But the melody that poured from Samantha’s fingers was something else, something beyond music, something that transported me out of that room into the vivid recesses of my own mind.

  It carried me away, spinning visions of Passion in my head. I saw Passion the first day I’d met her at Greenfield High. Passion, alone and forlorn, on the bleachers as she sat out of gym class. Passion at her church in her dad’s play the time Emma and I had decided to go. Passion in my Calculus class, her pale arms scarred and cut. Passion in the hospital, her mother praying at her bedside. Passion drugged and loopy in Mike Palmer’s basement. Passion, every significant moment I’d ever seen or known her, dancing as notes and chords and symphonic progressions in my head and in my heart. It was incredible, and amazing, and terrifying.

  The music stopped, and I opened my eyes. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them. I glanced to my side, wondering if Passion had seen and felt the same things I had.

  She was staring at Samantha, who had turned on the piano bench. Their eyes were locked, and tears were streaming down Passion’s face.

  “I know what you’ve been through,” Samantha said softly, reaching out and clasping Passion’s left wrist.

  I didn’t have time to stop her, even when I realized what she was about to do.

  Samantha James slid Passion’s sleeve up to her elbow, and all three of us looked down at the nasty pattern of pain and punishment mapped out on her pale arm.

  Now I could see the tears swimming in Samantha’s eyes as she said, “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I—it—I was trying to understand,” Passion said, her lips trembling.

  “Dimitri,” Samantha said, “bring me your knife.”

  And that’s when I realized we were no longer alone in the practice room.

  Sometime during the private recital for Passion, while we were lost in the magic of Samantha’s playing, Dimitri and Renzo had slipped into the room behind us.

  They both stepped forward, and Dimitri pulled out a small milky-colored pocket knife.

  Samantha took it from him and snapped it open, the sharp blade as strangely colored as the handle.

  The entire thing was made of bone, I realized, to escape detection from a weapons scan.

  “Hey, what the hell?” I said, rising from my seat, ready to disarm Samantha any way I could.

  Arms clamped around me, holding me back, and Renzo’s smooth deep voice said softly in my ear, “Take it easy. No one’s going to get hurt.”

  “I have a special ear,” Samantha said, still holding the knife out, as she turned her head and showed Passion the ear she was talking about. “Most people think I have a special ear for music, and that is certainly true. But what they don’t know or understand is that I can hear PSS.”

  What the fuck?

  “PSS energy is made up of both particles and waves,” Samantha went on. “I hear the wave aspect as music. To me, each person’s PSS is a unique composition, a distinct symphonic melody.”

  Holy shit.

  “And it doesn’t matter how small or deep or secreted away that PSS is,” Samantha said, turning the knife slowly in her fingers as Passion watched it, transfixed. “I can still hear it.”

  Okay, I had no idea what the fuck was going on. If Samantha could hear PSS, why hadn’t she called me out on my ghost hand the moment we’d met? Why hadn’t she recruited me, instead of ignoring me and fixating on Passion? And what was all this crazy talk about hearing PSS no matter how deep or hidden it was? You either had PSS, or you didn’t. And why threaten Passion, a cutter, with a freakin’ bone knife?

  “Put the knife away,” I said, struggling against Renzo’s hold. “You’re scaring her.” When that didn’t work, I tried my relax-and-throw-a-reverse-head-butt-move on him, but he was too tall for me to clip his chin, and it only made him grab me more firmly, his arm pressing around my neck, making my dog tags dig into my skin.

  “Take her out,” Samantha said, nodding at me.

  “No!” Passion cried. “Let her stay.”

>   “Does she know?” Samantha asked.

  “No,” Passion said, shaking her head, “But I trust her.”

  Did I know what? Fuck. What was going on?

  “Fine.” Samantha turned the knife in her hands and presented the handle to Passion. “Show us.”

  In the entire dossier on Samantha James, Marcus had apparently managed to miss the one crucial piece of information that she was bat shit crazy.

