"In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence."
Robert Lynd
He strode past his neglected violin and the pipe organ next to the dining nook, pausing when he reached the three bedrooms at the back of his home. The one on the left belonged to him, and the one on the right was reserved for her … once she lived again.
But it was the black door in the center where Ange waited that held his interest now. Even after all these years, the gargoyle door knocker held him in the thrall of its hideous snarl because what it guarded within was equally grotesque, powerful, and fascinating.
Choosing not to use the knocker, his knuckles thrummed the door lightly. "It's Thorn. Are you decent?" He waited for a response.
Eleven years before, at the age of eight, he'd busted inside, eager to show off the ortolan songbird he had rescued from a cat. His guardian was standing at the mirror—bared of the fitted mask that usually hid the top three-quarters of his face.
Thorn had stared in stupefied horror at the exposed reflection: the jaundiced skin, crinkled and waxy … stretched so thin that every vein and frayed capillary manifested itself like a gruesome road map, revealing large hematomas, red and pulsing underneath; the cavernous indentions above his eyebrows, making his eyes appear sunken; and most horrifying of all, the bridge of a nose stopping almost before it started, leaving no cartilage to cover the two large, black holes from which he breathed. A missing upper lip opened to a row of teeth, so perfect and straight, that like the strong and flawless chin below, they mocked the jigsaw-puzzle face above.
Thorn had never seen anything like it—a corpse's rotting head atop a man's living form. He'd screamed and clenched his hands in a knee-jerk reaction, crushing the tiny bird cupped between his fingers.
The ortolan's agonized chitters broke through his trancelike state, and he dropped her to the floor. His careless mistreatment of the bird earned him a cuff to the ear from his guardian, a reprimand so sharp and instantaneous, Thorn almost blacked out from the resulting dizziness.
It was the first and last time Father Erik ever struck him. He had other, subtler ways to discipline Thorn, methods far more effective than corporal punishment.
Thorn had struggled to stay standing. The ringing in his ear couldn't drown out the songbird's whistling gasps as she labored to breathe against the broken ribs puncturing her lungs. His guardian bent to pick up the dying bird.
Hot tears streaked Thorn's face. He fixed his gaze on the yellow-and-green clump of feathers inside his father's fine-boned hands, avoiding a second glance at that deformity atop his neck.
After wrapping the bird in a handkerchief, Erik snagged Thorn's chin. Thorn tried to close his eyes, but his guardian simply had to speak.
"Look at me, child."
Thorn's eyelids locked open, unable to resist that hypnotic voice. It was Father Erik's ultimate power. Those vocal cords sparked decadent sensations—so preternaturally persuasive there was no escape. With just a spoken word or a serenade of song, the man had the power to wrap a deadly cobra inside a cocoon of coiled obedience, and bring a cold-hearted murderer to drown in a pool of their own repentant tears. Once the net of his voice was cast, he could capture and manipulate anyone and anything. Sometimes only for seconds, and other times for hours or days or years, depending upon the victim's inner strength and will.
"Embrace your revulsion." Father Erik's resonant, masterful command had cradled Thorn in softness that day, quieting the buzz in his throbbing ear. "But never pity me. Never. For pity makes us both victims. Be true to your instinctive horror. Turn it outward and wield it."
Erik held the limp, gasping bird against Thorn's chest. He caught Thorn's hand and urged him to touch his disfigured face … to feel the withered flesh that crinkled like moist, decaying leaves under his palm, to rake his thumb at the edge of the spongy craters where a nose should've been. Thorn obeyed, never blinking an eye. Nausea and repellent fear gathered around his heart until it burned. The fiery sensation culminated and passed from him to the bird's feather-encased breast. A shiver of turquoise light flashed through her eyes, then her breathing eased and she fluttered, enlivened.
Cured.
"Did you see the aura's color, Thorn?"
Thorn nodded. He'd experienced such pigments of light in small samplings since he'd been living there, doled out by his guardian, but had yet to learn how to harvest the flashes himself. And he'd never seen such a transfer give life … only take it.
"Auras are vibrations of color, signifying the energy around all living matter," Father Erik had said, releasing the songbird from the handkerchief so Thorn could return her to the woods outside. "The colors change with mood … a brilliant clarity that only our kind can both see and command. And now you know that one of the most distilled forms of energy is harvested from the depths of dread. The moment you've mastered inspiring fear in others, you will be their master. The only thing more potent than the despair of terror is the rapture of music. As you remember, from your own past."
