Alyzon Whitestarr

Relief flooded through me, and it struck me that he had been both kind and courageous in saying all this to me. I said shyly, “They tell us all the time that boy hormones are pretty strong. I guess I am the first girl in history to know it firsthand.”

  “So we forget it happened?” Harrison asked. I nodded, but of course I would not forget. How could I? In a sense it had been my first real kiss. And what a kiss! If anyone had asked before, I would have said that Harrison was probably as inexperienced as I was, but there had been no awkwardness or hesitation in how he had held me.

  It was getting late, so we finished our cold hot chocolates and Harrison offered to walk me back to the bus stop. We walked in silence for a while, then Harrison shot me a look, his face pale in the harsh spill of light from a street lamp. “I dinnae suppose …”

  “What?”

  “Well, I was just wondering if it might not be your sister who brought your da to Rayc’s attention. What if that CD Harlen gave you tae return tae your sister had your da’s song on it? Maybe she took it tae that poetry group for some reason, and knowing Rayc’s interest in celebrities, someone passed it along tae him.”

  “Why would Serenity talk about Da in a poetry meeting?” I asked.

  “You said yourself she is angry at him, and I bet there would be every invitation and encouragement in those poetry meetings for people tae wallow in all the negative things in their lives,” Harrison said.

  I shivered, because it seemed likely he was right. Harrison shrugged off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. I didn’t protest, and as his warmth and woody scent enveloped me, our gazes seemed to snag. Harrison took off his glasses very purposefully, and my heart began to hammer because I thought that he was going to kiss me again. Then a car roared by and blatted its horn at us, and he just polished the lenses and put the glasses on again.

  We made our plan to meet at the train station the next day, and Harrison offered to get Raoul to call the school pretending to be Da, and say I was ill.

  “What about your parents?”

  “There’s just my dad, and he won’t care. My mother died when I was born, and he kind of lost interest in life after that.” There was something in his tone that made me think of the barrier I had come upon inside him. It struck me that none of us, Harrison or Gilly, me or Sarry, had normal mothers. It was one of those significant-seeming details that didn’t add up to anything.

  * * *

  I felt a powerful rush of relief and gladness to see Da sitting at the table reading a book when I entered the kitchen.

  I ran to him and hugged him, without remembering what the consequence might be, but I only felt a warm lovely envelope of love enfold me. “Hey, I missed you, Aly Cat,” Da said, smiling. It was something he’d called me when I was about five and had spent half the time pretending I was a stray cat that had wandered in, pestering everyone for pats and bowls of milk and hissing when I was ignored. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

  “I was with Harrison,” I said, sliding onto a stool. “So what happened with the gig?” I kept my tone carefully light.

  “It was … interesting.”

  “Interesting?” I persisted, not liking the word.

  “Well, it was unusual because as well as a lot of artistic types in the audiences, there were dozens of musicians, some of them pretty big. I’ve never performed for so many performers before. It was an honor, in a way.”

  “I thought it was a charity function.”

  “Oh, it was, but it wasn’t a fund-raiser. The performers and the sponsors were being thanked by the charity for their help throughout the past year, and there were a lot of speeches in between performances about future projects, so I guess everyone was being nicely warned that they’d be needed again.”

  “Was Aaron Rayc there?”

  Da nodded. “He gave one of the speeches about an annual fund-raising event coming up at the Castledean Estate, which is his property.”

  My skin prickled. “He didn’t happen to invite you to perform at it, did he?”

  Da laughed. “No, he did not, but I wouldn’t have minded if he had. Provided he asked me with Losing the Rope. I all but said as much, as a matter of fact.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “Who else performed?”

  “Lots of people. There were a couple of rap guys called Neo Tokyo who were pretty good. Nice guys, but very young. The biggest name was the Rak.”

  “I don’t like their music.”

  “I don’t much like it either,” Da admitted. “It’s not that their musicianship is bad. In fact, the guitarist is brilliant. But their lyrics are so savage and judgmental.” He laughed and shook his head. “I must be getting old.”

