Blood To Blood (5 page)

“Roro was an amazing help to
me. The same way Addy was to her.”

“So, you’re saying we have a
tradition in the family? That the next-oldest helps the youngest go through...The
Change?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “It’s
the way our family’s done it for a long time.”

The thought of Cici helping
me through whatever was coming filled me with a sense of peace. Besides my
session at Mr. C.'s, it was the only time that day that I felt relaxed. My
mouth formed around a potentially skull-cracking yawn before I stuffed a
forkful of cold potatoes into it.

“Why would I need your help?”
I asked while chewing. “I mean, doesn't The Change just happen on its own?” I
chomped on a piece of chicken.

“The shift is not just a
physical change, sis, it’s total; emotional, mental, even spiritual. It’s good
to have someone who can be with you.”

“For those times when I
forget my shoes, find myself levitating uncontrollably, or becoming one with
doors,” I said in a wry tone.

We all laughed then, loudly
and with abandon. Our voices tinkled like the crystal chandelier hanging
overhead. But underneath the laughter, there was a sad feeling; we knew we’d
never laugh this way again. The “baby” was a baby no more. The family would yet
again change. Forever.

The last thing I remember of
that night was the way the light glistened on Mom and Cici’s teeth, and how it
danced in Dad’s eyes.

I never made it to my room.
In a couple of seconds, I was sleeping like the dead with my head on the dining
room table.

T
rue to their word, Jules and LaLa came in
the morning to pick me up on the way to Sawyer’s. When they found out both Mom
and Dad were onboard with my career choice, we traded hugs and high fives.

“Are they really letting you
drop out before graduation?” Jules asked in an awed tone.

Oops. Had to back-pedal on
that one. The answer was yes, but of course I couldn’t tell them why. “Nope.
Can’t have everything, I guess.” We climbed into LaLa’s old 1995 Saturn.

“Speaking of dropping out of
school, “ Jules said, “last year, when he was a freshman, Sawyer Creed dropped
out of Berklee College of Music to produce full-time.”

“Seems to have worked out for
him,” LaLa whispered later as the three of us looked around his home studio.

As if it were the sole
lived-in part of his home, the studio was the only area that was furnished. It
took up most of the first floor of his two-level brownstone apartment and
featured two large black leather couches, several beanbag chairs, armchairs,
fold-up chairs, stools, and various functional tables.
A sound booth big enough to hold ten
people stood adjacent to a smaller sound booth containing a huge console with a
soundboard, Macintosh computers, monitors, and some other cool stuff. Stacks of
Billboard
,
Music Business Journal
, and other music industry mags
were sprawled on a low table made from a sheet of Plexiglass balanced on two
large concrete blocks.

Sawyer moved around the space
like some type of blond tiger, frustrated with not being able to pull the
perfect track for us. He was no friendlier than he was the day before, aside
from an abrupt hello when we arrived. And, yep, he still frowned. I figured it
must be the music that always occupied his head that gave him that perpetual
scowl. Did he ever smile? Or even laugh?

He swore under his breath.

“Why don’t we just listen to
the tracks and pick what we like?” I said to his back.

He aimed his glare in my
direction. “That's a lot of tracks.”

His bad temper wasn’t going
to ruin my day. I smiled at him. “Then we should probably get started.”

I felt better today than I
had in a long time, for a lot of reasons. One: I’d slept for twelve straight
hours the night before. Two: telling my family the truth filled me with relief.
And three: I was finally going to learn exactly what The Change was. Cici had a
presentation called “Bighead’s Transformation” planned for the evening. I
chuckled at the memory of her enthusiasm when she’d told me about it.

Sawyer raised his head from
the sound deck to throw me a nasty look. “Something funny?”

Well, excuse me for
breathing. What was his problem? The edges of my vision turned a pre-Shimshana
pink. “Private thought,” I said turning my attention to the music videos on the
flat screen.

