Lilith glared as he approached. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“This,” he said. With a deft twist of his wrist, he adjusted the microphone so it was the perfect distance from Lilith’s lips. Now she wouldn’t have to hunch. She could speak in her low, natural voice and be heard clearly throughout the cafeteria.
“Get off the stage.” She cupped her palm over the mic. “You’re embarrassing me.” She turned out to the audience. “Um, I’m Lilith, and I—”
“And you suck!” shouted a girl at the back of the cafeteria.
Lilith sighed and flipped through the pages of her notebook. It was clear to Cam how much the other students hated Lilith, and how terrible she felt because of it. He didn’t want to be one more thing making her miserable right now.
He started backing off the stage when the look in her eyes made him stop.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I can’t do this,” she mouthed.
Cam came close again, stopping before instinct took over and he embraced her. “Yes, you can.”
“I’ll take the zero.” She backed away from the microphone, clutching her journal. “I can’t read in front of all these people who hate me.”
“Then don’t,” Cam said. At the foot of the chair where Lilith had been sitting in the audience, Cam had spied her guitar case. Luckily she hadn’t stowed it at the creek today.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Lilith,” Mr. Davidson called from the back of the cafeteria. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” Lilith said.
“No,” Cam said at the same time.
He jumped off the stage, opened the silver clasps of her guitar case, and raised the lovely, cracked instrument in his arms. He heard snickering from the crowd and saw the flash of someone photographing Lilith as she stood caught in the grip of her stage fright.
Cam ignored them all. He pressed the guitar into Lilith’s hands and eased the strap over her shoulder, taking care not to catch her long red hair beneath it. He took her journal from her, and it felt warm where her hands had been.
“This is a disaster,” she said.
“Most great things start out that way,” he said, so that only she could hear. “Now, close your eyes. Imagine you’re alone. Imagine it’s sunset, and you’ve got all night.”
“Get a room!” someone yelled out. “You both suck!”
“This isn’t going to work,” Lilith said, but Cam noticed the way her fingers naturally moved into strumming position. The guitar was like a shield between her and the audience. Already she was more comfortable than she’d been a moment before.
So Cam kept going.
“Imagine you’ve just thought up this new song, and you’re proud of it—”
Lilith started to interrupt. “But—”
“Let yourself be proud,” Cam told her. “Not because you think it’s better than any other song, but because it comes as close as anything ever could to expressing how you feel right now, what you’re about.”
Lilith closed her eyes. She leaned in to the mic. Cam held his breath.
“Boo,” someone hooted.
Lilith’s eyes shot open. Her face went white.
Cam homed in on Luc in the center of the audience, hands cupped around his mouth, jeering at Lilith. Cam had never punched the devil, but he wasn’t afraid to change that tonight. He stared out coolly at the audience, raised both his fists, and flipped them off.
“That’s enough, Cam,” Mr. Davidson said. “Please exit the stage.”
The sound of very quiet laughter made Cam turn to Lilith. She was watching him, chuckling, the ghost of a smile on her face.
“Showing them who’s boss?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Play that guitar and show them yourself.”
Lilith didn’t answer, but Cam could tell from the change in her expression that he’d said something right. She leaned in to the mic again. Her voice came soft and clear. “This one’s called ‘Exile,’?” she said, and began to sing.
“Where love spurs me I must turn
My rhymes, my rhymes,
Which follow my afflicted mind
My mind, my mind.
What shall be last, what shall be first?
Shall I drown from this thirst?”
The song poured out of her like she’d been born to sing it. At the microphone, with her eyes closed, Lilith didn’t seem so twisted by anger. There was the hint of the girl she’d once been, the girl Cam had fallen in love with.
The girl he was still in love with.
When she finished, Cam was trembling with emotion. Her song was a version of the one he’d been humming as he left Troy. She still knew it. Some remnant of their love story was still alive in her. Just as he’d hoped it would be.
Lilith’s fingers lifted off the strings of her guitar. The audience was silent. She waited for applause, hope in her eyes.
But all she got was laughter.
“Your song sucks worse than you!” someone hollered, throwing an empty soda bottle on stage. It hit Lilith in the knees, and the hope in her eyes died.