“I’ve got less than a month of school left and then I’m off to college in the fall. What do I care what they think? They aren’t true friends, not by any stretch of the imagination.”
They sat together snacking on dried figs and apricots while Cody ran circles around Justin, in effect making a fool of him.
After practice, before leaving to shower, Cody gestured to Aiyana to come down to the court. Before saying goodbye to Sophia, she said, “I’m coming to Tonio’s on Saturday, okay?”
“Totally. If you don’t see me, ask. Sometimes I work in the back or in the office,” Sophia said. “You stuck to your guns the other night with Justin. You’re a strong person. I’m really proud of you.”
Aiyana smiled and waved. Her praise felt so good. Sophia was a really nice person. When she got to Cody, he leaned close. “Meet me outside the boys’ locker room in fifteen minutes. Follow my lead no matter what I do. Okay?”
Aiyana nodded and he ran off.
Fifteen minutes later, she waited for him where he’d asked, alone again. A group of girls waiting for their boyfriends made a point of ignoring her.
Justin came out of the room with some of the team members.
He saw Aiyana and grinned. “Waiting for me? ’Bout time you came around.”
The jerk thought she’d come for him? After what he’d done to her? Was he really that dense?
Cody came out of the locker room just in time to hear Justin’s remark. A cheerleader called Cody’s name, but he ignored her and walked over to Justin, grabbing him by the back of his jacket and shaking him as though he were nothing more than a puppy. “I heard you’ve been spreading rumors about my girl.”
His girl? What a good brother to do this favor for Emily, and for a girl he only knew because their fathers were friends.
Justin sputtered, but Cody gave him no time to reply.
“How do you get off on telling lies about someone great like Aiyana? I should kick your ass.”
Aiyana scrambled forward. “No!” she shouted. “Don’t fight. Don’t get into trouble because of him.” She jutted her chin toward Justin, angry with him, but also at herself for having ever found him attractive.
She held her breath, afraid that Cody might go too far. You could have heard a pin drop in the hallway.
Cody had three inches and twenty pounds of muscle on Justin. No way would Justin come out the winner, but Cody could get in trouble for instigating a fight. Those kinds of things went on a kid’s record.
She touched his arm. “He isn’t worth it.” Justin was nothing but a bullying nobody.
Cody let go of Justin, who stumbled. “Next time, think twice before you spread a bunch of lies.”
Cody wrapped his arm around Aiyana as they walked outside. She died and went to heaven on the spot. “Thank you. That was really nice of you,” she whispered.
“We’re not done yet.” He steered her toward his car. “If you were really my girlfriend, we’d go out for something to eat.”
He stopped walking abruptly. “Would that be okay with you? I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to do.”
Not want to go out somewhere with Cody Jordan, even if it was only pretend? She grinned at him. “Oh, yeah, I want to.”
He grinned back and held open the door of his car. Before she got in, they heard, “Hey!” Justin stood on the school steps surrounded by his entourage.
“If she’s your girlfriend,” Justin called, careful, Aiyana noted, to keep his distance from Cody, “why did she go out with me the other night?”
“We were fighting,” Cody lied glibly. “We made up, though, didn’t we, sweetheart?” He kissed her on the lips, quick and hard, making a show of possession.
Justin made some kind of derogatory comment Aiyana didn’t catch, but judging by his stiffening body language, Cody did.
He stalked away and Aiyana stared after him. Where was he going? He stopped on the sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot, no longer on school property. “Come over here and say that, if you have the nerve.”
Cody wouldn’t get into trouble with school if they fought there. Smart. He was also calling Justin’s bluff.
Justin’s bravado evaporated and he went back inside the school, his friends following, but darted dark glances at Aiyana. No doubt, they were all going out the side door to avoid Cody.
Cody returned to the car. “I guess his true colors are showing. Let’s go.”
They drove to a family restaurant on Main Street, where they ordered burgers and fries.
Cody stretched and scratched his stomach. “Good practice today. I’m starving.”
Aiyana tried not to stare at the rippling of his muscles, at the peek she got of a hard stomach when his T-shirt hiked up. Cody was comfortable in his body in a way that Aiyana had never been in hers.
She toyed with the paper cover from her straw, nervous, because Cody was kind and good-looking, and she didn’t know what to say to boys. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me today.” Oh, so lame.
Cody waved away her thanks. “You did the hard part. I saw what those creeps were saying about you. I can’t believe you had the nerve to come to school today.” He gulped back half of a large cola. “That took real guts.”
“Your sister helped me a lot.”
He nodded. “Emily’s smart.” He stared at Aiyana for a long time. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
His mouth dropped open and he got a little pale. “I kissed you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Aiyana giggled. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to report you. You were helping me.”
Cody’s stiff shoulders eased back against the booth. “When do you turn sixteen?”
“On Thursday.”
Their meals came and Cody took a huge bite of his hamburger, taking his time chewing and swallowing. “This Thursday? That’s not too long to wait.”
