Salvation's Song

by Pearl Love

  Tyrell grinned, but didn’t deny the charge. “Nah, I’ll get something later. What about you? Are you hungry?” He moved around to the other side of the bed and hopped lightly onto the mattress after toeing off his shoes, making the bed bounce. Unlike a lot of his friends, he never complained about having to live with an older relative. After Tyrell’s dad died, Lucille had moved in to help his mom with him and Kevin. He’d always been close to her and had never felt the need to reject her affection in the name of acting cool.

  “No, I’m fine. What about your brother? Did he have a good day?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen Kevin yet, but he should be home in a while. I think he has some afternoon club activity.”

  “Goodness gracious, you boys are so busy, I can hardly keep up.” Lucille chuckled deep in her throat. “And what about you? You didn’t have anything to do after school?”

  Tyrell shrugged. He considered mentioning his nebulous plans to join the basketball team in an effort to impress Shaunteé, but he didn’t want to get her excited in case he decided not to bother. “What are you listening to?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

  Fortunately, Lucille was more easily distracted than Cynthia. “Oh, this is that CD you made for me a little while ago. When did you give it to me?”

  “On your birthday the year before last,” he said, recalling the gift. He’d painstakingly transferred nearly forty songs from the various albums and cassette tapes Lucille had amassed over the years. Digitizing the analog collection had taken forever, but her teary gratitude had made the effort totally worth it.

  “Ah yes. That’s right.” She hummed along with the song currently playing, bopping her head and snapping her fingers as she did.

  “What’s this song?” Tyrell asked.

  “‘You’re the Top’ by Ella Fitzgerald. Do you like it?”

  Tyrell had never really listened to his grandmother’s music, not even when he’d been preparing her gift. The notes had sort of drifted in one ear and out the other, but this time he paid attention. The song wasn’t as fast as the songs he usually listened to, but it moved at a nice clip. He moved his head back and forward in time with the beat, drawing a laugh from Lucille.

  “Yeah, it’s nice,” he confessed.

  “Glad you think so. When did you start playing drums?”

  Tyrell blinked and shot his grandmother a confused glance. “What? I don’t.”

  Lucille looked down meaningfully at his hands. “Then what do you call that?”

  He hadn’t realized he was tapping out the rhythm of the song on his lap. He entwined his fingers to make himself stop. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Oh no, baby! I didn’t mean to stop you. That was very good! You know,” she said, smiling up at him serenely, “you should think about playing for real.”

  Tyrell looked at her again, this time in surprise. “Funny you should say that. My homeroom teacher is the band director. He caught me messing around in class, you know, beating on my desk, and asked me to try out.”

  “And are you?”

  He shrugged in reply.

  Lucille patted him on the thigh. “You know, my father, your great-grandfather, used to play in an ensemble back during the war.”

  He assumed she meant World War II. “I didn’t know that. What type of music did he play?”

  Lucille smiled. “The only thing worth listening to back then. Big band jazz, of course.”

  Tyrell nodded like he knew what that meant. “Was he a drummer?”

  “He played percussion, though mostly the xylophone.”

  “The xylophone?” Tyrell wrinkled his nose. “You mean like that toy you gave me when I was little?” The tiny instrument with the primary colored bars had disappeared in the fourteen years since he’d received it for his second birthday, but he had vague memories of banging on the toy happily with little plastic mallets.

  “Well, a grown-up version of it. Here.” Lucille reached over for the remote and pointed it at her CD player before suddenly hesitating. “Um, how do I use this?”

  Tyrell smiled sadly and took the remote from her hand. “Do you remember the number of the song?”

  “Twelve,” she answered confidently.

  He dialed up the song and listened enraptured when a burst of music filled the room. “Wow!”

  Lucille let out a bark of laughter. “That’s Lionel Hampton. He played the vibraphone, which is a lot like a xylophone. Anyway, that’s how my daddy sounded when he played. I loved to listen to him when I was a little girl.”