The power of the terror Thorn embraced that day couldn't compare to the remorse he'd felt for bringing shame to the man who had shown him such compassion since the tender age of seven … who became his guardian and teacher and friend.
In that one mask-less moment, he had looked upon the only father he'd ever known as a monster. Although now Thorn understood someone's appearance was not the measuring stick for a soul's predisposition toward goodness or evil, he still regretted that instinctual prejudice fueled by immaturity.
Tensing at the memory, Thorn pounded Father Erik's door once more. His chest constricted at the resulting silence. The damp air, a result of being so close to the water, usually soothed him. But today, it clogged his lungs, thick and weighted like a death shroud.
He shoved the door open. The coffin, balanced atop its dais and lined with red velvet, was empty. Just as he'd feared.
Cursing, Thorn stared up at "Dies Irae" painted in lovely black script around the top edge of the room to form a border against the red walls. The verses had never seemed more apropos—a requiem mass as ghastly and rhapsodic as the man who had built this lair over a century ago for his sanctuary: the composer, the alchemist, the architect, the magician, the mastermind.
The Phantom.
But that legendary man had grown weak and sickly of late, and no longer ventured topside alone, neither to the secret passages of the academy that held nothing but bad memories for him, nor to anywhere in Paris. He went only when Thorn accompanied him to provide support.
Or so Thorn thought. There was only one reason Erik would risk going without him today. The same reason he'd lost all his senses a hundred years earlier at an opera house much like this one—before Thorn was even born—and kidnapped the opera's prima donna.
Thorn's gaze shifted to the painting hanging on the wall where Christina Nilsson, Erik's cherished Christine, was dressed as Pandora from Greek mythology. A necklace holding a ruby wedding ring hung from a nail beside it.
Thorn growled. Should Erik be seen or captured, their entire way of life—all that his father had worked for and built, along with their ties to the subterranean world—could be exposed.
Turning back toward the darkness of the parlor, Thorn shouted the "Dies Irae," the tension on his vocal cords excruciating: "Day of judgment! Day of wonders! Hark! The trumpet's awful sound; louder than a thousand thunders, shakes the vast creation round!"
Ange answered with her own trumpeting squawk as the elevator made a whining hum, the cables drawing the car up from the cellar. She tottered toward a shadowy figure clambering out of the gated door with a lantern in hand.
"Brava, Thorn!" Erik's deep and dulcet praise floated over to him, stroking him like a loving pat to the head. "Stunning recitation. Although you mustn't strain your voice. And hymns are best delivered in their native tongue. The protestant version holds no torch to the Latin." With a weary grunt, his silhouette slumped to the floor. The swan huddled in his lap and scolded him, her beak tugging at his ear.
Thorn crouched beside the duo, relieved it had only been a case of Ange not knowing where her master was. But that relief sunk to concern when he noticed the sickly gray aura surrounding Father Erik. Thorn fought the usual bout of jealousy that niggled at him, seeing Erik give so much of himself to his cause in the cellar lab. His father was always exhausted on Sundays, after burning all his energy, but this was extreme. "You should be in bed, saving your strength," Thorn said, pushing out the statement from a throat still raw and achy after his panicked tantrum.
"Just as you should be respectful of your own limitations." His father's unsteady fingertip tapped Thorn's Adam's apple in the lantern's soft light, then moved to his face, as if assuring himself all of Thorn's features were in place.
He often compared Thorn's appearance—defined dark brows above piercing, wide-set brown eyes; high cheekbones; a straight nose above plump lips shapely enough to be a woman's; square, cleft chin; and defined musculature—to the heroes in the mythological tomes Thorn liked to read. Thorn, however, preferred the monsters of those tales. Their tragic misbalances and flaws were so much more compelling than any perfection could be.
And so it was with Erik. Having no outer beauty to empower him, he'd honed his inner artistry instead, the things that truly made him unique: mind, talents, voice, and mysticism. Attributes that demanded respect, fear, and awe.
Thorn had watched and learned during the twelve years he'd been under Erik's tutelage. Pretty faces were no more than masks worn to justify laziness and intellectual monotony. Since Erik had been born without one, he'd crafted a myriad of his own—masks that gave the illusion of conformity but could be cast aside whenever he wished to unleash the true, blinding radiance of deviation.
Thorn followed in his guardian's footsteps, made his own masks—some stitched of cloth, some ceramic—to cover the right half of his face in tribute to his mixed bloodline. Although he had nothing physical to hide, a demon lurked inside him, afraid to forge into the light of day. His masks made him feel safe, and as adept as he was at blending into his surroundings, he rarely walked the grounds without wearing one. Today being the exception. A mistake he wouldn't make again.
