When We Wake

by Karen Healey

  Racing the trace, I dove frantically into the data. Most of the addresses were in the Northern and Western Territories, but there was one in Victoria—in fact, it was in Williamstown.

  Close to the army base. I didn’t think that was a coincidence. I stared at the address, willing myself to memorize it. Pens and paper didn’t really exist anymore, and I couldn’t trust any device I might write the information on.

  ADVISE IMMEDIATE CLOUD SEPARATION.

  TRACE 96.2% COMPLETE.

  “Fuckity fuck fuck fuck,” I said calmly. Then I grabbed my rusty iron statue of the lady in the sea and beat the crap out of Bethari’s computer.

  The computer’s pliable material resisted, wrapping around the statue and trying to disperse the force, but I hammered it on the ground, hoping to open a crack somewhere. There might have been a less drastic way to separate a future computer from the online world, but I had no idea how to do it, and no time to find out before the trace got through the proxies and triangulated my position. Marie’s address would be a very clear indication of the inquiry’s source.

  “Stop it, stop it!” I said, and hit harder. Even underground, with the thick earth walls, I was worried that Marie might hear. “Home, play ‘Revolution,’ volume eleven!”

  The house computer obeyed, routing the song through the room’s speakers, and under cover of the reverberating strings and heavy bass, I brought the statue down again with all my might.

  The iron lady’s head flew off.

  But the computer’s surface had finally cracked. I grabbed my bottle of water from the nightstand and poured it into the gap. There were a few sparks, and the screen died.

  I thrust the entire mess—statue, water bottle, and all—under my bed.

  John sang that it was all gonna be all right.

  “Easy for you to say,” I muttered, and flopped, spread-eagle, on my back.

  “Tegan?” Marie’s light voice called through the noise. “Are you all right?”

  I checked to make sure everything was well hidden before I replied. “I’m fine! Come in!” There was anger burning inside me, a hot, tight feeling that would not give way to tears.

  Marie evidently saw it on my face as she pushed open the door. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Just… Why is the world so terrible?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You have… a faith. Does it help?”

  “I have faith in a life after death. I don’t think that means we get to make this life awful.”

  “We can try to make it better,” she said tentatively. “That’s always been my aim. Are you sorry that I brought you back to this time?”

  I thought about it. Yes, the future was much worse than I’d thought. But the past had been bad, too, and I hadn’t even considered leaving it. There had been love for me there, and music, and joy. And here I had Marie and Bethari, and a chance at all those things. “No. Not really. I like being alive.”

  Marie’s smile was glorious. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “It just arrived.”

  She leaned down and picked up a guitar case, holding it out to me in both hands.

  I sat still for a moment. “Really?”

  “You can’t possibly use a school guitar for music tomorrow,” she said, then laughed. “Well, I know you could, but I wanted to celebrate your first day, and this seemed like a practical gift.”

  The case was smooth and black, made of something that looked like bumpy plastic but felt like cool, sturdy metal to my fingers. I laid the case on my unmade bed, slipped the catches with worshipful fingers, and caught my breath, gloating, at the treasure inside.

  She was an acoustic-electric, with the classic shape, a soft brown-gold body, and a short black neck. She was nestled in the plush red cushioning like a queen in a pile of velvet pillows.

  I lifted her out and slipped the strap over my shoulder. She was a twelve-fret, and the neck was slim enough for my short hand span. I positioned a few chords without strumming, checking the slip factor and reach. The strings were made out of some material I didn’t recognize, but I liked the give under my fingers—not too sloppy, not too tough. My calluses had vanished during my long sleep, but I’d build them up again.

  I plucked the thin E string and listened as the high, pure note rang out. It had a lovely solid tone. My old guitar, McLeod, had been a third- or fourth-hand Ovation and an absolute delight, but I thought I might grow to love this guitar more.

  She must have cost Marie a mint.

  “I talked to some people,” Marie said. “Is it all right?”