Ironically, none of my
thoughts were private anymore now that I was in the mind lock. When I woke up
that morning, Cici was floating in the corner of my room, legs folded in lotus
position. Her eyes were shut and she looked like she'd been that way for a
while. I spotted a glass of juice and some grapes on the nightstand and downed
the contents of the glass.

She opened her eyes. “How're
you feeling, Bighead?”

“Thirsty.” I glanced at the
empty glass in my hands. “Guess I'm not Shimshana yet.”

“Nope. The Change will take a
little time. Could be days or weeks. Definitely on your way, though.” She
floated to the bed and settled down on the pink comforter. “First order of
business. Mind lock.”

I sighed, remembering my
promise to Dad.

“Don’t worry about Dad seeing
all your secrets. You won’t be locked to him. You’ll be locked to me.” She
smiled broadly.

“Huh?”

“Dad said it was okay when I
pointed out it would be the same result whether you were locked to me or him.
And in the end, he really didn't want to know exactly how grown up you are.”

I breathed a gargantuan sigh
of relief. She pointed to my small altar in another corner of the room. On it,
below an ancient wooden cross, she’d placed a small blue candle, a small bowl
of water, an offering of fresh flowers, and some sort of dried herb. Beside the
chalice lay a small ceremonial knife and two miniature goblets.

“Ready?” she asked.

I knelt before the altar and
felt the first twinges of apprehension. After all, I’d never had a mind lock
before. 

She began. “I call upon
protection from the Four Directions. Earth.” She placed a few of the grapes
onto the altar. “Fire.” She lit the blue candle. “Water.” Dipping her fingers
in the bowl, she said “and air” before exhaling and resting her hands on my
head. “Mind of my mind, heart of my heart, sisters for eternity. We are bound
forever. Now, you say it.”

I repeated the words.

“Our minds are one, our
hearts are one, where you go I go,” she continued. “There is nowhere in this
world you go that I cannot be. Do you agree?”

“Yes. Mind, heart, and soul,”
I said. Before I knew what was happening, the palm of my hand was slit with the
knife. “Ouch!” She squeezed a few drops into one of the goblets and drank.

“Now you,” she said cutting
her wrist just as quickly, letting the blood drip into the other goblet.

I hesitated. It wasn't the
first time I would taste blood. Mom had
given
me some when I was six and too dumb to know any better. I'd
been traumatized by that rusty, slippery taste ever since. I took a deep
breath, held it, and downed the liquid as fast as I could without being rude.

“Blood to blood, flesh to
flesh, your mind is my mind. And so it is.”

“And so it is.”

We both blew out the candle.
The tug of her mind on mine felt comforting.

She glanced at me and raised
an eyebrow. “Well daggone it Angel, why didn't you tell me you had to pee!” She
hooted as I ran to the bathroom.

#
# #

Sawyer's moving goatee-framed
lips drew my attention back to the present. I focused my attention on them in
order to digest what he was saying.

“There's a hundred and
eighty-two tracks here,” he said. “I'll play the first few bars of each. Just let
me know what you think.” His sideways glance seemed to say, “See? I took your
advice” as his arm reached over the board to hit “play.”

A track started beating out a
simple rhythm. As he sipped a bottle of mineral water and watched us intently
to gauge our reactions, I wondered if he knew about that old-fashioned
production myth—the one that says women are the sounding boards of choice
when it comes to creating beats, and if we start dancing it usually means the
track has better Top 10 potential.

We listened to the beat with
no interest at all.

He hit the delete button, and
the next track began. This one was upbeat and bouncy, with a good hip-hop
backbone. Julietta started nodding her head, LaLa started chanting a few rap
lyrics and I started riffing a little. But after a few seconds, I stopped.
Sawyer’s eyebrow arched inquiringly and I shook my head “no.” “Eh,” LaLa
declared. He hit delete. We went through quite a few tracks this way, some
getting a lukewarm response, some getting no love at all.

