Dark Secrets (5 page)

Self-amusement turned
to fear and dried my throat. I looked at Bertha, considering hiding
behind her. “Yes, sir.”

“
And what will you be
playing for us today, Miss Thompson?”

“
Uh.
Playing?”

“
We
expect a performance from
all
our students on the first day.” He grinned,
cupping his hands as he looked around the class. And at that point,
the second head I’d earlier assumed he’d have, showed
itself.

Everyone in the class
waited for me to respond, or maybe to run away crying. Clearly,
this was the reason for David's smirk in the library. I felt like
saying, “FYI, David, you being here with me does
not
make this spotlight
on my awkwardness okay. Not even a little bit!” But I bit my tongue
instead, my eyes narrowing when David tipped his head in a slight
nod. It was so obvious. He knew this was coming. He knew Mr Grant
was going to do this. Why didn't he warn me? Then I could have made
some lame excuse to run back home for the day.

Mr Grant stood back
from his lean toward me, offering the piano stool. “If you please,
Miss Thompson. Or do you require
sheet
music?”

Groaning, I shuffled
out of the straps of my backpack and went to dump it on the
ground.

“
I’ll take this for
you.” David grabbed it and placed it by his feet.

“
Uh, thanks,” I said,
then walked over to Bertha. The weight of two options dragged me to
slump a little heavier on the stool; burst into tears and run away,
or play a song?

“
If
you can only play Chopsticks, Miss Thompson, that will be fine,” Mr
Grant said, and I just wanted to pull his ponytail. Jerk. But there
was no way I’d let this know-it-all music professor make me cry in
front of all these kids. I was sure he’d reduced many a student to
tears in the past and it was time somebody taught
him
a lesson. If there
was one thing I hated in this world more than anything, it was
people using their talents or skills or, worse,
knowledge,
to make other people feel
small. And that’s exactly what Mr Grant was doing to me. And it
worked.

Everyone watched. I
hesitated only a breath more, then lifted the cover and touched the
very tip of one finger to the high C, too afraid to press
down.

“
Ara?” David rested
his elbows on the top of the piano and smiled at me. I did not
smile back. “You’ll be okay. Just play.”

My lip quivered a
little, tears burning in my eyes. That little bit of control I had
over my life was just about to slip away.

Mr Grant, standing
uncomfortably close, watched me reposition my stool so I could
reach the foot pedals, then held out a stack of papers. “Your sheet
music.”

“
I’ll be fine without
that, thank you, Mr Grant,” I stated calmly and politely. Really, I
wanted to take them from his puny little hands and clonk him over
the head. Instead, I traced the columns of black and white for a
second, drawing a tight breath through my teeth. I didn’t know the
weight of the keys or the force it would take to draw a sound from
them. This piano was unfamiliar and old, and after two months
without so much as hearing a piano, I wasn’t sure I could even play
anymore. This could end badly.

“
Today, Miss
Thompson,” said the intolerant imp.

David gave me a
reassuring nod, leaning a little closer to watch my fingers as they
found their way home.

Okay, you can do
this, Ara-Rose. Just breathe
. I looked
around the room and grinned. “Has any one here heard of the
band
Muse
?”

Under the cheers of
the class, David nodded and sat back against the table behind him,
while everyone else pulled their chairs into a neat circle around
me. Even Alana moved from her desolation in the corner and stood
beside Ryan, with her violin still in hand.

“
Go get ‘em, Ara.”
Ryan waved an encouraging fist.

“
Thanks,” I
muttered.

The world disappeared
for a second then. I inhaled and felt the cool of the keys under my
fingertips—heavy and solid. Breathe.

The first notes of
the song filled the air, and a familiar flood of excitement rushed
through my heart, then flowed down my hands. The keys were heavier
than the ones back home, but it only took two chords to get used to
it. “This is called
United States of
Eurasia,
followed by
Collateral Damage
,” I
said.

A few people laughed
loudly and cheered.

As I panned over the
notes, feeling the long-forgotten muscles in my hands stretch; I
cleared my throat and sung the words. David looked down, keeping a
smile hidden behind his eyes as he nodded in time with the
music.

On the second verse, a
violin came in out of nowhere; I looked over my shoulder and smiled
at Alana, who had her eyes closed. But her accompaniment gave me a
new kind of confidence, and my voice flowed, unwavering, into the
echo of the auditorium. It just felt so damn good to release the
air from my lungs this way again, as if this was my first breath in
two months.

Everyone else in the
room became a part of the performance then—keeping the beat with
their hands and feet as I played. It was like a journey; a story
with a beginning, middle, and end. And right where I’d have done
so, if it were me, the violin cut out, leaving an eerie stillness
as I drew the song to an end; the high notes sorrowful, laden with
a distant kind of pain that reminded me of home—of my best
friend.

With my eyes closed,
encasing the memories of my old school and the softly-weighted keys
of the baby grand piano in the music room there, my fingers played
for me, allowing me to drift away to the shores of days when life
was simple. Alone, in that place, I felt the last note leave, and
only silence remained—hovering like a breath held.

I opened my eyes to
David’s beautiful face. “Oh, crap. Did I faze out?”

“
No.” He stood up,
and Ryan started clapping like a seal at a marine park.

“
Way to go, New Kid,”
one of the girls said.

“
Thanks.” I smiled
sheepishly, steering my eyes away from David's soul-penetrating
gaze.

“
Well—” Mr Grant peered down his sharp nose, “—I can see I
have nothing much to teach
you
, Miss
Thompson.”

