Hadrian's Wall (68 page)

“I’ll help you,
Delilah,” I said. “I’ll
let Stephen believe that you’re still my nanny. Make your
reports to him, as you always do, but take the time to show him how
much you’ve changed.”

“Okay!” She gave a little cry of joy. “Thank
you.”

“Oh, there’s one more
condition. In addition to acting discreetly and resume behaving
like a normal girl, you’ll have to resume your friendship with Abby
—l
ike it was before I arrived. She’s hurt.
It’s not fair to her. She thinks she’s been cast aside no more no
less.

Delilah was thoughtful for a few
seconds.

“You’re a great girl, you
know that? I’m really sorry to have misjudged you.”

Pre-judged
. Melissa mentally
corrected her.

On impulse, she suggested: “Tonight will be
a great opportunity for you and Abby to become friends. Come to BP
with us!”

By then, the wastebasket was already full of
shredded paper. I stood up, considering my good deed for the
day.

“Okay, I’ll go!” Before
opening the door to leave, I said,
“Uh, if
you
see Stephen around there, tell him I
have a list of drawing materials I need to buy. If I can’t get
everything on the Internet, I might be forced to take a little
trip...let me see...maybe to South Portland.” I gave her a perverse
grin. “How about it?”

Her eyes widened, excited.

“Okay, let’s do better!” I
said. “I’ll leave my list with you. You can tell him that you’re
helping me to find everything I need.”

Delilah looked at me hopefully.

25

SOMBER
PEOPLE

Blood Pressure Bar. The BP
as the girls called the place. It would be a strange name in any
other part of the planet, but in Hadrian’s Wall it seemed more than
appropriate.

After a quiet afternoon,
studying and
sketching with
Walter
, the BP was a great change of
environment. From the quiet to the “buzz & fuzz.” Definitely,
t
his one violates my “personal code of
conduct”:
I never hung out at an “in
crowd” kind of place, which this was. I’d rather be lying in my
bed, watching a good movie. However, BP didn’t look like the bar
that we saw in on television, nor the pubs in the English
movies.

Earlier, I asked Walter
about the BP, but he wasn’t very helpful. He knew almost nothing
about places in the town. When I invited him to accompany us, he
replied, “Unfortunately, I cannot...” and automatically glanced at
his wristwatch as always he does, controlling his time. I began to
suspect that the supervision of my studies was his only external
distraction. In the end, I concluded that my hypothesis was right:
the Pine Tree High School was a detention center.

Walter was so cute! He
deserved a little more excitement in his life and that’s why I
decided to help him with his drawings—but not as a teacher. After
all, who was I to teach anything to anybody? I just gave him some
tips and it was not difficult because he has great talent and a
surprisingly firm hand.

Walter was very excited
about our conversation about comics, but I don’t know how the idea
of setting up a magazine at his school was spawned. He told me he
had a twin brother who also liked to draw. It was the first time
he’d spoken about his family. He believed that the magazine would
motivate his troubled brother to be interested in his studies. I
realized that the brother situation was worrying him a
lot.

“If I can get permission
from the school, will you help us?”

Wait
...

“I cannot do it,” I said emphatically.

But seeing his animation
quickly fade, compassion led me to revise my decision. “If you get
permission, and if your weird colleagues want my help, and if your
brother has any interest in my drawings, then we’ll
talk!”

He gave a me crooked smile. I saw his eyes
twinkling behind his glasses.

“My weird people want
this...” he said slowly as was his manner. The weird guys I know
enjoy manga. I think if we offer the idea of a drawing workshop, it
might even encourage my classmates to improve their performance.
Director Bourke will only give us permission to do other activities
if they reach seventy-five percent yield.”

In my mind, I translated
this enigmatic information in the following way: prison only
granted “visiting day” to the prisoners approved to participate in
the program for good behavior. That’s funny! I understood the
evaluation process of this school less and less.

“Take my
manga
drawings and if
they think I’m up to the task, I’ll do a workshop with you...but on
one condition—the group has to be small, okay?”

“No problem. Our classes
are usually small...very small. Forming a drawing group won’t add
more than four or five people.”

I couldn’t imagine myself
leading a drawing workshop for weird boys and girls that probably
had as much power as Adrian and Stephen. Was there something they
couldn’t do? I bet that Walter didn’t need my help, so why was he
asking for it? Maybe it was one of Adrian’s ploys to keep me busy?
This hadn’t occurred to me because Walter behaves like a simple,
gentle human.

Except that he isn’t
human
.

Just as Keyra McPherson
isn’t human either.

Worse than committing
myself to give drawing lessons to a group of abnormal people was
being watched by unseen eyes. Having Stephen and Delilah watching
my back wasn’t enough for Adrian, so he found another “person"
close to me to watch my every step. This became obvious when I
happened to run into Mrs. McPherson that afternoon.

“Watch out, Melissa,” she
said unexpectedly. “Some places are not appropriate for a walk.
Don’t forget that curiosity killed the cat.”

She knew! I bet that she was the one we
heard in the underground gallery. I almost asked her, but at the
last second I changed my mind. Though it was cowardly, I thought it
best too play dumb.

Now here I am at the BP,
sitting between Delilah and Abby, thinking about the day’s events.
With a jolt, I realized that Abby was talking to me, so I forced
myself to pay attention. She said something about the band that was
performing.

It was my understanding
that this was some kind of impromptu jam session. Abby was
explaining that the band performing was result of a lightning
reunion—The Stereotype Band. Preston found some freshmen who also
attend UWall’s music school. They came up with an idea for earning
extra money by utilizing their talent to help pay for school and
maintain their expensive standard of living away from Mom and Dad.
After a few trial appearances around the county, they were offered
a gig at the new bar in town—the BP.