  “It’s unbelievable,” I breathed, sliding my fingers over the pickguard—more mahogany, inlaid with some sort of shell. “She’s beautiful. Thank you so much.”

  “Do you want to play it?” she asked.

  I did. More than almost anything.

  “After dinner,” I said, and put my guitar back in her case. My fingers couldn’t resist one final swipe over the polished wood, but I managed to tear them away.

  I couldn’t close her up in the dark again, though. I left the case open on my bed, breathing in the air under the earth.

  Apart from anything else, she’d help conceal the messy truth hiding under my bed.

  With Koko in my pocket and Abbey the guitar beside me, I traveled alone to school the next morning. Gregor was driving, and I could feel him watching me.

  It was no part of my plan to provoke suspicions. So before I got out of the car, I said, “Thank you, Gregor. For stopping the Inheritor. You saved my life.”

  Alex, who was an accomplished liar, had taught me as best she could. Keep it simple, she’d said. It sounds more sincere.

  Gregor’s teeth flashed. “You’re welcome,” he said, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. “All part of the job.”

  Which job would that be? I thought, but my face stayed, I hoped, in the same grateful smile. I was still wearing it when I got out, to be escorted by Zaneisha past the crowd of journalists waiting for me.

  “Why are you so happy, Tegan?” yelled one of them.

  Hah. If only they knew.

  I was hoping that I’d have time to find Bethari before music, and maybe even enough privacy to talk about what I’d found—and to apologize for destroying her computer.

  But Abdi was waiting just inside the entrance. He was still gorgeous, those light eyes striking in his dark face. He still looked completely uninterested in me.

  He had a flute case in one hand, though. That was new.

  “I’m supposed to show you to music,” he said.

  “No need,” I said politely.

  “The teacher told me to show you.”

  “Well, that’s fine, but I know the way,” I said, sharper this time. Zaneisha had made me memorize the building plan and every escape route.

  I glanced at her for confirmation, but she was no help at all. She and Abdi could have an expressionless face-off.

  Except that Abdi’s bored blankness had broken into open annoyance. As I turned back to argue the point, he grabbed Abbey’s case from my hand and took off.

  “Give her back!” I snarled, and raced after him. Had it been my wallet he’d snatched, I would have tackled him. Unfortunately, he was holding something much more precious, and I couldn’t risk him dropping her. While I dithered, he dodged through a slalom course of students coming the other way and started down a flight of stairs.

  Mistake. I took a deep breath and swung myself over the edge. I heard students gasping behind me, but I twisted and landed square on the bottom step, facing Abdi as he came to a halt, inches from my nose.

  Okay, it was a stupid stunt. Jumping onto stairs is far more dangerous than onto flat ground, where you can easily roll to take the impact. But I’m light, and I land well, and it definitely got Abdi’s attention.

  I snatched Abbey away from him, cradling her tenderly. “What is wrong with you?”

  “People are staring,” he said tensely, and then walked through the door. I caught snatches of ins
truments being tuned.

  He’d led me right to music, just as he’d said he would.

  People were staring. “That’s not my fault,” I told Zaneisha, who had caught up with us and was resolutely avoiding eye contact.

  I hoisted Abbey a little higher and stepped into the classroom. What a great start to the day.

  When I’d asked Koko for information about my music teacher, I’d been flooded with it. Kieran—one name—had a blunt nose, dark curls streaked with blond highlights, and an incredibly impressive record. He was a Wurundjeri man who’d been a session musician, a solo artist, a producer, a soundtrack designer, and, in semesters when he felt like it, a teacher at Elisa M, his alma mater. I couldn’t imagine anyone more different from Just-Call-Me Eden. Kieran’s students were all quiet and disciplined, seated in a semicircle, straight-backed on stools with table attachments.

  No one would be napping in his class.

  There were instruments and equipment at the back that I longed to get my hands on and at least two recording studios elsewhere in the school. Koko could do a lot of basic production for me, but a real studio was still the golden apple of the recording world.

