Melody Burning (8 page)

“And you spent the whole day recording songs that can’t be used. Suicide songs?”

“This is totally insane. Because this was the best day I’ve ever had. I mean, songs I didn’t even know I had in me came out, and my arranger—who is the one who actually knows, not Mom—she says they’re brilliant.”

“She’s a paid employee. Of course she’s enthusiastic. But this material needs to disappear.”

Could Mom actually have my songs
erased
? Would she?

“Where is my music?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what I said, you bastard. WHERE IS MY MUSIC?” I jump up. “MOM! MOM!”

She’s in the living room, smoking and drinking vodka.

I approach her. “Did you erase my day?”

“Darling, you can’t go out there with that stuff. It’s horrible.
Horrible
!”

And then I am on her. I am hitting her, slamming her, kicking her, and I feel myself almost immediately being pulled off, and I scream—boy, do I scream. I scream with all my might for help, for anyone to come, for
him
to come because whoever he is, he’s going to be better than the living hell this place has become.

I’m dragged across the room by this prick, who is stronger than he looks.

I go limp. What’s the use?

“Melody, we’re going to give you a little sedative,” I hear him say.

Mom nods.

“That was probably the best session at Reynolds in
history
!”

“When you wake up in the morning,” Mom says, “there will be a composer here, and tomorrow the three of us are going to start creating some music that people want to hear.”

He takes my arm.

“Don’t you dare touch me!”

Then there is a pain in my shoulder and I jerk away, but it’s too late.

Already the world is going. I can feel the covers coming up around me.

I see the sunset out my window, red at the horizon, gold higher up.

Then it is dark.

C
HAPTER 9

B
eresford had never felt anything like this before in his life.

All day he had stayed in Melody’s apartment, forcing himself not to open her drawers or her closet, looking instead in the fridge at the things she ate and drank, the diet sodas, the cheese and roasted chicken, the cold cuts, the mint ice cream. He would take a taste and close his eyes and let the flavors fill his head and think, “
She
has tasted this taste;
she
knows this flavor.”

Only when their maid had come in and cleaned had he hidden, and then just to go up his hatch and linger there, waiting for the vacuum cleaner to stop and the singing to fade away, which it did, as always, in a couple of hours.

He had looked for his rose, but it was not there, so that meant she liked it and had it with her. Good.

Usually, they were home late, so he wasn’t expecting the man who came when the sun was midway down the western sky. Still, it was easy to slip into the den and back up into the crawl space. He’d lain along one of the beams, listening. The man went into Melody’s room and searched it carefully. He could hear him turning pages, and he wondered if Melody kept a notebook. Why not? She could probably write and read and all that.

When they came home, the man met them and there was yelling that made Beresford stuff his fist in his mouth so he wouldn’t shout out his own rage at whatever they were doing to her. They were breaking her heart and maybe even hurting her. He could hear the terror and the sorrow in her voice.

Then the man put her to sleep. He’d heard that, too, had heard her scream and beg for him not to, and then her voice went low, and the man—a doctor—said she would sleep until morning.

Beresford sweated out the minutes until the place was quiet. He was going to enter an occupied apartment again. He hadn’t been able to stop himself last night, and he couldn’t now.

Slowly, carefully, he opened his hatch and looked down into the den closet. All was quiet. No light shone under the door. So he slipped down to the floor, then carefully slid the door open a crack.

The den was full of shadows.

Moving quickly and silently, he stepped out of the closet and crossed the room. There was light shining under this door, but none of the shadows revealed movement. Also, not a sound. Carefully, he grasped the doorknob and turned it.

The hall was dimly lit by a lamp in the living room. Melody’s mom sat on the couch reading papers of some sort. She listened to soft music.

Beresford needed to be with Melody.

He slid silently along the wall to her door, then touched the doorknob as if it was a delicate blossom and gently turned it.

He was in. The curtains were drawn. With three quick steps he crossed to her bedside. He could just see her in the darkness, her face glowing as if with an inner light.

He bent closer, cupping his hands around her cheeks, not daring to touch her. He could feel her warmth and smell a faint perfume. She was so wonderful. Just so very wonderful. He drank her in with his eyes, touched the faint heat that lingered around her head, and longed for something he didn’t understand and couldn’t name but that made his whole body ache.

Finally, he sat on the floor beside the bed. At once shaking with fear and thrilled beyond words, he leaned his head against the mattress. He could feel the faint tickle of her breath against his cheek.

Hesitant, hardly daring, he slid his hand up until it just touched her arm.

After a time, she sighed and shifted in the bed. When she stopped, he was already halfway across the room.

Now she lay with a hand dangling off the edge of the bed. He crept back.

Her face was now turned toward the wall. His heart hammering, his breath shallow and quick, he knelt beside the bed, bent forward, and kissed her cheek.

Her skin smelled of flowers. His face close to hers, he imagined that he could send her his thoughts: “I love you with all my heart, Melody McGrath, and I give myself to you forever.”

Her sleep continued on, undisturbed.

He did not kiss her again, but he also did not leave.

Sometime very late, he heard voices. It was the doctor and Melody’s mom.

There was no time to do anything except slide under the bed. A bare second later, four feet entered the room.

“See, she’s peaceful,” the doctor said. “It’s not the Nitrazepam anymore. It’s just natural sleep. She’ll wake up normally and feel a lot better.”

“I don’t know if she hates me or what.”

“Sixteen is very conflicted.”

“You can say that again.”