Erik's palm smelled of formaldehyde and iodine as he patted Thorn's cheek. "How could I rest this evening, my lovely boy? The girl has arrived. I feel it." Thorn could hear Erik smile behind his own chosen mask, shaped of copper and coated with silver. Ange's enthusiastic greeting had knocked the covering askew, blocking his mouth and revealing that sunken crater in his forehead where one of his eyebrows jutted out unnaturally.
When the mask was in place, all that showed was the bottom quarter of his face—strong chin and full lower lip—making him appear deceptively normal, distinguished. A middle-aged man with a head of black, well-groomed hair and piercing amber eyes that glowed when he was at his most powerful.
With the mask and wig, one wouldn't know he'd been in the world for centuries, or that he was disfigured and had only a scant cluster of hair. With everything in place, one couldn't see the irregular shape of the eye sockets, how they burrowed too deep into his skull. They could only see the expression harbored within those depths: wise, intense, and maniacal beneath the weight of irrepressible genius and tortured memories.
Thorn's palm covered the warm, white swirl of energy from Rune's song, still snuggled under his sternum. He'd been selfish to think, for even a second, that he could keep any of it for himself. That he could feed his latent compositions with the fire of brilliant green that pulsed through her eyes when she performed. Erik needed it so much more than he ever could.
"Yes," Thorn answered at last, helping his father straighten his mask so the synthetic copper nose centered over his absence of one. "It's her. She possesses the gift. Just as was foretold." He gripped Erik's hand and placed it across his glowing chest where his own hand had been. "I hold the proof. Her voice—it's immaculate."
"Seraphic, you mean to say," Father Erik corrected, half-teasing, as his hand began to absorb the power—a tug Thorn felt all the way into his feet.
With a rueful smile, Thorn nodded. "Undeniably. A fine match for yours, or any choir in heaven."
"Despite that she was born to an ensemble of demons," his father answered with that flare for dark, self-deprecating humor.
They shared a laugh, though Thorn didn't feel any joy in his heart as he watched Erik's veins surge with light.
Rune's light. The purest white he'd ever seen … incarnate, rare … the essence of an angel. Thorn wanted it back, nestled inside his body. Warming him and resurrecting his muse.
"She wishes to be free. I sensed that," Thorn added, more to distract himself from the loss than to justify their heinous plans, although it served the latter purpose well enough.
"Didn't I tell you? Just as the old witch predicted. It will take little convincing for her to give it all up, yes?" The silver-and-gray-striped Milano suit, tailored perfectly to Erik's thin frame, tightened around his shoulders as he tried to stand. He always dressed in his finest clothes on club nights, but today was Sunday. Their weekly sojourns through the underground tunnels and into Paris were reserved for Saturdays. Thorn was surprised to see him in such fine array while working in the lab. He supposed he'd wanted to look his best, in hopes Thorn might've been accompanied by Rune.
Lately, Erik's desperation made him forget his patience. They both knew it wasn't time yet. They had to tease her out with carefully placed crumbs. Once convinced she couldn't trust the students and teachers—on the chance they'd think she was losing her mind—or even herself around them for fear of their safety, she'd venture out on her own, seek the truth within the shadows.
Father Erik had too much to do in his cellar lab in preparation, so it was Thorn's place to lead her down that path. But only she could surrender to the darkness—body, mind, and soul.
And once she did, Erik would have everything he needed, at long last.
Thorn looped his father's arm around his neck. Years ago, the man's six-foot-two frame had towered over him. Now, Thorn overshadowed him by two inches. Using his thigh muscles, Thorn lifted them both to standing. Only fitting, after all the times Erik had carried him in his childhood.
"You must take me to her once night falls," his father pressed, admiring the glow at his chest, beneath his lavender tie and navy shirt, where Rune's aria fed his heart with a burst of strength. "Let me see the little pigeon for myself. Her aura will be most visible as she sleeps."
Thorn seated Erik on the chaise lounge and propped his hip against the curved arm on the other end. A refusal flared at the base of his larynx. He didn't want to spy on her while she was so vulnerable.
The absurd thought extinguished as quickly as it sparked. How laughable, that such a thing would occur to him.
Their kind was descended from hunters … renowned for infiltrating darkened bedrooms and wearing the breath of sleeping women like precious pearls upon their flesh, hijacking their dreams and seducing their bodies and spirits—feeding off their passion, need, and fear.
