I said nothing, but it didn’t matter. He found the truth in my eyes and sighed.
“I meant what I said to you on Monday in the parking lot. It has to be you. You have to see it,” he claimed emphatically. “But . . . I thought—I thought maybe, if you were to audition and get the part, I could at least get you there; give you an opportunity to believe in yourself.” He paused for a brief moment.
“You have every right to be upset with me,” he granted, though it lacked the rueful compunction of someone truly sorry. “Please know that I did not intend to betray your trust or hurt you. I did what I did, knowing with absolute certainty that a part of you, whether you know it or not, wants this. Foster, you were born to do this.” There was an adamancy that rose up like a freshly kindled fire. But at that moment, a strong gust of wind rushed up the side of the cliffs, extinguishing the look of heat in his eyes. “You just don’t know it yet.”
The breeze continued to blow, lifting Dominic’s long bangs off his forehead. It rustled the enormous tree providing shelter over us, shaking the blooms so that they began to fall like tufts of purple cotton candy. The breeze was chilly, but I had sweated through my clothes and dried too many times today. The brisk air was rejuvenating—clean and fresh—both of which I did not feel at the moment.
I sat up straight, uncoiling my body, and stretched. The stress of the last hour had left a mark on my lower back, shoulders, and stomach, leaving a dull ache in some places and a soreness having nothing to do with physical discomfiture in others. I turned my whole body to face Dominic, and reached up to pluck a few purple flowers embedded in his hair. He gave a breathy chuckle, his eyes climbing past my forehead.
“You should see your hair,” he commented, full of insinuating amusement. “You look like an actress in a shampoo commercial.”
“A shampoo commercial?”
“Yeah.” He resituated, turning toward me and bending one knee to rest on the bench. “You know . . . the one where a woman is sitting at her desk day dreaming about washing her hair. Her boss comes into her office, finding her sniffing a stapler—though she thinks it’s her shampoo, of course. He gives her a strange look, tells her there’s a meeting in ten minutes, and then leaves. She doesn’t know what to think until she gets up from her chair and there’s flowers all over her office, and her.”
Amused, I continued to stare at him, fixing my expression with that clueless look.
“Seriously? You’ve never seen that one?” He regarded me with incredulity for one brief second, then smiled. “Oh, that’s right. I keep forgetting you don’t watch TV very often. That’s not a bad thing,” he was quick to say, “and actually, I don’t think anyone really watches commercials anymore, now that we can fast-forward through them. Sometimes, though, I seriously think they’re better than the actual show.” He smiled wistfully, chuckling softly. “Deanna and I always laugh at the one I just told you about. It’s so over the top ridiculous, but she says it still makes her want to go buy some pretty smelling shampoo. Or was that me? I can’t remember now.” He gave me a wry look, a smile beginning at the corners of his mouth. We both broke out in laughter at the same second.
This shift in conversation was much needed, I thought, for the both of us. He smiled at me, wanly, and we exchanged a look, each of us knowing that the time had come to resume the conversation we had started and never finished.
“Will you go?” he asked, not needing to elaborate any further than that.
My stomach dropped, uneasiness spreading through my veins, cold as ice water. “I don’t think I have a choice,” I said, my voice fearful and yet resigned.
“You always have a choice, Foster.”
“I wouldn’t want to disappoint Mr. Balfy by not going.”
“What about disappointing yourself?”
Puzzled, I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Was I wrong?” he asked, the question posing a challenge. “About your reasoning for not wanting to audition? If I was, Foster, tell me right now and I’ll go find Mr. Balfy. I’ll tell him it was me who put your name down. You tell me I was wrong, and that there isn’t any part of you that wants to go to that audition, and win that part . . . tell me that and we’ll fix this right now.” He remained facing me, one arm stretched along the back of the bench. The other had long since ceased in tracing my palm, but rest with a gentle weight atop my hand. I watched as it began to rise, coming up under my chin and tilting it so that it was level. The eyes bluer than the sky surrounding us, poured into mine, ardent and consuming. He whispered, “But I want to hear you tell me I was wrong.”