  “I can see why.”

  The sound of the vibraphone was amazing. Tyrell felt like he was flying, the unique timbre of the notes like nothing he’d ever heard before. He closed his eyes, completely aware this time that he was slapping his thighs in time to the thrilling composition.

  “You should try out, baby. You have to.”

  The seriousness of Lucille’s tone caught Tyrell off guard, and when he opened his eyes to look over at her, her gaze was weighty with some unknown meaning.

  “What do you mean, I have to?”

  She leaned in and cupped his face in her palm, her gaze never leaving his. “Music is in your soul, Tyrell. You can’t fight what’s in your soul.”

  “JEREMY, IT’S your turn to do the dishes.” Emelia delivered the message by sticking her head into his room as she passed by. Instead of continuing on, however, she paused and returned after a few seconds. “You okay, squirt? You look kinda awful.”

  “Gee, thanks. Don’t you have lab or something?” He pulled a pillow over his face in an effort to ignore her. He groaned when the shield promptly disappeared.

  She slapped a hand on his forehead. He wanted to dislodge it, but he knew that would only encourage her. Even though Emelia was a year from finishing her nursing classes, she had gotten it into her head that she could diagnose any ailment her family was suffering. More’s the pity for them, she was usually right.

  “Did you get too much sun today?”

  Jeremy sighed, marveling inwardly at how good she was. When he’d finally made it home after his interminable bus ride from the UIC campus, he’d promptly gone to his room and collapsed on his bed. His book bag sat on the floor next to his desk, taunting him with the homework he still had to finish, but studying was the last thing he felt up to right then.

  “Jeremy—”

  “Yeah,” he replied before his sister could ask any more questions. He definitely didn’t want to explain how he’d gotten into this state, having convinced himself he’d imagined the entire scenario of hearing Chris’s voice and feeling as though he was being chased. His unfortunate run-in with Tyrell had just put the icing on the crap cake of his afternoon. “I went to Mario’s for some Italian ice after classes.” He flung a hand toward the empty paper cup sitting on his desk, which held the melted traces of the treat Cynthia had given him. Fortunately there was no logo on the cup to betray the fact that he’d never made it to the frozen lemonade stand. “I guess the walk was too far in this heat.” He opened his eyes and gave her his best innocent look. “Could you bring me a glass of ice water?”

  Emelia scoffed and picked up his pillow so she could dump it on his head. “If you’re feeling well enough to pull the baby act,” she said while he sputtered indignantly, “then you’re well enough to get it yourself. I’ll do the dishes,” she added as she sailed out of his bedroom.

  Jeremy accepted his minor victory with a grin and followed her into the kitchen. No one else was there, which surprisingly wasn’t that unusual an occurrence given the number of people who lived in the apartment. “Where is everyone?”

  “Monica and Dad are over at Irina’s to visit with Cathy, and Anna said she’d be studying late at the library.”

  “And Andrew?”

  Emelia shrugged, and Jeremy decided he’d exhausted his curiosity where his brother was concerned. After filling a glass with ice and running it under the tap until the water threatened to overflow, he sat at the kitchen
table and watched Emelia do the dishes. There weren’t that many. Monica had done the few left from dinner last evening, and none of the Michalaks were particularly fond of eating breakfast.

  Thinking of one brother inevitably brought another one to mind. Jeremy raised his pendant to his face and studied it, still mostly convinced he’d been delusional when he’d seen it glowing during his ill-advised sojourn that afternoon. “Hey, sis?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did Chris ever mention anything strange about this pendant?”

  Emelia turned to look at him, her expression reflecting her confusion. “What do you mean, strange?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. Just… strange.”

  She turned off the water and placed the last dish in the rack next to the sink to dry. “Not that I can recall.” The fact that she wasn’t giving him a hard time about the odd question showed how much everyone still tiptoed around him when it came to the subject of Chris.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Well,” Emelia continued, “not unless you count the fact that he never took it off strange.”