Even if Thorn tried to argue, Father Erik would convince him all was perfect and proper with a hypnotic purr of those celestial and hedonistic vocal cords.
Over the years, Thorn had become acutely aware of his guardian's manipulations. When he was that eight-year-old boy, Thorn had delivered the ortolan back to the forest that afternoon after being "healed" by Erik. Then he watched as the bird tried to fly but instead floundered on the ground, gasping for breath. Erik had convinced the songbird she was healed … but her ribs still pricked through her lungs, and she died just the same.
Nothing could live forever. At least, nothing of the natural world.
Thorn often wondered if he had the strength to refuse his father's will, now that he knew. But this had evolved to something beyond Erik's web of persuasion. Thorn owed him his life and purpose, and would do most anything to hear pride and praise on the strains of Erik's beautiful voice—no matter how maniacal or horrific the request. He wanted to be the son Erik needed.
The man behind the masks was his father in all the ways that counted. And family counted above all else.
So, of course Thorn would take him to Rune, as soon as Erik had digested her song's energy and could make the trip. They would be silent in their observance; she'd never know they were there. A slight detour from their relaxed Sunday routine of resting in their rooms wouldn't hurt.
Thorn told himself this, in hopes to stifle the truth: that he himself wanted to see her again, and that later, when he and Father returned home, he would pick up his violin. After two years of sleep, his muse had reawakened.
Tonight, he would serenade Rune in her dreams once more.
It's his eyes that call to me first—coppery and glimmering. I squint, unsure if they're real.
Then I hear the music, and there's no denying the reality, or that I'm meant to be in this place. Meant to see, hear, and feel everything. It's the only way I'll be complete and comfortable in my own skin.
I stumble into the pitch-black tunnel without hesitation, following the heart-rending chords of the violin. Literally following the notes. Each pitch dances along the stony wall—a different color—like a laser-light show. My hand traces them, drawn to the tactile delicacies they offer: blistering reds, temperate greens, sun-warmed yellows, and blues as cool and variable as the ocean depths, where cerulean and navy glisten like sapphires on the tails of monstrously fanged fish.
In the distance, I see him: my maestro, draped in shadows. His eyes flash again—two pennies at the bottom of a wishing well. Can he make my wishes come true? Can he help me sing without pain?
A heavy mist seeps down from above and separates us.
A dripping sound echoes, and my feet splash through cold, rising water. I'm momentarily brave, but my courage wanes when the liquid turns black and swallows me up to my neck.
I shiver in the icy waves. My throat constricts. I panic … struggle to keep my head exposed. It's not a tunnel; it's a box. A box filling with water that reeks of rotting fish and stagnant mud.
I'm drowning.
My skin freezes, my lungs burn; my mind grows dizzy, numb. I kick against the wooden walls, but I'm too weak, too small, too scared to break through.
Unconsciousness ebbs.
The violin revives me. It becomes more than music. It becomes a voice.
My maestro speaks through it, coaxing me to fight my way to freedom. I grit my teeth and kick again. Everything I do is in slow motion, until finally, my left knee bursts through, leaving a gaping gash in my skin. It will be a scar one day.
But all that matters right now is I'm free.
The box bursts open and I swim to the surface. Overhead the night sky greets me, blanketed in stars. The musical laser-light show becomes planets in chaotic disarray. I drift upward until I've joined them, in the middle, at the epicenter of the Milky Way, where it's warm and comforting like a velvet throw.
My own song breaks free to join the violin, a duet both celestial and powerful. The spaces resonate in my head, lining up behind my mouth and nose and transitioning to my upper register. My voice lifts—a high C so pristine it forms a golden glow—a bubble made of glittering energy. It matches my maestro's sparkling eyes.
The planets and stars in the galaxy float around us, aligning, riding upon the melody the violinist and I now carry as one.
Two halves united.
With the heavens aligned, all is right with the world. Music and love and happiness. Also, peace.
The universe belongs to us. Together, we own it.
Together, we won.
"Rune."
The whisper warms my ear. I curl up and pull the covers over my head, reluctant to leave the private haven of REM sleep.
"Come on, hon. They're serving breakfast in the atrium. You need to eat so you can get to class on time. How are you feeling today?"
The concern in Mom's voice shatters my utopia, but I already know the details of that dream by heart. It's the same one I started having shortly after Dad died. The dream that pulled me through the darkest and most terrifying event of my life, when my grandma tried to drown me. When I was falling unconscious, his music roused me and gave me the power to save myself.
