Mercy m-1

by Rebecca Lim

  To change … anything.’ There’s a funny note in Richard’s voice, like a rising sob quickly tamped down, and I look up from my seat on the bench and look away again as I clock the wet sheen in the guy’s eyes. Seems genuine enough.

  Ryan’s gaze meets mine. His look saying, You believe it?

  It’s hard to say. Though, being me, there is one foolproof way to know for sure. A way Ryan neither knows about nor has any access to.

  I steel myself, because, as I’ve indicated, what I’m about to do invites in the unwanted.

  I look up into Richard Coates’ face and raise Carmen’s left hand reluctantly, taking hold of his wrist.

  It’s surprisingly wiry and thin for someone capable of throwing himself and a quarter-tonne machine through complicated loops and arcs in the air.

  My left hand begins to burn with that strange phantom pain, and I feel that building pressure behind my eyes. The boy doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t even react, his features as impassive as I know Carmen’s are. He just looks at where my fingers meet his skin, an unfathomable expression in his pale eyes as we flame into contact.

  And I see … everything. Feel … everything. As he told it. And more.

  Like what hanging out on Coronado Beach really meant to Lauren and Richard. The sun moving quickly across the sky towards the waterline, the waves racing in towards the land, as the hours pass through my mind’s eye in a blur, the wind rising steadily, whipping harsh sand through her hair, his, as they touched, then talked, then began to fight in earnest, voices rising, body language hardening, growing ugly. The last hours they spent together played out for my benefit. The whole shoreline empty of life, as if the two of them were the only people in the world, the first two people in creation.

  It’s clear to me that although they hadn’t seen eye to eye on about ten thousand things, they’d had a love so deep it was almost incendiary. Something truly enviable.

  Though Lauren wanted more from Richard than he was prepared to give. He could have let things continue the way they were forever, mainly because he — like me — doesn’t do normal either.

  There’s a part of Richard Coates that isn’t earthbound, and Lauren had refused to acknowledge it.

  I recognise it in him, because it’s in me, too.

  Ryan doesn’t even know half the story.

  When I finally let go of Richard’s wrist — for all I know, it might have been a single heartbeat or an hour — all he does is tug the edge of his frayed cuff back over his tattooed arm. Unlike my contact with Ryan, or how I felt after his parents touched Carmen’s bare skin — burned, excoriated, as if by acid — the connection with Richard was somehow … different. He felt it, my mind in his, I’m sure of it. And it gives me pause.

  We stare at each other momentarily before looking away from the incomprehensible.

  While Richard’s gaze is elsewhere, Ryan raises an eyebrow in my direction.

  I think he’s telling the truth, I mouth silently.

  Ryan nods, a finality about it. I wonder why my opinion means so much to him, holds any weight at all.

  After several attempts at polite conversation, Ryan and I drive away. I look back at Richard Coates, wandering his motorbike graveyard like a restless spirit, until he is lost to sight.

  Chapter 15

  ‘What happened to you?’ says Brenda nastily at my elbow when I return to Paradise High for the last period of the day, Maths. ‘We’ve been trying to track you down for hours.’ Her two, ever-present henchwomen take up unsmiling position on either side of me and I know they’ll be escorting me to my seat personally today.

  After they work me over a little first. For a moment, I wonder if Brenda saw Ryan picking me up just past the school gates this morning, and wants to cause a scene just for the hell of it. But then I recall what went down at Mulvany’s the night before.

  ‘My meds reacted badly with the stuff Bailey slipped into my drink,’ I say apologetically in a little-girl voice, hanging my head like I know Carmen would. ‘Ryan was soooo mad at me this morning. He was dying to get back to you last night and was pissed off at me big time when I finally came around.’ The lie works wonders. The crop haired brunette with the eyeliner and leather fetish and the horsy-faced dirty blonde with the impeccable French manicure fall back a step and Brenda is practically snuggling up to my right side with a delighted, ‘Really?’

  ‘I so told you,’ insists the brunette from behind us.

  ‘It was obvious.’

  ‘Kayla had it pegged,’ agrees the blonde. ‘He’s still into you in a big way.’

