Silent Song (Ghostly Rhapsody) (13 page)

The door to the cafe opened not fifteen minutes later to a flushed Dave that rushed over to our table as soon as his eyes found us.

“Holy hell!” he stopped dead upon seeing Keith’s face and stared at him. “What’s happened here? Anna, I thought you said everything was okay?”

“It is.” Anna shrugged in a calculated show of innocence.

Dave ignored her and kept his eyes steady on Keith. “So, how did you get that?”

Keith held his gaze, but replied with a shrug. Protecting Ray? He’d not be so stupid! Anna’s sensibilities, then?

“My fault, Dave,” she said after an uncomfortable moment of silence.

“You smacked him around?” He snorted, more amused than outraged.

“No. Ray got a bit more possessive than usual, and Keith stepped in. Ray flew off his hinges.”

“Ray’s a linebacker! Did you want to get killed?” Dave turned to Keith with a new look in his eyes—surprise and perhaps a little bit of respect.

“To tell you the truth, I was hoping someone from the mall would break the fight before it got to that point,” he replied with a shrug.

“Man.” Dave shook his head.

“Do you want to have a coffee?” I interrupted, feeling bad that we’d just called on him as a chauffeur.

“Nah, I was in the middle of a family tea party, plenty of coffee to drink. I’ll just get you home and then head back before my grandma realizes I’m missing.”

We cleaned up our mugs and left the small shop. Dave’s car was thrown haphazardly on the curb. He obviously hadn’t meant to stay.

“You tell me the route,” he said, clicking the doors open with the remote and looking over to Keith. “I’ve no idea where you live.”

“I can walk a bit and get a bus, don’t worry about it,” he said, shrugging it off.

“Get in the car.” Dave rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to let you walk off looking like that. The ladies here would never forgive me.”

“Damn right we wouldn’t.” Anna grinned, jumping in the front seat.

“He lives close by my place. I’ll tell you how to get there,” I said, grabbing Keith’s arm and hauling him into the car with me.

He let me maneuver him, discussion ended, and it was I who gave the directions to the old neighborhood. When we arrived to Keith’s street, I told Dave to stop. “Okay, you can get back to the school turning to the right now. You can take it from there to Anna’s.”

Dave looked back at me through the rearview mirror, surprised.

“Don’t you want me to drop you off at your place?”

“I’ll get out here. It’s just a five minute walk, really,” I said, trying to sound confident.

They were nice enough to buy my offhand statement.

“Thanks for the ride,” Keith said, pulling open the door.

“Anytime, man.”

“Thanks, Keith! See you tomorrow!” Anna called, twisting in her seat to wave at us.

Or at him, I guess.

As the car sped away, though, she shot me a look that said,
Prepare to be drilled for information later.

No helping that. I could deal with the interrogation, but I couldn’t deal with just leaving now.  “Aren’t you going to tell me that you can get home without help?” I took a deep breath, turning to Keith.

“No. You know I can. If you’re here, it’s because you want to be.”

“Or because I have a hidden agenda?” I teased.

He met my gaze then, his deep blue eyes searching and his expression pensive. “Do you?” He was intense, too intense for me to handle.

“No,” I breathed. Any banter left in my system beat a hasty retreat.

Keith reached out, tender and insecure, and touched my cheek just as he had done the previous evening at the park. “This feels too genuine to be a fake, Alice. I can’t believe this is a lie, no matter how hard I try not to get my hopes up.”

It was difficult to breathe. The world had slowed down, faded out, disappeared into a static background to him, to him touching me ever so slightly. To us.

I tried to smile.

“You’re the one getting my hopes up now,” I said, trying to lighten the mood and failing miserably. My voice caught in my throat and came out shakier than I wanted.

He flattened his palm against the side of my face and I saw his Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed. His eyes were dark as the ocean depths, but then again, it could be because we were on the far side of dusk and everything looked pretty dark.

Still, I placed my bets and took a step closer, right into his personal space. Without conscious guiding, one of my hands rose to the base of his neck.

His thumb caressed my cheekbone, and I realized that I had never wanted to kiss someone as badly as I did then. It was a physical need, so intense that it hurt.

It would hurt much worse if he pulled away, so I prayed he wouldn’t move aside, wouldn’t turn this into another chaste kiss like he had done yesterday. And I tilted my face up, closing my eyes.

His lips were cool, firm, slightly chapped and trembling against mine. The contact was just barely there, the softest caress, and I felt trapped between the need to stay like that forever and the need to press further into him. After an agonizing second, his hand slid to the back of my head and he sighed, deepening the kiss with the same gentleness it had started.

My head swam and the world crashed back around us, the night breeze and the sounds coming from the homes and the smell of his shampoo mingling with the warmth of his skin.

It was a perfect kiss, bruises and all.

He pulled back reluctantly when we both ran out of air. We stood in silence, trying to recover, both of us too scared to break the moment with words. Then, Keith leaned in again and left a small peck on the corner of my lips.

“There’s school tomorrow and your parents are going to worry. Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

I nodded and started to follow him before his words registered. When they did, I stopped dead. “No. I want to make sure you are okay and that you take care of those blows. I’m coming to your house.”

“It’s nothing too serious. It just needs a bit of ice or something.”

“I’ll put the ice there, then.”

“Trust me, I want to have you at my house right now.” His voice dropped, growing husky. “I want to have you in my room, and I want to have you fussing over me. But it’s Sunday, past eight p.m., and I can’t be selfish.”

“You should,” I said, back to being breathless.

He shook his head.

“Your parents are going to hate me without me giving them any reason. Besides, my dad’s home; he’ll do plenty of fussing. Even if it won’t be the same, you can stop worrying about the bruises.”