Even after that, my maestro continued to keep my subconscious company for a long time during nightmares of the event, until I suddenly stopped dreaming of him two years ago. I've missed our duets in my sleep. It felt so good to finally be in that place of comfort again.
All this time, I'd always assumed Dad's spirit was the one playing the violin … my deliverer of music. And that his eyes shifted from hazel to flashing coppery-gold to serve as my beacons in the darkness.
But yesterday, I saw those eyes shining inside the gardener's hood. And now I'm having my dreams again.
What does that mean?
I shiver, only partly because Mom drags off my covers to expose my skin to the chilly room. I squint at her. She's holding the bed curtains open, and soft lavender light filters into my comfortable cave from the lava lamp. It still looks like midnight in my tiny room. Her stance is blocking my digital clock.
"What time is it?" I ask.
"Seven thirty a.m."
The answer shocks me enough to sit up, so fast I almost bump the top of my head on the antechamber's low, arched ceiling. "You're supposed to be at the airport by eight! Why didn't you wake me up earlier? I wanted time to say good-bye." I feel like a little girl again, needing that red thread around my wrist so I can let her go.
Mom pats my hand. "It's okay. I called and got my flight changed. I'm going to stay till the end of the week, to catch up with Lottie and to do a little sightseeing on my own. I can buy a few outfits to wear while I'm here. Maybe I'll even find the perfect wedding dress, yeah?"
"Mom … you should be back home with Ned, planning the wedding." Newly engaged, and he's all alone at our house instead of spending quality time with his fiancée.
She shakes her head. "You're my priority, Rune. I just don't feel good about leaving yet. Your spell was … different this time."
Her unspoken I'm worried you might be going completely bat-monkeys like Grandma Lil echoes in the silence. The lava lamp makes a soft burbling sound and the fluorescent light casts everything in eerie shadows. Mom looks like half of her face is gone.
I cringe and roll my shoulders to alleviate the sense of dread and confusion rising around me like the freezing water in my dream, adding to the guilt I'm already wrestling with over so many things—including making Mom stay longer, all because I faked fainting yesterday.
Not only did she have to call the airport, she had to notify her boss at the house-cleaning service, too. Now she's using up vacation days that should be saved for her honeymoon. She must be really upset to disrupt her life like that.
And to think, she doesn't even realize how screwed up I am.
"Let's get a move on." She nudges my left knee with her palm, almost touching the scar that's exposed by my lace-trimmed shorty pajamas. "The seniors have last breakfast while the juniors start their classes. It's the perfect time to meet the kids you'll be graduating with."
I cringe. After the "fainting" incident yesterday, I stayed in my room the rest of the evening and was able to avoid meeting any of the students other than Sunny. However, most of the teachers breezed through for introductions.
Professor Diamond Tomlin—the youngest of the staff at age twenty-five, and instructor of all things theatric and scientific—came in, having just returned from a weekend gig in Paris with his alternative punk band. Other than his tweed jacket and pleated pants, he looked the part of a drummer, with his dark beard and wiry build. But his hair sticking up in thick, brown waves all over his head and the sharpness of his inquisitive blue eyes gave him more of a young, rebellious Einstein vibe, which fit with what Sunny had told me: that he likes to perform science experiments in his dorm after lights-out, resulting in strange orange flashes beneath his door.
Principal Norrington came in behind the professor and shook my hand, saying he looked forward to having me in his financial-literacy and career-planning classes second semester. With his accent and weathered good looks, I was convinced there was a British spy hidden behind his stuffy sweaters and wire-rimmed glasses. Confirmation came when he unintentionally bumped into Madame Harris—school librarian, classical lit teacher, and counselor in a curvy, blond-haired, gray-eyed package—on the way out of my room. As he helped her pick up the papers she'd dropped, their eyes locked, and a 007/Miss Moneypenny vibe passed between them.
Their romantic moment shattered when Madame Bouchard—instructor of historical musicology, vocal pedagogy, and all around scariest staff member at the academy—appeared. Bouchard fit perfectly inside this gloomy, haunting place with her stiff-as-iron poise, thin-lipped, heavily painted face, and straight white hair bleeding to a hot-pink dye job before falling to her waist. She was something fresh out of Bride of Frankenstein. Yet from what Sunny told me, Bouchard is more mad scientist than monster. Her favorite pastime is taxidermy. She's even transformed one of the empty dressing rooms on the second floor into her workshop and personal exhibition hall.
