The Ghost Sonata (32 page)

Gilda felt a little better after expressing her feelings in a poem. Her blood still boiled with outrage, but she couldn't help but feel pride in her literary talent.
Maybe this is what it means to “suffer for your art,”
she thought.

Gilda paused, searching for words that would make herself feel strong again—words that would somehow make her care less.

Somewhat bolstered by the pep talk she had just given herself, Gilda stood up and checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her false eyelashes were askew, so she peeled them off, slipped her sunglasses back on, and reapplied her white lipstick.

She returned to the hallway lined with practice rooms, determined to find Wendy and to forget about Julian.

 

Gilda burst into Wendy's practice room, eager to vent her outrage about Julian and announce the discoveries she had made in the library that afternoon. Instead, she fell silent. She felt compelled to sit down and listen.

Wendy leaned forward on the piano bench, squinting at the handwritten, yellowed pages on her music stand as her hands flew across the keyboard. Something about the music she played made Gilda's scalp prickle; she could literally feel her hair standing on end. She knew it had to be the music they had discovered in the well.

Gilda had heard of people who could literally see music—people who had something called kinesthesia, which enabled them to perceive sound waves as colors. As she listened to the Sonata in A Minor written by a boy who died at age fourteen, Gilda could almost imagine what this sensation must be like.
If this music had a color,
she thought,
it would be silver and pearly white, dark blue and black. It would be like a ghost wandering through a moonlit graveyard.

44

The Ghost in Gloucester Green

 

So far, Gilda had avoided calling home as a matter of principle. She wanted to be able to tell herself,
I went overseas for the first time in my life and didn't get homesick! I didn't even need to call home once!

But as she walked toward the Gloucester Green bus station, something about the waning daylight made her feel nostalgic for home. Maybe it was the damp chill that seeped into the air with the settling fog, the echoing
clip-clop
of leather shoes upon the pavement as people hurried home from work, the glimpses through basement windows of lonely students typing papers at their desks. To make matters worse, she kept seeing boys who resembled Julian—tall, thin boys with pale skin and dark hair—boys who hunched their shoulders as they cringed from the cold, wearing jackets that weren't warm enough.

Gilda stepped into a phone booth and placed a collect call to her mother. As she listened to the faraway ringing of her family's telephone back in Michigan, she read the graffiti on the phone booth wall:

Stephen answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, Stephen! It's your long-lost sister!”

“Mom's not here right now, Gilda.”

“I miss you, too.”

“Sorry—I just assumed you wanted to talk to Mom. Are you in trouble or something?”

“Why would I be in trouble?”

“Because this is the first time you've called. Mom was worried, but then she said, ‘No news is good news when it comes to Gilda.'”

“It's good to know my family has such a high opinion of me.” Gilda began to regret calling home at all. “Actually, things are fabulous here. I did a fantastic job turning pages and Wendy made it into the final round of the competition.”

“Wow. She made it into the finals?”

“We're both practically celebrities around here, Stephen. We're meeting absolutely brilliant people.”

“Are you trying to speak in an English accent?”

“This is how I always talk.”

“It kind of sounds like you're faking an English accent.”

“I also met this absolutely brilliant bloke named Julian.”
And he broke my heart
, Gilda thought.

“Uh-oh.”

“Why ‘uh-oh'?”

“Anyone with the name ‘Julian' sounds like a potential problem.”

“You're so provincial, Stephen.” Secretly, Gilda wanted to agree with him.

“I'll tell Mom you called, okay?”

“Wait, Stephen—”

“Yeah?”

Gilda wanted to confide in someone, and she particularly wanted a boy's perspective. Of course, Stephen wasn't known for his dating expertise. He had suffered a single broken heart in the past, and it had left him almost permanently grouchy.
He's probably the worst person I could talk to
, Gilda thought. On the other hand, Wendy had been preoccupied with preparing for the competition finals, and Gilda simply needed someone to listen. “Stephen,” she said, “I need your opinion about something.”

“You
do
?”

“Let's just say you were a boy.”

“I am a boy.”

“I mean, let's just say you were a boy who liked girls.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Let's just say you liked a
particular
girl—in fact, you
acted
like you liked her a lot. It was all really romantic and intense.”

“What did you
do
?”

“Hardly anything.”

“Maybe you should talk to Mom.”

“She'll just get all worried and start calling me night and day. Anyway, as I was saying, let's say you like this girl and you let her know it, but the weird thing is that the very next day—you kind of did the
same thing
with this
other
girl.”

“Is the other girl cute?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Maybe I like both girls.”

“That's all you have to say?”

“Look, for one thing, I'm not exactly sure what we're talking about here, and I don't think I
want
to know. For another thing, I probably wouldn't be
lucky
enough to have two girls get interested in me at the same time.”

“You're a huge help.”

“You asked me what I thought.”

“My mistake.”

“Gilda, the only thing I can tell you is that some guys—some people—they don't take everything as seriously as you do.”

“I don't take things seriously.”

“You take
everything
seriously.”

“I do?”

“You have to watch out for being too clingy.”

Gilda was indignant at this comment. “What do you mean clingy?! Which one of us is in a foreign country all by herself, and which one is clinging to his mother's bosom?”

“For your information, I've hardly seen Mom all week. Anyway, all I was saying is that you have a way of getting involved and sticking with people, whereas other people might let go more easily.”

“Maybe other people are shallow.”