Bruises had become the very last thing on my mind, but I tried to recover and nodded. There was truth to what he said, after all. It was going to be difficult for us and we shouldn’t go looking for extra trouble.

The word “us.” I wasn’t surprised at how natural it came to my mind.

“Okay,” I relented. “Can I come over tomorrow to listen to your playing?”

“You can come anytime,” he said with a smile.

We reached a sort of compromise then. He walked me home, but I held onto his hand the whole way. I didn’t want to let go.

By Monday morning, gossip of the previous day had spread like wildfire. The blow to the social structure of the school was of epic proportions. I’d have to be careful or I would end up as collateral damage to the debris while the St. Francis Golden Crowd crumbled to pieces.

Lena and Jack, of course, took Ray’s side. It was hard to understand how anyone could still look at him, but apparently, for them, what he had done was better than my great sin.

Mingling with the weirdo caste is unforgivable, but shoving your girlfriend isn’t. Go figure.

The debacle was pretty much what I had predicted when I decided to invite Keith for coffee so I should have been ready to accept it, but I refused to go down without a fight. It wasn’t just about me anymore, either. It was about Anna.

In any other place, Keith would be congratulated for what he did. Anna would be supported. Ray would be frowned upon. I would not be cowed or embarrassed.

So I set out to remind everyone of that fact. Holding my head high, I strutted through the school building and added an extra sashay to my step. I made sure that my light smile was self-assured and conceited. I behaved as if I owned the place and the joke was on them.

Worrying about this absurd popularity war gave me a measure of control and kept me from overanalyzing what was in my mind. 

The way to class was purgatory, in spite of my master plan. Class looked pretty much like Hell, with twenty heads that snapped around to watch me like carrion birds hoping to find a social corpse. Still my tactic worked, at least marginally, and I saw some other students shaking their heads while doubt crept into the faces of a few lead gossipers.

Lena might be the Bitch Queen, but she’d have to work hard if she wanted to defeat me this time.

The only drawback was the amount of whispers that spread around, discussing the new developments. I’d given the rumor mill enough fuel to keep going for weeks.

Tuning the voices out for perhaps the first time in my high school history, I focused wholly on the lecture and took notes. It kept me relaxed, away from the incoming disaster that’d be lunch hour.

When the last bell rang, I headed to my locker and met up with Anna. She played her part, smiling like everything was right in the world, her hair and make-up perfect and her choice of clothes stunning. Her eyes were skittish, though, and I could understand why.

Together, we headed toward the cafeteria and Dave joined us on the way.

“So, where are we eating today?” he asked, casually.

Bless the guy; he had decided to fall in with our side in the schism. 

“First free table we can find?” Anna replied, fussing unnecessarily with the hem of her sweater.

I nodded. “Yeah, and if we can find it toward the center of the lobby, then that’s even better.”

“Isn’t center a bit too close to Ray?” Dave was dubious.

“Precisely. He’s the one who should be cowering into a corner, not us.”

Dave shrugged and Anna nodded, steeling herself. The unnatural moment of silence that greeted us was proof enough that whatever normalcy we had was prefabricated, but still the three of us stuck to our plan and headed for a center table with fake smiles plastered on.

Ray looked at us crossly, but he didn’t try to approach. Lena, on the other hand, was beyond livid. We’d have to keep an eye on her, and not just for Keith. Which reminded me…

“I never thanked you properly for yesterday, Dave,” I said suddenly

He tried to brush it off. “It’s cool. That’s what friends are for.”

“Boyfriends are supposed to serve in the same department and look at Ray.”

“I was quite surprised about that. I mean, I know he’s a hot head, but… getting violent with a girl? I’m just glad Keith was around.”

His name was out in the open, and I took a deep breath.

Now or never.

“He’s going to stay around.”

Dave paused for a second, his expression wavering, but he recovered too fast for me to put a name to the emotion.

“Look,” he said, “I know he’s a weirdo. I know he doesn’t have the best rep in school and all that. To be honest, I didn’t like him. But now? He’s pretty decent, if nothing else. I’m okay with giving him a chance, if you two like to hang around with him.”

I let out a relieved sigh. I had been ready to go on alone if I had to, but the support of my two best friends took a weight off my shoulders.

“Ah, speak of the devil, there he is,” Anna said, waving obnoxiously over. “Hey!”

Sure enough, there he was. He looked surprised and embarrassed to Hell and back for being thrust into the limelight, but he approached our table and sat down anyway.

There was another moment of silence in the hall, another collective gasp followed by snickers from the central table. Then we started to talk about the play and the music score, and after acting as if we didn’t care for a while, we truly got so immersed in our own conversation that we did stop caring.

Afterward, we even walked with Keith to retrieve his guitar and then all four of us headed over to theatre.

“Look there, the new entertainment service,” Lena called out when we entered the class.

“Look here, my brain came up with a joke!” Keith mimicked in a low voice, and I giggled.

“Do try to get in character, Lena. We’re going over your lines, and you’re supposed to
luuurve
Alice,” Anna reprimanded her.

Lena looked like she had bitten a particularly sour lemon, but didn’t comment.

Rehearsal was going to be very, very long. Then Mr. Hedford arrived and announced that we’d be doing the private meeting between my “mother” and me.

“It never rains…” Dave whispered, with a smile much too amused for his own good.

The announcement got most of the younger students to find their own practice spots, since the tension was kind of obvious, and only Jack, Dave and Anna stayed to look. Keith retired to his corner in the pit, setting up his rack and preparing the volume to be unobtrusive to our own practice.