  He looked over at her. He couldn’t say what he thought of that one way or the other since he always wore it himself, though his attachment to the jewelry was mainly sentimental. What had been Chris’s reason? “Did he ever say where he got it?” He held the blue stone up to his eyes. It looked perfectly ordinary, beyond the fact that it gave off a distinctly new age-y sort of vibe. No wonder Monica had insisted he keep it.

  Emelia shrugged. “I think he told me he got it at a flea market or something. After he came back from his senior-year school trip to New York, he was wearing that pendant, and I never saw him without it again.”

  Until he died. The caveat hung unspoken in the air between them. Despite her protestations about her immediately younger brother, Emelia had been nearly as close to Chris as Jeremy, since she and Chris were only a year apart in age. They usually danced around the subject of his death like skilled ballerinas.

  “Huh.” Jeremy continued to carefully examine the lapis lazuli stone. He traced over the engraved, golden owl with the tip of his finger.

  “Maybe Chris wrote something about it in one of his journals. He was forever scribbling away in those things.”

  Content to let the subject drop, Jeremy was unprepared for Emelia’s suggestion. “Chris’s journals?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “If you’re really curious about the pendant, you should look there. Monica probably packed them away in the storage closet in the basement along with the rest of his stuff.” She sighed. “At some point I guess we’ll need to convince her to donate it all to Goodwill or something.”

  A sense of profound reluctance glued Jeremy to his seat. Emelia’s idea was a good one, but he could think of literally a thousand things he’d rather do than to comb through his brother’s inner thoughts. It wasn’t that he was concerned about invading Chris’s privacy. He and his brother had been so close, he’d be surprised if he found something in them about Chris’s life that he didn’t already know. Rather, his unwillingness stemmed from fear that reading the words his brother had written would make him seem alive again. He’d been having a hard enough time accepting Chris was gone, as evidenced by his auditory hallucination earlier that day.

  In the end he decided it wasn’t worth the heartache. He just wasn’t curious enough to go on a hunt through the numerous journals Chris had collected over the years. He’d begun journaling when he was in middle school and had continued right up to the night before his death. Chris had kept the books in his room, and Jeremy had counted nearly fifteen volumes once when he’d been killing time hanging around while his brother was playing video games. Too many to go through, especially when he didn’t even know what he was really looking for.

  “Nah, that’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter. I was just curious.”

  Emelia let it drop without further comment. After grabbing a can of pop from the refrigerator, she headed out of the kitchen. “I’ll be in my room reading.”

  “Okay,” he answered. He took a deep swig of his water and wiped the droplets from his mouth. “Guess I’ll get to that homework,” he said to no one in particular. It was amazing, he thought, how lonely he could feel in a house full of people.

  Chapter TEN

  “A GIRL died during our game against Kendall. Isn’t that insane?”

  Tyrell looked up from the turkey sandwich he’d been about to bite into. “What are you talking about? Oh,” he added, “I think I saw something about it on the news last night.” A teenaged girl had been found dead on school property, and his mother had set off on an annoying rant about the dangers of illicit drug use. Like she had any idea what had happened to the girl. The news story had been notably vague on that point.

  “You did?” Ryan looked bummed for a moment for not having caught Tyrell off guard with the news. “Anyway, Coach told us at practice yesterday. He said he’d heard it from the Kendall coach. Apparently she had a heart attack or something. The janitor found her under the bleachers while cleaning up after the game.” Ryan took a swig of his pop, incongruously gleeful as he related the macabre story.

  Any desire Tyrell had for his sandwich swiftly disappeared. The rush of fear and nausea he’d felt while returning from his halftime bathroom break was nearly as strong as the first time he’d experienced it. “Under the bleachers?” The news story hadn’t mentioned that detail. “Where exactly?”

  Fortunately, Ryan didn’t seem suspicious of his interest in the subject. “The ones near the main entrance to the stadium. Coach said they didn’t find anything weird on or near her, and she wasn’t injured. It’s like she just crawled under there to die.”

