Silent Song (Ghostly Rhapsody) (20 page)

Act II began, and I tried to mask my emotional distance under the hardship of the situation. But the first notes to the theme started to resonate, and a sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, making any act unnecessary. The audience was rapt, and once again, the song weaved moods and emotions around like a master of ceremonies. But instead of being captured by the beauty, I was more and more horrified with every passing moment.

It was the right song. It wasn’t the right player.

How could the others be so blind? Keith, gentle and loving Keith, never sounded like this. He coaxed the notes to flow into one another, pouring forth complex melodic lines that, for all their independence, always entwined in the moments of tension, supporting each other. This time, the song was forced forward, clipped and frail, each note as cold as an icicle. Like icicles, they shattered when the tension building inside grew too high, and the shards that the breaking moment sent forward scattered on their own, lashing out aggressively at the melody itself.

The emotions, the anger and fear and frustration, might not be out of place with the scene, but they were certainly out of place with Keith and with our previous rehearsals. By the time the curtain fell, a cold sheen of sweat pearled on my brow and I could almost taste the desperation in the back of my throat. I stole a glance to the pit while the others buzzed around me, adjusting the few details that would mark the beginning of Act III. I didn’t have a good angle to see, but I knew what I’d find there.

Part of me wanted to leave, to cast the Lady aside and rush to him.

The other part was too scared of what I’d find and preferred the denial offered by the stage.

The play could last only so long, though. When it was over, the clapping still ringing in our ears, I grabbed Anna and pulled her aside. She must have noticed my look, because her smile evaporated.

“Alice? What is it?”

“Did the performance feel okay to you?”

She blinked, cocking her head to the side as if trying to make sense of my question, and then ventured saying, “Yes?”

I let her go, hunting Dave down in the chaotic backstage. “Dave! The mood today, didn’t you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

He paused, halfway out of his costume jacket, and shrugged. “You might have been a bit colder, but otherwise I’d say it was one damned fine performance. Why?”

“Never mind,” I said, wondering if perhaps there was some brand of craziness in the air. If perhaps it was contagious.

“Alice!” Anna came up behind me. “What the hell are you going on about?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “I was just worried that we’d disappoint after giving the public such great expectations.”

She smiled, immediately put at ease. I had voiced a fear she shared, a fear every actor shared at some point. She was willing to believe it. That was always the trick with the lies. Weave them with the truth, using what they want to hear.

I still disliked lying to her, but I shook it off. When I didn’t know the truth myself, what else could I do?

Smiling back and hoping that my face looked natural, I turned from the celebrations and headed for the pit. Some people looked at me, some of them with a blank expression and some of them with a smile. It was the first time I went to Keith without waiting for the auditorium to empty first, and I made a note in the back of my head of who sported what look even as I registered how useless and unimportant it was.

The fear had prepared me, but still, seeing Keith curled in the floor, guitar carelessly discarded as he shook and convulsed, sent me very nearly into hysterics. I was by his side in no time at all, my arms trying to hold him steady.

“Hold on,” I said, my voice coming out embarrassingly close to a croak. “I’m calling a doctor. You’re going to be okay.”

“No,” he forced out, the word strangled. His hand sought mine and held onto it like a lifeline. “No, please. Just hold me. I’ll be fine if you’re with me.”

I very much doubted his claim. He was cold, clammy, and his eyes were red and sunken. I could see a muscle in his jaw working as he swallowed repeatedly, trying to control his trembling.

“I can’t leave you like this,” I whispered, brushing the hair back from his brow.

“They can’t help me. You make it all better, Alice. You make
me
better.”

Swallowing back my own tears, I nodded and settled down by his side. I thought that perhaps the convulsions were getting weaker. I told myself that it was okay, that he just needed a few moments to be okay again.

I heard a snort behind me.

“Lena,” I said, turning around and staring up at her in numb horror.

“You do know what kind of trouble you can get in for hiding your junkie boyfriend, right?” Her words were mock concerned, but her expression was vicious.

“He’s not a junkie. Don’t you dare to call him that,” I replied, not even thinking.

“Oh, please. He’s got ‘withdrawal’ written all over him,” she tsked and pulled out her cell phone. “Don’t you agree that’s what it looks like?”

“Lena, please, he’s not feeling right. Couldn’t you bring some water from backstage?”

“And stop recording? No way.”

My mind couldn’t grasp how she stood barely three feet away, seeing how Keith fought against a seizure and just looking smug. I had known her to be cruel and petty, but I hadn’t imagined evil. The words tumbled out of my mouth before I thought to check them.

“You bitch.”

Her eyes blared. “Isn’t that you, Alice dearest? God, look at you! Playing around with the resident bad boy just because you can!”

“I’m not playing around.”

She snorted again, tossing her head.

“You love his pathetic adoration. That’s what gets you going.” Her face contorted in a grimace, and she looked ugly in the semi darkness of the pit. “You’ve the money and the brains, the friends, the leading roles. You have everything, even though you don’t deserve shit! And you change it all for this idiot.”

“I change it all for the guy I love,” I said, still holding onto Keith, my voice suddenly calm. “Then again, it’s not a feeling I’d expect you to understand.”

The words cut her to the bone and she looked stricken. The sneer she mustered was only half-hearted.

“Don’t you dare to talk about love,” she said, without as much conviction as before. “Don’t you dare, after hurting David like that, turning him down month after month!”