“
That’s okay, Mr
Grant,” Ryan said. “Dan still hasn't gotten past open
chords.”

A boy ditched a pencil
at Ryan.

“
Right.” Mr Grant
turned on his heel and walked back up the aisle. “Carry on, people.
We will be working on our performance pieces for the Halloween
concert.”

My eyes stayed on the
keys until the heavy door to the auditorium closed with an echoed
thud behind the two-headed beast. What was that guy’s problem? “Did
he expect me to fail?” I asked, looking around the
group.

“
He does it to
everyone new.” Ryan patted my shoulder.

“
Well, thanks for the
heads-up, David.” I frowned at him.

“
I figured you could
handle it.” He looked at Ryan then and they both
laughed.

There was no way he
could’ve known that, unless he’d read my student file—which
I
highly
doubted.
This was obviously some cruel practical joke they played on new
kids. I folded my arms. “So what gave you that impression? That I
could handle it?”

David stopped laughing
and folded his arms, too, looking a little smug. “Your fingers,
actually.”

Slowly, I pulled them
out from the fold and studied them. My nails used to be perfectly
rounded atop the long, thin digits, but looked a little worn these
days from being munched on so often. But he was right.

“
The hands of a
pianist,” he added.

Very observant, Mr
Know-It-All. “Fine. I’ll pay that one. But next time, a little
warning, thanks.”

“
Sure. Well, in that
case, maybe you should ditch History class,” he said, holding back
a smile. “That guy gives really boring lectures.”

“
Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.” I rolled my eyes, not really
meaning to smile as well. It was hard to be annoyed at David—he was
just so sweet, and I had to hand it to him, he was right. I could
handle it. I
did
handle it. I was grateful to Mrs Baker now for the three
hours every Tuesday and Thursday, where she would painstakingly
force me to play piano until my fingers seized up and turned
bone-white. Mrs Baker was one thing I would
not
miss about my old
life.

“
Seriously,” David
whispered in my ear as the hovering crowd dissipated and went back
to their projects. “There was a reason I didn’t tell you about Mr
Grant.”

“
I’m listening,” I
said, shuffling over so he could sit beside me.

“
I was afraid you’d
run home.”

I would have.
“I’m not that weak,” I said. “But I could’ve at
least prepared myself.”

“
I'm sure.” He smiled
to himself, placing his fingers on the keys. “Heart and
Soul?”

“
Huh?” I looked up at
him.

“
Heart and Soul. You
wanna play it?”

“
That’s a little
Kindergarten
, don’t you
think?”

“
Oh, I’m sorry,
Mozart,” he said with a breathy laugh. “Would you prefer a more
complicated duet?”

“
Can you handle it?”
I asked teasingly.

“
Young lady, I can handle anything
you
can dish out.”

“
That
, I strongly
doubt.”

After David escorted
me all the way to third period Math class—even though he wasn’t in
my class—I watched him walk away, and fell inside myself at the
back of the room. I didn’t recognise anyone from Music class and,
for the most part, no one bothered to strike up a friendship. So, I
sat quietly and thought about David until the teacher said, “Five
minutes left to finish those questions and hand them in. If you’re
done already, you can leave.”

A few students jumped
up, placed their work on Miss Chester’s desk and left the room. I
pushed my unfinished paper aside and reached into my bag for my
map—to hopefully locate the nearest bathroom. But as I pulled my
schedule and pencil case out, then my purse and keys, and looked
into the empty space, a wave of panic rushed over me.

Oh my holy God! It was
gone.

I checked the ground,
the desk, even in my pencil case. Nope. Definitely gone. But I was
sure I had it in the library.

The familiar heat of
panic flushed through my arms, rising into my cheeks as I dropped
my face against my hand. I was ruined! I could see the headlines
now: New Girl Asks Where Bathroom Is—Gets Laughed at for Needing to
Pee.

The bell screeched. I
stood, packing my stuff into my bag with the speed of an old,
arthritic lady. As the last of the gossiping dregs shuffled from
the room, I herded out behind them, dumping my paper on the
teacher’s desk before stepping into the corridor. The hot, damp air
trickled over the balustrade from the courtyard below, wetting my
lungs as I breathed it in.

Of all the doors
nestled into the brown bricks around the square lot, not one of
them looked like a bathroom, and of all the kids hanging over the
guardrail, tossing things to their friends on the ground floor, not
one of them looked like the kind of kid I could ask for directions
without being laughed at.

So, I swung my bag
over my shoulder, and as I looked up, my gaze met a pair of amazing
green eyes, shining out like emeralds.

“
Need a guide?” David
flashed his mischievous grin.

God,
yes
. “Well, I wouldn’t if
someone
hadn’t taken my
map,” I said accusingly, then smiled back as I stood beside
him.

“
Sorry. But those
things are impossible to read, anyway.” He looked down at me.
“You’d have gotten lost without me to show the way.”

“
Is that so?” My
playful tone drew a smile to his lips again.

“
Yes.”

“
You seem pretty sure
of yourself.”

He nodded, his smile
remaining.

“
So, are you saying
I’m incapable of finding my own way?” I said.

“
No.” He shook his
head. “Only that life’s easier when you have someone to walk beside
you.”

“
Life?”

“
Er, yeah, I meant…in
the context of getting from A to B.” He rubbed a hand across his
mouth. “That was kind of awkward, wasn’t it?”

“
Uh, yeah.” I let the
laughter out with a breath. He had foot-in-mouth-disease almost as
bad as me. “You know, Emily warned me about you.”