Strange Sweet Song (32 page)

Maestro Keppler’s eyes narrow, but he nods.

“Don’t, Nathan,” Sing whispers. “You’ll be trapped here.”

Nathan looks at her and smiles. “Then only one thing will have changed.” And he opens his fingers.

The Maestro snatches the necklace and peers at it. The gun falls and skitters down the sloped roof. Nathan picks up Sing’s coat from where it has fallen and drapes it over her shivering shoulders. She leans against him, suddenly exhausted. He kisses the top of her head. Somewhere below, a light flicks off.

“But it’s just going to continue.”

They both look to the Maestro, still contemplating the bright teardrop in his hands. His voice is soft now.

He looks up as if surprised by their presence. “It’s going to continue, isn’t it, Nathan? You love her.… That’s so strange.”

Nathan’s tone is careful. “What’s going to continue, George?”

“I can’t keep you here, can I?” The Maestro’s face is so forlorn, Sing almost wants to comfort him.

“I’ll stay,” Nathan says.

George sighs. “You don’t
want
to stay.”

Nathan is silent. Sing watches his face, but she can’t read his expression. Maestro Keppler is looking at them, brows drawn, mouth curved in a pensive frown. He lets the crystal fall, and it clatters on the slate.

“Good-bye, Nathan,” he says, lifting one of his gleaming leather shoes.

There is a moment of quiet confusion. Then, ugly comprehension dawning, Sing and Nathan rush forward at the same instant.

They are too late. The rigid heel of the Maestro’s shoe slams down onto the slate with an icy crunch. Sing and Nathan freeze. The Maestro lifts his shoe again to reveal a tiny, glittering splatter of shards.

“What have you done, George?” Nathan says, eyes wide. “We
need
the crystal.”

George smiles. “I only needed you, Nathan.” And he is frozen, still smiling. His eyes lose their sheen, then their intelligence. Sing gasps as the Maestro seems to grow hollow before her eyes. She clutches Nathan’s arm. After a moment, Maestro Keppler sinks slowly to the slate rooftop like a macabre, deflating balloon. Sing sees again her mother’s white dress, collapsing onto the stage, the woman inside it just as dead.

She lets out a cry and buries her face in Nathan’s chest. But he, too, is disappearing.

“Nathan!” He can no longer stand. She helps him lie down on the slate. “Nathan! We can fix this. I’ll find the Felix. I’ll—”

He looks up at her, weak but bright-eyed. “It’s all right.”

Her tears are ice sliding down her cheeks. She doesn’t want them to fall on him. She gathers him in her arms. He feels so light now.

His mouth is against her cheek, his breath still warm. She squeezes her eyes closed and grips him tighter. But suddenly, there is nothing to grip.

She looks down to find a mass of lustrous black feathers scattering in the wind.

Hold on to them. Gather them. Get him back. Hold on.
She scrabbles at the air.
Grab them, grab them,

“Grab what?” Ryan says.

Sing realizes she has been staring vacantly at the red-and-gold-leaf design on the Woolly lounge’s lush carpet. “What?”

Ryan’s expression is puzzled yet amused. “You just said, ‘Grab them.’”

“Oh.” She studies the carpet, trying to remember. She didn’t intend to stay this long at the reception; she must be overtired. Her father and the president are still in conversation across the room. She thought she’d lost Ryan to the famous pianist Yvette Cordaro and a string of giggling girls, but apparently he has found his way back to her.

The golden leaves on the carpet seem to swirl. She has a strange, overpowering desire to scoop them up in her hands and clutch them safe. “I think I meant the leaves,” she says. “On the pattern, there.”
Is that what I meant?
The shape of it is right. But something tickles her brain.

“Well,” Ryan says lightly, extracting a glass of something from her hand, “I don’t think you’ll be needing any more of
these
.” His green eyes are as alert as ever, but slightly shadowed by the late hour. He puts Sing’s glass down on the tray of a passing server and takes her arm. “Here, it’s getting boring. I’m going to play some waltzes to celebrate my impending victory.” He steers her toward the shining grand piano in the corner.

She watches the golden leaves in the sea of red carpet float by as they walk.

Sixty-one

M
ORNING SUN DIGS ITS FINGERS
into Sing’s closed eyes, causing her to groan and pull a pillow over her head. Her head aches. Why does her head ache? What time is it?