Tears stung my eyes, threatened to dribble down my cheeks at the slightest bit of movement. “You weren’t wrong.” My voice was thick and choked, but I pressed on, needing to purge the words stacking in my throat. “When I was younger and would sing at a baseball game, or for the performances put on by my choir teacher, it was the only time I felt sure of myself. I knew that what I could do was special, that not everyone could sing like that. But I honestly didn’t know . . . I didn’t how special it was. People were always coming up to my parents, telling us how much they enjoyed hearing me sing, but I figured that most of the time it was because they were being kind. And while I appreciated it, it wasn’t why I loved it. That wasn’t what made it special to me. If it had been, I think I would have lost interest a lot sooner, because everything changed once there were expectations and trophies and competition and jealousy. All of a sudden it wasn’t fun anymore; all the joy I felt from singing died, and in its place, fear, anxiety, and doubt. I let the voices inside my head—allowed them to steal what I loved most about singing; the way I felt free and alive and a part of something inhumanly beautiful . . . and then . . . and then I couldn’t even sing anymore.”
My voice cracked and a tear from each eye bubbled up, forcing past my eyelids, trailing warm streaks that instantly turned cool on my cheeks.
“The thought of singing in public terrified me. It was all right if I was in a large group, because then, very easily I could fade into the background. As long as I knew that no one was counting on me to be great . . . nothing for me to win, nobody to impress, then I had nothing to worry about. But if it was me—just me, it was too much pressure. The harder I tried to push something out of me, the worse it was—nothing but awful choking sounds. The teacher, she assigned me solos four separate times before she stopped asking me to sing. I stayed in the class for about another month and then asked my parents to take me out. I stopped singing altogether,” I admitted, the shame and embarrassment feeling as fresh as it did ten years ago. “It just . . . it hurt too much. It was a few years until one day I just started singing again, but only in my room.”
“But . . .” Slightly perplexed, Dominic gave his head a small shake. “Well, you must have overcome your fear enough to audition for Mr. Balfy’s class, right?”
I cast my eyes down, shaking my head. “No,” I said quietly, “that had very little to do with me actually. Mr. Balfy found me, one day after school had let out. I was there picking up a book I had forgotten and had my iPod in. The campus was deserted; I didn’t think anyone was around. When I closed my locker and turned around, he was just . . . standing there.”
Dominic gave a low, amused chuckle. “That must have been a shock.”
“Oh, I thought my heart was going to stop. And then I was horrified to have been stumbled upon like that.” I sighed, surprised to feel a smile on my mouth. “He didn’t say anything at first, just smiled at me with this look on his face like he hadn’t seen the sun in years and I was the sun. We must have stood there, staring at one another for at least a minute.”
“How did he talk you into it? Auditioning?”
I smiled a little sheepishly. “Well, he asked me if I would come and audition for him the next day. I told him I would, but I never went. He found me the next day, though, and talked me into auditioning for him right then and there. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, and I told him that. But . . . he
said ‘let’s give it a try and see what happens’ and the way he said it, I don’t know . . . there was no pressure. So I sat down at the piano, closed my eyes, and just sang.”
Dominic’s lips curved to the side, a dreamy look flitting across his face. “I would have loved to have seen that.”
I smiled, tucking a wayward curl behind my ear. “It was the first time in a very, very long time I heard myself really sing.” The tendril freed itself, and commenced whipping against my cheek. This time Dominic reached out, securing it around the curve of my ear. He left his hand there, buried in my hair, his fingers gently pressed into my scalp. I shivered, no fault of the ocean’s breeze.
“And what did it feel like?”
“It felt . . .” I closed my eyes tightly, trying to describe it. “Like swimming,” I whispered. “But not in water; it felt like swimming in color, absorbing each one as I passed through. When I had finished playing the piece, opening my eyes and taking my hands off the keys, it felt like I had swallowed a rainbow.” I opened my eyes and looked up into Dominic’s face, serene and placid, but full of liveliness, his royal eyes blazing blue.
