Vivaldi in the Dark
By Matthew J. Metzger
Published by Queerteen Press
Visit queerteen-press.com for more information.
Copyright 2013 Matthew J. Metzger
ISBN 9781611529814
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America. Queerteen Press is an imprint of JMS Books LLC.
* * * *
Vivaldi in the Dark
By Matthew J. Metzger
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 1
The baton came down, the bows came up, and the storm ended. The silence was as ringing as the strings, and rolled in like an angry tide to reclaim the stage, flooding over the orchestra until the very last memory of the tempest in Vivaldi’s Summer had been washed away.
Mr. Weber lowered his arms slowly, with an air of grandeur, looking down his long nose at the boys as though they were not boys, but failures.
“I suppose,” he pronounced heavily in the empty theatre, “that that will have to do.”
They stared back at him, unblinking, waiting.
“You are merely children,” he continued. “You do not know the power and rage behind such storms. You have not the ruthlessness of this energy. You only have playtime. Perhaps it is too soon to expect this of you.”
Still they waited, used to their maestro’s moods.
“You are dismissed,” he snapped, waving them off and turning away. “I do not need boys. I need men. Return when you are men.”
He barely paused long enough to gather his bags before sweeping out of the empty theatre; the moment the door clanged shut behind him, the assembled orchestra rippled into subdued life, the tangled squeaks and wails of the strings clashing and protesting with their rough treatment at the hands of teenagers as they packed up the stands, returned the chairs, and zipped their instruments back into their bags. Over it all, the noisy hubbub of voices in various stages of breaking failed to harmonise, much like the violins in their dubiously executed storm.
And as the noise swelled and ebbed from their assigned seats to the messy outpouring at the door, one hung back.
“Catch you tomorrow, Peacemaker!” someone yelled, and then the door boomed shut for the second time, and a single figure remained centre-stage, lit by the bright halogens used in the absence of a performance.
He would have cut a tragic figure, perhaps, had he remained and played the haunting solo on the empty stage to the empty hall. He would have echoed not only the genius of a long-dead composer, but the ghosts of all the heroes ever written and forgotten, had he simply stood and played. But defiant tragedy was not his style.
He retreated, with the exquisitely designed violin, to a backroom beyond the stage, a back entrance for technical crew and minor actors, littered with dust, mouse droppings, and deep shadows impenetrable by the bright lights of the stage. There, he closed the door, flicked on a single bulb, and tugged the violin back to his shoulder.
Without music, he played. With no primary violin, he played the distant echo of a concerto in A-major, the violin sounding detached and mournful in the absence of its leader, in the absence of its partner.
Alone in the darkness, he played Vivaldi.
* * * *
This is gunna be our year! xxx
Eight-thirty in the morning. Tuesday. A brooding September sun, low in a milky sky, and the crunch of leaves on the path that ran between Attlee Road and Churchill Street. That strange autumn warmth-that-isn’t-warm that made the school blazer too thin, but a coat overkill. That hushed lull of a neighbourhood evacuated to the rush-hour traffic, but not yet in the silent throes of abandonment. The kind of quiet contentment that came with a life used to its own course, but not yet jaded.
It would have been nice if it wasn’t the first day of school.
Jayden sifted his shoes through the leaves as he ducked through the gap in the hedge into Churchill Street, and wished—not for the first time—that he was an adult already. He had turned sixteen yesterday, but it still wasn’t close enough. In two-and-a-half years, he would never have to go to Woodbourne Comprehensive again, and those two-and-a-half years seemed like a lifetime away. A year before he could take the scholarship exam to St. John’s Independent, the boys’ private school on the other side of town. Eighteen months before he could apply to university. Three years before he could actually go.
He couldn’t wait—but he had to.
So Charley was a liar, or an optimist, or both. She said the same thing every year, and every year, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t going to be their year, or at least not his. It would be exactly the same as last year. And last year…kind of fucking sucked, actually.
Charlotte Cross of Churchill Street was waiting on her garden wall for him, once Jayden stopped dragging his feet through the leaves long enough to reach her. After a blazing summer of denim shorts, a new style every day for her long fair hair, and perfecting the art of makeup and pouting in mirrors (apparently it looked sexy; Jayden wasn’t stupid enough to argue with her), she looked younger now, scrubbed clean, ponytailed, and those endless legs hidden in tights and a shorter-than-regulation black skirt. Younger, but still outrageous, as she demonstrated by sliding off the wall into a hug and crooning a greeting in his ear.
“I,” she announced, linking their arms and cuddling up to his shoulder like he was her boyfriend or something, “have a plan.”
