A red tainted Silence (3 page)

That’s why I called you.” She squealed then and said, “Here he comes! That’s Nicholas!” I sat back in my chair, glad Jenny’d dropped my hand. I gripped my knees and watched as this boy -- he hardly looked old enough to be a senior -- with black hair and dazzling blue eyes in a pale, dirt-smudged face entered the scene and turned and grinned.

The audience went wild.

I looked at Jenny, stunned.

“They love him,” she said, and all I could do was nod.

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He had the audience -- including me -- eating out of his hand. And, oh, how he knew it, as he strutted around, flashed that grin, lived his part. His timing was perfection, his moves practiced and sure. He totally stole the show from the boy who played Joseph. I had to wonder why he hadn’t gotten that part. Except he was a little short; the guy who played Joseph towered over him. And I guess was better-looking, in a hard kind of way.

But it was Nicholas who entranced me. He smiled, laughed, delivered his lines in such a way that we were there. I was there with him, beside him where I longed to be. He and the guy who played Joseph and all the others tore into the next musical number, and I found myself completely lost as to what was going on.

I didn’t care. I was too busy falling in love.

I felt Jenny’s eyes on me, felt her hand touch mine. My own hands were clammy, the auditorium steamed. My jeans felt two sizes too small, and I shuddered with embarrassment.

As the song came to a stop, I felt torn into tiny bits when he exited the stage. I realized I’d stopped breathing. I wiped my hand across my mouth. I was shaking. Oh, fuck, I was shaking. I closed my eyes, felt Jenny’s arm wrap around my shoulders.

I groaned. My face burned. She’d witnessed my complete disintegration. I was mortified as I turned to look at her, but the loving, delighted grin she wore on her face reassured me like nothing else could have.

And then the stage faded to black, except for a single circle of light. In the middle of that light sat a battered wooden bench, and as I held my breath, mesmerized -- as was everyone else in the audience -- “Jacob” walked into the light and sat down, his hands clasped between his knees. I held my breath, my body throbbing as strains to a song I’d never heard filled the auditorium.

He began to sing.

I don’t think anyone breathed for the next five minutes. I know I didn’t.

Now that he sang alone, I could hear exactly what had made Jenny think of me. His voice, clear and strong, higher than I thought it would be but oh-so-perfect, filtered over us -

- over me -- wrapping itself around my senses. I was possessed, entranced. I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my eyes off him as I drowned in the words and the music. My heart thumped wildly in my chest, and I knew then, as his calm gaze settled on me -- on me! -- in the darkness, where I knew of course he couldn’t see me, that I’d found him.

Jenny was right. Here was our singer -- my singer.

I had to have him.

At that moment I knew that he and I -- somehow, someway -- would live, write, work, and love together. No one else could give him what he needed -- the music to carry that remarkable voice higher and higher.

The guy was a fettered star, and I wanted to be the one to break him free.

12 Carolyn Gray

It didn’t matter that I was hardly more than a kid myself. Shit, I was barely seventeen, he about a year older, I guessed, and, to my chagrin, not a dropout like me. But I knew. I knew. He left me breathless, and any shame I felt for the throbbing heat exploding in my groin was forgotten as the last strains of the song ended.

The stage darkened and the lights went up. The audience went wild. Jenny turned to me, her face triumphant. “See? He’s perfect!”

All I could do was nod. Jenny did know things. Her grin turned sly. “Want to meet him after it’s over?”

Again, all I could do was nod. I couldn’t move. She laughed. “Intermission. Want something to drink?”

“Yeah,” I choked out. She kissed me on the cheek and stood. I prayed she wasn’t aware of just how profound an effect Nicholas Kilmain had on me. I tried to think of anything and everything gross and disgusting I could think of -- fat men in Speedos almost did the trick --

to try to calm myself down. I grabbed the program as Jenny and her friends left -- chattering about him -- and scanned the cast list until I found his name. Nicholas Kilmain. The song he’d sung was titled “Betrayed.”

Disbelief filled me and I felt my heart pounding again. He’d written the lyrics himself. I flipped the program over; they were printed on the back. I scanned through them, almost as mesmerized by the words from the boy as I was by the boy himself.

