Crossing (13 page)

I
breathed in.

And when I exhaled, I felt the surge of my lungs, the power flowing out of them. I angled my larynx to bring out the desired sounds, tweaked miniscule muscles for the most dramatic of tonal fluctuations. I had total mastery of the sounds I sang: the pitch, the depth, the tonal base, the melodious warbles. I knew how to split nuances into vast ranges of feeling. There was a marked difference in my singing.

Mr. Matthewman, my audience of one that morning, was ecstatic. “I don’t know what you did at the hospital over the past two days, kid, but it’s brilliant.” He looked at me, every feature of his face seemingly accented with an exclamation mark. “Brilliant!”

I nodded. It
was
brilliant.

“Well,” he said, getting up from his piano and stool and walking over to me. “You’ve arrived, Kris. At the perfect moment, too. Not a day too soon.” He placed his hands on my shoulders. “Tonight, at the dress rehearsal, you’re going to shine. You’re going to shock the world,” he gushed. Then he sighed heavily. “Never,” he said, excitedly shaking his head from side to side, “never would I ever have wanted to wait so long to give you a chance to practice with the chorus. To sing before the teachers. But there were unforeseen, unfortunate circumstances…” He looked down at me. “Your mother doing all right then?”

I nodded. “Should be returning home later this morning. She’s promised to come to the show. She’s excited.”

He patted me hard on the shoulders again, almost thumping down on me. “You’ll show them, kid. You’ll show them all.”

“I’ll show them,” I said.

“That’s the spirit!” he added. He went to his piano and rummaged through some paper. “I thought I put it in here somewhere…” he muttered to himself. “Aha!” he said, bringing out a piece of paper. “You need to go to room five twenty-four at lunchtime today. Miss Jenkins will be there to give you your costume. She worked in overdrive mode over the weekend to finish it. Said she scrapped her original once she realized her work was probably going to be photographed and taped by the media.”

“Five twenty-four. Lunchtime. I’ll be there.”

“And be nice, Kris. You know what she can be like.” He rolled his eyes.

“Who? The dragon lady?”

He chuckled. “Now, before you go, some last words of advice. No hollering or screaming, no excessive talking, OK? We really need to protect your voice. OK? Basically, you really should keep to yourself today and tomorrow.”

That, I thought, would not be a problem. “Stay out of the cold—it’ll shred your voice to tatters if you don’t watch out. A long, hot bath tonight after the rehearsal. Soak in it for at least an hour. Plenty of sleep. Try to get at least nine hours tonight, if not more. What else am I forgetting? Oh, yes—an afternoon nap tomorrow if you can. Come in here, catch a few Zs at around four or five. You can sleep on the couch. Eat something before five but not after—it’ll pay hellfire to your butterflies if you do, and it might make you drowsy.”

“Mr. Matthewman?”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I was wondering about the tickets…”

He smacked his forehead. “But of course.” He fished into his inner pocket and took out ten tickets. “As promised. Your wish is my command,” he said in his best genie voice. “Do you know how expensive those tickets have become?” He shook his head. “With all the media coverage, this school’s making a windfall.”

“I’ll only be needing three tickets.”

“Three? But you’ve been allotted ten. You’re the lead, after all, Kris.”

“Even so, three’s enough for me.”

“Here, take all ten.” He handed me the tickets. “Sell the extras on eBay—you’ll make a killing.” He winked at me.

“You didn’t hear it from me, of course, right?”

“Who are you bringing?” I thought this was a safe way to ask about his personal life. He never alluded to any family or friends. He was guarded about his past.

“Oh, I have some old colleagues of mine driving up from the city. It’s a big event, this one.”

“Old friends?”

“I’m not sure I’d call them friends,” he said, raking back hair from his eyes. “Just people I knew when I was at Julliard.”

I packed my bag and zipped it up. Then something occurred to me.

“When we meet again tomorrow morning…will that be our last practice?”

The question caught him a little off guard. “Huh. I haven’t really thought about it. Well, I suppose it would be.” He shook his head. “But we can’t let things like that distract us right now. Tomorrow night, Kris. The big night is tomorrow night. Stay focused on that.”

“And there’s no chance of any last-minute cancellation?”

“What are you talking about? Of the performance?” He saw me nod at him. “Of course not.”

“It’s just that I thought…maybe Mr. Marsworth is facing a lot of public pressure to cancel the show. I can see him folding if he senses that public sentiment leaning that way.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Kris,” he said. “In the end, everything will come together. You’ll see.”

“How can you be so sure? I mean, there’s no telling what might happen. There might even be another disappearance. Who knows when the guy might strike again? He’s been anything but predictable, after all.”

