I walk, thinking about the things I’d like to know if all this were really true. How does it happen? Where are the others? Do you ever remember
everything
about your past? “When did you first find out about … all of this?” I finally ask, feeling ridiculous even as the words come out of my mouth. I look behind us to make sure that nobody is close enough to overhear. Maybe I can figure out what’s going on if I pretend to believe him.
Griffon blows out a loud breath and runs his hand through his hair. “It’s been a long time since I transitioned. I haven’t thought about that for a while,” he says. He goes quiet for a moment. “It happened for me pretty much like it’s happening for you—in pieces. I was living in Italy at the time,” he says. “I was an older man—back
then, forty was considered ancient—and I began to understand what had been happening to me my whole life. I met a woman who knew about it, and she helped me. She was an Iawi Akhet even then.” He glances at me. “Sorry. ‘
Iawi
’ are Ahket who have had their memories for many lifetimes.”
“When was that?” I ask, understanding that whether or not all this is true, it’s at least true for Griffon.
He looks at me as if he’s deciding something. “The early sixteen hundreds. Hard to say exactly.”
“How old are you now?”
“Seventeen.”
“So you’ve been seventeen for over four hundred years?” Even he must realize how ridiculous that sounds.
He smiles sadly. “No. It’s not like I’m a vampire or some kind of immortal. I’ve been seventeen since February. I’ve just been seventeen many times before.” He stops and looks around. “Everyone has,” he says. “It’s just that some of us carry the knowledge with us. We remember what other people forget. Most of the time it’s a good thing.” He pauses. “Most of the time.”
“So what happened to her?”
He looks confused. “Who?”
“The woman. The one who helped you back then.”
“She died right after we met.” A shadow passes across his face, and I can tell that he’s thinking about something painful. I sense there’s more, so I don’t say anything.
“She was killed, actually,” he goes on. “For being a sorceress. Back then, you didn’t speak of these things in public.” He looks around as we emerge from the tunnel back onto the busy street.
“And if you want to stay out of serious therapy, it’s better not to talk about it now either.”
We cross the intersection and start up the street, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I hear pounding as a bus rolls by us, and looking up, I see Rayne in the window, pointing to the bus stop on the corner.
Griffon sees her too. “Your friend?”
I nod. “The one I was waiting for.” We walk to the corner and wait while Rayne pushes through the standing crowd and jumps the last two steps to the sidewalk.
“Hey!” she says, giving me a big hug. “I’ve been texting you all afternoon.”
I feel the outline of my phone in my pocket. I must have forgotten to turn it back on after Veronique’s lesson. “I missed it,” I say.
“Well, I’m here. I was trying to tell you that I can meet you for the movie after all.” She looks pointedly at Griffon, who is standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets.
“Oh, um, Rayne, this is Griffon. Griffon, this is my friend Rayne.”
“
Best
friend,” she corrects, and gives him a little wave.
After the introductions, Rayne turns her back on him for just a second to mouth the word “wow” to me, before turning back to face him with a smile. “So, are you coming with us?”
Griffon glances at me, a look of uncertainty on his face. “I don’t know,” he says. “Am I?”
Rayne grabs his hand in her right hand and takes mine with her left, practically bouncing as she walks. “I think you are. Is anyone hungry? I could use something serious to eat before we
go in.” Despite my confusion with Griffon and his games, I glance down to where their skin touches and feel a pang of jealousy. This entire afternoon, Griffon made a point of not touching me. He’s been avoiding any contact like I’m contagious.
I usually love the slices at the pizza place next door to the theater, but I can barely choke down one bite as I think about everything Griffon said. As Rayne grills him about his life, he keeps glancing over at me with a worried look on his face. The movie isn’t much better. I’ve always wanted to see
Harold and Maude
, but as much as I try to concentrate, my mind keeps wandering back to the conversation we’d had just an hour before. That, and the fact that Griffon is sitting on my right side, his eyes not moving from the flickering screen in front of us, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we’re so close it’s difficult to keep my hand from accidentally brushing his on the armrest. He looks like a normal seventeen-year-old guy—okay, an insanely attractive seventeen-year-old guy—sitting in a revival movie theater, which makes it even harder to believe what he’s been saying.