  ‘Shut up, Jackie,’ Brenda says impatiently. ‘What else did he say?’ We’re right outside the classroom now and I’m not even feeling guilty about what I say next, because this girl shouldn’t even be on my case. She’s Ryan’s unfinished business, not mine. He can deal with it.

  ‘You really should hear it from him,’ I urge guilelessly.

  ‘You two have so much to work out. All he can talk about is you. I’d give him a call. Today.’ Brenda nods eagerly, while part of me grins inside.

  Good luck.

  When I’d left him that morning, Ryan had muttered something about checking out one of Port Marie’s only two churches, still fixated on his recent, fragmented dream. I knew he and his friend, the ice pick, would be pretty much incommunicado while it was still light.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ I say, as we head towards a bunch of empty desks up the back of the class, away from where Tiffany, Delia and the others are giving me snake eyes for cosying up to the locals and not making myself available for their collective wrath. ‘I’m curious, because I’m staying in Lauren’s room and I’m virtually surrounded by photos, and I know you two were besties…’ Brenda’s ‘Yeah?’ is slightly less chilly than usual.

  ‘Was Lauren dating anyone when she disappeared?’ I say, keeping my little-girl act going. ‘It’s been bugging me which one was her boyfriend.’ There are pictures of Lauren and Richard together, but no pictures of Brenda and Richard together, or Richard with anyone else I’ve met at Paradise High so far, like Kayla, Jackie, Tod, Clint or Bailey. Plus, there are pictures of Lauren with a couple of other guys I haven’t seen around the halls. If Brenda truly was Lauren’s best friend, I figure she’d have a handle on what Lauren’s love life had really been like. Maybe it was a lot more complicated than Ryan realised.

  Brenda, still wrapped up in thoughts of her ex, is almost friendly when she replies. ‘Lauren never went for clean-cut guys, only the freaks. She was dating a loser called Richard when she was taken, a real short ass with even bigger loser-ass friends that I wouldn’t be seen dead with; and before that, a geeky mountaineering guy with a ponytail called Seth, who left town before she started seeing the motocross dwarf. Goes without saying I didn’t hang with him either. A choir nerd from Port Marie tried to ask her out just before she disappeared, but she told him things between her and Richard were pretty serious — can you believe it? — and they couldn’t be anything more than friends. Ask him if you like. He’s doing this stupid Mahler concert with us. He’s a “soloist”, just like you are.’ She drawls the words Mahler and soloist as if they’re synonyms for something filthy and unspeakable that could get you arrested. Anyone other than me would take issue with it. But I could care less, because she’s just given me a lead that maybe Ryan has never followed up, never even known about.

  The info about Seth the mountaineering geek correlates with the pictures I’ve seen jammed into the right-hand bottom corner of Lauren’s mirror: of her with some incredibly tall and skinny outdoorsy type with a huge Adam’s apple, bushy ponytail, ginger stubble and a friendly expression. So I just need to look out for a round-faced, dark-haired, spectacle-wearing ‘choir nerd’ who’s singing one of the solos in the Mahler piece and who hails from Port Marie. Easy.

  Maybe he can give us something more to work with.

  He might even be the something everyone has failed to see all this time.

  ‘Well, thanks for sat
isfying my curiosity,’ I say mildly, as I slide into an empty seat by one of the windows. ‘You remember to call Ryan now. I can tell you’ve got a lot to talk over.’ Brenda smiles coyly as she cracks open her textbook.

  ‘Maybe you aren’t such a waste of space, after all,’ she replies kindly.

  There is a God, because at the after-school rehearsal for the Mahler concert Mr Masson tells all the soloists to sit away from their usual choir stations and away from each other.

  ‘Sopranos and altos, spread yourselves out among your opposite number. Spencer, Jonathan and Harley, do likewise among the boys.’ There’s outright laughter from most of the males in the room as three very different-looking boys stand up, red-faced, and fan out through the assembly hall, forcing their way past a sudden sea of extended legs, locked knees and folded arms.