  Passion took the knife in her shaking right hand, her thumb still sporting a small Band-Aid from the gun accident.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I pleaded with Passion. “I don’t know what you heard in that music, but you don’t have to do this.” Maybe Samantha had brain-washed her. Maybe that’s what her music did—how they got new recruits for The Hold. Shit. I was going to have to use my hand.

  Passion must have sensed what I was thinking, because she looked up at me and said, “It’s okay, Anne,” just as she stabbed the knife into her left thumb, gouging a hole smack in the middle of it.

  “Hey!” I yelled, bucking against Renzo.

  Passion pulled the knife away, the sharp tip wet and red.

  Blood oozed out of the wound.

  And so did something else.

  Something blue, and glowing, and incandescent, slowly welling from the wound and separating itself from the blood across the curved plane of her thumb like oil from water.

  Dimitri leaned over Passion’s shoulder and peered down at it. “Looks like her red blood cells are normal,” he explained calmly, “but her white cells and plasma are definitely PSS.”

  15

  SURPRISE, MY ASS

  I stared at Passion’s thumb. I watched blood and PSS well out of her. Liquid PSS. At least that’s what Dimitri said it was, and I certainly didn’t have a better explanation. Normal people, regular people, did not have blood like that. Even as we stood there, it continued to separate, red blood pooling in one spot, glowing blue pooling in another. Either Passion was an alien, or Samantha had heard PSS pulsing in her veins and this was the proof.

  Shit. That was why Passion hadn’t wanted me to see her hand when she’d injured it at the gun club. That’s what had been smeared on the gun. Her PSS.

  “Here, put some pressure on it,” Samantha said, pulling a tissue from her pocket and wrapping it around Passion’s thumb. “And thank you for showing us,” she said, gently taking the knife from Passion’s other hand and giving it back to Dimitri.

  “I’ll go test it in the chemistry lab,” he said, producing a plastic baggy from his pocket, slipping the knife into it, and putting them both back in his pocket as he headed out the door.

  “Wait—you—I—” I said, looking from Samantha to Passion and back again. Renzo had relaxed his grip, but he was still holding onto me as if he wasn’t sure what I’d do.

  “Anne,” Passion said, locking eyes with me. “I know this is a surprise. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  Surprise, My Ass. Passion had PSS. She had always had PSS. And she hadn’t told me, or Marcus, or any of us. Why would she tell me about her cutting but not about this? What had she said the other night? What if cutting was the only way to find out something important about yourself?

  “Are you sure it’s PSS?” Passion asked Samantha anxiously. “I’ve never heard of PSS blood. I know people have it on the outside, like your ear, but not blood, not something inside them. And it looks different than yours.”

  Passion had seen Marcus’s PSS, and it was certainly inside of him. But she was right; this was different. Maybe it wasn’t PSS.

  “I’m sure,” Samantha said. “Dimitri needs his little lab test, but I don’t. I’ve been listening to your PSS sing since the moment you walked into the school. The first time I hear someone is always a bit overwhelming: It drowns out everything until I can process it and play it. The music I just played—that’s what yours sounds like. It’s very strong and complex. I’ve never heard anything quite like it.”

  So, Shotgun hadn’t ratted us out, and The Hold hadn’t been expecting us. Samantha had simply honed in on us because of Passion’s loud PSS blood. But what about my hand? Hadn’t Samantha heard it too, or had Passion’s PSS overwhelmed it and drowned me out?

  “But how did you know it was my blood?” Passion asked.

  “I wasn’t positive at first,” Samantha said, “but when I play the music, I know things—where it is, what the person has been through, especially any experiences that have to do with their PSS.”

  “And you can hear anyone’s?” Passion asked, casting a side-long glance at me, her eyes darting, only for a moment, to my gloved right hand.

  “Yes, anyone’s,” Samantha said, following Passion’s gaze, but her eyes slid right over me, bored. “Which makes fle—” she stopped herself mid-word and looked back at Passion, “which makes people without PSS relatively uninteresting to me.”

  Samantha James had almost called me a fleshman. Samantha James, who could supposedly hear the music of everyone’s PSS, didn’t have a clue that I was standing right in front of her with a PSS hand.

  “Let her go,” she said to Renzo with a flick of her hand.