  However, I wasn’t going anywhere or touching anything until Kieran let me. And right now, perched on my own stool in front of them all, I wasn’t sure that he’d even let me stay in the class. Now that I’d met Kieran, I could sort of see why Abdi had obeyed his instructions instead of my wishes.

  So far, under the guise of “getting to know my new student,” I’d answered questions about my training (one guitar lesson a week was clearly horrifying), my practice hours (not too shabby, thank god—but I’d had to admit I hadn’t really practiced since I’d woken up), and my performance credentials (apparently playing for old people’s homes didn’t count).

  By the end of the interrogation, I was more hiding behind Abbey than holding her, and the line of sweat down my back owed very little to the warm classroom.

  “Well,” he said finally, “I can see we have some work to do.”

  I nodded, thoroughly cowed. Abdi must have been loving it, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Kieran to check.

  “Who are your favorite musicians?”

  “The Beatles,” I said. “Ani DiFranco. Nina Simone. Bruce Springsteen. I like, um, Janis Joplin, Vienna Teng, Janna van der Zaag, and…”

  Some of my classmates were nodding, which was a pleasant surprise. I should really have expected it—they were musicians, like me. Of course they’d be more informed than Bethari on the obscure music of the last century. But they didn’t seem terribly excited by my choices.

  I cast around for something from this day and age. I’d listened to some contemporary stuff and liked much of it, but it was all falling out of my head now that I was under pressure. “Um, that bhangra-punk group—what are they called? Brighton?”

  “Birmingham,” someone supplied.

  “Right, I like them,” I said. Feeling like an idiot, I retreated to familiar ground. “But the Beatles, definitely, are my all-time favorite.”

  Kieran nodded. “All right, Tegan. Play us something by the Beatles.”

  My fingers tightened on Abbey’s case, appalled. Now? In front of everyone? “They don’t really… I mean, they’re songs, you know? It’s not compositional; it’ll sound weird without singing.”

  “Then sing.”

  I shook my head, pushing my voice past the lump in my throat. “I can’t, not really. Backup only.” I tried a weak grin.

  Kieran wasn’t smiling. “Music is risk, Tegan. I want you to open yourself to the possibility of failure. I’m not judging you on the quality of your performance—only on your willingness to try and your ability to access emotion.”

  My classmates were watching carefully, waiting for me to get over my fear and begin, so they could get a feel for who I was and what I could do. They’d decide in that moment whether I deserved to be there or if I was only at Elisa M because the government had told them to take me.

  And then they’d tell the whole world what they thought. I recognized several of Soren’s cronies and wondered what a good famer could do with an exposé on my talent—or lack thereof.

  Abdi wasn’t watching, though. He was holding his flute case on his lap and staring at a point above my head.

  “Okay,” I said, and pulled Abbey out of her case. She got a few raised eyebrows—she really was a beautiful guitar. I checked the tuning and snapped a capo on the seventh fret. “Okay, but I warned you.”

  No one seemed to recognize the tune as I picked out the first notes, which tightened my throat again right before I had to sing. So I lengthened the introduction a little bit, playing around with that bare premelody, and then gathered my courage, opened my mouth, and gave it my best shot.

  It was a disaster.

  I’d chosen “Here Comes the Sun” because it has a simple voice part and I knew it very well. On the other hand, the guitar part has a lot of complicated time signature changes, making it a rhythmically impressive piece. I definitely wanted to be impressive.

  And in a way, it worked. My playing was fine.

  But even on the simple melody, my voice cracked and warbled; I hadn’t been lying about my singing. Worse, and more unforgivable, I didn’t catch the feel of the song. I didn’t sound like someone full of hope, at a glimpse of spring and a new beginning. I sounded exactly like a schoolgirl forced into a reluctant performance before her peers. I was mechanical and flat and soulless.

  Hardly the performance of someone accessing emotion.

