Nuala frowned at her fingers on my skin. “Other faeries get to remember.”
“You just said you weren’t like other faeries. They don’t feel properly. But you have to be more human, right? To be able to catch us.”
She was silent.
“How human are you?” Right after I asked the question, I wasn’t sure how I meant it. But I didn’t take it back.
She was quiet so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, she took her hand from my cheek and said, “Too much. I didn’t think I was very human at all, but I guess I was wrong. Or maybe I’m just dying. Maybe this always happens. How would I know? Sixteen years doesn’t seem very long when you’re at the end of it.”
I sat back. I didn’t like how I was feeling, so I said, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
Her voice was petulant. “I will when you do.”
I looked down at my hands. In the faint light, I could just pick out some of the words on them: dead, valkyrie, following them down. “Let’s write something, together.”
Nuala looked at me, her face sort of frowning.
I said, “Don’t give me that ‘what the hell do you mean’ look. I mean, let’s write something.”
“You mean, you want me to help you write something.”
“No, I mean we use both our brains and just my hands to write something.”
“Write what?”
“I don’t know. Music? A play?”
Nuala looked like she was trying really hard not to look pleased. “You don’t write plays.”
“If we wrote a play, with music, you could direct it. We’re supposed to do some creative project for Sullivan’s class, something having to do with metaphor. I mean, it’s not a movie, but hell, we can only do so much before Halloween, right?”
She was looking at me really intensely then, in the sort of way that I had always wanted Dee to look at me. I kind of thought she was going to kiss me, for some reason, because she was looking at my mouth. I had a horrible idea that she would, and then I would think of Dee while she was, and then she would kill me in a long, slow, painful process that would be hard to explain to insurance people.
Nuala looked from my mouth to my eyes. “Get your pen out,” she said.
I did. I had no paper, but that didn’t matter. “What should we call it?”
Without hesitation, Nuala climbed into the seat behind me so that she could wrap her arms around my shoulders. The sixth sense in me told me she was cold, but a totally different sense blazed hot when she rested her cheek against mine, the side of her mouth just touching my cheek.
I clicked the end of the pen so the nib came out, rested it against my palm for a second while I listened to her silence, and then wrote: Ballad.
James
Because I was not a real music student and because Sullivan sucked at organizational skills, we had to meet for my piano lesson in the old auditorium building. Turns out the practice rooms were filled to capacity at five o’clock on Fridays, by real piano players and real clarinet players and real cellists and all their real teachers and ensemble leaders.
So instead, I picked my way over to ugly Brigid Hall. To prove that Brigid was no longer a useful member of the Thornking-Ash environ, the grounds people had let the lawn between Brigid and the other academic buildings get autumn crunchy and allowed the boxwoods and ivy to take over the dull, yellow-brick exterior. It was a message to all visiting parents: Do not take pictures of this part of the campus. This building has been deemed too ugly for academic use. Don’t think we didn’t notice.
On the walk over, my phone beeped in my pocket. Pulling it out, I saw a text message from Dee. When I opened it, the first words of text I saw were
James im so sorry
and I felt sick to my stomach and deleted it without reading any further. I shoved the phone back into my pocket and headed around the side of Brigid Hall to the entry.
The door was coated in peeling red paint that seemed somehow significant. I didn’t think there were any other red doors on campus. Like me, a loner. I punched my knuckles lightly against the door knob in solidarity. “You and me, buddy,” I said under my breath. “One of a kind.”
I let myself in. I had entered a long, thin room, populated by old folding chairs all pointed attentively toward a low stage at the other end of the building. It smelled like mold and the old wood of the floor and the ivy pressed up by the frosted glass windows. On the stage, recessed lights illuminated a grand piano that was as old and ugly as the building itself. The whole thing was a crash course in all that was best forgotten about 1950s architecture.
Sullivan sat at the piano, knobby figures toying with the keys. Nothing mind-blowing, but he knew his way around the keyboard. And the piano, for what it was worth, didn’t sound nearly as bad as it looked. I walked up through the folding chair audience, grabbing one of the front-row chairs and bringing it onto the stage with me.
“Salutations, sensei,” I told him, and dropped my backpack onto the chair beside the piano. “What a lovely creation that piano is.”
“Isn’t it though? I don’t think anybody remembers that this building is here.” Sullivan played “Shave and a Haircut” before getting up from the bench. “Strange to think this used to be their auditorium. Ugly little place, isn’t it?”
I noted the detachment. Not “our auditorium.” Sullivan was frowning at me. “Feeling all right?”
“I didn’t sleep much.” A understatement of cosmic proportions. I wanted nothing more than the day to be done so that I could fall into my bed.
“You mean, other than what you did in my class,” Sullivan said.
“Some would argue that recumbent listening is the most effective.”
He shook his head. “Right. I’ll be looking for evidence of its efficacy on your next exam.” He gestured to the bench. “Your throne.”
I sat at the piano; the bench creaked and shifted precariously. The piano was so old that the name of the maker was mostly worn away from above the keyboard. And it smelled. Like ground-up old ladies. Sullivan had put some sheet music up on the stand; something by Bach that I’m sure was meant to look simple but had way too many lines for pipe music.
Sullivan turned the folding chair around and sat on it backwards. His face was intent. “So you’ve never played piano before.”
The memory of Nuala’s fingers overlaying mine was somehow colored by the memory of last night; I tightened my fingers into a fist and released them to avoid shivering. “I tinkered with it once after we talked. Otherwise”—I ran my fingers over the keys and this time, struck by the memory of Nuala, I did shiver, just a tiny jerk—“we’re virtually strangers.”