As the lights come up, Rayne wipes the tears that have been streaming down her face. “Oh. My. God,” she says. “That was the most amazing love story.”
“It didn’t bother you that he was our age and she was eighty?” I ask, vaguely icked out by the romantic parts of the movie.
“No,” she says. “They were connected by so much more than mere age. They were destined to be together despite their ages. It was just beautiful.”
We walk out of the theater and into the buzz of nighttime in the Haight.
“Did you like it?” I ask Griffon. He’s been strangely silent since the movie ended.
“Yeah,” he says. “I did.” He leans down so that only I can hear. “I liked it the first time I saw it, too,” he whispers. “Back in 1971 when it had just come out.”
Feeling the warmth of his breath on my skin makes me shudder, and I have to pull away to get control of my emotions.
“Let’s go see if we can get a seat at Café Roma,” Rayne says. “I need to process some more.”
“I can’t,” Griffon says. “I have to get back.”
“Aw, come on,” Rayne says. “It’s only eight thirty. What in the world do you have to do?”
I freeze. He probably has a girlfriend. That would explain his no touching rule. The thought of him going back across the bridge to be with someone else makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
“I just have to go,” he says firmly. “Walk me to the corner?”
Rayne bumps me and glances at Griffon.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to her, and walk slowly up the street with him.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I guess,” I answer, feeling suddenly depressed and overwhelmed. A bus pulls up beside us and we stand back to let people off.
“Hey, when is that concert Kat was talking about? Isn’t it this week?” he asks.
“Yeah. Saturday.”
“Do I still have an invite?”
“If you want,” I say, trying to sound casual. Part of me is desperate to have him come, and part of me—a small part, but still—knows it would be better for both of us if he just got on the bus and didn’t come back. Took all of his talk about Akhet and reincarnation and just vanished into the night. “It starts at eight. But you don’t have to stay for the whole thing.”
“Don’t you have a solo?”
“Duet. I’m doing a Massenet piece with my friend Julie on piano.”
“Which one?”
I look at him sideways. Except for my conservatory friends, nobody I know has even heard of Massenet. “
Meditation
. From
Thais
. It’s no big deal. I think we’re last on the program.”
“Then I’ll definitely be there.” There’s an awkward silence where a kiss good-bye might happen under different circumstances. The part in the movie of my life where he bends down and brushes his lips lightly against my cheek and I reach up and run my fingers through his hair as I draw him to me. Instead, he gives me a little wave as he gets on the bus. “See you Saturday.”
Once he’s out of sight, I blink hard and take a deep breath, more convinced than ever that he has a girlfriend on the other side of the Bay. He isn’t interested in me that way. Why would he be? Apparently, I’m nothing more than his junior year charity project.
Rayne is buzzing with excitement when I get back to the theater. “So that is
insane
,” she says, bouncing up and down. “Amazing. Did he kiss you? What did he say? Are you going to see him this weekend?” She loops her arm through mine and steers me down the crowded sidewalk. “You have to tell me
everything
!”
I stop for a second, wishing I could. “It doesn’t matter anyway—we’re not going out, so don’t get all worked up. Griffon has some ideas that are not exactly … normal.”
“Ideas about what?” Rayne whispers, completely alert now. Ideas that aren’t exactly normal are totally her thing. “Like sex stuff?”
“No!” I say, a little too loudly. “Like…” I trail off here, unsure about how much I should say. There’s no way I’m going to tell her about everything Griffon said, but she
is
my best friend. Even sharing a tiny bit about what’s going on might make me feel not quite so bad. “Weird ideas about death. Reincarnation, past lives, things like that.”
Rayne looks at me like
I’m
the crazy one. “That’s it? So what? So does half of Berkeley,” she says. “My mom talks about that stuff all the time—indigo children, past life regression. Damn, in her eyes, that would make him even more perfect.”
“Perfect for you, maybe,” I say. “But not me.”
