Code Name Cassandra (11 page)

And let me tell you, what was going on behind that door was some fine, fine Bach. We’re talking flute-playing so elegant, so assured, so … well, passionate, it almost brought tears to my eyes. You don’t hear that kind of playing in the Ernest Pyle High School Symphonic Orchestra, you get what I’m saying? I was so entranced, I didn’t even think to knock on the door to let the professor know I’d arrived. I never wanted that sweet music to end.

But it did end. And then the next thing I knew, the door to the practice room was opening, and Professor Le Blanc emerged. He was saying, “You have a gift. An extraordinary gift. Not to use it would be a crime.”

“Yes, Professor,” replied a bored voice that, oddly, I recognized.

I looked down, shocked that such lovely music had been coming from the flute of a student, and not the master.

And my jaw sagged.

“Hey, lesbo,” Shane said. “Shut the barn door, you’re lettin’ the flies in.”

“Ah,” Professor Le Blanc said, spying me. “You two know one another? Oh, yes, of course, Jessica, you are his counselor, I’d forgotten. Then you can do me a very great favor.”

I was still staring at Shane. I couldn’t help it. That music? That beautiful music? That had been coming from
Shane
?

“Make certain,” Professor Le Blanc said, resting his hands on Shane’s pudgy shoulders, “that this young man understands how rare a talent like his is. He insists that his mother made him come to Wawasee this summer. That in fact he’d have much preferred to attend baseball camp instead.”

”
Football
camp,” Shane burst out bitterly. “I don’t
want
to play the flute.
Girls
play the flute.” He glared at me very fiercely as he said this, as if daring me to contradict him.

I did not. I could not. I was still transfixed. All I could think was
Shane? Shane
played the
flute
? I mean, he’d said he played the
skin
flute. I didn’t know he’d been telling the truth … well, partially, anyway.

But an actual
flute? Shane
had been the one making that gorgeous—no, not just gorgeous—
magnificent
music on
my
instrument of choice? Shane?
My
Shane?

Professor Le Blanc was shaking his head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said to Shane. “Most of the greatest flutists in the world have been men. And with talent like yours, young man, you might one day be amongst them—”

“Not if I get recruited by the Bears,” Shane pointed out.

“Well,” Professor Le Blanc said, looking a little taken aback. “Er, maybe not then …”

“Is my lesson over?” Shane demanded, craning his neck to get a look at the professor’s face.

“Er,” Professor Le Blanc said. “Yes, actually, it is.”

“Good,” Shane said, tucking his flute case beneath his arm. “Then I’m outta here.”

And with that, he stalked away.

Professor Le Blanc and I stared after him for a minute or two. Then the instructor seemed to shake himself, and, holding open the door to the practice room for me, said with forced jocularity, “Well, now, let’s see what you can do, then, Jessica. Why don’t you play something for me?” Professor Le Blanc went to the piano that stood in one corner of the walk-in-closet-sized room, sat down on the bench, and picked up a Palm Pilot. “Anything you like,” he said, punching the buttons of the Palm Pilot. “I like to assess my pupil’s skill level before I begin teaching.”

I opened my flute case and began assembling my instrument, but my mind wasn’t on what I was doing. I just couldn’t get what I’d heard out of my head. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense that Shane could play like that. It just didn’t seem possible. The kid had played beautifully, movingly, as if he’d been swept away by the notes, each one of which had rung out with angelic—almost aching—purity. The same Shane who had stuck an entire hamburger in his mouth at lunch—I’d sat there and watched him do it—bun and all, then swallowed it, practically whole, just because Arthur had dared him to. That same Shane. That Shane could play like
that
.

And he didn’t even care. He’d wanted to go to football camp.

He’d been lying. He cared. No one could play like that and not care. No one.

I put my own flute to my lips, and began to play. Nothing special. Green Day. “Time of Our Lives.” I jazzed it up a little, since it’s a relatively simple little song. But all I could think about was Shane. There had to be depths,
wells
of untapped emotion in that boy, to make him capable of producing such music.

And all he wanted to do was play football.

Professor Le Blanc looked up from his Palm Pilot at some point during my recital. When I was through, he said, “Play something else, please.”