  “Being angry isn’t the same as being young,” I said.

  He gave me a surprised look. “Well, no, I guess it’s not, but a lot of the time it does seem to be the same thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe kids think that’s how they’re supposed to be because musicians and writers keep telling them so.”

  Da said thoughtfully, “Now that you mention it, maybe that’s why the Neo Tokyo boys seemed so confused to me. They have a great energy, but it’s as if they’re trying to push it into this angry, edgy stuff like the Rak does. I suspect that they have something different to say. Or they would, if they made the effort to figure it out rather than just emulating the Rak.”

  “I bet Aaron Rayc loved them,” I said.

  “I don’t know if he liked it, but he did say that the Rak’s music expresses an anger that people feel but can’t show. That it offers an outlet that doesn’t hurt anyone.” He paused. “He asked me to play a couple of numbers with them.”

  “And did you do it?” I asked.

  He laughed at my expression. “I told them I couldn’t do their music or songs, so they suggested using a couple of my songs. I was taken aback because I would have thought my music would be anathema to them. We spent a whole day rehearsing and adapting the two songs we had decided on. It was interesting, but a little disturbing, too. I also did a couple of Losing the Rope songs with Neo Tokyo. They were nowhere near as polished as the Rak, but I have to say I enjoyed it a lot more. They seemed to understand the music better, and when they altered it, they just added something new to it rather than turning it on its head.” He smiled.

  I smiled, too, because although I was sure Aaron Rayc was out to change Da to make him marketable in a certain way, seeing him made me feel he was too complete, too grounded in his honesty and beliefs to be manipulated.

  Mum came in wearing a drifting green shirt over tight black pants, her hair a cloud of red floating around her shoulders. She looked stunning, and I saw the adoration in Da’s eyes. For some reason the look that passed between them reminded me of Harrison’s kiss, and I got up abruptly. But as I reached the door, I heard Mum tell Da that she was painting Serenity. I turned in time to see a troubled look on Da’s face.

  “You’re painting Serenity?” Da repeated.

  “I have been wanting to paint her for some time,” Mum told him gently. She reached out and touched his cheek.

  A little puzzled by the exchange, I went to have a shower. I had been determined to tell Da about Serenity the moment I saw him, but what had happened that night with Harrison had changed my mind.

  Lying in bed a little later, I felt heavy with tiredness. But on the verge of falling asleep, I found myself vividly reliving Harrison’s kiss. It roused in me a restless heat, and even though I told myself it was just an echo of boy hormones, it felt very much like longing.

  * * *

  I set out to meet Harrison the next morning as planned, managing to make a quick call to Gilly before I left home to explain I wouldn’t be at school. I told her only that Harrison and I were going to Shaletown to see if we could learn more about Harlen. If he asked about me, she could say she didn’t know where I was, which would be true in the most specific sense.

  “I believe that is what my gran would call splitting hairs with the devil,” Gilly lau
ghed, then Mum came in yawning and I had to end the call. I told Mum that I would be with my friend Harrison after school and would come home late, and she nodded. She would forget to mention it to Da, of course, unless he asked her.

  I had left early enough to change into casual clothes at the station, because a uniform was identifiable and we didn’t need any nosy neighbors calling the school to ask what was going on. The train was already at the station when I got out of the washroom, and I was pacing up and down the platform anxiously when Harrison arrived late, looking heavy-eyed and flustered. “Sorry,” he said briefly. “Did you get your ticket?” I shook my head. “Good. Raoul’s going tae drive us.”

  I stared at him. “All the way to Shaletown?”

  Harrison nodded. “It’ll give us more time there. But we have tae get the bus over to his place, because it’ll be quicker at rush hour than for him tae drive over and collect us.”

  “Is everything OK with you?” I asked once we were on the bus. He glanced at me, and I read his awareness of my extended senses.