I couldn’t deny that the
guys were good...for those who like noise and they played so well
together it gave the impression that they’d been playing together
since high school.

Abby kept talking and I
nodded, pretending I was listening. My mind was on other things,
tumultuous thoughts swirling around in my head. There was only one
fixed subject in the mental chaos and it wasn’t the
gossip...
it was Adrian
.

All thoughts converged on him. What madness!
I felt that he was thinking of me at that very moment. It was as if
he already knew what stage of understanding I was in right now.

I shared Delilah’s secret,
so now I recognized what was right in front of my face since the
first moment when I woke up in Caledonia Hospital. I wondered if I
should catch the first bus to Alaska, Canada, or maybe the North
Pole.
I could try to get a job as one of
Santa Claus’s helpers
.

It was as if Adrian knew
my feelings too...and waited for my decision. Stay or leave. After
the nightmare about my mother and Dailey’s Crossing, I was sure
that I simply could never let him go.
But
will I be able to handle whatever comes next?

“You’re so distracted,”
Delilah commented. “Don’t you like it here?”

I looked around,
disinterested. There were two small rooms for games, separated by
glass walls (billiards, button soccer, and video games coexisting
in noisy harmony), but the barriers didn’t prevent the machine
noise and the shouts of the players from filtering into the bar
area.

Across the room was the
bar where two
buff-looking
bartenders were serving drinks and food orders
delivered to them through the small window between the bar and the
kitchen. The sizzling sounds of food frying and the clanging of
dishes commingled with the noise of the games and music, creating
an atmosphere of
sheer
bedlam
.

In the center of a small makeshift stage,
Dwayne was performing his keyboard, another band member was
frantically strumming an electric guitar, and behind him, the
drummer was literally beating his cymbals and drums. The group
seemed compressed on the tiny stage.

In front of them was the
dance floor where people were pressed together l
ike glossy and slippery sausages in a can of
fat
. It was impossible to tell who was who
under the pulsating lights. Well, impossible for me
anyway!

Along the wall, people
were sitting on double-wide couches, while others were sitting in
the area of chairs and small fixed tables.
At least, our table wasn’t too close to the bar or to the
walkway, which provided some relief to my poor ears. The music
coming from the stage had evolved into something
edgy...electrifying. People were talking loudly to make themselves
understood, but nobody was complaining...in fact, quite the
contrary.

On balance, I guess the pros outweighed the
cons. The place was interesting, somewhat dark, but cozy. Hmmm,
maybe the darkness was cozy...and I was so sleepy! To my horror,
nodded off for a brief moment and then noticed that Delilah was
still waiting for my response.

“Oh sure! I like it here. Seriously!” I
said, concealing a yawn. “I was just thinking about some things.” I
picked up my Coke and sucked on the straw, giving her a scathing
look.

Of course, she understood what those
“things” were.

“No use dwelling on it. Life is short,” she
whispered in my ear.

As usual, Abby was
drooling over Dwayne. Suddenly, she turned to us and said something
like “The challenge will begin next.” Delilah told me that people
will ask them to play certain songs and if Dwayne knew the song, he
would play it on his keyboard, but if he didn’t know it, the
customers
could have a
mug of beer on the house.

“So far, he’s known every
song requested,” said Abby, beaming with pride.

Delilah and I exchanged a
significant look. It’s obvious that Abby could drag a truck for
Dwayne. Before our evening began, I was worried about Abby’s
reaction to my involuntary intrusion on her friendship with
Delilah...what was going on inside Abby’s head. I was afraid that
she’d behave like Mrs. Jones’s psychopathic daughters.
B
y force of
circumstances
, I still felt like an
outsider.

The arrival of Violet and
Janice dispersed my thoughts. I focused entirely on them, assuming
they would join us, but they just ignored us. Violet gave us a
quick look while walking around tables, but when she reached the
dance floor, she pulled Janice onto the sofa nearest the stage. She
only had eyes for Dwayne. Dwayne’s reaction was immediate. I didn’t
expect him to give her one of those glances filled with promises,
crowned by a sexy wink, but that’s exactly what he did. Abby had
followed Dwayne’s gaze and witnessed the exchange of glances
between Dwayne and Violet. Her smile quickly faded. I felt sorry
for her. As a member of the female gender, what he did made me
really angry. Men...
BAH!

I spied Nik on the other
side of the room. He was casually leaning on the bar, sipping his
beer, but he wasn’t alone. David and a girl unknown to me were with
him. She pointed to his foam mustache and Nik laughed.
David
picked up a napkin
and wiped it off.

I looked around but didn’t
see Sally Benson. That’s strange, since those two were always
together; however, given the current circumstances, her absence was
a good thing. I stood up and walked straight toward
them.

“Hi, everybody!”

“Hey, Mel!” the two guys greeted me in
unison.

The girl with David gave me a suspicious
look and clung more tightly to his neck. I waved, but she just
nodded. Well, I had no time to worry about her feelings of jealousy
now. I got right down to business!

“Nik, will you do me a favor?”

He gave me a
sideways
glance and then
straightened up and followed me to the corner of the counter. David
stayed behind, making jokes, while his
companion
gave me a look of sheer
relief. She probably concluded that I was interested in Nik and not
in David.

“I think Abby is feeling
like a fifth wheel, nodding at the stage, trying to be as discreet
as possible. The scene that unfolded there didn’t need any
explanation. Violet had stood up from the couch and was dancing
seductively around Dwayne. I mean if wriggling her body like a
crazed boa constrictor could be classified as seductive. Dwayne
smiled, clearly pleased by her performance.