I launched into an old standby. “Fascinating Rhythm.” Always a crowd-pleaser. At least it pleased my dad, when I was practicing at home. I usually played it at double time, to get it over with. I did so now.

The question was, how could a kid who could play like that be such a total and complete pain in the butt? I mean, how was it possible that the person who’d played such hauntingly beautiful music, and the person who this morning had told Lionel he’d dipped his toothbrush in the toilet—after, of course, Lionel had started using it—be one and the same individual?

Professor Le Blanc was rooting through his briefcase, which he’d left on top of the piano.

“Here,” he said. “Now this.” He dropped a book of sheet music onto the stand in front of my chair.

Brahms. Symphony Number 1. What was he trying to do, put me to sleep? It was an insult. We’d played that my freshman year, for God’s sake. My fingers flew over the key holes. Open, of course. My instrument was practically an antique, handed down from some obscure member of the Mastriani clan who’d gotten it under questionable circumstances. Yeah, okay, so my flute was probably hot.

The thing I couldn’t figure out was what was God—and I’m not saying I’m so all-fired sure there is one, but for argument’s sake, let’s say there is—thinking, giving a kid like Shane talent like that? Seriously. Why had he been given this incredible gift of music, when clearly, he’d have been happier tearing down a field with a ball in his arms?

I tell you, if that’s not proof there is a God, and that he or she has one heck of a wacked-out sense of humor, I don’t know what is.

“Stop.” Professor Le Blanc took the Brahms away and put another music book in front of me.

Beethoven. Symphony Number 3.

I don’t know how long I sat there looking at it. Maybe a full minute before I was able to rouse myself from my Shane-induced stupor and go, “Um, Professor? Yeah, look, I don’t know this piece.”

Professor Le Blanc was still sitting on the piano bench, his arms folded across his chest. He had put away the Palm Pilot, and was now watching me intently. The fact that he was, in fact, a bit of a hottie, did not make this any pleasanter than it sounds. He looked a little like a hawk, one of those hawks you see all the time, wheeling in tighter and tighter circles above something in a cornfield, making you wonder what the stupid bird is looking at down there. Is it a field mouse, or the decomposing body of a coed?

Professor Le Blanc said, enunciating carefully, “I know you don’t know this piece, Jess. I want to see if you can play it.”

I just stared at it.

“Well,” I said after a while. “I probably could. If you would maybe just hum my part first?”

He didn’t look surprised by my request. He shook his head so that his kind of longish, curly brown hair—definitely longer than mine, anyway—swung around.

“No,” he said. “I do not hum. Begin, please.”

I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. “It’s just,” I explained, “usually, back home, my orchestra teacher, he kind of hums the whole thing out for us first, and I really—”

“Aha!”

Professor Le Blanc yelled so loud, I almost dropped my flute. He pointed a long, accusing finger at me.

”
You
,” he said, in tones of mingled triumph and horror, “
cannot read music
.”

I felt my own ears turning as pink as Karen Sue’s had out in the atrium. Only not just pink. Red. My ears were burning. My face was burning. It was air-conditioned enough in that practice room that you practically needed a winter parka, but me, I was on fire.

“That isn’t true,” I said, trying to appear casual. Yeah, real easy to do with a face that was turning fire-engine red. “That note right there, for instance.” I pointed at the music. “That’s an eighth note. And over here, that’s a whole note.”

“But what note,” Professor Le Blanc demanded, “is it?”

My shoulders slumped. I was so busted.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t
need
to read music. I just have to hear the piece once, and I—”

“—and you know how to play it. Yes, yes, I know. I know all about you people. You I-hear-it-once-and-I-know-it people.” He shook his head disgustedly at me. “Does Dr. Alistair know about this?”

I felt my feet beginning to sweat inside my Pumas, that’s how freaked out he had me.

“No,” I said. “You aren’t going to tell him, are you?”

“Not going to tell him?” Professor Le Blanc leaped up from the piano bench. “Not going to tell Dr. Alistair that one of his counselors is musically
illiterate
?”

He bellowed the last word. Anyone passing outside the door could have heard. I went, in a small voice, “Please, Professor Le Blanc. Don’t turn me in. I’ll learn to read this piece. I promise.”