  My eyes pick out the dark-haired boy from Lauren’s photo straightaway. He’s of middling height and kitted out like a clothing-catalogue spread, from his side-parted hair and roundish glasses down to his neat navy blazer and polo shirt combination, stone-coloured, pleat-fronted chinos and boat shoes. He looks like the kind of kid who gets his head flushed down the toilet at least once a day by rival forces, and Richard Coates’ total opposite number. If Lauren went for freaks, this guy would have stood no chance.

  I stand up as well, taking my place in the back row of the altos as close to the guy as it’s possible to get with a wall of snickering basses between us. A couple of girls make room for me with calculated indifference.

  Tiffany Lazer is on the diagonally opposite side of the alto section from where I’m sitting, still simmering at her inability to get to me for the purposes of having it out over last night’s case of spotlightus interruptus.

  As Mr Masson moves to turn on the ancient sound system that serves as our ersatz symphony orchestra, Paul Stenborg raises one languid, beautiful hand from the sidelines and calls out pleasantly, ‘Just to up the degree of difficulty, Gerard, let’s have the soloists stand while the general chorus remains seated, hmmm? It will separate the, ah ha, sheep from the lambs.’

  ‘What a splendid idea, Paul,’ Mr Masson agrees brightly, clapping his hands as the seven of us rise with varying degrees of enthusiasm; four girls, three guys.

  Tiffany, the only soloist still occupying a front-row seat, sweeps her shining helmet of blonde hair back over her shoulders and grins in anticipation. She shoots me a confident look over one shoulder that is designed to psych out the real Carmen. But I force Carmen to give her a brilliant, mega-watt smile in return, lips drawn right back over the teeth, and Tiffany’s expression curdles as she faces forward again.

  Immediately, I let the lines of Carmen’s face go slack.

  Part of me hopes she’ll keep up the pressure when I’m gone, but I have my doubts.

  Ready when you are, bitch, I think, taking a deep breath.

  The boy from Lauren’s photo pushes up his glasses repeatedly and fiddles with the wristband of his watch, though neither needs any kind of adjusting. A nervous type, then, just like Carmen ordinarily would be. The other two boys are hardly any better, like a slapstick comedy duo with their obvious bobbing, shuffling and gulping. All three are totally surrounded by the enemy as far as the eye can see, and are being given no quarter.

  Delia and the second St Joseph’s alto, Marisol, take their places among the sopranos nervously, like skittish thoroughbreds at the starting gates. The orchestra surges back to life, the entire room lurching into Part 1 with the fervour of a sick cat.

  As we hit Figure 7, and I soar into my traffic-stopping solo without a shred of Carmen’s usual self-consciousness, I position myself so I can see the boy from Port Marie. I realise Lauren’s mystery friend is the faltering tenor who always makes his wobbly, half-assed entry after mine and before Tiffany, Delia and Marisol.

  *

  All of the soloists, apart from Tiffany and myself, who have no notes to sing for several more pages of score, have bumbled well into Figure 21 when Paul Stenborg claps his hands loudly and with evident displeasure. The whole circus shudders to a halt, and you’d think the other choirmasters would be annoyed at his high-handedness, but they aren’t. It’s a measure of the respect they have for the much younger man that they wait expectantly for his words. Even Miss Fellows looks attentive, almost deferential, and I wonder at it.

  ‘ Infirma nostri corporis,’ Paul says in a ringing voice.

  ‘ Virtute firmans perpeti.’ The ancient Latin phrases roll off his tongue as if he, too, were born to say them.

  ‘Whatever,’ I hear the bass beside me snigger, hardly impressed. Though he should be, if he knew any better.

  Paul’s pale eyes zero in on my neighbour with laser-like intensity and he turns his next wiseacre comment into a cough.

  ‘I realise we are pleading with God to “endow our weak flesh with perpetual strength”,’ Paul continues bitingly. ‘But you don’t have to be quite so, well, weak about it. And that goes doubly for you, Spencer.’ His voice is ferocious as he singles out the wonky tenor with his scalpel gaze, who flushes scarlet. ‘It’s an insult.’ And just like that, I have a name to put to the face.

  Spencer.