“No, that’s not going to happen.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I give you my assurance, Kris.” His voice was firm as he spoke; he stood up and walked over to me, placing his hand on the back of my neck. It was warm and sweaty, and I flinched at the touch.

“The show will go on.” There was a flinty glint in his eye. “I guarantee you this.” And his hand grew hot on my skin as if suddenly charged. His fingers twitched on the nape of my neck, energized by some sudden prospect. He shook his head as if clearing it. “Well, off you go,” he said.

I grabbed my backpack, nodded a quick good-bye, and left. The door closed with a thud behind me. And right outside the classroom, taped on the wall, was a
Missing
poster. The faces on the poster jumped out at me: Anthony Hasbourd. Winston Barnes. Trey Logan. Their smiles were accusatory, and their eyes, even through the black and white photocopy, were snappish and castigating.

I wondered where they were at that very moment. Imprisoned somewhere far away, in the dark basement of some weirdo, the unwilling participants to his psychosis? Or lying facedown in the woods somewhere, or face up drifting down the river, or stuffed into a refrigerator and dumped at a landfill? I stared at the three of them, trying to find some resemblance, some common trait that might have drawn the abductor to them in the first place. But where one was wimpy, another was filled with brawn. Where one lacked intelligence, another was filled with academic potential. Nothing seemed to tie the three together. Except their eyes, of course. With a singular feeling, they glared at me. I hated the way they looked. They seemed to know something I didn’t.

I
t was night, and the shepherds sat upon the fields. Sheep of varying sizes grazed under the pitted sky, their forms as stationary as the stars above. The shepherds rested easy, their calloused hands laid soft against the smooth bark of their rod and staff. A slight breeze blew across the land, drawing with it the musty smell of wet weeds and the dank odor of toil and sweat. It was a night like countless thousands.

Then the heads of the sheep suddenly lifted in unison, their noses pointed up and towards the northern mountains, their bodies stiffening ever so slightly. Under their hooded attire, the shepherds barely moved, but their eyes were alert now, their fingertips edging around the curves of their staffs. It was an angel. It started to float towards them, its arms raised in consoling fashion, its face a picture of chaste radiance, white wings sprouting from behind. It glided closer and closer, sailing across the terrain…then it tripped over its feet.

The speakers screeched with feedback. A stagehand turned the auditorium lights on.

“Oh, Samantha, I thought I told you to be careful about the wires. If you can’t remember to step over them in rehearsal, there’s no way you’re going to remember tomorrow night.”

“Sorry, Miss Jenkins,” Samantha said, picking herself up. As she patted down the front of her costume, a little plume of dust mushroomed out.

“Oh,” sighed Miss Jenkins tragically, “the wing is all bent out of shape now. Come here, let me fix it.”

The real world broke in. The glaring spotlights, the impatient, demanding teachers sipping from coffee cups. Wired models of sheep standing at bay, disheveled cotton wool shed on the floor beneath. The lingering smell of glue in the air, of varnish and fresh paint. Around me, tired students shifted in their costumes, weary from a dress rehearsal gone awry. After two hours of practice, we’d gotten only ten minutes into the show; I’d yet to sing even a note.

A five-minute break was called. A number of students made their way to the bathroom. Police officers, pulling some serious overtime, sauntered over to the connecting hallway. I stayed behind, finding a seat on the front row.

“Kris.” It was Miss Jenkins standing in front of me.

“Yes?”

“I trust you’re ready to sing?”

I nodded my head. “I’m ready.”

“Well, Theodore has told me good things about you.”

I smiled awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

“What we’re going to do,” she said, tapping her clipboard, “is skip a few scenes so we can squeeze you in tonight. Get in at least a few of your songs. I think it’s important that we get to hear you,” she said, her voice stilted.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said pertly, and she walked away.

The students wandered back slowly, looking tired. Miss Jenkins lifted her spindly finger into the air and announced that practice would resume.

Except practice never did resume. I was standing in the middle of the stage all alone, readying myself for the solo. The stage had been set. The orchestral music had already begun. I sensed all eyes zeroed in on me, curious, expectant. I breathed in and felt a pocket of air gather in my lungs.
Let it germinate in there
, I could hear Mr. Matthewman’s gravelly voice saying.
Let it crystallize into sweet musical notes
.

It was only then as the lights dimmed down that I first noticed the swiveling blue, red, and white lights sashaying on the ceiling. We all blinked at those lights, none of us, I don’t think, really understanding their true import at the time. But then gazes shifted away from the ceiling and towards the high windows. The siren lights radiated in like a sickly rainbow.