“I do not want you to learn to read this piece.” Professor Le Blanc was on his feet now, and pacing the length of the practice room. Which, only being about six feet by six feet, wasn’t very far. “You should be able to read
all
pieces. How can you be so lazy? Simply because you can hear a piece once and then play it, you use this as an excuse never to learn to read music? You ought to be ashamed. You ought to be sent back to where you came from and made to work there at the IG of A as a sack girl.”

I licked my lips. I couldn’t help it. My mouth had gone completely dry.

“Um, Professor?” I said.

He was still pacing and breathing kind of hard. In school, they made us read this book about this guy named Heathcliff who liked this loser chick named Cathy, who didn’t like him back, and I swear to God, Professor Le Blanc kind of reminded me of old Heathcliff, the way he was huffing and puffing about something that really boiled down to nothing.

”
What
?” he yelled at me.

I swallowed. “It’s bag girl.” When he only gazed at me uncomprehendingly, I said, “You said I’d have to work as a sack girl. But it’s called a bag girl.”

Professor Le Blanc pointed toward the door. “
Out
,” he roared.

I was shocked. The whole thing was totally unfair. In the movies, when somebody finds out the other person can’t read, they’re always filled with all this compassion and try to help the poor guy. Like Jane Fonda helped Robert De Niro when she found out he couldn’t read in this really boring movie my mom made me watch with her once. I couldn’t believe Professor Le Blanc was being so unfeeling. My case, if you thought about it, was really quite tragic.

I figured I’d make a play for his heartstrings … if he had any, which I doubted.

“Professor,” I said. “Look. I know I deserve to get thrown out of here and all, but really, that’s partly why I took this gig. I mean, I completely realize my inability to read music is hampering my growth as an artist, and I was really hoping this was my big chance to, you know, rectify that.”

I totally did not believe he would go for this crap, but to my never-ending relief, he did. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was trembling. Not because I was nervous or anything. I was, but not that much. I mean, it wasn’t like the steam table held that much horror for me. It was just because it was about thirty degrees in there.

But I guess Professor Le Blanc thought I was suitably cowed or whatever, since he finally said he wouldn’t turn me in to Dr. Alistair. Although he wasn’t very gracious about it, I must say. He told me that, since his class schedule was completely filled, he didn’t have the time to teach me to read music
and
prepare my piece for the concert at the end of the summer. I was like, fine, I don’t want to be in the stupid concert anyway, but he got all offended, because the concert’s supposed to be, you know, what all of us are working toward for the six weeks we’re here.

Finally, we agreed I’d meet him three times a week at seven
A.M.
—yes, that would be seven in the morning—so he could teach me what I needed to know. I tried to point out that seven
A.M.
was the Polar Bear swim, which also happened to be the only time I could realistically bathe, but he so didn’t care.

God. Musicians. So temperamental.

While I was sitting there back in Birch Tree Cottage, thinking about how close I’d been to getting fired, and talking about Paul Huck, I looked out at all the kids in front of me and wondered how many of them were going to grow up to be Professor Le Blancs. Probably all of them. And that saddened me. Because it seemed like they were never even going to get the chance to be anything else, if they only got two hours of free time a day to play.

Except Shane, of course. Shane, the only one of the kids at Camp Wawasee for Gifted Child Musicians who probably could make a living as a musician one day if he wanted to, clearly didn’t. Want to, I mean. He wanted to be a football player.

And you know, I could sort of relate to that. I knew what a pain it was to have a gift you’d never, ever asked for.

“—so Paul Huck got jobs around the neighborhood,” I went on, “mowing lawns and doing people’s yardwork in the summer, and chopping firewood in the winter. And pretty much nobody noticed him, but when they did, they thought he was, you know, a pretty nice guy. Not a whole lot upstairs, though.”

I glanced at Scott and Dave. They were sitting on the windowsill. In a few minutes, I would give the signal, and one of them would sneak into the kitchen to say his line.

“But there was actually a lot going on upstairs in Paul Huck’s head,” I said. “Because Paul Huck, while he was in people’s yards, digging up their tree stumps or whatever, he was watching them. And the person he liked to watch most of all was a girl named Claire Lippman, who, every day during the summer, liked to climb out onto her porch roof and sunbathe in this little bitty bikini.”