Beresford was furious. This man was supposed to be a doctor, and he sounded like one, but he shouldn’t be in the apartment this late with the patient’s mother. That was not right.

“What am I gonna do with her?”

“Make money, Hilda. You have two years before you lose control of her.”

“I’ve got her album back on the charts. I’ve got her show sold out.”

“And she’s ever so grateful.”

“Hardly.”

In reply, he chuckled. Then the feet came together and Beresford’s face burned, because he heard the sound of kissing.

Finally he saw them walking out, her arm around his waist. When they were gone, he pulled himself out from under the bed—but as he did so, he heard something else.

Listening, he froze. It was in the ceiling, a faint creaking.

But there was a lot of wind tonight, so maybe it was the building. Nobody but him ever went in the crawl spaces.

He resumed his vigil beside his sleeping beauty, wanting to protect her but not sure exactly how to go about it.

As before, she breathed softly, her breath warm on his cheek when he leaned near her.

He was just settling back down beside her bed when there was a sharp intake of breath. Before he could react, she shot up to a sitting position and her eyes opened wide. She was going to scream.

He laid his mouth beside her ear and whispered, “Don’t scream, don’t scream, please, please, please.” In response there was a choked groan, then another. “Please, please, please . . .”

Then, for the first time in the world, the girl he loved spoke to him. She said in whispered breath, “Who are you?”

He raised his head and looked into the most perfect face he had ever known. His heart hammered and sweat came all over his shivering body, and he told her the truth. “I don’t remember.”

A frown flickered in her eyes, then her lips opened slightly and her eyes glanced away. “W-what?”

He thought she must be at the edge of total panic.

“I guess I had a name a long time ago, but I forgot it because no one talks to me.”

He had never in his life wanted to hug somebody as much as he wanted to hug Melody. Impulsively, he kissed the end of her nose.

She smiled a little, but then wagged her finger in front of his face.

“How do you get in my room?”

“I live here.”

“In my apartment? You
live
here?”

He pointed to the ceiling. “In there. All over. I live in the Beresford.”

She looked at him a long time, her eyes rich with questions, her soft lips alternately touched with a smile, then trembling at the edge of fear.

“You know you’re wearing a woman’s blouse.”

It was a shirt he got out of the trash in an apartment, so he was not sure what this meant.

“Yes,” he said carefully.

“Are you a TV?”

He was confused. Wasn’t it obvious that he was a person?

“Do I look like a TV?”

“No, except the blouse.”

He looked down at himself. “It’s not a TV.” He felt it. “It’s cloth.”

Surprise washed her face, sparkles came into her eyes.

“What is going on here?”

“Shh! Shh!”

She got out of bed, swept across the room, and locked the door. “Man, I need coffee. Can you make coffee appear, magic boy?”

“Yeah, but we better go to a vacationer.”

Suddenly there was light! Instinct made him go for the closet, then terror swept through him like a rush of fire, because his hatch was not in there.

She stood by the door with her hand on the light switch. She was looking at him now with frank, wide eyes. She came toward him.

“Turn around,” she said.

He turned slowly.

Now her head was down, her cheeks flushing a soft pink.

“You’re beautiful,” she said.

“You’re beautiful.”

“You need to get out of here.”

“I want to stay.”

She smiled at him, which caused him to think again of the meaning of the word
love.
This was love. That was what he felt.

“I want to stay because I love you.”

She tossed her head and laughed a little in her throat, and the way that sounded made his body stir. He longed to hold her but knew from TV that if he did what he wanted, it would make her upset.

He said, “Can we hold hands?”

Silently, she came to him. She held out her hand. He took it. They stood face-to-face, hands clasped almost formally, and he thought there must be something else he should do, but he didn’t know what it was.

“You kissed my cheek. That’s why I woke up. I dreamed you were a prince. Are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“A beautiful boy with magical powers who wakes the sleeping beauty.”

She raised her face to his and brushed her lips against his cheek.

It was fire that tickled. He shuddered.

Then she looked up at him, her eyes shining, her lips just parted. She took his chin, drew it down, and brought his lips to hers. An instant passed that was like eternity for him. But then she turned away.

“You have to go.”

“I want to live here now.”

“You haven’t met my mother.”

He did not say how well he knew her mother. He did not say how well he knew her life.

“If she found you, she would have you arrested.”

He’d seen that on TV. “I didn’t commit a crime.”

“I’m still jailbait, you know. How old are you?”

“I’m as old as you are.”

“You’re sixteen?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She gave him a sideways glance. “Can you count to ten?”

“I can count to a hundred. I can read some stuff.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“Uh . . . I don’t remember.”

“You don’t. You really don’t.” She folded her arms and looked him up and down. “Do you live in an apartment? Where are your parents?”

“Mom died. Luther killed Dad.”

“Luther? Who is Luther?”

“I don’t know. I just never forgot his name. He pushed Dad off the roof.”

“My God. Did the cops come? Did they arrest this guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“This happened—when? Today?”

He shook his head. It was so long ago now, it felt like it was at the bottom of a well. In the dark of the past. “I had to hide or Luther would get me, too. Luther would kill me.”

“So you hid . . . where?”

He dared not tell about his place, not even her.

“In here.”

“In my room? Luther killed your dad, and you hid here?”

“Wait, wait, I’m trying to tell you. It happened when I was little.”

“But—
what
? Where do you come from, then, a foster home?”

“I come from here.”

“I think you’d better leave now.”