After the twenty-sixth track,
I turned to the girls. “Edge,” I said. “We need it.”

Julietta looked dubious.
“Nina says to keep it less hip-hop and more pop.”

“Should we be trying to sell
the record before we even write the damn thing?” LaLa’s tone was ironic. “Let's
just do what we feel.”

 “What about track No.
8?” I asked.

They looked at me, trying to
recall. I started singing the melody line, note for note, to help them
remember.

Sawyer’s gaze was sharp.
“That's quite a memory you have.” Perceptive, I noted, adding that attribute to
my mental Sawyer file.

“I take good notes,” I lied,
gesturing toward my laptop and small notebook. I always kept a notepad or
something nearby for times like these so as not to draw attention to my knack
for remembering almost every musical arrangement I hear. Changing the subject,
I continued with a sense of urgency. “There’s a rock guitar with that,
something like...” I started singing a counter-melody.

With a deeper frown, Sawyer
turned back to the board and pounded a button to start No. 8 again. I sang the
melody of the guitar I heard in my head along with the track. Somehow, his
frown looked pleased.

“That's tight,” Julietta
said. LaLa started paging through her lyrics and softly chanted what she found,
just loud enough for us to hear her flow, but not enough to distract from the
process of putting the different song elements together. Focused on finding
just the right sound, Sawyer whip-swiveled his chair around to the keyboard and
pounded a number of keys until he located the rock guitar voice.

“That's it,” I proclaimed,
“that’s what I hear.”

Nodding his head, he started
playing chords in the rock guitar voice, searching for the right combination in
the key I sang. Meanwhile, Julietta tweaked a harmonic vocal to counteract
mine. On my laptop, I pulled up lyrics I’d jotted down during history class and
started singing, while still allowing the track to breathe as we all worked out
our contributions.

Suddenly, Sawyer hit a
specific chord combination and we cheered simultaneously. “That's it!” I
exclaimed. It was exciting to hear him play it the exact way it sounded in my
head. His face broke out in a grin as he added the chord to the track and
started synching it up to loop and flow along with the beat.

Underneath the excitement of
creative synergy, I was disconcerted by his gleaming grin and wondered why the
sight of it made my stomach jump. His body swayed slightly as he worked. As his
long fingers splayed effortlessly across a wide span of keys, the thick gold
ring on the middle finger of his right hand caught the light. His hair wasn't
pulled back today. It fell forward in a wavy curtain hiding his face as he bent
over the keyboard.

Something, however, was odd
about Sawyer: he was excited about the music, too, but his heartbeat
didn’t
accelerate. Mine was beating faster now; so were LaLa’s and Jules’. But,
come to think of it, his heart had beat at roughly the same rate since I’d met
him, despite his mood or level of activity. Maybe he was always calm, even if
he only looked excited, or maybe he was in great shape; but either way, it was
weird.

I focused back on the music,
singing the lyrics over and over again while Julietta and LaLa worked to
solidify harmony and rhyme.

It sounded absolutely,
positively awesome.

“That works,” Sawyer said in
an understated tone that made everything feel even more exciting. He jotted
down some notes as we high-fived. “I'll dump that on a work CD for you,” he
added. “Let's move on to the next track.”

He hit the play button and
track twenty-seven began. “Boring,” Julietta said before shooting an apologetic
smile at him.

“Not a problem,” he said in a
friendly tone, “tell it like you see it.” He obviously liked straight talk. I
put that into my file, too, while noting his more chilled-out demeanor.

The doorbell rang and soon an
ultra-skinny guy walked into the studio. He wore baggy, immaculately pressed,
dark blue jeans and Timberlands. A gigantic watch hung off his skeletal wrist.
Freshly braided cornrows peeked out from under the rim of his pristine baseball
cap as he traded fist pounds with Sawyer and tossed his thick, goose-down
jacket into a corner.