  Spencer is still nuclear-threat-warning red as he pushes his spectacles back up his nose for the thousandth time, as if the familiar gesture will offer him some kind of corporeal protection from harm. A ripple of laughter moves outwards through the hall at his expense.

  ‘More balls, Spencer,’ adds Paul Stenborg in a soft but threatening voice. ‘If you please.’ Spencer nods miserably. Some of the boys around him hoot with laughter and pretend to grab at the crotch of his pants.

  ‘Ready, please, Mr Music,’ Paul says, with only a trace of icy humour. Gerard Masson obediently flicks the switch.

  Tiffany and I make a brief return cameo at Figure 20, then the whole thing falls into a heap again as soon as Delia, Marisol and the boys realise they’re on their own once more at Figure 21 without the two powerhouse broads leading the charge.

  ‘Carmen?’ Paul Stenborg addresses me suddenly with his golden voice, his electric eyes, as if there is no one in the room besides the two of us. Everything seems to stop, even time itself. For a moment, I cannot look away from him.

  ‘I know you’ve memorised the entire score from the way you’re not even referring to your music,’ he continues warmly. There is an implicit smile in his rich voice, like sunshine. It suddenly occurs to me that he’s a little like Luc that way, each of them possessing the same inherent, undeniable glamour. That ability to make others do what they want with barely any effort.

  ‘Would you stand beside Spencer and sing his part with him?’ he cajoles lightly. ‘It’s clear you can handle a challenge. Rachel, is it? You can stand in for Carmen.

  We’ll leave Tiffany where she is, no sense fixing something that isn’t broken. That should work quite well.’ I nod, wondering not for the first time what this man is doing here in this drab backwater, governing such unpromising charges.

  Tiffany’s brilliant smile dies, while a delighted Rachel — until now always the understudy, never the star — bounds to her feet. Now there are eight of us standing amidst the seated and sprawled student host.

  Something about the set-up tugs at my memory, won’t come clear.

  It’s true that I have no further need of the music, though I wonder how Paul Stenborg could have noticed in the general bedlam. He would be even more surprised to know that I have the entire score, from general chorus alto to solo baritone, from timpani to string section, memorised now. The whole thing held entire in my head, able to be picked apart at will, attacked from any direction, any figure, any phrase, any individual bar, demisemiquaver, you could care to name.

  The basses between me and Spencer part like the Red Sea as I move to a position beside him. He is so hot and embarrassed that he can’t bring himself to look at me, but I’m right where I want to be. I’m suddenly eager to get the singing over with and the guy to myself for a couple of minutes. It’s
approaching five and we’re almost out of time. I need to make my move before the boy vanishes back into whatever hole he came from.

  ‘Good girl,’ Paul Stenborg says approvingly. ‘Shore the poor boy up. Play the Good Samaritan.’ He nods at Gerard Masson standing patiently by the sound system.

  ‘Gerard will beat in the altos in his inimitable fashion, then away you go.’ I realise as I tackle the tenor part — Spencer falling in a fraction of a second behind me — that it’s way lower than Carmen would ordinarily sing. Though the notes trouble me not at all, I have to push through the strange knot in her throat, her body’s residual reluctance to come to the party. For a second, there’s a minor skirmish for control. But I always win, and so it goes on, our blended voice still pure, sublime, singular and rare, cutting through the general murk and chaos around us, clearly discernible to everyone and the cause of talk, talk, talk.

  Several times, I catch Paul’s remarkable eyes snapping from his score to me in fascinated approval.

  Gerard Masson doing the same thing from the podium, Carmen caught in a crosscurrent of open admiration.

  I know that if it wasn’t for me, the girl would have faltered to a stop long ago under all the scrutiny. Even though Carmen wants to be a famous singer more badly than anything else in the world — I know, because she’s written it in capital letters enough times in her diary —she doesn’t really like people looking at her.

  I may have plenty of problems, big ones, but that’s never been one of them. The way I see it? You are what you are, so deal with it.

  Only once does Paul Stenborg single out the boy beside me for further humiliation.

  ‘Spencer, Spencer, Spencer!’ he roars in exasperation as a passage of orchestral accompaniment begins.