“Oh, no.”
“Don’t gimme that.” She pinched his elbow. Jayden noticed that he’d grown, by the way her temple bumped lightly against his shoulder now. It didn’t last year. “I have a plan, and it involves you and me getting everything we ever wanted.”
“How about just pass our exams and survive the year?”
“No.” Charley pinched his elbow again. “Our year! Priorities! We are going to be successful, and rich, and everything everyone else ever wanted. You and me. Deal?”
“Deal, I guess.”
“You’re so moody,” she complained. “Step one: I am going to get a
job. I’m sick of getting hand-me-downs from Lucy. She has no taste.”
Privately, Jayden thought Lucy at least had a better sense of what flattered her figure than her younger sister, but he had enough self-preservation instincts not to tell Charley that. She was scary when she got mad.
“Step two,” she continued as they crossed the main road and into the territory of Woodbourne Comprehensive. The line of weather-beaten oaks kept the grey concrete of the school from spilling into the road, but it was a near thing. “Step two is for you, and that’s to actually act in one of your plays, not just write them!”
“Okay, Charley, no, I get enough flak for…”
“And step three…”
“If it ain’t the skirt and the—oh yeah, the other skirt,” a familiar voice, gravelly with fag smoke, drifted over the chain link fence after them as Charley marched them defiantly through the gates and past the smouldering cloud of nicotine and danger that hung over the group of blazered boys at the entrance.
“Step three,” she continued defiantly as she rushed them into the main entrance and past reception, where the squeaking corridor was empty and only the tiles could hear her, “is to get us both boyfriends by Christmas.”
Therein lay the problem.
“Because that’s ever going to happen, Charley,” Jayden said, extracting his arm as they reached their lockers. It was simultaneously great and crap that they kept their lockers from the first year up. It was great because it meant he could get to it, sort out his things, and get out before any of the other boys had finished their morning fag. It was crap because they all knew where it was and defaced it on a weekly basis. Sometimes, if classes were really boring or someone’s girlfriend wasn’t putting out, on a daily basis.
“It will happen,” Charley said decidedly. “I’m done with being single, and so are you!”
“I’m happy to wait.” Well, he wasn’t, but he didn’t have much choice. Not round here.
“No, you’re just afraid you’ll get more crap,” Charley huffed. “Come on, Jayden, there’s no way you’re the only gay guy in town. Town’s too big!”
“Gay and out are different things,” Jayden pointed out, slamming his locker on his lunch and shifting his bag to the other shoulder for the twenty-metre walk to Charley’s. She still had a picture of Josh Meyer taped to the inside, he noted idly. So much for being over her crush from last September. “Anyway, university is going to have much more interesting, intelligent guys than this place ever would.”
Charley grumbled, sliding her arm back through his the moment that she closed her locker. “What about St. John’s?” she suggested. “All boys private, they’re bound to be gay.”
“You can’t make gay people, Charles.”
“So why do single-sex schools churn out so many of them, huh?”
“They don’t, it’s a myth.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed, hugging his arm. “I predict—listen to me, listen—I predict that you will go off to St. John’s for sixth form, and you’ll have half a dozen gay friends and a boyfriend within six months.”
“What happened to getting a boyfriend by Christmas?”
“You’ll do that too,” she said imperiously, waving a hand like his protest was a bee in front of her face. “And then you’ll find someone even better at St. John’s, and you’ll be the gay version of Don Juan by the time you go to university to become a famous whatever.”
“Playwright.”
“Whatever,” Charley repeated. English, for her, had been little more than an opportunity to stare at the back of Josh Meyer’s head.
“I appreciate your faith,” Jayden said as they approached the lists of new form rooms on the glass doors of the drama block. “But it’s not going to happen. Not in this town.”
He squeezed her arm warningly against his side as they reached the doors, where other students were already clustering. It might have been common knowledge that Jayden was gay, but it wasn’t exactly something he wanted to advertise. He got enough shit as it was.
“Right.” Charley turned on him and hugged him, kissing him on the cheek when she dropped back. “I’ll see you in maths. Remember! This is our year.”
Jayden rolled his eyes at her and let her go.
* * * *
The Brightside Theatre was a small, almost timid construction on the north edge of the town centre, a fifteen-minute bus ride from school, or a thirty-minute walk in this September mildness. It had two theatre halls, a small lobby, and a cafe that was barely ever open. It had been a project by the council five years ago to bring more culture to town, and Mum’s amateur dramatics group (the horrifically named Stars) had promptly moved in for rehearsals and, three times a year, performances.