“A rainbow,” he repeated, his eyes drifting to the left as he began to fiddle with a curl, wrapping it around his index finger. “I like that. And it makes sense, especially for you.”
“For me?”
“It’s like you said: what you can do—it’s special, not very many people can do what you do. You don’t see rainbows every day.” His eyes filled with a determination, something resolute and keen, but he smiled as if delighted. “I wish you could understand. When you sing . . . you don’t just sing, Foster. You become the music. And it becomes you.”
The tears rallied with a vengeance, pooling in my eyes until Dominic was nothing more than a beautiful black and blue blur. I blinked and a deluge of wet warmth flooded my cheeks, the sensation a blissful release.
“I don’t—” I sucked in a ragged breath, licking my lips and tasting salt. “I haven’t sung like that since that day. I don’t think I can do it. Not alone. Not in front of that many people. That part of me—she’s broken.”
Dominic smiled, his brows darting together, his bottom lip pulling downward in a brief pout. The tenderness in his face was enough to produce another onset of tears.
“Not broken, Moonpie,” he said softly, taking both his thumbs and stroking the wetness from cheek to ear. “Only hiding. A rainbow can’t hide forever, though.”
Chapter Thirty-two
As usual, I was the last person to exit the classroom. As I stood up, the roiling nausea that had been bubbling in my stomach all hour long like a decomposing bag of trash, rose high into my abdomen, shooting acidic fluids into my esophagus. I clamped down hard, waiting for the feeling to subside.
That was it; the last class of the day had ended and now it was time to . . . to do this.
I had changed my mind upwards of a hundred times, and even now was having second thoughts about my second thoughts. The voices that argued contentiously in my head were as ambivalent as they were persistent, each one doing all it could to persuade me in the opposite direction.
Which one, I wondered, would succeed?
Dominic was waiting for me; and for one moment, seeing him leaning up against the wall of lockers, his arms crossed over his chest, smiling and stunning, all the worry, doubt and fear I had been battling with . . . fled.
He blinked, his thick lashes brushing the shallow groove beneath his eyes. “Hi, beautiful,” he said, and pushed off the wall, walking toward me.
My heart did a succession of backflips and cartwheels. “Hi,” I answered, a bit breathlessly.
He took my backpack, placing it on his free shoulder, staring at me for a half-second before—in true Dominic Kassells form—he got straight to the point. “You ready for this?”
If what he meant by ready was: ready to empty the contents of my stomach, or, ready to flee the country, then yes, I was absolutely ready.
Mistrustful of my voice, I managed a wan smile and a jittery nod. Dominic read the look in my eyes, and laughed softly, taking my hand before I could bolt. Silently, we took off down the nearly vacant hallway, in the direction of the auditorium.
My pulse sped up, my body stiffened, and my heels pushed against the slippery floor, involuntarily resisting the inevitable. Dominic’s grip fortified and he administered just enough pull to make up for my drag. The nausea turned sharp and toothy, as if it had developed claws and teeth that sank into the lining of my stomach, trying to slow me down. By now, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn I had an ulcer. Clammy beads of sweat formed along my hairline, slowly rolling down my spine, or hovering around my neck like a damp cloud.
“I pulled someone out of the pool last period.” He spoke casually, so causally in fact that it took much longer than it should have for the words to register.
I tried to slow our stride, but Dominic continued towing me along at a swift pace. “You what?”
“I pulled someone out of the pool,” he repeated, staring straight ahead as we took a corner. “He drowned.”
I gasped, horrified, and again tried to stop walking only to have to hop to keep from tumbling forward. “Dominic. What!?”
~
I wouldn’t have thought distraction feasible—not when debilitating fear had consumed me for the latter half of my day. But I was reminded again that with Dominic, nothing was impossible.
