The audience clapped and hooted, distinctly louder. Luke gave a wild smile. “Now, Dee and I will be playing an old Irish song called ‘The Faerie Girl’s Lament.’ I hope you like it. Let us know!”
This was where I would normally either throw up or fall down, but I didn’t feel like doing either. I felt like grinning as big as Luke. I felt like kicking some music-geek ass. It was the best feeling I’d ever had. Where had the real me gone? Because I didn’t want her back.
“Ready, Dee?” Luke asked softly.
His smile was infectious and for the first time in my life, being on stage felt right. I smiled hugely at him and began to play. The strings were still buttery-soft from the heat outside, and the acoustics of the stage made the harp sound twenty feet tall. Luke chipped in and began to play, and the flute was low and breathy like his singing voice, full of expression and barely suppressed emotions. Together, we sounded like an orchestra, albeit it an ancient, untamed one, and when I began to sing, the auditorium became as still as a winter night.
Did I really have the voice of an angel? The voice that filled the room didn’t sound like mine—it sounded grown-up, complex, as agonized as the Faerie Girl in the lyrics.
The first verse ended and I felt the flute hesitate for the barest of moments, waiting. I began to play a counter-melody, something that had never been heard before. Only this time, I’d done it before and I knew I could wander from the melody without getting lost. This time I attacked the counter-melody with sweet savagery. It climbed up the scale, bitter and lovely, and Luke’s flute came back in, low notes that climbed with mine to an almost unbearable intensity.
Then I began to sing the last verse, the one I had just learned from Luke. Any other day, I would’ve forgotten the lyrics, but not today, with the memory of his voice singing them. The words seemed to take on new meaning as I sang them; they were real.
I was the Faerie Girl.
Fro and to in my dreams to you
To the haunting tune of the harp
For the price I paid when you died that day
I paid that day with my heart
Fro and to in my dreams to you
With the breaking of my heart
Ne’er more again will I sing this song
Ne’er more will I hear the harp.
By the time we got to the last refrain, Luke was grinning so widely he almost couldn’t play. I let my voice fade softly, vanishing with the flute’s last note, returning to wherever that amazing counter-melody had come from.
The room was completely silent.
Luke smiled a small, private smile, and then the audience leapt to its feet, clapping and whistling. Even the judges in the front seats were on their feet. I bit my lip, color flushing into my glowing face, and exchanged a look with Luke.
We let ourselves be directed offstage for the next performers and Luke seized my hand, his face shining as if from within. “Good girl!” He released my hand. “Good girl! I have to go—but I’ll be back for the reception tonight.”
“You have to what?” I repeated, but he had already disappeared into the throng of people backstage. I felt strangely lost.
two
Don’t wear something trashy,” Mom advised, shutting my bedroom door behind her.
Thanks for the hot tip, I thought, staring at the pile of clothing she’d put on my bed. I didn’t know what I was going to wear to the reception, but I already knew it wasn’t going to be any of the items she’d taken out of my closet.
I was still holding her last suggestion, a dress that made me look like a runaway from a nursing home. I chucked it on top of the pile of other too-formal dresses and pantsuits, and looked out my bedroom window. Patchy white clouds slid across the afternoon sky, taking the edge off the heat and obscuring the faint sliver of the moon—if it was even still out there.
Instead of getting dressed, I stuck a CD into my player, shoved the mound of clothing over to the other side of the bed, and crashed on top of the covers. The wild set of reels on the CD whirled through my brain, bringing back the vivid memory of playing on the stage earlier today.
Holy crap. Luke Dillon was real. I couldn’t really wrap my brain around it. People didn’t just walk out of dreams.
For a few minutes, I allowed myself the luxury of lying on the bed and remembering Luke. The careful way he spoke, delivering each word as if it were something precious. The breathy voice of his flute, whispering secrets and longing. His super-pale eyes, like glass. I could imagine him holding my hand and making me one of his secrets. I kind of felt guilty for lying around, letting myself crush on him when I should’ve been getting ready, but I hadn’t ever had a crush on a boy before.
Well, that was a lie. Back in seventh grade, I’d been in a class with Rob Martin, a slight, dark-haired guy with a face like a brooding dark angel. Or at least, that’s how I imagined it. With my superpower of invisibility, I watched him everyday at school without ever working up the courage to speak to him. I knew he was a saint of some variety, because he spoke out loudly against animal cruelty and picked all of the meat out of the cafeteria’s offerings. He once berated our teacher in front of the entire class for wearing a leather jacket. He used words like “anathema” and “pogrom.”
He was my hero.
Then, a few days before summer vacation when I was shadowing Rob during recess, invisible, I watched him take out a lunch box and eat a ham sandwich.
I hadn’t had a crush on anyone since then.
On the CD, the reels ended and the next track started, a sweet, sad ballad and one of my favorites—“If I Was a Blackbird.” As I hummed along, a sudden, familiar phrase stuck out like a sore thumb. Oh. So much for magical improvisation. My counter-melody wasn’t exactly like the one the band was playing now, but it was close. I listened hard as they repeated the verse. Okay, not that part. But there—wait—those few notes? And maybe those? Oh yeah. It was painfully obvious to me where my inspiration had come from.
I sighed heavily, but some part of me was a little relieved. If there was a plausible explanation for my sudden ability to improvise, then there was probably one for Luke, too. Because the fact of it was, people didn’t just walk out of dreams. I was recognizing him from somewhere—heck, the way he’d played the flute, maybe he even had a band that I’d heard before. I didn’t know anything about him except that he was cute, played music, and was interested in me.
Did anything else matter?
Well, he did just show up in the bathroom—
“Deirdre!” Mom shouted. “Have you picked something?”