They were haunting, beautiful, so sad. A song of betrayal, yes, but also of hope.

By the time the play resumed, I’d memorized the words. His words that came to mean everything to me over the coming months. Strange words that didn’t really fit the play, but the crowd had loved them nonetheless. Nicholas Kilmain was accepted, loved, admired by his peers and teachers as I never had been by my own, and the song had been his gift to them. That was simply the way Nicholas was, and still is.

As soon as the play was over, I followed Jenny to the front of the auditorium, tagging along after her like some overgrown puppy. She asked person after person if they’d seen Nicholas, but no one seemed to know where he’d gone. Determined, Jenny grabbed my hand and went backstage. But it was to no avail. No one had seen him. He’d disappeared the moment the play was over.

“That’s what he always does,” we were told by the guy who’d played Joseph. He jerked his costume off and threw it onto the ground. “No one knows where he goes.”

“Won’t he be back?” Jenny asked, looking away as he pulled a t-shirt on.

He shook his head and said, “Knowing Nicholas, we’ll never see him again.”

“Why?” I asked, finding my voice. Panic raced through me. This couldn’t be happening. I had to meet him. Talk to him. “I’ve got to find him. Where does he live?”

“Can’t help you there.”

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“Why?” I repeated, feeling like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I felt Jenny’s hand on me, but I shook it off. The guy looked up at me, his expression stone cold. Finally he answered,

“Because no one knows where he lives. He graduated at Christmas and his parents moved away. He just stuck around to do the play.” He smirked at me, then hauled a backpack onto his shoulder and walked away.

I couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe that I’d never see Nicholas again, never hear his voice again. But it seemed like that was going to happen.

* * * * *

I love my mom. She never asked questions, but she knew I was hurting deep inside.

She’d just hug me, love me, tell me someday it would be all right. As much as it hurt, I never believed her, and she knew that, but she’d keep telling me anyway.

My music became everything to me as I pushed the issue of my sexuality deep inside myself. I finally accepted that, yeah, I had to be gay, though I stopped looking at other guys’

butts and no longer worried that anyone outside of Jenny would find out.

There was nothing to find out. Sex didn’t matter to me anymore -- I’d lost the one I wanted. The only one I wanted. At first I dated a few girls in a useless attempt to get his eyes, his voice, his face out of my mind, but it didn’t work. He was still there, and he refused to leave, staying as clear and sharp in my memory as when I’d first seen him.

Jenny got me all the pictures from the drama department that she could find. I pasted them into a book that I hid on my bookshelf at my parents’ house. I didn’t dare give Adam the chance to find it. I felt like one sick puppy every time I took that book out and stroked the tiny face inside, but I did it anyway. I still have that book. I still look at that book, the pictures smudged by years of falling tears.

God, I’m pathetic.

I’d lay awake on my cot in my brother’s apartment, and like a ghost, Nick’s face would reappear in my mind. Mel Gibson was replaced by Nicholas Kilmain in my fantasy jerk-off sessions. Time passed, and I found myself playing Nick’s song over and over again on my guitar.

Whenever I was alone and played it, I cried.

See? Pathetic.

My bandmates tried to get me to tell them about the song, but I refused. Soon, they stopped asking. I withdrew into my music even further then, writing every spare moment I had, but never finding in our new singer, Jake, the virtuosity I needed for my music.

14 Carolyn Gray

It was Nick’s voice I wrote for, though no one knew it.

The rest of that year passed. Then another.

I tried to find him. Jenny did her best to help, but no matter who we asked, who we talked to, we failed. Nicholas Kilmain had disappeared as if he’d never existed. The school wouldn’t tell us anything -- like we were going to find and kidnap him or something -- and none of the kids he’d hung out with ever heard from him anymore. He was gone, just gone.

I sank into depression. Got sick a lot, losing weight I couldn’t afford to lose. Became withdrawn and listless, finding peace only in my music. Jenny held me more than once over those months as I cried my frustrations into her shoulder. Without Jenny, I might’ve given up. Not on finding Nicholas, but on myself.

But he had existed. I’d heard him, felt him, experienced him. I had his words in my heart to prove it. It would, I knew, just be a matter of time before I found him again, and then I would never, ever let him go.

