Catherine (12 page)

“As soon as I could, I got one of my own,” he told me. “A super-cheap acoustic, but
I loved that thing. I taught myself by ear.” He talked about going to the public library
to read and reread the one book they’d had on the punk-rock scene, and how he’d hatched
his plan to come to New York. “New York or London, but London seemed out of reach,
so here I am.” He had finally started talking about his past, and I listened eagerly,
hoping he would reveal more about himself, but all I could piece together from his
stories was
that he hadn’t had a lot of money, and that music had meant more to him than school,
or his friends, or even his family.

Now, as Dad showed off our tickets to Greece, a crazy thought popped into my head.
Why not ask Dad if we could bring Hence along with us? It would only be one more plane
ticket, and Sebastian Clegg’s villa must have at least one extra bedroom. Hence had
probably never been to Europe. Was it fair that I was getting to go there again, and
he’d be stuck holding down the fort at The Underground?

As I looked into Dad’s glowing face, I realized how irrational I was being. The tickets
were already bought. And, anyway, as nice as Dad was to his employees, he’d never
bring one along on a family vacation.

“What’s wrong, Cupcake? Aren’t you excited?” Dad took a closer look at me. “I thought
you loved our family adventures.”

I shut the dishwasher and punched its buttons, not knowing what to say.

“Are you thinking of Mom?” he asked, in a quieter voice. “She’d want you to be happy.
You know that, don’t you?”

After that I felt bad, because I hadn’t been thinking of Mom at all. I threw my arms
around Dad’s shoulders and hid my face in his shirt. A wave of sadness swept through
me, as though I were absorbing it from him. My father needed this vacation. I would
go to keep him company and try to have the best time possible, for his sake.

Dad kissed my forehead. Before I could stop him, he started rummaging in his wallet.
“You’ll need clothes, right? A bathing suit? Or maybe a sundress? Don’t say no—what’s
money for if I can’t treat my only daughter to something nice once in a while?”

As hard as I protested, he kept insisting, until, feeling even guiltier, I pocketed
his money.

Mykonos was every bit as gorgeous as I’d imagined, its houses and hotels blindingly
white against the cloudless sky; by day I stretched out and read beside the deep blue
Aegean or wandered through the winding streets, popping into boutique after boutique
to shop for souvenirs. Dad, Q, and I went out every night to hear live music in little
seaside clubs, and for two glorious days, we chartered a sailboat and took an overnight
trip to Vernon Hale’s villa on Naxos. Vernon was one of Dad’s oldest friends and one
of my musical heroes; I had every album he’d ever recorded. He and his band jammed
until three
AM
under a delicate crescent moon. His wife, Riki, made me virgin piña coladas, and
all her party guests danced barefoot on the patio under Japanese paper lanterns. I
was blissfully happy until I thought of Hence, a whole ocean away, mopping the floor
and hauling crates while I was having the time of my life.

The very next day, I stopped at a kiosk, bought myself a phone card, and called The
Underground from a pay phone beside a seaside taverna. When Hence picked up the phone,
the sound of his voice made me sad and happy all at once.

“It’s Catherine.” Should I pretend I was checking up on the club? No, that would be
ridiculous. Why hadn’t I planned this better?

Finally, I thought of something to say: “What’s new?” It wasn’t exactly snappy repartee,
but it was better than nothing.

“You won’t believe this,” Hence said, excitement in his voice, almost like he’d been
waiting for me to call, storing up some important piece of information. “I have an
audition lined up with Riptide. You know who they are, right?”

“Of course I do.” Riptide had played The Underground a few months earlier—
A white-hot band on the verge of a breakthrough
, Dad had called them. “They’re hiring a guitarist?”

“Bill Dierks quit. Out of the blue. He had a nervous breakdown, or at least that’s
what people are saying. The crazy thing is, they were about to get signed. So they’re
desperate for a front man.”

“Wow.” There had been a few other auditions since the one with The Pickup Sticks,
but so far nothing had clicked. “Riptide. They’re brilliant.”

“I’m worried they’ll think I’m too inexperienced.”

“What does it matter, if you can play?”

“They need a lead singer, too. Dierks was their vocalist. Stan—the drummer—says none
of the rest of them has a strong enough voice to carry the lead.”

“You can sing,” I told him. “I’ve heard you. And you’ve got range.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so.”

There was a long, awkward pause.

“I had this feeling I should call you today,” I added.

He laughed. “I’m glad you did.”

Before long we said our good-byes. In Hence’s presence, the silences that sometimes
fell between us never felt uncomfortable, but over the phone was another story. The
minute I hung up, I
wished I hadn’t, but calling back would have been even weirder than having phoned
in the first place, so I made myself trudge uphill to Vernon’s villa. Four and a half
days until our flight home. How would I stand the wait?

The trip home from Greece felt like it took a million years. When we finally pulled
up beside the club, I burst out of the car and let myself in the front door. Hence
was exactly where we’d left him, strumming his guitar at the edge of the stage and
scribbling lyrics in a nearby notebook. He jumped to his feet as if I’d caught him
slacking off. Dad was still outside, trying to find a better parking spot for the
Jeep, but Q was right behind me, so I didn’t dare greet Hence the way I wanted to,
by throwing my arms around him.

Q dumped his duffel bag at Hence’s feet. “This goes upstairs,” he said, then turned
away, headed for the elevator up to our apartment.

Hence’s eyes met mine, and instead of the happiness I expected to see in them, I saw
anger. Before I could do or say anything, Hence bent to hoist my brother’s duffel
and reach for my suitcase.

“I’ll carry mine,” I said, feeling my cheeks grow hot. This wasn’t how I’d imagined
our reunion. We lugged the bags to the elevator and waited for it to return to the
first floor. “I’m sorry my brother’s such a jerk.”