Rayne shakes her head. “We’ll see.”
I pace backstage, more nervous now than I’ve ever been before a performance. Telling Griffon about the concert was the single worst idea I’ve had in weeks. Stupid. And distracting. Hundreds of people in the audience never bothers me. Mom and Dad I can deal with. Even having Veronique here is okay. I think about the moment when I told him it was tonight and wish to God I’d shut my mouth. I don’t dare peek at the audience. Not only is it unprofessional—and Herr Steinberg would kill me if he knew I was even thinking about it—but knowing where he’s sitting will make things worse. Maybe he didn’t even come. It’s not like he owes me anything. Maybe he just stayed home on his side of the Bay and forgot about the whole thing. That thought alone makes me feel slightly better. Slightly.
Julie appears beside me, dressed in wide-leg black pants and a
sleeveless top like I’m wearing, but on her they look elegant, instead of stumpy. The heels I have on help a little, but they also give me one more thing to worry about as I try to walk around without falling. You think that I’d have the heel thing figured out because I’m so short, but heels are one of the things that are in Kat’s domain, not mine.
“You ready?” Julie asks, standing up straighter and shaking out her hands.
“As I’ll ever be.” We step out onto the lit stage to enthusiastic applause. I say a silent prayer of thanks for the lights in the concert hall, because it’s pretty impossible to see who’s out there, and I can try to concentrate on not letting Julie—and everyone else—down.
As Julie’s piano leads into the piece, I pick up my bow and take a deep breath. I love the feeling of this music and don’t want to blow it.
Meditation
is from the part in the opera where the heroine is trying to decide whether to go with the monk who is in love with her and renounce her lustful ways or to listen to her heart and be who she is meant to be. In the tempo and the mood you can feel her conflict as the notes soar and fall on the scale, everything rising to a peak and then dropping back. At least, that’s the plan.
The first few notes are strong and clear as I draw the bow across the strings, my hands loose, each segment flowing into the next one. As the music gets faster and louder, my fingers become the voice of the instrument, pulling the emotion from the cello, and then slowing down, softer and softer until the notes are almost a whisper. Just a few bars into the piece I give up
consciously thinking about what I’m doing and just let the notes flow on their own, knowing that my best performances are the ones where I stop thinking and just go with it. I have to surrender everything and trust that repetition and instinct will carry me through to the end.
Too soon, the last notes fade into the ornate ceiling of the hall, and I open my eyes to the audience’s applause. As the relief that always comes from a successful performance fades, I suddenly feel Griffon in the room, can almost hear his hands clapping over the sound of everyone else. Turning my head to the left, the lights aren’t as bright, and I spot him right away, sitting several rows from the back, smiling as our eyes meet and applauding even harder. I can feel my face getting hot, and this time it isn’t from the effort of playing
Meditation
.
The lobby is humming with people when I finally walk out of the hall. I glance through the crowd, but don’t see Griffon anywhere. Not that I’m
looking
for him. I don’t want to talk about reincarnation or Akhet. I don’t want to have any more serious conversations. Things have been fine the past few days—no blackouts, no strange feelings—and I’ve almost convinced myself that the whole thing was some weird episode that has now passed. I just want to say thanks for coming all this way on a Saturday night when I’m sure he has better things to do.
“There she is!” Dad calls, waving me over to where he’s standing with Mom and Veronique. He puts his arm around me, pulling me in close to him. “That was wonderful, honey,” he says. “I literally had tears in my eyes at the end. Just beautiful.”
Mom bends down and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “It was
lovely. Although I did sense a little hesitation during the adagio section at the end. I thought you were going to work on that.”
“I did,” I say quickly, glancing over at Veronique, who looks away uncomfortably. I give Dad’s arm a squeeze. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Your piece was better than I ever imagined,” Veronique says, and I can feel her excitement. “Transcendent. Luminous.” She shrugs her shoulders and grins. “I’m totally running out of descriptive words, but you know what I mean.”
“Thanks,” I say. “And thanks for coming.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” She glances downstairs. “I’m going for a drink at the café. Can I get you anything?”