  As Renzo pulled his arms from around me, the band of his expensive gold watch momentarily snagged the material of my shirt, pulling it askew.

  Passion’s eyes darted to my neck, and I knew what she was looking at—the chain of my dog tags, now exposed. Dog tags made from a razor blade that could block minus meters. And what did those minus meters read? The waves of energy or sound or whatever it was PSS put off.

  Samantha James was a human minus meter.

  And she couldn’t detect my PSS because I was wearing the tags.

  “Have you ever met anyone else with PSS blood?” Passion asked Samantha.

  “Not with PSS blood, no,” Samantha answered. “And please don’t cut yourself anymore. You’re very special. You have to understand that.”

  “I thought there was something wrong with me,” Passion said, her voice breaking a little. “I was afraid to tell my parents or my therapist, and then my doctor said—” Passion stopped, looking at me. Did she mean Dr. Fineman? What had he told her about her blood while she’d been under his care? Was all this just an act, a way to get more sympathy from Samantha, or had Passion really been this clueless about her PSS?

  “What did your doctor say?” Samantha asked, leaning forward, as drawn into the story as I was. “Did he take a sample of your blood? Did he send it to a lab?”

  “Yes, he took my blood.” Passion nodded. “But he didn’t send it to a lab. He did some tests right there.” Right there in Mike Palmer’s basement.

  “And what did he tell you?” Samantha asked, sounding concerned.

  “He said I had a rare blood disease. He said we’d have to do more tests.”

  “Then he was an idiot,” Samantha scoffed, putting her arm around Passion’s shoulders.

  Had Dr. Fineman said that? And had Passion actually believed it? Is that why she hadn’t revealed her secret to anyone in Piss Camp? Had she come with us because she believed she was dying or because she’d known she had PSS all along? My mind was reeling. Marcus didn’t fully trust Passion. He’d questioned her motives for coming with us. But what better way to discover more about PSS than to join a band of people with it?

  “It’s a good thing he didn’t send it to a lab,” Samantha continued to comfort Passion, “because most doctors and scientists don’t know the first thing about PSS. You don’t have a disease. You have a gift. And people without PSS,” she cast her glance my direction, “will never understand that unless we show them the way.”

  Why did that sound like a veiled religious threat? Probably because it was. I could see Passion looking at me, glancing at my hand. This was probably as alone as we were going to get with Samantha.

  I looked at Renzo. He certainly didn’t strike me as a CAMFer spy. Well, he did have the annoying habit of wearing sunglasses indoors.

  His lips quirked into a smile, and
he raised his hand to the dark glasses, lifting them up so I could see his eyes. One brown eye and one glowing pale blue eye stared back at me. He winked at me with the PSS eye and slid the glasses back in place.

  It looked like Samantha was collecting people with PSS just like Marcus was. Dimitri certainly hadn’t seemed surprised by Passion’s blood, and Samantha had made it clear she found people without PSS >barely tolerable. That probably meant the other girls who’d been on the Segways had it too. And all I had to do to be welcomed into their happy little clique was whip off my glove and reveal my hand.

  But then I would have to explain why Samantha hadn’t heard me. And that would involve revealing the ability of the dog tags which would lead directly to things I did not want to divulge about my hand. Besides, Passion had already accomplished what we’d set out to do. Plus, suddenly, more than anything, I could not bring myself to show Samantha James my ghost hand just so she would like me and consider me worthy of her attention. If she couldn’t respect me as a human being, PSS or not, screw her.

  The door to the practice room swung open and Dimitri came back in, the sound of a bell echoing behind him. “That’s the bell for third period,” he said. “Oh, and this is for you.” He crossed to Passion, handing her a Band-Aid for her thumb.

  “Thanks,” she said, removing the tissue and putting the bandage on.

  “I’ve got a school yearbook meeting,” Dimitri said, looking to Samantha. “Unless you need me.”

  “No, we’re fine.” She twined her arm around Passion’s. “You and Renzo go ahead,” she dismissed them, and both guys headed out the door. “Our third period is Calculus,” Samantha said, getting up and pulling Passion with her.