She peers blearily at the clock on her bedside table: 9:24. She’d better get up if she’s going to be in good voice for
Angelique
this afternoon. Harland Griss will be there. The New Artist vacancy is at stake, perhaps more than she would like to admit. Her father’s influence is important, but she knows he doesn’t wield it the same way her mother did. If Griss chooses to look elsewhere for his new butterfly, Ernesto da Navelli will leave it at that.

No one is using the bathroom at this hour on a Sunday. Students with something going on today were up long ago, and those who had something going on last night won’t be up for a while. The tile floor is cold on Sing’s bare feet. She takes her time brushing her teeth, trying not to think about what she will do with the hours before the performance. She squints at her reflection, face tilted so close that the mirror traps clouds of breath on its cool surface.

Her eyes are shadowed, her skin pale. She steps back, studying.

Something pricks at her mind. Something isn’t right.

She shuffles back down the hallway in her bathrobe. Voices emanate from behind the closed door across the hall—Jenny and Marta, still in their room. They have nothing to worry about today. The performance of
Angelique
will come and go, they will do their parts, onstage and in the orchestra, and then school will continue. School, homework, practice, performance, boys, drama, self. Sing, trying to bring her own future into focus, is surprised to find herself longing for their company.

Who are they?
Barbara da Navelli would say.
You’ll be leaving this school soon. Why do you need them?

Sing puts a hand to her door but doesn’t go in. She stands for a long moment in the empty hallway, listening to the muffled voices behind her. It’s not often she feels the
girl
inside her—not a child, not an adult, but the part of her psyche that longs for validation from her own kind. Ryan feeds this part of her—
Ryan,
that’s why her head aches, the semifinals reception that ran far too late into the night—but she needs friends, too.

Barbara da Navelli wouldn’t understand. She fed only two parts of herself, the professional and the strategist. Never the girl. “I need them because I’m not you,” Sing says aloud.

*   *   *

“That’s it?” Jenny says. “‘Sorry’?”

Sing shrugs. “That’s all I’ve got.” She strokes the yarn mane of a glittery stuffed Pegasus.

“Her name is Belinda,” Marta says.

“I shouldn’t have taken you guys for granted the way I did,” Sing says. “And I shouldn’t have played the celebrity card on you. It’s … embarrassing. I don’t really have an excuse, I guess. New schools are hard.”

Jenny eyes her. “Yes, well, some of us manage it.”

“I know,” Sing says. “I’m sorry. Please … don’t do a tawdry exposé on me for
The Trumpeter
.”

Jenny snort-laughs. “Oh, it’s
tempting.
But the thing is, Sing, we do love you, really, even though you can be kind of an entitled bitch, there I said it. And it’s hard to stay mad at you for screwing Lori Pinkerton since she’s just about the most irritating person there is. I secretly love that she’s finally getting what she deserves. Just don’t make a habit of it, okay?”

“My mother made a habit of it,” Sing says. She and Marta are seated on Marta’s bed, while Jenny sits nearby in a rolling desk chair, the lazy light of the free Sunday morning drifting in through the ancient beige curtains. Jenny is still in pajamas, while Marta wears flowing, embroidered garments that are possibly also pajamas. “It’s easy to get caught up in the superficiality of it,” Sing says. “How a thing looks.”

“Oh, right.” Jenny swings her legs and spins slowly in the desk chair. “Makeup and eyebrows and hair. Like you need to worry about
that.
Ryan may be a jerk, no offense, but he is definitely the cutest guy on campus. And,
and,
you stole him from the resident diva. So it’s not like you’re going to curl your hair and put on lipstick and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, my God, Sing, how could I not have seen how amazingly hot you are? Let me dump my popular cheerleader girlfriend for you.’ Because that’s
already happened.
”

“She’s not talking about that,” Marta says. “She means wanting the lead just because it’s the lead, not because it’s right.”

“It
is
right. It’s what I’ve always wanted.” Sing winds the Pegasus’s yarn tail around her fingers. “I just … I think I need to feel
normal
today. I don’t know why.”

“Of course you know why,” Jenny says. “Everything is riding on this performance. You’re wondering if you’re good enough. Honestly, you’re pretty damn good.”

Sing pulls her hair into a ponytail with one hand.
Zhin would tell me I’m the best,
she thinks. Then, surprising herself, she says it aloud.

“Psh,” Jenny says. “I’ll tell you one thing—you do
not
need her.”

“I know,” Sing says. “She’s just … she’s like…”

“Like what? Underhanded? Egotistical? Betray … erous?”

