by Pearl Love
“Yes! I mean, that’s so sweet of you to ask.”
“Well, you were one of my first friends here at school, so I thought….” Could you be more lame, Michalak? He’d been trying to figure out a way to counter her inevitable assumption that he was asking her out on a date, but he realized he’d done more harm than good when color bloomed in her freckled cheeks.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she replied.
Jeremy smiled weakly, at a loss at how else to respond. “Good. So, uh, I’ll see you later, then.”
“See you!”
Jeremy closed his eyes so as not to have to watch her walk away, her ponytail bouncing happily along with her as she went. So much for that, he thought. He didn’t not like her, he rationalized. He just didn’t like her in the way she so obviously liked him. That emotion was unfortunately reserved for another unlikely prospect. And speak of the devil….
Jeremy straightened from where he’d been leaning against the wall to the side of the main doors when he saw Tyrell. He allowed himself a moment’s indulgence to appreciate Tyrell’s casual, loping walk before forcibly drawing his mind back to the task at hand. He raised a hand in greeting when Tyrell looked in his direction.
“Hey,” Jeremy said once Tyrell was in earshot.
Tyrell met his gaze quickly before looking away. He moved closer to Jeremy, stepping out of the way of the crowd. “What happened yesterday?” he asked.
Jeremy sighed. “Yeah, sorry about that. I had to babysit my niece. Oh, while I’m thinking of it, what’s your cell number?”
“Right. Good idea.” Tyrell waited until Jeremy was ready with his phone, and then rattled off the digits.
“Got it,” Jeremy said once he’d finished entering the number in his contacts. “I’ll send you a text so you’ll have mine.”
Tyrell nodded. “Sorry I was out on Monday. My grandma was sick.”
“That’s too bad,” Jeremy replied, his concern genuine. “Is she all right?”
“Yeah, she’s better, but I need to go home right after school to check on her while my mom is at work. So, did you find anything out about your pendant?” Tyrell continued, abruptly shifting topics.
Jeremy looked at him curiously. Tyrell was still looking off at the crowd of students, but his voice sounded oddly tense. It was too bad they wouldn’t have any time together after classes, but he shrugged mentally, figuring it couldn’t be helped. “Nothing useful, I’m afraid. According to my mom, the stone was popular among both royalty and religious cults back in the day.”
“What do you mean ‘back in the day’?”
“Like hundreds, even thousands of years ago.”
Tyrell whistled. “Huh.”
“Yeah, it’s interesting but, like I said, not really useful.” Jeremy waited for Tyrell to take his prompt and frowned when he remained silent. “You okay?”
Tyrell glanced at him sharply before looking away again. “What do you mean?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem… distracted by something,” he said uncertainly.
“No.” Tyrell shifted his weight and stuffed his hands in the back pocket of his jeans. “Except that I found something really nuts.”
Jeremy tensed. “What did you find?”
This time when Tyrell looked up, he caught Jeremy’s gaze. “I got to thinking how those two girls were discovered in the same places where we had those creepy experiences, and I wondered what they might have in common. The only thing they did, as far as I could tell, is that they both died of apparent heart attacks.”
Jeremy straightened. “You’re right. I didn’t consider that.”
“So anyway, that made me remember how Sam, the track team captain, died. Same thing. Young guy just dropping dead of a heart attack. And then there’s, uh….”
“My brother?” Jeremy said.
Tyrell nodded. “Yeah. I wondered how many similar deaths there had been, so I did some digging online.”
“Let me guess,” Jeremy said, feeling queasy, “you found a pattern.”
“Exactly. Over a dozen in the past couple of years in Chicago alone. All of the victims were under twenty-one, and all died of apparent heart attacks.” Tyrell’s expression was grim. “What are the odds of that, do you think?”