“It’s not your fault,” Hence said, not meeting my eyes. We
rode up to the second floor, and I held the door while he deposited Q’s dusty duffel
bag in the vestibule. Only after the door slid shut again did he venture a look at
me, and I saw that his expression had softened.

“So, what happened with the audition?” It had been killing me, not knowing how things
had gone with Riptide. Though I’d known there was no way Hence would contact me at
Sebastian’s villa, every time the phone rang I jumped, hoping it might be him, calling
with good news.

He allowed himself a small smile. “I’m in,” he said. “We had our first rehearsal—”

But I cut off his air supply with an enormous hug of congratulations. “I knew it!
I knew they’d pick you!” Hence was stiff at first. We’d never hugged before, and I’m
sure he wasn’t expecting it. But then he hugged me back, and electricity crackled
between us again. For once, the stupid elevator moved too quickly, lurching to a halt
at my floor, and Hence released me.

Despite my protests, he lugged my suitcase to my room. I fumbled with the keys. “I
want to hear all about how it went, and what the band is like,” I said as soon as
we were through the door.

“They just signed a contract with Plasma Records. I mean
we
did. We’re going to be recording.” He said that last part quietly, as if he hardly
dared believe his good luck.

“Don’t forget me when you’re famous, okay?” I let myself give his arm a playful squeeze.

“Like I could forget you,” he said, looking into my eyes, then away. We stood awhile
in the middle of my bedroom, not saying anything. “I’d better get downstairs,” he
finally said.

“We’ll talk soon, okay?” I gave a casual little wave, trying to look like my heart
wasn’t pounding a thousand times a second. As soon as he shut the door behind him,
I dropped down to my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Had Hence really said
Like I could forget you
? Could I have imagined those words? And what did they mean, exactly? That hug, though.
I knew that part had really happened. The scent of him—green-apple shampoo and a faint
whiff of baking bread—clung to me, and I could still feel the hug itself, warm and
lingering, like neither of us wanted it to end.

Despite the noise and my fury at Hence, I managed to fall asleep, but my dreams were
anything but restful. I tossed and turned in the brass bed that used to be my mother’s,
until a sound startled me awake—the scratch of branches against the window. Eyes shut,
I pulled the covers tighter around me, trying to get back to sleep, until I remembered:
There were no branches outside my mother’s window.

I bolted upright, surprised to find the room bright with moonlight—or maybe light
from the street. I turned to the window to find out where the scratching sound was
coming from. Even as I moved I knew I didn’t really want to know, that the sound could
only mean bad news. What I saw at the window chilled me all the way through. White
twigs. No, not twigs at all. Fingers—long and thin, with stubby fingernails like mine,
clawing at the
window. Just then a face pressed itself to the glass, so close that its features were
distorted and its breath began to form a cloud.

I started, the sound of my own screaming filling my head. I wanted to leap out of
bed and run from the room, but I was frozen in place, too shocked to move, even as
the fingers clawed at the pane, trying to part the glass like water.

This has to be a dream
, I told myself.
It can’t be real.
But knowing that didn’t make me feel any less petrified. She wanted something—the
girl at the window. Somehow I knew it was a she. The face drew back so that I could
see her large desperate eyes, her untamed hair, and her moving lips, enunciating three
syllables I couldn’t make out at first. But she repeated them over and over until
I got it and said them along with her:
Let. Me. In.

Just then, I heard the elevator outside the door creaking to a stop. A second later,
the apartment door opened, and a man strode into the room—a half-familiar, black-haired,
glowering man jangling a key ring. I had that densely foggy confusion that comes with
being woken up in the middle of a dream, and for a moment I couldn’t remember his
name. I turned back to the window—only a second or two had passed since I’d looked
away—and the face was gone.

“What’s going on up here?” the man demanded. “You woke me out of a sound sleep. Didn’t
I tell you I’d kick you out if you caused me any more trouble?”

Hence. Slowly the night before came back to me. I nodded.

“Why were you screaming?”

“I had a dream,” I said. “A nightmare. I couldn’t help it.”

He exhaled as though he was completely exasperated. “A
nightmare? I’m an idiot for letting you stay here. Do you always scream in your sleep?”

“I’ve never done it before,” I said. “There was a face outside the window.”

“What do you mean, a face?”

I struggled for words to convey what I had seen. “A girl. In my dream. With sad eyes
and long hair.”

Hence said nothing, but his eyes widened.

“She scratched at the window and told me to let her in. It felt so real.” Come to
think of it, I didn’t remember waking up, exactly. Could I still be dreaming? Or had
it not been a dream at all? I gestured at the window. “Could somebody have climbed
the fire escape?”

To my surprise and amazement, Hence took a single long stride—a leap, really—and,
leaning over me, tore the window open in one swift motion. He threw a leg over the
sill, climbed outside, and started down the fire escape, its metal groaning under
his weight. Still shaky, I drew my legs to my chest and hugged them. Minutes passed.
A cool wind blew in through the open window; the temperature must have dropped outside.
I wrapped the blanket around myself and got out of bed to pace awhile, wondering where
on earth Hence had gone and if he was coming back. I was fairly certain I wasn’t dreaming
anymore. No, I was positive. This was real. And the girl scratching at my window…
could she have been real, too? Hence must think so, or else why would he be running
around barefoot on the street below?

Just as I’d started to consider closing the window, the fire escape creaked and I
heard him climbing back up. He clambered over the sill, his hair crazy and his eyes
wide.

“What was that all about?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He stood there a moment,
looking at me as though I were a figment of his imagination. “Did you find her?”