The Lost Songs (26 page)

The kids moaned. Maybe a quarter of them gave it a whirl.

Doria said, “The trouble with this song is nobody wants to be a little light. Everybody wants to be a spotlight, or have one.”

“I’m sure that’s not a nice way to think,” said Jenny’s mother, who clearly knew nothing about her daughter.

“Doria’s right,” said Rebecca. “We don’t want to be tidy little candles in a small town on a Sunday afternoon. We want to shine on the world’s stage.”

It was one of those moments when nobody was shy and everybody could admit the truth: they wanted to be special and they wanted the world to acknowledge it. Kid after kid confessed to the kind of stardom he or she hoped for.

Pierce was last. “I think I’m standard issue. I don’t see myself achieving stardom. But I’m okay with that.”

How amazing that Pierce could think of himself as standard issue.

“Think of Train, though,” said Jenny. “He’ll never be a star. He’ll never even be an extra. He won’t even get tickets to the show. I think it’s actually making him crazy.”

Evan said, “I agree with you. Train is looking for a spotlight. Or maybe DeRade ordered him to find the spotlight. But he can’t find it. Or doesn’t have the guts.”

“Really?” said Michael. “I think Train has guts. And I also think he’s crazy. He’s ready to burst. He’ll bring guns or hand grenades to school.”

Pierce was shocked. “Do you mean that?”

“He’s frantic,” said Michael. “Pulsing. Like a warning light.”

“He’s ready,” agreed Evan. “But for what, exactly? I don’t agree that he’d bring guns or grenades to school.”

“I like Train,” protested Doria. “He’s perfectly nice whenever we chat.”

“Train chats?” said Rebecca. “ ‘Chat’ is the last word I would choose when that creepy guy stares with those dead eyes.”

Pierce was on his cell phone. “Dad? There’s sort of a feeling here that Train Greene might be ready to bring guns to school.”

“Hey! Don’t use my name!” said Michael.

“Why’s he calling his father?” asked Jenny.

“His daddy’s a homicide cop,” said Michael. “Like we need Train to know we’re talking about him. Last time somebody ratted on a Greene brother, he lost an eye.”

“I’m not naming names,” Pierce told them. “No, Dad,” he said into the phone, “just kids in Youth Group.”

Jenny’s mother butted in. “Doria, I understand that you took advantage of the opportunity offered last Sunday to volunteer in our community. Would you tell us whether the charity involving meal delivery in Chalk seems worth our money and time?”

“It was worth
my
time. A hundredfold. But on the other hand, a visiting professor was not impressed.”

“Tell us,” said Rebecca. “I’ve never even been in Chalk. It’s supposed to be so dangerous.”

Doria told them about her afternoon. She talked for so long that when she looked at the time, she blushed.

“So it isn’t dangerous,” said Rebecca.

“Miss Kendra was careful. She kept her eye on me and twice said to stay next to the Explorer. But everybody was nice and smiling. Train even found my car keys that I dropped and brought them to me.”

“Train hasn’t done a thoughtful thing since he stopped being Cliff,” said Pierce. “And this isn’t the first time there’s been interest in your keys. What exactly happened, Doria?”

“Are you going to tell your father about that, too?”

“Doria, it’s better to prevent murders than solve them.”

“Who’s talking about murder?” demanded Rebecca.

“I am,” said Pierce. “Train and DeRade blinded a kid. If Train is ready to take a step up, it would be murder.”

“They didn’t completely blind Nate,” Jenny pointed out. “He lost one eye, not both.”

“Just an oversight,” said Pierce. “Train won’t get it wrong next time. So are we going to play volleyball or just hang around talking about psychopaths?”

M
onday morning Lutie woke up feeling separated from the Lutie she had been the previous sixteen years. That Lutie was innocent and stupid.

This Lutie was afraid of being among the other kids. The threads that knit her to her friends and classmates had unraveled. She was separate; she would always be separate. Her family secret was the worst secret there could ever be.

Doria was separate from most people most of the time. How did she get up and face the world every morning with that burden?

“You have to go to school,” said Aunt Tamika. “I’ll drive you. The minute you get there, this feeling will diminish. You’ll be busy, school will be full of demands and you’ll start forgetting.”

Forget that her mother had murdered her grandmother?

Lutie couldn’t find anything to wear. Usually getting dressed was a highlight of her day. She often went to sleep wrestling with the delightful decision of choosing tomorrow’s outfit.