And at long last, it happened. The day finally came when Nicholas Kilmain walked back into my life, when I least expected him.

When I saw him, I fainted on the spot.

A Red-Tainted Silence

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“Hey, you okay?”

A soft, cool hand placed itself on my forehead. His hand. A whimper escaped me -- oh, so masculine, Brandon. I opened my eyes, blinked. Everything was fuzzy. The back of my head felt like a jackhammer had ripped into it, and my elbows smarted -- and dammit, my left hand. I pulled it to my chest and closed my eyes as a single tear escaped. I’d hurt the palm of my hand. Dammit dammit dammit.

Fingers wiped the tear away. His fingers. My eyes shot open, and I gasped as the fuzziness cleared and those incredible blue eyes I’d longed to see again stared down at me. I startled in shock.

“Lay easy,” Nicholas said in that velvet voice of his. “You hit pretty hard.” He didn’t realize the half of it. My brother pushed Nicholas away as he knelt beside me. “What the fuck happened, Brandon?” He was pissed. Not concerned -- pissed. No “Hey, little brother, you okay? Want me to call an ambulance? Mom?” Just “What the fuck happened?” That’s Adam.

“I -- I don’t know,” I stammered. “Help me sit up. Don’t touch my hand.” Adam grabbed one upper arm, and Nicholas -- oh, God, Nicholas -- the other. Together they lifted me to a sitting position, my legs sprawled for balance on the gritty floor as I fought a sudden wave of nausea. I wrapped my good hand around my stomach and bowed over, willed myself not to toss my lunch right at the feet of the man of my dreams. I took a few gasping breaths, wincing with the pain and dizziness.

Adam stood and I looked up. His mouth pressed into a grimace as he shook his head at me. “Your timing really sucks, man.”

Annoyed, I said, “I didn’t pass out on purpose, Adam.” 16 Carolyn Gray

He scowled and stepped back as Nicholas moved in front of him. Nicholas cast a look of disapproval in Adam’s direction and crouched in front of me, his elbows resting on his knees, hands between, as his gaze studied my face.

“Let me see your hand.” He grinned, totally misinterpreting my horrified expression. If only he knew how many times I’d imagined him saying something like that, or at least the

“let me” part. But not like this. Not with my brother glaring down at us. “Don’t worry; I’m an expert at playground injuries.” At my puzzled frown, he laughed. “I work at a preschool.” A teacher. The guy was a teacher? And of little kids, at that? I hesitated again, then held out my hand. He took it, and I closed my eyes as an eddying wave of joy soared from the connection between us and into my heart. Sappy, I know, but my stomach did little flips and my chest tightened. I was afraid to open my eyes, for fear of what he’d see in them. But I had to peek, steal these moments and memorize everything about him that I could.

He was oblivious to me, as involved as he was in examining my hand. His teeth grabbed his lower lip and let it go again, making me shiver with the simple sensuality of the gesture. His gaze shot to mine, and I stared at him through his bangs, feeling my face heat when I couldn’t tear myself away. The corner of his mouth rose, and then he looked down again. My neck burned with embarrassment. What must he think, my looking at him like that?

But he acted as if he hadn’t noticed. I breathed a sigh of relief. He bit his lip again --

how had I not realized before how beautiful his mouth was, how full his lips were? My secret little pictures didn’t do him justice; that was for sure. How could a guy’s lips be so ...

luscious? I’d never kissed a guy before, but right then, despite the very real fear that I would throw up any second, I wanted to kiss him. Adam and the other guys be damned.

Still oblivious to me -- at least, I hoped he was -- he turned my hand over, shaking his head as he picked out a few pieces of gravel that’d burrowed into my skin. His soft fingers gently probed my palm and I winced, pulling my hand back.

“That hurts.”

He smiled in chagrin. “Sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, but these need to come out.” I nodded for him to go ahead. “I don’t think it’s broken. Maybe sprained,” he said. He rubbed the calluses on my fingertips. “Guitarist?”

I nodded. “And keyboards and drums.”

He smiled in appreciation. “Virtuoso.” Then he bent back to his task, carefully pulling out the last bit of gravel.