Her gruesome reputation precedes her, judging by how the other three teachers scattered as Bouchard started to grill me about my training: who my instructor was in the States, how many times I've performed in public, and how long I've "been such a little songbird because you must have practiced Renata's aria from The Fiery Angel for months on end to master it so well." Aunt Charlotte adjusted her glasses and insisted I'd had a stressful enough day and wasn't to be interviewed.
The two ladies began arguing. My mom and I sat, dumbfounded, until Headmaster Fabre arrived and told Bouchard to save her questions for another time. He had a kind, handsome face and a French accent; but his thick white hair and burly beard were more reminiscent of a distinguished seafaring captain than a Frenchman. Bouchard didn't dare back talk to the man who hired and fired the staff. She glared at Aunt Charlotte, then left in a fluster of stutters and snarls. After rescuing me like he did, the headmaster would've been my choice for teacher of the year, if not for his subjects being world geography and social studies, my least favorites. He complimented my singing at the audition, then apologized that his wife, the costume designer and health teacher, was away in Paris at a fashion show.
She is the teacher I've most wanted to meet, and I've already decided to look for her today. I'm hoping to offer assistance with costumes. If I'm going to be stuck here, sewing and designing are the best shots I have at staying sane.
"Where are those uniforms we borrowed?" Mom interrupts my thoughts, digging through my closet where we shoved my things last night before we settled in to sleep—me in my comfortable curtained-in cave and she on the chaise lounge. I'll offer her the bed tonight. It's unfair for her to have to curl up on a couch that's four inches too short just because of my dishonesty. Besides, I'm curious to know whether she'll hear the same things I heard coming from the vent above my bed … rustling and breathing. Maybe those are the kinds of sounds a hundred-year-old building makes. But I'll feel better knowing it wasn't all in my head, like everything else seems to be.
Mom drags some clothes from the closet. The pink bag that held my uniforms went missing yesterday between my unplanned operatic performance and our attempt to unpack and pretend everything was normal. Aunt Charlotte had to sift through old uniforms donated by last year's seniors to give me temporary substitutes.
I wrinkle my nose, remembering how awkward and big they looked last night when I tried them on. "Why can't I just wear street clothes until they show up? These are extenuating circumstances, right?"
Mom chews her lip. "Rules are rules. Lottie's already bent enough for you. She has to draw the line at academics. It affects your grade if you go to class out of uniform. These will have to do until we find the ones we bought. I'm sure they'll turn up by the end of the day."
I nod, not mentioning how violating it feels, having your clothes stolen, wondering why anyone would take something so personal in the first place.
Unless it was for revenge because I interrupted the tryouts …
My unruly hair cascades around my shoulders, several strands sticking to my suddenly overwarm cheeks. I use the brush Mom hands me to rake the waves from my face until they pop with static. Snuggling a knitted headband into place, I swing my feet over the bed's edge and yawn.
As I'm pouring my sleepy limbs into the gray jacket, long skirt, and white ruffled shirt that make up the riding habit wannabe, the scent of bacon and something cinnamon blends with rich notes of coffee and wafts under my door. My stomach rumbles. Last night, after I showered to clean the sticky soup from my skin, I refused to eat anything else. I said I wasn't hungry; but the truth was, I was too freaked out.
How is it possible that I saw a guy in Victorian clothing who no one else knows about, who can vanish and drain the life from roses with just a touch? Whose eyes have been in my dreams for years, alongside violin music I thought belonged to my father?
I force the unsettling thoughts deep down inside. I have enough to worry about today in the real world. Cinching the borrowed skirt's waist with a belt only causes the excess fabric to pleat and bulge in weird places. At least the red necktie fits. After applying light strokes of blush and peach-tinted lip balm without risking a peek in the cheval mirror, I follow Mom toward the door, resigned to my fate.
I won't be able to get out of this until I prove myself capable of performing without breaking down. Yesterday's fiasco brought this truth to light, and it's been confirmed by Mom's determination to stay at my side until she feels I'm strong enough to be here without her. For years, Mom has put her life on hold to deal with my lack of one.
It's time to figure out why this overpowering ability to sing—that once brought me so much satisfaction—is gnawing away at me like a sickness. I need to know why I'm broken, so I can fix myself. One way or another. Maybe this place can help me do that, and then I can finally look forward to my future. Because I'm starting to realize there's something worse than stepping up and facing your fears—and that's living as if you're already dead.