“She’s a lot like my mother.”

Jenny arches a brow. “Vell, zen,” she says with a thick accent that is possibly trying to be German, “I sink ve’re getting shome-vhere! Zat vill be vun hundred dollars. Next veek ve disguss your boy-froind.”

Sing laughs. “Oh, God, let’s not.”

“I don’t know how you forgave him, by the way.” Jenny flops back in her chair.

Forgave him.
There’s something fuzzy there, in Sing’s mind. Ryan cheated on her with Zhin. And probably with Lori. Heck, he probably cheated on Lori with Sing. But she forgave him, right? At the reception last night, after the Gloria Stewart semifinals. Something about it feels so unreal.

The door opens and Carrie Stewart pokes her pixie face in. “Hey, guys, I just saw Mr. Bernard!”

Jenny’s expression is flat. “Oh, my God.”

“No!” Carrie breathes. “Maestro Keppler
died
last night!”

*   *   *

During its busy Sunday lunch hour, the Mountain Grill smells like beef stew, onions, cinnamon, charcoal, woodsmoke, and ladies’ perfume. The window is cheerful but cold, and Sing snuggles into her sweatshirt, grateful to be out of uniform. Midday sunlight illuminates the details of the wood grain on the tables and floor, as well as the smooth, silver lines of Marta’s mermaid pendant as she leans forward, mouth open slightly.

“What did he say?”

Sing found her father in Hector Hall surrounded by faculty, apprentices, and a couple of quick-out-of-the-gate reporters. He managed to speak to her briefly, with Jenny and Marta waiting for the details. “Heart failure,” she says. “Around midnight. Discovered in his bed early this morning by Apprentice Garcia. The ambulance or whatever, the hearse, I don’t know, has been and gone. That’s it.”

Jenny frowns, crossing her arms. “And the performance is going on? The man is
dead
.”

“Well, they could just tell everyone to go home, I guess,” Sing says. “But there’s been so much put into the Autumn Festival, it would be a shame.”
Maestro Keppler is dead. Heart failure.
Why does that seem …
wrong
?

“Will your father conduct?” Marta asks.

Sing’s stomach squirms. “Yes.”

“Wow!” Marta says. Jenny raises an eyebrow at her, but she goes on. “I know, I’m sorry the Maestro died. But it was his time.” Sing resists the urge to roll her eyes; Jenny doesn’t. “But I may never get the chance to sing under Maestro da Navelli again. It’s kind of incredible.”

“It will be interesting.” Sing keeps her voice low, even though their booth is fairly insulated from the Grill’s other patrons. “My father’s never conducted
Angelique
.”

“Really?” Marta is aghast. “But he must know it!”

“Yeah,” Sing says. “He knows it.”

Despite Jenny’s efforts to hide it, Sing catches the movement in her shoulder as she elbows Marta under the table.

“No, it’s okay.” Sing smiles and actually feels it inside as well as outside. “It will be good for him. And a treat for the audience. Well, I guess ‘treat’ is kind of a horrible way to put it.”

The waitress brings their lunches in thick ceramic dishes that clatter against the wooden table. “Not really,” Marta says. “We can’t help it the Maestro died.” She dips a spoon into her tomato soup.

“He was like a
hundred,
” Jenny says. “Honestly, what was holding that man together? I think we were his last stop, honestly.”

Sing scrunches her eyebrows. “His last stop?”

“Well, he’s been haunting the Orchestre de Paris for so long, I didn’t think anyone could peel him off the walls and shoot him stateside again. This ‘homecoming performance’ always felt less like a publicity stunt and more like a grand finale.”

“That’s awfully cynical,” Marta says.

Sing studies her hamburger. Again, that strange prickly feeling starts at the back of her mind. She saw Maestro Keppler only last night, at the Gloria Stewart semifinals. He was there with his assistant, Apprentice Garcia, the doughy-faced young man who turns Ryan’s pages at rehearsal. Did the Maestro seem sick? She doesn’t think so. But then, you can’t always tell with hearts.

“I still think we should be allowed a crazy, campuswide snowball fight instead of the performance.” Jenny pokes at her potatoes with a short fork. “We could use the woods! It would be epic! And, you know, healing.”

“Not very mournful,” Sing says.
The woods.
She pictures their ashy smell, their sharp chill. The night she escaped there, after Carrie Stewart’s party. She can remember the woods with pristine clarity. Or can she? In some of her memories, there is a strange vagueness. A dark cloud.