  “Just home stuff going on,” he said. “How did it go with your da and that Remington gig, anyway? I gather he’s OK?”

  “He was so much the same as usual last night that I feel a bit stupid for being worried,” I admitted. Just the same, I told him what Da had said about the gig, and Harrison said finally that maybe Aaron Rayc just liked exerting his power and influence and seeing what happened. Because neither of us could figure out how it could possibly benefit Aaron Rayc to have Da play a couple of songs with the Rak. Harrison knew of them, too, but like me he didn’t care for their music.

  “I guess we’re not angry enough to like it,” he said.

  His words made me think of Rose Cobb, and I wondered aloud if there would be time to stop in and say hello while we were in Shaletown.

  It took us almost an hour to get to Raoul’s house, and he opened the door at once as if he had been waiting for us. He wheeled straight down the dove-gray hall to a garage that was not visible from outside the house. There we got into Raoul’s car.

  We had just got to the highway when it started to rain. Raoul switched the windshield wipers on, and I watched them, half mesmerized, as Raoul made Harrison go over everything that had happened the night before.

  I dozed a bit. Soon after I saw the familiar sign welcoming us to Shaletown. Raoul pulled the car into a lot behind a comfortable-looking bluestone pub, which turned out to have a ramp entry and widened doors for wheelchair access.

  “How lucky,” I murmured, but Harrison said sardonically that he doubted luck had anything to do with it. Raoul gave him an amused look and said he had found the pub via the Internet.

  “You got your computers cleaned up, then?” Harrison asked.

  Raoul shook his head, maneuvering into the pub. “I had a third telephone line installed and bought a new computer.” He saw my horrified look and laughed. “It was a good lesson not to rely totally on one system,” he said. “Daisy will repair the rest when she comes later this week. Now, let’s have a quick lunch before you head off.”

  Once we had given our orders to the waitress, Raoul spoke decisively. “All right,” he said, “you’d better have these.” He took out a map of Shaletown and showed us where the private school had been: Carmine Street. “As you see, it’s not far from the detention center.” Raoul put a cell phone on the table. “My number is stored in it. Just call or text when you’re ready to be collected.” Then he put down two clipboards with paper, saying a survey would be a good reason for us to go from house to house asking questions.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked him.

  “I have an appointment at the Shaletown office of Rayc Inc.”

  I gaped at him, and Harrison asked, “He has an office here? Isn’t that kind of weird?”

  Raoul laughed. “I thought that would get a reaction from you both. Yes, he has an office here, and yes, it is odd. Apparently his wife was living in Shaletown when he met her, and the office building belongs to her. She inherited several holdings when her previous husband, a self-made Shaletown man called Jamie Makiaros, died. The property is tied up so Rayc can’t sell it, and I suppose he decided he might as well make use of it.”

  “Where did you find out all of this?” I asked worriedly.

  “Just some clever Internet snooping on my new computer. No communication with human beings and no downloading, so don’t worry. I rang the office this morning to say I had heard Rayc Inc. would be able to give me some advice about finding some more meaningful way to donate money. I said that I was driving through today and would like to discuss the matter. His secretary asked who had given me the name of the office, and I told him I had heard it at a cocktail party.”

  “You can’t ask him about Da,” I said, still not completely reassured.

  “Of course not. I doubt very much that the man himself will be there, though. I’d just like to get a feel for what the organization actually does. But you two had better go.”

  I hesitated, then I reached in my bag and got out my journal. “I’ve been writing stuff down since the accident, and I thought maybe you would like to have a look. The last bit is a copy of what I read in that yellow book.”

  Raoul took it, looking pleased, and by the time our food came, he was already leafing through it.

  * * *

  “It’s lucky the rain stopped,” I said as we walked briskly along the street. Harrison, map in hand, was doing the navigating. Carmine turned out to be a wide street with beautiful, well-established trees on both sides and a glistening carpet of red, brown, and yellow leaves lying beneath them. It was a residential street, and most of the houses were enormous redbrick or sandstone mansions with beautiful well-kept gardens and gleaming Range Rovers or Volvos sitting in their driveways. The households’ second cars, Harrison guessed. He reckoned the primary cars would be BMWs or Mercedes.