“It feels like it’s taken forever. I’m tired of waiting.”
“What are your plans for the summer?”
“Dad usually sends me to the reservation for a month so I can learn about my heritage.” She’d been eating her fries, but put down her fork beside her plate. “I don’t want to go. I’m trying to get out of it. What about you?”
“My dad’s got me working at the resort.”
“What will you be doing? Working at the desk or in the office?”
“Landscaping.” Cody grimaced. “Can you believe it?”
“But why? Your dad owns the place. He can give you any job he wants. Why would he make you do that?”
“He says to build character. He says I need to get my hands dirty, that I should learn all of the jobs from the bottom up.” He’d finished his burger and wiped his lips. Aiyana liked the way they were formed. “He’s right. I need to learn everything.”
“Are you going to college?”
“Yep. In September. Business.”
She nodded because that made perfect sense. Chances were, he would someday take over his father’s business.
When he took her out to his car, he held her hand. He insisted on driving her home, even though she walked all over town by herself. Just before she got out, he said, “Aiyana, don’t undervalue yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re worth more than a dozen Justin Whites. There are boys who are worthy of you, but he isn’t one of them. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She got out of the car and entered the house, happier than she’d been in ages. Only when she closed the door behind her did he drive away.
CHAPTER SIX
WEDNESDAY MORNING. The time had come for Emily to talk to Aiyana’s class.
She stepped into the school and paused inside the front door.
Classes had already started and the halls were empty. The eerie silence held too many bad memories.
Ghostly echoes rang in the hollow stillness.
Emily Schmemily. So childish.
Emily Jordan’s got a friend in Gordon’s. Intimating alcoholism.
Emily puts out. Here’s her phone number. Promiscuity. She’d been a virgin until college. They’d called her a slut and a skank.
In hindsight, it was all stupid, but also relentless. Daily. How could a girl maintain her self-esteem against a never-ending barrage of name-calling and negativity? At the time, she’d been devastated, even though somehow she’d managed to hide her hurt feelings from the world, faking bravado. But it had hurt. Terribly.
Emily stood outside the classroom door and waited to be called in, pulse racing.
She didn’t usually play for strangers. Her music was an intensely private thing and she kept it close, usually playing only for trusted friends. Today, she would be playing for a bunch of high school students, possibly the toughest crowd on earth. Maybe this had been a bad idea. Maybe she should just ramble on a bit about archeology.
Standing in the hallway of her former school, she struggled to stop the old panic rising in her chest. It wouldn’t do to walk into the classroom hyperventilating. She was no longer that unhappy young girl. She no longer had to pretend to be strong. She was strong.
She had survived the ringer washer of her relationship with Jean-Marc and had finally found the strength to call it quits. She’d found the strength to break away from a career that hadn’t excited her anymore, and that no longer gave her the “juice” she needed in life.
The final step in severing ties with that past, in breaking the mummy wrap that bound her to Jean-Marc and archeology, would come in time. As soon as she heard back from Arthur, she would know what her next step with the prayer book should be.
Surely, she could survive this school and the bad memories.
The door opened and Aiyana peeked into the hallway, her expression both uncertain and hopeful. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Emily forced a game smile. This was all for Aiyana. Being here was tough, performing even harder, but Aiyana needed her.
This morning, there had been nothing new on the internet, all because of Cody’s intervention yesterday.
Please, Emily thought, let today finish off the situation altogether.
She entered the classroom and walked to the front, noting some of the kids Aiyana had described for her, the key players in her abuse. Justin sat in the row near the window. In the tilt of his head and the way his body sprawled out of his chair and into the aisle, Emily detected arrogance and a sense of entitlement. She also saw more. When he looked at Aiyana, anger simmered on his face. The guy obviously didn’t like to lose.
So. There might still be trouble there. Maybe she should alert Cody, but Aiyana would need to learn to defend herself at some point in her life. Maybe after all of this support, she would have more confidence to do that.
After an introduction to the teacher, Emily took out the two violins, her own and the one she’d rented.
“Hi.” A slight tremor in her voice betrayed her nerves. She hoped it wasn’t bad enough for everyone to hear. “As you all must know, I’m not Aiyana’s parent, but I am a good family friend, and she asked me to talk to you about the work I do.”
She laid the rented violin on the teacher’s desk.
“I’m an archeologist, but I decided I’d rather talk today about music. My passion is playing the violin.”
She held her violin and bow ready to play. “This is an instrument based on a simple premise—pull the bow across the strings to make music. As you can imagine, with beginners that sounds pretty much like cats screeching in a back alley.”
Some kids laughed. “Once a musician knows what she’s doing, though, she speaks to us from the heart through her instrument. I know few of you listen to classical music, but bear with me while I play one of the most beautiful pieces ever composed for the violin, Bach’s Chaconne for solo violin, from Partita number 2 in D minor.”
