The Ghost Sonata (4 page)

She knew she should feel happy and excited, but instead, she found herself wondering why her nightmares seemed to occur more frequently as the date of the piano competition approached. Anxiety dreams before a big performance were nothing new to Wendy: there was the familiar dream that she had accidentally walked onstage naked; the dream that her hands suddenly became paralyzed; the dream that the piano keys made no sound when she pressed them down; and the dream of sitting on the piano bench and discovering that another competitor had left gum on the seat. But the dreams she had been having lately were different—more disturbing and more
real
than any nightmare she had experienced before.
What if they're actually bad omens?
Wendy wondered.
What if they're signs that something terrible might happen to me?

“So lazy!” said Mrs. Choy, interrupting Wendy's trance. “Nine o'clock and still in bed!” Standing in Wendy's doorway, she held a long, red silk dress on a hanger.

“Mom, our flight is a red-eye, and I probably won't get any sleep tonight.”

Mrs. Choy held out the dress. “You wear this dress in the show. Lots of luck!” Mrs. Choy considered herself a thoroughly modern woman, but she still maintained several ancient Chinese beliefs and superstitions. One of these was her certainty that the color red would help bring luck and keep away evil spirits. As a result, red decorations and pieces of art were tastefully placed throughout the Choys' neat, uncluttered house—wall hangings, fans, figurines of dragons and frogs. A strong believer in feng shui principles to increase the flow of “positive energy” in her home, Mrs. Choy also placed green “money plants” in strategic locations and avoided all angular shapes and sharp objects.

Wendy eyed the dress skeptically. It reminded her of a Chinese wedding gown. “I don't know, Mom. . . . It seems a little too Chinese for England.”

“Nothing wrong with Chinese. Red for good luck.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“To win, you need luck. You win, you get five thousand pound. You lessons not cheap!”

Wendy was well aware that the winner of the competition would receive a cash prize and the opportunity to perform with a major orchestra. She also knew that both her parents worked overtime in jobs they didn't particularly like to make this sort of opportunity possible for her, and she accepted as a fact the idea that she owed them some significant success as payment for their sacrifices. If only she could win something big, like the competition at Oxford University—something her parents could tell their friends about—she would prove herself
worthy.

“Mom,” said Wendy, “I might
not
win. This is an international competition. That means there could be lots of kids there who are better than me.”

“Always someone better. You
work
harder.”

“There are other people who work just as hard.”

“Don't be afraid to win.”

Wendy feared something much scarier than winning—something nameless that she couldn't even articulate. Her mother couldn't possibly understand the deep unease that had been creeping into the corners of her mind, so there was no use trying to explain.

“Okay, Mom,” said Wendy, simply wanting the conversation to end. “I'll take the red dress.”
But I probably won't wear it
, she thought.

5

Fear of Flying

 

Gilda and Wendy sat near their gate at the British Airways terminal, waiting for the boarding of flight nine to be announced.

“You haven't said anything about my travel attire.” Gilda wore a black dress, lace-up black-leather boots, and a hat with netting that half-concealed her eyes. She felt very mysterious in the clothes, as if she were a traveling spy.

“I like the hat,” said Wendy. “The net over your face kind of reminds me of dead bugs on a windshield, though.”

“That's exactly what my brother said.”

“See?”

“He has even less fashion sense than my grandmother.”

Nearby, Mrs. Mendelovich paced back and forth as she spoke in Russian on her cell phone, gesturing dramatically.

“I wonder what she's talking about,” Gilda whispered.

“She's probably yelling at her husband because he forgot to run an errand or something,” said Wendy. “She always does that during my piano lessons.”

Sitting across from Gilda and Wendy were Ming Fong and Gary. Ming Fong's childish clothes and diminutive body made her look younger than her fourteen years. Her hair hung in a ruler-straight bob just below her moon-shaped face. Gary was a plump boy dressed in uncomfortable corduroy pants. He sat with a book of music open, tapping out the fingering of a composition and quietly humming to himself.

“Did you practice today, Wendy?” Ming Fong asked.

“Not much,” said Wendy.

Ming Fong's eyes narrowed slightly. “
How
much?”

“A couple hours, I guess. I ran through all my pieces.”

“I practiced four hours. I usually practice at least five.”

“Good for you,” said Wendy, with thinly veiled annoyance.

“Wendy doesn't need to practice,” Gilda interjected. “She's naturally talented.”

Ming Fong fixed Gilda with a stare, as if she were calculating something in some computerlike portion of her brain. “Wendy will probably win the whole competition,” she declared with sudden forced cheer. “Wendy
always
wins.”

Wendy squirmed. It was a compliment, but for some reason, she felt as if she had just been jinxed.

“Of course Wendy will win,” said Gilda. “She can practically play Rachmaninoff 's Third Piano Concerto with her toes. Besides, Wendy and I have big plans for that five large in prize money.”

Ming Fong's mouth became a small, flat line.

“
Gilda
has plans for the prize money,” said Wendy.

“What would you do with the five thousand pounds?” Gary looked up from his music, suddenly interested.

“First, we'll take a trip to Paris and update our wardrobes. Then we'll probably travel through Europe, followed by a cruise,” said Gilda.

“Whatever's left over will go into our college funds,” Wendy joked.

“Community college, of course,” Gilda added.

“Devry University.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I don't get it,” said Gary. “Are the two of you playing duets together in the competition or something? Why would you split the prize money with Gilda, Wendy?”