“Not high.” Jeremy grimaced. “Damn. That’s crazy.” He stared at Tyrell thoughtfully for a moment. “I still think there’s got to be some connection with Chris’s pendant. I can’t imagine what happened to me—hearing his voice like that or the light shooting out of it—was just a coincidence. He was definitely trying to warn me about something… if it really was him.” Jeremy curled his hands into fists. “Hell, I don’t know, but we should keep looking into this. There’s a pretty good library not too far from where I live. Maybe, um, you can go there with me after rehearsal tomorrow, and we can do some more digging?”
Tyrell’s face shuttered. He turned away, his body stiffening in blatant rejection of Jeremy’s suggestion. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean,” he added hastily, “we should probably split our efforts to, uh, cover more ground or whatever.”
Jeremy couldn’t fault his logic, but that didn’t stop a knot of disappointment from forming in his stomach. He had the sickening feeling that Tyrell’s reluctance stemmed from something more than a mere desire for efficiency. “Yeah okay.” The stream of students entering the building had slowed to a trickle, and when Jeremy glanced at the clock on his phone, he saw that it was nearly time for first period.
Tyrell had seen the display as well, and he stepped away with the clear intention of leaving. “I’ll see you in homeroom.”
“Okay. Oh wait,” Jeremy said before Tyrell could move.
Tyrell looked at him briefly and then toward the door, silently telegraphing his desire to go. Jeremy pursed his lips in annoyance. What in the heck was Tyrell’s problem?
“Are you going to Nicole Martin’s birthday party?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“She invited me, or one of her friends did anyway. Thanks for suggesting it to them.”
Tyrell stared at him, surprise written plain on his face. “What? I did?”
Jeremy began to suspect that his assumption was mistaken. Tyrell apparently had nothing to do with the invitation. “I was planning on going. Is that okay?” he asked, feeling stupid the instant he uttered the question. It wasn’t as though he needed to ask Tyrell’s permission.
“Yeah, sure,” Tyrell mumbled. “Later.”
Jeremy frowned after him, waiting until the door had closed behind him before making his own way inside.
TYRELL SPENT the day in a morass of confused emotions. Jeremy’s disappointment had been palpable when he rejected his offer to continue their research jointly. But Tyrell knew full well he was still too weirded out by what he’d seen yesterday to be able to concentrate on anything else where Jeremy was concerned. Even to his own ears, he’d sounded painfully stilted during their conversation that morning. He could only imagine what Jeremy thought about how he’d behaved. Homeroom hadn’t been much better, though at least he’d had the excuse of listening to Mr. Crabtree to take the focus off the fact that he was being standoffish.
Oh what a tangled web we weave.
Everything seemed to be irritating him, Tyrell realized, even his penchant for expressing his thoughts in terms of British poets. At least he was guaranteed to get an A in English Lit, what with how crazy his life had become lately. He was heading to lunch when he encountered another aspect of his emotional disarray.
As usual, Shaunteé was walking with some of her dance squad cohorts, and the other girls giggled annoyingly when they saw him. Shaunteé merely smiled with her usual self-assured flirtatiousness.
“Hi, Tyrell.”
“Can I talk to you for a second?” he said abruptly, not in the mood to make nice.
Shaunteé blinked at his low but pointed tone. “Sure.” She turned to her friends. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
Ty
rell waited until the other girls’ chatter had faded and they were alone. “Why did you guys invite Jeremy to Nicole’s party?” he asked without preliminaries.
She tilted her head in confusion. “What do you mean? Shouldn’t we have?”
Tyrell exhaled sharply, frustrated by her evasion, though he was unsure whether or not it was deliberate. “How does Nicole even know Jeremy?”
“She doesn’t. I asked her to let us invite him,” Shaunteé answered serenely.
Tyrell raised a questioning eyebrow. “And you did that because?”
Shaunteé lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug. “He’s new to this school, and we just wanted to make sure he feels included. Besides,” she continued, her hazel eyes sharp as she looked up at him, “you guys are friends, aren’t you? I always see you sitting together at lunch.”