  I was trying not to cry as I struggled through the final line of the first verse, singing that it was all right, when it most definitely wasn’t. Soren’s friends were flicking little glances at one another and moving their fingers surreptitiously over their computers. I absolutely couldn’t cry. The humiliation would never end if I did.

  In the brief moment between the first verse and the second, Abdi stood up and tucked his flute under his stool.

  People gave him sideways looks, but he ignored them as stonily as he’d ignored me.

  Then he squared his shoulders and sang.

  His face looked mildly disgusted, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he was doing it. But his voice was absolutely pure, and it filled every corner of the room with warm longing. I promptly dropped back and let him take over the melody, joining in on the chorus bits for extra volume.

  We rocketed through the long bridge, my fingers hitting every shifting beat.

  I still don’t know if it’s because Abdi was so good that he was able to anticipate my moves, or if it was because I was so desperate that I was instinctively following his cues, or something else altogether, but in the space of that bridge, we somehow achieved the kind of mind-reading synergy you get with someone you’ve been making music with for years. Owen and I had it. Owen and Dalmar had it. Dalmar and I didn’t have it, but we would have gotten there eventually.

  But Abdi and I made it happen right away. So when he nodded at me at the end of the bridge, I knew he was going to leave me on my own for the final verse.

  My voice still wasn’t pretty, but my singing was bright and strong, instead of faint and unemotional. I sang about ice melting and clear skies and sounded like I meant it.

  And then Abdi picked me up for the final chorus, his beautiful voice sliding around my creaky one. I strummed through the outro, and we were done.

  It wasn’t until we finished that I wondered if it had really been appropriate to choose that particular song. People here were probably happy about long winters. The sun was the enemy, not something to welcome. But the silence didn’t seem angry—just faintly puzzled. And maybe a little bit awed. Soren’s friends were busily tapping away, but they didn’t have that air of triumph I knew to be wary of.

  “Did you two work this out before class?” Kieran asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No,” Abdi said.

  “Then… all right. Thank you, Tegan.” He waited a breath, and then added, �
�Thank you, Abdi.”

  That didn’t sound like a teacher giving rote thanks to a student; it sounded like a fan thanking someone he admired. Which is when I remembered that Abdi hadn’t sung a note in public since he’d arrived in Australia.

  No matter how much money he’d been offered or how many glittering stars had requested duets, he hadn’t sung for them.

  But he’d sung for me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Revolution

  Three weeks before I died, Dalmar had asked me why I liked the Beatles so much.

  “Best musicians of their century,” I recited, as I had many times before. “And ours. And all the ones to come.”

  “Yeah, but why? You think that lots of Paul’s melodies are saccharine and some of John’s experiments are horrible and Ringo—”

  “Ringo is perfect,” I warned him. “Don’t say anything about Ringo.”

  He grinned at me, the wide flash of teeth that always made me feel shaky and warm. Even in our garage “studio,” that smile belonged to a star. “You say things about Ringo.”

  “I’m allowed. I love him most.” I fiddled with Owen’s guitar strap. “Have you seen my dopey brother?”

  “He’s in the kitchen, trying to get money out of your mum. There’s a live gig at the Corner—”

  “Oh, the pig! If he wants money, he can get out of bed and help her at the markets, like I do!”

  He shrugged. “Really, why the Beatles?”

  “They changed the world,” I said. “And they changed themselves. I mean, there are lots of reasons I like them. They were amazing composers, and they reformed pop forever, and they gave young people a voice. But they also realized they’d made terrible mistakes, and they tried to reform themselves. Like, John, he hurt a lot of people—”

  “He hit his first wife,” Dalmar said. “And he cheated on her.”

  “Yeah. He had a lot of anger, and he took it out on people. And doing those things was bad, the sort of thing that’s bad forever. You don’t get to take that back; the best you can do is change yourself and never do it again.” I tightened my hands on the guitar strap. “I just… I need to believe that people can change, Dalmar. The world’s so horrible, and I’m scared that no one’s going to care enough to do anything about it, and I really need to believe that they can.” It was the first time I’d ever said it to anyone else.