She set bow to instrument and became immersed in Bach’s melody. Standing here in front of the class, everything she had suffered at the hands of arrogant boys and mean-spirited girls flooded her, the loneliness, the isolation and her sense of hopelessness.
She didn’t want that for Aiyana. Emily played fiercely. As she had done back then, she opened her heart to the healing power of the music, and the ugliness of the past slowly faded until only beauty remained.
When Emily finished and opened her eyes, it took her a moment to come back to reality. When she did, she found that not everyone had been enthralled. The boys who lounged across the back of the room looked bored. Others looked happy.
One girl’s expression arrested Emily’s glance around the room. Her hands were cupped one inside the other on her desk, the knuckles bone-white. From beneath her closed lids, one tear trickled down her cheek.
Emily’s heart broke for her, for whatever she was going through, especially here where a show of weakness could leave a girl vulnerable to attack by her peers.
Emily had to lighten the mood, both so the girl could collect herself and to engage those bored boys.
“I’m going to play you a fiddle classic, because it’s showy and gives you an idea of how different an instrument can sound when playing completely different songs.” She played a truncated version of the “Orange Blossom Special.”
She was working up a sweat. Some of the kids were engaged. Others, still not so much. She had to get through to this crowd.
“I know fiddle music isn’t what any of you listen to, but I hope you can see how versatile an instrument can be. It can be classical, or rooted in folk traditions. Then there’s fusion. Melding and blending and showcasing different cultures.”
She started some fiddle riffs that morphed into a jig that became a run on some current Irish stuff she really liked then became heavily laced with an East Indian beat that then spun to jazz.
“Instruments are yours to make of them what you will. You can play anything on any instrument.”
She had most of the class listening, but the die-hards, the four boys sitting across the back looking as if they couldn’t wait for lunch hour, were hard-core cynics.
“Now, let’s try something completely different.” She picked up the rental violin, the workhorse with the heavier strings. “Who here thinks you need an electric guitar to play rock? How many of you have heard of Apocalyptica?”
The four boys in the back sat up straight and exchanged glances.
“For those of you who don’t know of them, they started as four classically trained cellists. They play Metallica. Yes, on cellos.”
She ran the heavy rental bow across the strings and adjusted the tuning. She would never play Vivaldi on this, but Metallica? Bring it on.
She explained that she’d had heavy strings put on this violin. “If they can do it with cellos, why can’t I with a violin? This is their version of ‘One.’ Okay, here goes. Fingers crossed that the violin survives.”
She played “One,” starting by plucking the strings in Metallica’s signature opening, then switching to the heavy bow she’d rented.
Further into the song, the sound became harder and heavier, and picked up speed.
Strings on her bow snapped, broken strands of horsehide whipping back and forth with her frenzied sawing motions. Still, she played, wringing youthful disillusionment, defiance and triumph from the violin.
Her hair fell in waves around her face. Sweat bloomed on her forehead and cheeks. On and on she played, wresting sound and passion from these bits of wood and string.
She ended abruptly. Done. Spent.
Dear sweet freaking God, she loved making music. Adored it.
The silence aft
er her last notes was broken only by her heavy breathing.
More silence and then...resounding applause. Even the bored boys at the back of the room were on their feet, clapping and hooting, while the teacher tried to quiet them down. That wasn’t happening.
Emily swiped her forehead with her sleeve and laughed, joy coursing through her. There was no high on earth quite like this.
The only one not clapping was Justin, his face full of a sullen lack of grace. Too bad. His loss.
She glanced at Aiyana, whose face glowed. Emily had definitely made points for Salem’s daughter.
She had done more than that, though. She had conquered the demons that had walked these hallways with her for too many years. The past fell from her like sheets of ice from a ’berg.
She was free, bullies and bad memories vanquished, replaced by joy.
A movement just inside the back door caught her eye. Salem. Oh, he shouldn’t have come, especially given how hurt he’d been yesterday, but he didn’t look hurt now. He looked proud. Of her.
A tiny frown marred his tanned forehead and he watched her as though sorting out a puzzle.
They’d always had a witchy ability to read other. It had become rusty over the years, but she tried anyway.
Read my expression, answer my question—what’s wrong between us?
He looked away briefly. He wasn’t going to answer.
When he met her gaze again, though, an understanding passed between them. From Salem came, loudly and clearly as though he’d spoken it, a profound Thank you. Her response was an animated smile. My pleasure. My deepest, happiest pleasure.
The lunch bell rang, but Emily couldn’t leave. Too many of the students asked her about music, about whether she gave lessons, about how they could learn to play Metallica, or any heavy metal, themselves. And, hallelujah, the crowd included the four boys from the back of the room. She’d managed to break through their defenses.
She took down email addresses and promised to get back to them. Aiyana waited patiently, smiling.
Last, the girl who’d been so affected by Bach approached, uncomfortable but determined. She raised her pointy chin and asked, “Can you teach me to play? Can you teach me that song? The Bach?”
Always Emily Page 12