If he’d been forced to give her expression a name, he would have said it was jealousy, but that was beyond ridiculous. He tried and failed to find a hole in her argument, but the reasonableness of her answer didn’t fully calm his suspicion. The scene from the previous afternoon was indelibly burned into his brain, and he was positive one of the assholes who’d been harassing Jeremy was the guy Nicole was dating. She’d been seeing him since at least the Spring Dance their sophomore year, and he hadn’t heard that they’d broken up. That fact made the invitation to Jeremy all the more perplexing, but he didn’t have nearly enough to accuse Nicole of anything. Or Shaunteé for that matter.
Tyrell’s next thought, of course, was why in the hell he was so concerned in the first place. He had meant it when he’d told Cynthia it wasn’t his job to look out for Jeremy, no matter that he’d said it partially to assuage his guilt for not doing precisely that. So what if Nicole was nicer than her boyfriend. There was no reason to suspect they were conspiring in some way to harm Jeremy. Shaunteé was probably right that Nicole and the dance squad members were merely extending their hand in a show of school spirit.
“Yeah, he’s cool,” Tyrell replied. “So, uh, tell Nicole thanks, I guess. Jeremy sounded like he was looking forward to it.” Or, at least, that’s the impression he’d gotten during their quick meeting before classes. Tyrell had been too uncomfortable trying not to think about what had happened to Jeremy to pay all that close attention to what he was saying. No, that was a lie. He’d been hyperaware of Jeremy the entire time, and the sensation had made him eager to escape from Jeremy’s curious gaze.
Shaunteé’s smile was back firmly in place. “No problem. Nicole is just about done with the planning, with our help, of course.” Her laugh was throaty, not at all like the irritating tittering of her friends, and it reached straight into Tyrell’s shorts. “I’ll let you know the details soon.”
“Okay,” he replied.
“See you later.”
Tyrell inhaled when she brushed against his arm as she moved past him. The hallway was practically empty, so she’d obviously done it deliberately. The scent of her perfume lingered in his nose, making him feel somehow both better and worse at the same time.
Chapter TWENTY
“SORRY FOR the delay, everyone,” Mr. Crabtree said as he called the band to attention. “I know I promised you Holst last week, but the sheet music company was late with my order. Anyway, here it is.” He held up his thick conductor’s score. “Perhaps the greatest piece of the early twentieth century.” Looking pleased that there were only a few murmurs of dissent, he picked up a large set of copies and walked over to the clarinet section. “Pass these down, and let me know if anything is out of order.”
Jeremy took the set Mr. Crabtree handed him and passed the rest to his left. The score wasn’t for the entire suite, though he hadn’t been expecting that. Most conductors arranged ensemble practice in order of difficulty of a piece, but it seemed Mr. Crabtree had a different philosophy.
“Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” Jeremy mouthed as he read the title. It was an interesting choice to begin with seeing as it was far from the most difficult selection in the suite. He’d have thought “Mars” or “Mercury” would have been the teacher’s first choice. He had never played “Saturn” before, but he’d heard it on numerous occasions. The first was when he’d gone to see Chris’s high school performance his senior year, mere months before his death.
“How many of you are familiar with this one?” Mr. Crabtree nodded as he glanced around at the smattering of raised hands. “That’s what I figured. ‘Saturn’ isn’t as well-known as some of the other pieces in The Planets suite. So, I thought we could all take a listen to it first so you know what to expect.”
Jeremy didn’t hear anything at first after Mr. Crabtree pressed a button on the large stereo system set into the far corner of the band room. He turned his head and strained his ears.
“No, neither the CD nor the player are broken,” the teacher said, articulating Jeremy’s thoughts. “Listen carefully, and you’ll hear the notes hidden beneath the quiet.”
Jeremy closed his eyes, and after a moment, he did hear the faint strains of clarinets and flutes. Over the course of several minutes, the music slowly increased in volume and intensity until, well past the four-minute mark, the piece suddenly burst forth with a violent cacophony of discordant sound. The experience left Jeremy with a sense of frustration followed by surprise and an unsettling sense of dismay.
The piece was like the perfect metaphor for his relationship with Tyrell, Jeremy thought wryly. After their rocky beginning, everything had seemed so promising once they’d revealed their shared secret to each other. Jeremy had thought things would continue on an even keel while they attempted to uncover the reason behind the disturbing events that seemed to be swirling around them, unnoticed by everyone else.
