CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Wednesday. Two more practices before the recital, so we started doing dress rehearsals and marking where there'd be props on the stage. Being modern dance, there weren’t a whole lot of props - mostly backdrops and the occasional foreground items. The only one that gave me real trouble was for the finale. There were five ping-pong balls that had been cut in half and laid down where there would be props for my final dance. When I asked what they were for, Dane told me that the pieces hadn’t come in yet, but not to worry since they weren’t too big. He also added that it would be good for the performance if I stayed within the circle that the props formed. It was a large circle, so it shouldn’t have been a problem, but it still irritated me that my dance was becoming less and less my own.
Jack was not waiting outside the auditorium when practice was over. In fact, I had only seen him during history class. Mina wasn’t there, so I wasn’t sure why he didn’t just take the time to recover from his injuries, but apparently coming to school was simply that important to him.
When Dane dropped me off at home after practice, I noticed a complete change in the atmosphere. Whereas for the last few weeks there had been nothing but tension in the air, now there was something less... angry. It felt melancholy, and cold.
“Dad?” I called out. I heard nothing at first, until I got closer to the door leading to the garage. I couldn’t hear dad very clearly through the door at first, but it was definitely him.
Suddenly he was yelling. “I did what you asked! I made the damn candles, I dropped them off at the spot you told me to, now let her go! No, I will not wait until they’ve been used!”
I didn’t wait to be there when dad was finished talking and he came out of the garage. I heard all I wanted to know; curiosity was not strong enough to keep me there. I quickly slipped upstairs and waited until I could hear the door to the garage open, then slam shut. He slammed it shut hard enough I could feel vibrations at my spot at the top of the stairs, and Arvin came out of his room, curious. I motioned for him to be quiet and wait with me for a few seconds. We walked down the stairs as nonchalantly as possible, and tried to step loudly so we could announce our presence.
Dad was at the kitchen table, hunched over with his face in his hands. Apparently he was so out of it that he hadn’t heard us stomping down the stairs.
“Dad?” I asked quietly. “Are you okay?”
He looked up at me and Arvin. He appeared to be feeling worse than ever – he was almost completely white-skinned, and the darkness around his eyes almost made it look like he had been punched in both eyes.
“Kids! When did you get home?”
Arvin gave me a confused look. I knew for sure that he got home before I did, and I wasn’t exactly sneaking in when I came home, either. “It’s almost four thirty, dad. I’ve been home for a while and Kenna just walked in. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. Wow, four thirty already? I’ve got to get dinner started. You kids have homework to do, right? Go do it. I’ll let you know when I have some food put together.”
I ended up pacing back and forth in my bedroom. I fiddled with my necklace, anxious about the fact that I still had to wear it. Practice was never short enough that I could dance on my own afterwards and make my curfew, and most of my time was spent being directed by Dane on how to dance better with my backup dancers, so I couldn’t even get a good dance in then, either. Dane didn’t care, really, he just made me promise to “properly” dance during the show.
All I could do was think about what I had heard on Dad’s side of the conversation. I wish I hadn’t heard what I did, because now I was just more worried about mom. I now knew that dad was being forced to make candles. I knew that finishing them was the condition he had to satisfy for getting mom back. I knew that he didn’t have a face to face transaction with whomever he was providing them for, which meant that he probably hadn’t seen my mother’s captor at all. All this was interesting knowledge, but none of it solved my primary worry: when was mom coming back? Apparently Mina had lied to me about my mother, since obviously she was still in captivity. I was disgusted with myself – I should have burned her when she had the chance. Why should I trust a vampire? It seemed stupid in hindsight.