Dave? So, that’s what it was all about? She fancied Dave? He was my best friend. Perhaps he’d thought to be something else; perhaps I’d thought we’d end up together at some point too. But no longer. We were never meant to be. Love had happened to both of us, and I could see that it had ignored Lena.

For a split second, I saw her as she was. A girl who had minions and not friends, someone who was popular because everyone else was too scared to ignore her. A girl who got good grades because she copied the homework of the football team, who got it from the resident bookworm in turn. A girl who had fallen in love and seen her crush look everywhere but at her.

I should have felt pity.

But she was holding a cell phone, Keith was still shaking in my arms, and I was, after all, the Bitch Princess.

“Please, Lena,” I said, almost bored now. “After all these years of telling the school’s losers ‘do not aim above your station,’ and still you fall for it?”

She stared at me as if she couldn’t believe what I had said and I went on, undeterred.

“Dave wouldn’t bother to look anybody’s second plate in the eye, and what are you? Leftovers from the entire football team? Christ, you’re eternally second. Guys, theater… they even kicked you out of the cheerleading squad back in first year, didn’t they?”

Her cell fell from her limp grasp and she turned her heel and ran. I thought I heard her hiccupping as she rushed out of the already deserted auditorium, but I couldn’t care less.

“Callous,” Keith’s raspy voice said, muffled against my shoulder.

“She should have known better than to mess with you.”

“That makes me feel protected.” He smiled, straightening up with a wince, and I had to laugh to let out a bit of steam.

“She’s the least of our worries anyway. Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. I told you, I just needed you.”

“Keith,” I said, licking my lips. “We can’t keep ignoring this.”

He looked guilty. “I know.”

“We have to figure out what’s going on. There has to be something we can do.”

“Yeah.” He stood up, resting his back against the wall, and motioned for me to come closer. I did, snuggling against his side as best as I could with my huge ball gown still in place. “Do you remember what I said—that the song was meant for Beatrice?”

There was no question about what song he referred to. I nodded.

“I saw her.” His fingers massaged the back of my neck, resting importance to the statement, as if it was meaningless. I took a deep breath.

“You saw… what?”

He took my hand and we climbed together on stage. It was dark, but the emergency lights were enough to cast the whole place in an eerie glow. He walked me to the small side table and the bouquet of roses. Except, it wasn’t the vase what worried him. It was the small portrait.

“I don’t know why or how, but when I saw it I knew it was her. She’s the woman the song was written for. I think…” He sighed. “I don’t know what to think.”

I let go of his hand and picked up the framed picture. The woman in there was young, elegant, and her eyes shone with a strength that sent shivers up my spine.

“It can’t be, right?” he whispered into the silence.

I strengthened my grip on the picture, resolute.

“Only one way to find out. We’ll ask the Nightrays about this woman. She might not be Beatrice, if there even was a Beatrice to begin with.”

I didn’t say what it would mean if she were, indeed, Beatrice. If they knew anything about the mysterious minuet. I couldn’t afford to think of that, not yet.

Sunday awoke overcast and grim, and the smell of rain lingered in the air. I wrapped the portrait I had shamelessly filched from the auditorium in a plastic bag and then stuffed it into my handbag.

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t get ruined if we end up facing the mother of all storms.

Staying put at home was out of the question, but I was still nervous about the task for the day.

The tone from my cell snapped me out of the moodiness. I raced down the stairs, shouted a hasty good-bye to my puzzled parents, and rushed to the driveway to meet Keith.

He smiled when he saw me and it made a knot form in my chest. He looked better than yesterday night, but definitely worse than he usually did. The papery-thin texture the skin over his cheekbones had acquired made me think of someone who had been a long time in a hospital, and the purplish marks under his eyes were all the more obvious in the light. I hugged him anyway.

“Hey,” he said quietly against the side of my neck.

“Hey, yourself.” It felt good to be buried in the crook of his neck, that infamous dyed hair of his softly caressing my cheeks and tickling my nose.

“Alice?” There was a note of horror in the befuddled tone of my father, right behind us, and I felt Keith tensing and letting me go at once.

I didn’t. It had taken me much too long to accept him, and I was past worrying about what others thought of us now, even if those others were my parents.

“Dad,” I said, stepping aside but keeping a comfortable proximity with him. “You remember Keith, don’t you?”

“Mr. Thorne. A pleasure to see you,” Keith said politely, reaching out a hand to my father.

He shook it and then opened his mouth and closed it a few times. The name was obviously familiar, but he failed to reconcile it with the face in front of him.

“So this is the, um, friend you’re going out with today?” he asked at length.

“Yes.” I eyed him, suspiciously. If he so much as complained, things were going to get ugly, fast.

“Oh. Yes, I see.”

“Did you want something, Dad?”

My mom chose that moment to appear behind him on the door and I swallowed a groan.

If things could get more awkward…

But to my surprise, she only did a very subtle double take when she saw Keith. In a flash, I remembered the conversation about chances we’d had what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Oh, hello,” she said, beaming her best smile. “You must be Keith Brannagh, right? It’s so good to see you again!”

Keith seemed taken aback by the full wattage of Mom’s smile, but he recovered quickly enough with a sincere smile of his own. “Mrs. Thorne. I’m glad to see you again too.”

The brief exchange must have reset my Dad’s flailing brain, because he shook himself and turned to me.

“You said you were going to have lunch together, and I thought that I should treat you to celebrate the play’s success,” he said, handing me a few bills, and I felt all my nerves melt away.

“Keith’s also part of the crew, so the both of you deserve it,” Mom added from the doorway.