By foot, the walk from the main building to the auditorium was a good ten minutes away. The fine arts department was a separate facility, the building a conglomeration of smaller units completing one humongous, domed structure. It was located on the other side of campus and usually people chose to drive rather than walk. Upon seeing it for the first time, I thought it resembled that of a toddler’s creation, had they a surplus of shiny copper Legos. Approaching now, the brushed finish reflected the sunlight, gleaming where the roof slanted and arched at flat angles.
By the time Dominic and I were passing through the glass doors, starting up the long, winding red-carpeted ramp, I had genuinely forgotten all about my anxiety. Truthfully, I had forgotten where I was going. I was that engrossed and transfixed as Dominic narrated the story, recounting every last detail.
“Did you see him right away?” I asked.
“No. And I probably wouldn’t have turned around, but I noticed the surface of the water was rippling. Since it wasn’t all that windy, and I was the only one there, it struck me as kinda odd. I couldn’t see anything, though, not from where I was—the sun was too bright. I started walking slowly around the edge of the pool, looking in. I think I got about four or five steps when I saw him, or his back I should say.”
I shuddered, imagining the sight of a body—floating and lifeless. “Do you know how long was he under before you arrived?”
“No idea,” he said sedately. I gave him a long scrutinizing look, and although he was somewhat drawn, he did not appear emotionally traumatized as I knew I would have been. “Obviously not that long, though,” he added offhandedly, “or I wouldn’t have been able to revive him. I think—I can’t be sure—but I think I remember hearing what sounded like a vibrating diving board and a splash as I was walking up to the gate. I didn’t even realize Shorecliffs had more than one pool. I’m glad I didn’t.”
“I can imagine the boy you rescued is too,” I said, my voice hushed and awed.
He chuckled bleakly. “Yeah, I suppose he is.”
I stared at Dominic’s clothes, wondering how it was possible that I’d overlooked his damp hair and change in outfits. Gone was the white t-shirt and blue jeans, replaced with gray shorts and a long-sleeve sea-foam green shirt.
“Weren’t you scared? What if you had been too late? How did you know what to do?”
At my rampant inquisition, Dominic turned his neck, regarding me with calm amusement. I shook my head. “Sorry. I just—I don’t know if I would have been able to do what you did.”
“You would have,” he replied in
stantly, not a hint of doubt in his voice.
I nodded solemnly. I couldn’t have imagined leaving someone unconscious in the pool, but each time I tried to wrap my head around the image of Dominic jumping into the pool and retrieving freshman swimmer Thomas Calbrennan—who I now knew had been practicing alone for a diving competition, and had slipped on the high board—I felt my face blanch and my knees wobble. Knowing me and my hapless luck, I likely would have rushed to try and save him, slipped on the wet ground and ended up at the bottom of the pool myself, leaving the both of us to drown. How fortunate for Thomas it had been Dominic that found him.
We rounded another corner, this time taking a right. Just like before, I remembered where I was going; however, it didn’t leave me with the same degree of stricken dread.
I supposed this was because while I’d been in class, panicking about my impending audition, Dominic had been saving someone’s life. This must be what people meant when they alluded to putting things, “in terms of life or death.”
I exhaled loudly, trying to absorb all that he had told me in the last ten minutes. “Did he say anything? Thomas? Once he was conscious, I mean?”
“Ah, yes . . .” He nodded. “His exact words were, ‘This is awkward.’”
“Awkward? How is it awkward?”
“Well,” he began nonchalantly, “I basically had to make out with the guy to bring him back to life.”
“Oh, right.” That part of it had slipped my mind. “Under the circumstances, though, I would think he wouldn’t have minded so much.”
“I think he was just uncomfortable and scared,” Dominic assessed. “People use humor to disguise their anger and fear. I think he was mostly worried I would rat him out. When I told him we should go find his coach, he looked like I had just suggested he turn himself into the mafia. I guess the coach is pretty strict?”
Awakening Foster Kelly Page 77