  “Just the right setting for a private school,” Harrison added. But although we walked the street from end to end, we saw only houses. “Nothing that could have been a school,” Harrison said. “You’re sure you got the street right?”

  “I am,” I said. “Maybe there’s more than one Carmine Street in Shaletown.”

  “No, Raoul would have checked.”

  We began to make our way back along the street on the other side. “Maybe it’s been turned into a house since it closed,” I said.

  “None of these is big enough tae have been a school. Hey!” He had stopped and was gazing back along the street. “That park we passed at the other end of the street. Was it actually a park or could it have been a vacant block?”

  “But … they wouldn’t pull a whole school down and then not build anything in its place,” I protested, following him back.

  The lot was a huge grassed expanse with nothing to suggest there had ever been any building there. But there was no sign saying it was a park either, and around the corner we found a “For Sale” sign with the phone number of a real-estate agent.

  “This must have been it,” Harrison said.

  “But why would it have been taken down?” I asked.

  “There could be any number of reasons. It might have been a bit of an eyesore.”

  “In a neighborhood like this?” I asked.

  “It might just have been a white elephant, hard to sell, so they figured grass would do better. On the other hand, it’s not sold and I wonder why.” His eyes lit up. “I’ve an idea.” He got out the cell phone that Raoul had given us.

  “Hello, is this Kernes Real Estate?” Harrison made himself sound older and slightly bossy. “I’d like tae speak tae someone about the large lot on the corner of Carmine Street.” His eyes widened and he gave me a pointed look. “Yes, the big one that used tae be a school. I don’t suppose you know anything about … Well, can someone else help me? OK, I’ll call back. Thank you. Yes, thank you.” He pressed the end button. “The woman who handles it is out tae lunch. Let’s go canvass the neighbors.”

  We pu
lled out the clipboards and marched up to the house closest to the vacant block. Harrison rang a doorbell shaped like the head of a lion. No one answered. We tried a few times, and then moved to the next house. A cleaning woman answered, saying that the owners would be home after five.

  “Have you worked here long?” Harrison asked. “Maybe you can help us. It willnae take long.”

  The cleaning woman sighed and shrugged. “OK, why not. I’ve worked here for two years.”

  “That block back there on the corner; it was once a school?”

  The woman frowned. “It was some sort of school. Why?”

  “We’re doing a project on land use,” Harrison lied smoothly. “We’re looking at how it’s changed, and why. Whether land has always been vacant or what used tae be on it. What happened tae the school, anyway?” It was neatly done. The woman was diverted from her momentary suspicion.

  “There was some kind of explosion, I heard. Or maybe it was a fire.”

  I was glad she was looking toward the lot just then, because I couldn’t control the jump I gave. But Harrison simply asked why it hadn’t been rebuilt.

  The woman shrugged. “Mrs. Callow, she’s the owner of this place, she was sure it had been bombed; it was all she could talk about. Some people have too much money and too little sense to fill all the time they have on their hands.” She glanced at her own reddened hands complacently. “She was real disappointed when the police found it was an accident, because she couldn’t go round anymore telling her friends that she had lived next to violent criminals.” She laughed derisively.

  “What did the police think had happened?” Harrison asked with the sort of flattering eagerness that storytellers love.

  “I can’t say I recall. It was the boiler that blew up, or maybe a furnace or something. Then there was a fire, and I think some people were killed. Or maybe somebody was only injured.” The woman frowned at me. “Is she all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said huskily. “I think that pie I ate for lunch might have been a bit off.”

  “We’d better go. Thanks,” Harrison told the woman. I felt her eyes following us as we passed on down the street and out of her sight. Harrison made me stop and sit on a fence, saying I was as white as a ghost.