Wendy grinned. “That's actually a very good question. I mean, shouldn't the person who's doing the
performing
get all the money?”

“We're splitting it because I'm Wendy's official page-turner for the sight-reading competition,” Gilda explained.

“Clearly you deserve half the prize money.”

“Why does Wendy get her own page-turner?” Gary asked.

“She has special needs,” Gilda blurted before Wendy could reply.

“Wendy's learning disabled?”

Wendy snorted at this comment, and Ming Fong burst into surprisingly manic laughter. “Learning disabled!”

“It's not funny,” said Gilda, feeling, for some reason, that Ming Fong was laughing way too hard. “‘Special needs children' is actually what they call learning-disabled kids in England.”

Ming Fong and Gary were suddenly confused, unsure whether Wendy did, in fact, have “special needs.”

“Anyway,” Gilda continued, “I'm kind of like Wendy's personal trainer as well as her page-turner, right, Wendy?”

“Completely wrong.”

“That's why Mrs. Mendelovich asked me to come with her to England.” Gilda eyed Mrs. Mendelovich, who was now gesturing even more broadly as she wandered farther away from her students.

“Gilda wanted a cheap trip to England,” said Wendy. “That's why she's here.”

“Don't forget getting out of school for a week.” With a twinge of dread, Gilda remembered that her suitcase included a stack of books and homework assignments her teachers had piled on “so you keep up while you're away.” Her English teacher, Mrs. Rawson, had been particularly grumpy about Gilda's request for a week away from school in the middle of February and had given Gilda the extra assignment of keeping a detailed travel diary. Because her teacher had obviously expected a horrified response to this work, Gilda had done her best to cringe and look nauseated. Secretly, she thought it was the first interesting homework Mrs. Rawson had ever assigned.

Gary looked at his watch. “Aren't we supposed to be on the plane by now? The flight must be delayed.”

As if on cue, a flight attendant's voice blasted over the loudspeaker. “Passengers on British Airways flight number nine, please note we have a delay due to a mechanical problem. Our mechanics are working to resolve it. We expect a delay of at least fifteen minutes.”

Throughout the room, passengers shot each other looks of exasperation and trepidation. “Mechanical problem?
That
doesn't sound good,” they joked ruefully.

Wendy felt an unpleasant, light-headed sensation. Everything around her seemed slightly blurry, paler than normal. She felt queasy as she noticed a red-haired girl and her mother staring at her from across the room with a little too much interest.

“I'm surprised they actually
told
us it was a mechanical problem,” said Gary. “Everyone's first thought is, ‘Oh no! This plane is going to crash!'”

“It isn't going to crash,” said Gilda confidently. “I would have gotten a psychic vibration if it was.”

“Really?” Gary looked interested. “You mean, you always know when a plane is going to crash?”

“Just the planes I'm on.” Secretly, Gilda felt a rush of anxiety. Gilda wasn't at all sure she
would
know if the plane was going to crash. She simply felt certain that it would be far too mean a cosmic joke if, on her very first trip to England, her plane actually took a nosedive.

Gilda noticed that Wendy's face had taken on a greenish hue. “Hey—what's wrong?”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Wendy, we both know that flying is probably safer than driving around in Detroit.”

“It's just—last night I had this horrible dream.” Wendy hesitated. She twirled a lock of hair around her finger, then examined the ends of her hair for split ends. She still felt that talking about the dream might make the disturbing images too real and powerful.

“A dream about
what
?”

Wendy sighed. “Well, I was alone, walking down a street. It was lined with a bunch of row houses and weird buildings, and then the next thing I knew, there were a bunch of practice rooms filled with pianos.”

“So it's about the piano competition.”

“Wait—I'm not finished. I realized that someone I saw in one of the rooms—someone who was sitting there playing the piano—was actually
dead.
” Wendy's voice cracked a bit on the word
dead.
She simply couldn't bring herself to describe the way the boy had waved at her with an eerie recognition. For some reason, this was the scariest part. It was an image that held some crucial significance, but its meaning was something she would rather not know.

Gilda felt a tiny tickle in her ear. A faintly cold sensation radiated through her spine.

“Creepy,” said Gary.

Ming Fong simply observed Wendy with an intense, expressionless interest.

“So, what do you think it means?” Wendy asked.

Gilda thought for a moment. She believed that her own dreams sometimes contained psychic messages or warnings, and there was definitely something very eerie about the dream Wendy had just described. However, Gilda wasn't at all sure how to interpret it, and she didn't want to make Wendy feel more scared than she already was.

“Wendy, how did you
feel
when you were having the dream?” Gilda had read that one of the important elements of analyzing a dream was to consider the emotions evoked by the images.

“I felt kind of alone, I guess—scared that something terrible was going to happen to me.”

“Hey, why don't I read your tarot cards?” Gilda suggested. “Maybe we can get some clue about what that dream means.”

Throughout the winter, Gilda had been expanding her psychic skills by studying a book called
The Mystery of the Tarot.
She had even begun reading fortunes for friends and acquaintances during her lunch period at school, just to add some excitement to her school day. In addition to what she regarded as the uncanny accuracy of her fortune-telling, Gilda also found tarot card readings to be a great way to start conversations with people who had previously ignored her. So far, her only big error had been an attempt to make a boy named Craig Overcash (for whom she had harbored a crush for almost two years) believe that he would “soon have a new, strikingly attractive girlfriend who has psychic abilities.” Craig did find a new girlfriend, but she didn't have psychic abilities. More importantly, she wasn't Gilda.