  “Like you said,” Tyrell mumbled, “insane.” Although he’d brought his lunch from home, he’d gotten a ginger ale from the cafeteria and forced himself to drink some, hoping it would settle his stomach. “Did your coach say who she was?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Nah, other than that she went to Kendall. He said her family didn’t want to give the press too much information. Coach knows some of the details only because he’s such good friends with the football coach at Kendall. Did you finish your Trig homework? If so, can I see it? Number five totally stumped me.”

  Tyrell nodded absently and promised to show his homework to Ryan after they finished eating. Ryan apparently considered the subject of the dead girl closed, but Tyrell couldn’t get her out of his head. When had she died? Had it been the moment when he was walking next to the bleachers and had felt that frightening sensation coming from beneath them? He was suddenly deathly afraid that he’d been there right when the girl was gasping for her last breath as her heart gave out.

  “Hey, guys. Look who I found.”

  Tyrell had never been so glad to hear Cynthia’s voice in his life. He shook off his morbid thoughts and looked up to greet her. In the next second, he was coughing, trying not to choke on his pop when he unexpectedly met a nervous gaze from a pair of amazing green eyes.

  But to see her was to love her,

  Love but her, and love forever.

  Again with the Robert Burns poems? Stupid brain, Tyrell griped as he gasped, trying to inhale despite his body’s insistence on thwarting him.

  Cynthia looked at him in concern. “You okay, Ty? Anyway, Jeremy here made good on his promise to treat me to lunch.” She slid into the chair next to Tyrell and nodded at the one next to Ryan. “Have a seat, Jeremy. Ryan won’t bite, though he might have cooties.”

  “Oh real mature, Parker.” Ryan ruined his attempted rebuke by speaking with a mouth full of food.

  “Gross!” Cynthia threw her napkin at him.

  Tyrell looked cautiously at Jeremy and watched as Jeremy took a moment to contemplate whether he really wanted to join the group. He looked as though he’d rather be anyplace else, but after a moment, he shrugged and sat. Tyrell exhaled, surprised at how anxious he’d been that Jeremy might decide to leave.

  Jer
emy looked far better than he had the day before. His skin was pale, but not in the sickly way it had been at Carm’s. The ringlets in his hair bounced playfully around his shoulders as he settled on the bench seat. Tyrell still found the style unusual, but it was a pleasant change from the sweat-logged look he’d been sporting the last time they met. Other than the hair, Jeremy’s appearance was unremarkable, if one didn’t count his T-shirt. On it was a figure sporting a large, curly wig, an odd jacket, balloon pants complete with tights, and shoes with those large buckles like the Pilgrims used to wear. The figure wore sunglasses and was jamming on an electric guitar. Under the picture was the caption: Hard Bach. Tyrell smiled despite himself, not that he had any idea who Bach was.

  “Cynthia, did you hear about the dead girl they found at Kendall after our game the other day?”

  She glared at Ryan. “Yes, jerk face, and thank you for trying to ruin my lunch.” She held her stare until Ryan glanced away in disappointment, and then sighed heavily. “It’s so sad… and so weird.”

  Tyrell looked over at her. “What’s weird?” He blinked in alarm when she suddenly teared up. “Whoa, I’m sorry! Did you know her?”

  Cynthia shook her head as she reached for a napkin. She discreetly blew her nose. “No, but our coach told us this morning what she learned about Sam.”

  “Who’s Sam?”

  It was the first time Jeremy had spoken since he’d sat down. Cynthia looked at him tearily.

  “He was a senior on our track and field team. They found him in the Dan Ryan Woods a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Dead,” Ryan added when Cynthia failed to elaborate.

  Jeremy sat back, his eyes wide. “Wow, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

  Cynthia’s smile was weak but genuine.

  “So what happened to him?” Tyrell asked gently.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”