Today Aunt Tamika picked out her clothes. Lutie didn’t
even argue. Then Aunt Tamika drove her up the long curved drop-off lane at Court Hill High and Lutie just could not get that car door open.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” said Aunt Tamika. “Nothing has changed. It’s just that you know more. Now, you text me all day long. At lunch, Grace and I are taking a few hours off and we’ll try to find Saravette.”

What for? Why had they ever tried to find Saravette? Why on earth did they want to find her now? Lutie wanted to throw up just thinking of her.

“I can’t tell from her message if she was drunk, or sick, cornered by something else she’s done, or mixed up with some deal gone bad,” said her aunt. “Or if she just felt weepy and threw her sins at you instead of us. So we’ll see if we can find her. That’s our job, not yours. You be a scholar and make us proud.”

When Aunt Tamika’s car was out of sight, Lutie skipped school for the second time in her life and walked home.

Train was summoned to the principal’s office.

There was a cop car parked out in front of the high school, but that was often the case.

Didn’t have to be for him.

Train thought about Saturday night, as he had edged closer to the organ. He thought about Doria, flinging herself out a door he had not seen. He thought about getting himself safely out of the church. Hadn’t been easy. Two men and a woman were circling outside and kept coming back to circle some more.

Doria must have heard him, although he was sure he had not made a sound. But she couldn’t have seen him. Couldn’t
have named him. If the police were here for him, it could not be over using a stolen church key and stalking Doria.

Court Hill High was a very easy building to leave, with all its outside doors. Train thought about walking away, shrugging about a stupid summons to the office, but he knew what DeRade would do. DeRade would swagger right in and laugh at the cops.

So Train took his time but eventually sauntered into the office.

Two cops.

He knew them both.

One was Pierce’s daddy.

Train refused to cooperate. No, he wouldn’t sit, he wouldn’t take a soda, he wouldn’t talk.

But the cops were not accusing him of anything. They were trying to be all fatherly and understanding. What was he planning, they wanted to know. How could they help?

Train had so many plans he couldn’t decide where to start. The set-a-kid-on-fire plan; the slice-someone’s-palms-open plan; the join-the-army-and-let-them-make-the-decisions plan.

“See,” said Pierce’s daddy, “you got a real special nickname. Train. I think it fits. A train is big and powerful. But it has to stay on its track. DeRade now, he followed a track went only one way. He never wanted a ticket out. He wanted a ticket straight to prison. But here’s the deal. It’s your train. You can choose where to get off.”

Train didn’t listen to sermons. Not his mother’s, not Miss Veola’s, and certainly not the police’s. He thought of a piece Doria had played the other night. It was like arithmetic: notes as neat as long division, lined up in tidy columns. It got bigger and more complex, like going from arithmetic to algebra to
calculus. He used to love arithmetic. He was failing it now, like he was failing everything, because he refused to study.

There was one thing he refused to fail.

Following DeRade’s orders.

Train’s cell phone rang.

The detectives got all alert.

Train looked down at his phone.

Stop
, Miss Veola had texted.

The only person besides the police who calls me, he thought. Religion and the law, they want me. Nobody else.

Anxiety and eagerness to know more infected the school. Teachers fluttered, students stomped.

The police had come for Train.

Nobody at Court Hill High knew what he had done.

Nobody doubted that he had done it.

In the cafeteria, Kelvin was sitting alone. He liked lunch and frequently took two rather than hustle back to class. His next class was Business Skills, none of which Kelvin wanted anyway.

Somebody would join him soon, and he’d chat with them, or he wouldn’t, but either way he’d be content.

Kelvin dozed in a patch of sun, protected by his nice even temperature.

Train yanked out a chair and sat down at Kelvin’s table. “You turn me in?”

“No.”

“Then it was Pierce.”

“Pierce?” Kelvin was amazed. “Lives down by Azure Lee?”

“The one.”

Pierce was a swimmer, a group singularly isolated from everybody else, proudly removed from the usual sports like
football, basketball and baseball. What did Pierce know about anything? Azure Lee, now—he could see Azure Lee turning in Train in a heartbeat. Azure Lee was tougher than all of them put together.

Kelvin said, “So what’d you do?”

“What makes you think I did anything?”

Kelvin raised his eyebrows. That was not DeRade talking. DeRade would have bragged about ten evil acts even if he hadn’t committed one.

Train glittered, and Kelvin felt as if he could see future evil acts lining up, ready to come onstage, ready to spill blood. Train gave him a savage grin, as if he had won a contest Kelvin had not known they were competing in.

Kelvin was suddenly afraid.