Jayden went to The Brightside almost every day after school. It was safe there. The smokers never got the bus, and if he went to the theatre, they couldn’t follow him home. Dwayne, the security guard, never minded letting him in. And at five-thirty, Mum would arrive with the other members for rehearsal (or whatever else they felt like doing, as it was as much a social club as an am-dram club) and he would get taken home in the car at six-thirty. It was Jayden’s refuge, and the only reason he hadn’t gone mad from the oppressive atmosphere at Woodbourne.
He didn’t go much in the summer, so Dwayne halted him in the lobby for a chat. Dwayne was in his forties, divorced, and likely desperately lonely. He was always showing people pictures of his kids, two little girls that had been taken back to Jamaica after his wife left him, and Jayden humoured him even if he couldn’t understand half of what Dwayne said, thanks to his accent: the bastard child of Jamaican and Cockney and utterly impenetrable. But he tried to listen. If Dwayne liked him, after all, he’d let Jayden come and go when technically he wasn’t meant to be there.
Slipping into the main hall brought him peace. The quiet, grand atmosphere was like a balm after a day at school, having his locker promptly decorated with variations on ‘faggot’ and being shoved into the girls’ bathroom between classes. The theatre didn’t care. The theatre had doubtless seen hundreds of gay kids, and it didn’t care. It was all about the performance in here, all about the show, and it didn’t care what the actors or the writers or the techs actually were.
Jayden climbed up onto the stage and took a long, calming breath.
He was going to get out of here. He had a plan. At the end of Year Eleven, he would apply for the scholarship to the sixth form at St. John’s, the private school. He would do his A-levels there, and he would apply to the University of Cambridge. And he would get in. And at Cambridge, nobody would care if he was gay. He could join the drama societies there. He could act, and write, and find other people like him. He could find a boyfriend.
Three years until he was out of here for good. Until then, The Brightside would get him through it.
And then he heard the music.
Life did not come with a soundtrack, and yet some low, haunting melody was drifting through the hall. Jayden stiffened, tuning into the sound. Some classical piece, some string instrument. And it sounded sad. It sounded tragic, like there was a funeral going on in the next hall.
He dumped his bag on the stage and followed the noise off stage left, creeping down the back steps towards the storeroom and the dressing rooms, a narrow, damp corridor leading out to the fire exit. The music got louder as he inched towards the green sign, and when he paused outside the storeroom, the low cadence shifted into a high, keening cry.
He opened the door—and jerked back as a violin bow swept out to jab him in the throat. The music stopped, the quiet ringing in its place, and the boy holding the bow stared at him from close range. A boy with loose, dark curls, stunning green eyes in the naked light of the storeroom bulb, and a pristine black uniform, probably from one of the schools beyond Queen Mary’s Avenue. An ethereal, out-of-place stranger disturbed from a haunting sonata that made something in Jayden’s chest twist uncomfortably. A ghost, if not for the pressure at his throat of the violin bow.
“What,” the boy asked, “the fuck do you want?”
And the spell was broken.
Chapter 2
“Sorry,” the intruder said, holding up his hands in some automatic gesture of compliance, and he dropped the bow. “I…uh…”
“What the fuck do you want?”
The intruder coloured. Which was impressive, given the lack of any colour at all in him. He was fair-haired, fair-skinned, and…all right, so the brown eyes were a little out of place. “I, um, sorry,” he said again and lowered one hand. The other he stuck out. “I’m Jayden.”
He tucked the bow under his arm and shook the offered hand. Jayden, whoever he was, had a firm grip, if a little damp. He was nervous. “Darren.”
“Was that…what were you playing? I mean, it was you, right? I heard it out in the auditorium, and it was…really good.”
Darren ruthlessly crushed the wave of bitterness at the compliment, focussing instead on the fluttery motions of Jayden’s hands when he talked. Pianist’s hands: long-fingered, slender, pale. They looked to be fairly smooth; the handshake had been.
“You play?”
“Me? No. God no. I barely…I mean, I can’t even read sheet music. I think I did the recorder when I was, like, six, and I was awful and I never did it again.”
He talked a mile a minute. Framed by the stark light of the corridor, he had for a brief second looked like some third-class angel, not so much the Archangel as the winged clerk at the heavenly reception desk, but Darren was fairly sure that if there was a God, he would have equipped his celestial waiters and hangers-on with a shut up function too. This Jayden didn’t seem to have one. Oddly, Darren found himself not minding too much.
“So are you…I mean, you must be allowed to be here, Dwayne’s not deaf, so are you…part of the orchestra, or…?”
“Yes,” Darren said flatly. “Every Tuesday and Thursday, three ‘til four.”
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