And then suddenly the door to the auditorium opened. A voice yelled out, heard clearly even above the dying, discordant notes of the orchestra. “They’ve found the bodies! They’ve found the bodies! In the pond, they’ve found the bodies!”

All thoughts of the show ground to a halt. The air in my lungs halted mid-flight, plummeted to the ground.

There was a pictorial beauty about the next few moments, a slavish energy to them that seemed to emblazon punctuated images into my memory. I remember them with both an ease and a revulsion: the ease with which one recalls the most whimsical of memories, the revulsion of nightmarish images that won’t go away.

In my memory, silence pervades the whole scene. This cannot be; surely there must have been shouts, screams, worried cries, the crackle of police radios filling the air. But in my memory there is only silence, the silence of a mime where the whole troupe of actors move in a seamless, effortless synchronization with one another. If there was a cry of protest from Miss Jenkins, we didn’t hear it, nor do I hear it in my memory. We scampered down the scaffolding; we rushed down the auditorium steps; we jumped out of the orchestra pit; yet there was no sharpness to our movements, no herky-jerky. It was all an aqueous slide, a silky flow out of the auditorium, a stream of light mercury pouring out.

And then we were running, gliding along the fields toward the pond. The siren lights from afar splashed languidly on the ground before us, soft, lazy sweeps of blue then red then white. We must have run for a minute, at least, but in my mind there is no effort, no exertion in our legs or chests. There is only the softened glee of children flying to the circus as one.

Even when we reached the pond, even when we saw that they were pulling the sodden bodies out of the break in the ice, the reverie continued. There must have been police officers intercepting us, for I can see them in my mind holding outstretched arms towards us. But they look more like ring-masters beckoning us to come closer, to take a closer look. And there were yellow ticker tapes on the perimeter, but in the matte-dulled lights of revolving red, white, and blue, they look drained of color, indecisive. Off to the side was a man in a jogging suit, hugging himself, his dog rapt at the end of a taut leash, still barking, its breath gusting out of its mouth in thick, loutish clouds…

Two bodies are lying on the ground, shining with wetness. The ice water has preserved them—Anthony Hasbourd and Winston Barnes, pale white as stripped mannequins. A peaceful expression on their faces, as if they have only just fallen asleep while gazing up at the canopy of stars above. And the last body is now being pulled out, stiff and unwieldy, and laid on the icy ground. Trey Logan. And just before a blanket is hastily drawn over him, I see his open eyes, pools of black set in harsh relief against the shock of whiteness that covers his face. The eyes stare at me with pinpointed condemnation.

Even an hour after the bodies were discovered, police kept pouring into school, carpeting the fields with swiveling siren lights. Reporters rushed over, their cars and vans careening around the slick roads. Uniformed officers began dispersing the swelling crowds, but I was already gone by then.

I biked to church. Not to seek some kind of spiritual solace, but because Naomi was there. At some kind of youth group meeting where she’d be singing on the worship team or sitting in a circle studying the Bible. I needed someone to talk to. I needed Naomi.

It was so dark and quiet in the sanctuary at first that I thought everyone had already left. But then I heard a murmuring of voices coming from a corner in the front. There was a group of them, hunched over, praying. I sat down in the back pew, far removed, and waited. My back was slick with perspiration. I waited.

There were only a few of them tonight, no more than ten. Attendance was sparse, affected no doubt by the disappearances. There were long periods of silence interspersed with short, somber prayers. I saw Naomi sitting on the steps leading to the pulpit. A faint haze of light fell on her; her head hung down against a kneecap, and she barely moved. Her slim porcelain arms extended out of her sleeveless turtleneck like white silk. I looked away.

Not too long after, they finished with a chorus of soft amens. I stood up; Naomi saw me immediately and came over.

“What are
you
doing here?” she said, surprised.

“Hey, just wanted to see how you are.”

“You’re all hot and sweaty. Did you bike here?”

I nodded, then began to tell her about the discovery of the bodies at the pond. Her eyes widened as I spoke, her hand clasping me tightly on the arm.

“Jason should know,” she said as she spun around, referring to the pastor’s son. “Come on, let’s tell him.”

“Wait, Naomi.” I touched her on the shoulder.

She paused and looked at me. “What is it?”

“I need to tell you something,” I said urgently. I glanced around. A few of her church friends were observing us from the front, not openly, but with curious, sideway glances. “Not here, OK? I can’t do it here with all these people around.” Maybe it was the bodies I’d just seen, how tangible they made the possibility of death, but I found that I could no longer wait. Enough pussyfooting around. I looked at her. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time.”