But then, all of a sudden, something had changed between them. Tyrell had done nearly a complete one-eighty from the friendliness he’d shown after making his heartfelt apology upon joining the band. In the week since they’d agreed to look deeper into the mystery they’d stumbled upon, Jeremy had barely exchanged a word with Tyrell. Either they were in a group, which made having a real conversation basically impossible, or Tyrell was nowhere to be found. Even during the most logical time, after band practice, Tyrell had made himself scarce.
Jeremy had tried to speak to him the previous day after Mr. Crabtree dismissed them, but Tyrell was gone before he could finish stowing his clarinet. After getting up the nerve the other day to send Tyrell a text that had gone unanswered, he’d tried to tell himself Tyrell was still just busy looking after his sick grandmother. The excuse was wearing thin, however, as he began to suspect Tyrell was actively avoiding him.
Jeremy was about ready to scream or wring Tyrell’s neck. He risked a glance toward the percussion section, where Tyrell sat fidgeting with his drumsticks. Outwardly, he looked the same as ever—tall with wiry musculature, neatly cropped hair, and a gorgeous face that had invaded Jeremy’s dreams on more than one occasion. But after a moment, Jeremy noticed how carefully Tyrell was preventing his gaze from roaming anywhere close to where he sat.
The same had been true for days now. Even when they were in homeroom or sitting together with Cynthia and Ryan at lunch, Tyrell never looked at him. Oh, their gazes might briefly meet in passing, but Tyrell always glanced away as though seeing him was somehow unbearable. Jeremy had no idea what had caused the shift in Tyrell’s mood, but he couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt.
On top of everything else, he hadn’t made any additional progress in determining what connection, if any, his pendant might have with what had been going on. Only two days before, the news reported that another body had been found, this time a fourteen-year-old boy. He’d been discovered in Lincoln Park, lying yards away from his damaged bicycle. Due to the lack of trauma, other than a few scrapes from his apparent fall off his bike, the police concluded he’d died of natural causes.
Jeremy would have bet money the kid had a heart attack. He’d tried desperately to catch Tyrell the day before, hoping to discuss whether he also tho
ught this latest death might be connected with their investigation. Tyrell had still been in evasion mode, however, rendering Jeremy’s efforts fruitless and stoking his frustration to an all-time high.
Once the recording finished, Mr. Crabtree took the woodwinds through the opening third of the piece. The brass players looked bored, not having much to do in this first section, but Jeremy let the notes wash over him as he played, hoping the quiet opening strains would soothe his anxiety. Sooner than he would have liked, Mr. Crabtree was calling an end to rehearsal.
“Good work, everyone. Oh, by the way, I’m instituting a new cleanup policy starting today. After every practice, two people will be responsible for clearing away the music stands and stacking them off to the side. Be sure to take your music with you, else it might not be here next time.” Mr. Crabtree waited until the chorus of groans died down before continuing. “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Unfortunately, Mrs. Jones, the choir teacher, has asked to use this room for her rehearsals on the days we don’t have practice. Apparently she likes the acoustics in here better than in the auditorium where the choir usually rehearses.”
When Jeremy looked around, his fellow band members wore nearly matching expressions of resigned annoyance. He waited with everyone else to learn who would be the first casualties of their conductor’s congeniality.
“I’m doing this through random selection,” Mr. Crabtree explained. “There are enough of you that no one should have cleaning duties more than three or four times over the course of the school year. All right, first up, Mr. Michalak and Mr. Hughes.”
Jeremy glanced at Tyrell instinctively and saw his shock mirrored on Tyrell’s face. He turned a suspicious gaze on Mr. Crabtree, but the teacher was smiling benignly as everyone else scrambled to leave before he could change his mind about the assignments. Jeremy wiped his palms on his jeans, feeling unaccountably nervous about being mostly alone with Tyrell for the first time since things had gotten so weird between them.