And then the most amazing thing happened. Her eyes suddenly softened like diamonds melting, glistening with a new wetness.

“Look,” she said, and stepped a little closer to me. “I’ve wanted to talk to you, too. We’ve both been so busy, it’s been forever since we’ve had a chance just to talk.” She reached out and took my hand. I could smell her shampoo, she was so close to me. “During the time we’ve barely seen each other, something amazing happened.” She was smiling now and stepped even closer. “I’ve come to realize something.”

The light was hitting her eyes just right, illuminating their deepest pools. I could see beautiful brown flecks in her eyes.

Barely able to speak, I whispered, “I know. I’ve realized something, too.”

Her eyes widened, then moistened even more. Her hand touching mine was soft, gentle; it was Naomi holding my hand in a way she never had. Fifty moonlight kisses were nothing compared to that one touch on my arm.

“Naomi,” I whispered. “I feel the same way. I know. I know.”

Her eyes flashed with surprise. “I didn’t know you knew.”

“How long have we known each other, Naomi?” I asked her tenderly. “I know you better than anyone else does.”

And just then, the moment was destroyed. A couple of teen boys moved into our space, clearly wanting to speak with Naomi. I backed off.

“Let’s talk later, OK, Xing?” she said crisply, cleanly.

As I watched her, I realized I had underestimated Naomi’s rise to superstardom in the church. She had gone from pew-warmer to attention-getter to godly princess. There’d been hints of this meteoric rise, but the days of suggestion were now officially over. Now the boys were going to start moving in on her like a tsunami wave. On Sundays at church, in her frilly summer dress, or at picnics in her spaghetti-stringed shirts and short-shorts, they were going to swarm her. Like they were already beginning to do now.

Afterwards, she came to me, glowing from all the attention.

“Whew,” she said, feigning exhaustion. “Too many people.” She made a show of arching her eyebrows in fatigue.

“Do you have some time we can talk now?” I asked her. I sat close to her, the length of our arms almost touching.

“I think so. Until the next batch of people comes running for my advice.”

I paused, not really sure how to proceed.

“Jason told me the police are all over school,” she said.

“Yeah, they got there pretty quickly.”

“He also heard that they really botched it. They didn’t seal the area off quickly enough. Again.”

I nodded, remembering the crowds of people. “Onlookers got there pretty fast. Everybody’s curious, everybody’s afraid.” I shook my head. “We had to cancel rehearsal.”

“Aw, that’s too bad. But you’ll be ready for tomorrow night, right?” She smiled at no one in particular. “But, wow, it gets me every time. I still can’t believe you’re the lead.” She saw my reaction. “No, I mean that in a good way,” she said, placing her hand for a fleeting moment on my arm. “So, big Broadway star, how does it feel to be just a day away from your debut?”

“I guess it’s OK.”

“Whatever,” she said, grinning. “Whatever you say, Mr. Man of Jerusalem. Not to sound corny, but you are The Man.”

I shook my head. “There’re more important things going on.” I turned to look at her. “What’s going on with you,” I continued quickly, “that’s more important.”

She stared at me for a moment, slightly bemused. Then she broke into a smile. “Oh, Xing, that’s so sweet.” Then she patted my shoulder.

She
patted
my shoulder. As one would a cute puppy.

I sat very still, sensing something off-kilter about this moment.

“I just can’t understand,” she went on, “how you found out about us. We’ve been careful to keep it a secret.”

I did not say anything. A sodden, cold weight hit me on the back of my head. I fought against it. I straightened my back and lifted my chin.

“Oh,” she said, gushing, “here he comes.”

Of course, it was a white boy; of course, it was the pastor’s son. Of course, he was attractive with sparkling blue eyes. Of course, he had a good build, was sensitive and spiritual, and of course, he was a great guy.

She cuddled up next to him. He was taller than me, broader than me, handsomer than me, spoke English better than me.

“Jason, this is Kris.”

And of course, his grip was firmer than mine.

“Kris, great to meet you. Nai’s told me all about you.”

It was awkward for about three seconds. But I could be strong before her. I could fight off the waves of disappointment. The next words out of my mouth were, “Tell me how you met, please.”

Naomi jumped at the opportunity, her words spilling out in joyful abandon.

I didn’t hear a word she said. Something about church, something about chemistry, something about the same wavelength. If she said more, I missed it. I blanked out on her words. I felt only one emotion. Betrayal. I wanted to grab her by the throat and ask how she could do this, how she could betray me by going out with one of them. I wanted to punch her; I wanted to kiss her.