The Prelude (A Musical Interlude Novel) - By Kasonndra Leigh
PROLOGUE
Lafayette, Louisiana
If I draw this guy’s face wrong one more time, I swear I’m just going to throw the damn pad out the window.
The eyes sit too close together, the chin looks too big, and the nose is crooked. The truth is I’m finding it hard to concentrate on any of my sketches. Art class has been particularly trying for me today. I keep getting that creepy feeling I always get just before my sister, Jada, and her psycho senior friends trick me into watching one of those exorcism movies that I hate so much.
My thoughts drifts back to the main thing weighing on my mind, the audition. I keep checking my cell phone, hoping that Jada will call again and let me know how everything went.
I stuff the phone back in my handbag and try to concentrate on my drawing. “I know what I’ll do,” I say to myself. “I’ll tell my parents about my decision to pursue a singing career on Sunday night after the Super Bowl ends.”
I know they won’t be happy. But Dad is always easier to approach after a good old-fashioned football game. Although my father was born in Nottingham, he has officially adopted the New Orleans Saints as his official team. It doesn’t matter to him that we live in Lafayette.
Sam, the boy I’m dating, sits at a table with the rest of the baseball players. They’re teasing him for some reason, and he keeps glancing across the room at me. His spiky hair is a soothing brown color and his eyes are a strange blue, a clear hue that plows right through me each time I glance into them. I truly enjoy listening to his English accent. It’s so much like my dad’s. After all these years living in the States, he never once lost the rhythm of his native tongue.
Sam’s accent is devilishly sexy and perfect on him. I hate to admit this, but it’s true. I’m as girly as they come. A British accent drives me nuts. The more I think about it, the more I realize my observations about myself rings with a hardcore truth. Jada doesn’t care for accents as much as I do.
My big sister is a mistress of the violin, the junior protégé who’s about to get accepted into a musical program at Julliard. I told her she’ll change her mind about her tastes in boys after she becomes rich and famous.
And me, I’m supposed to be heading off to design school in New York sometime after my senior year. At least, that’s my current plan of action. I’m sixteen-years-old. I have one more year of school left before I run out of time for making a decision. Jada and I might be on different career paths, but at least we’ll be together in New York.
My school’s chorus teacher keeps asking me to sing the lead in our upcoming production of Fame. He says he enjoys listening to my bird-girl voice. I don’t get it. In my opinion, birds sound squeaky, not soothing. So when somebody compares my singing voice to one it doesn’t make me feel all that great. All of this goes through my mind at once. These thoughts whirl inside my head, and only serve to heighten my anxiety about what Jada’s doing right now.
I glance around the room, checking out my classmates. A few of them are watching me for some reason. The teacher steps back into the room, her gaze focused on me. Did she ask me a question without me hearing it? My neck prickles with heat. It’s embarrassing to get caught off guard this way. But that isn’t why the teacher stares at me.
I have been so caught up in my worries that I didn’t see my mom standing outside the doorway. That’s weird. She never goes anywhere without my dad at this time of the day. And she never comes by the school for any reason.
All eyes focus on me. They’re waiting to see what kind of trouble I’ve caused. I’m almost sure of it. Even Sam stares across the room at me. I swallow and ignore my heartbeat thudding in my ears. This scene with Mom standing outside the door to my art class just doesn’t feel right.
Oohs and ahhs come from the students around me. “Oh shut up,” I mouth as I walk by the last table of kids, the baseball players sitting closest to the entrance.
The closer I get to the door, the harder it is for me to breathe. Two officers wait out in the hallway along with a man in a suit. I recognize him as one of my dad’s friends from the CIA. Mom stands just outside the doorway. She hugs her shoulders and purses her lips. Her gorgeous dark olive skin isn’t like mine. Once upon a lifetime ago, she was a model. That’s how she met my dad. I inherited his pale skin with the golden undertones, and Jada got our mother’s good genes.
“Your mom wanted to be the one to break the news,” the suit says as he steps toward me. Mom breaks down as soon as our gazes lock. Her face crumples, and the suit catches her before she collapses. Both my heart and breathing stop.
This isn’t good. It can’t be good. I just know it.
Mom chokes through her sobs, steps over to me and pulls my stiff body into her arms. A short moment passes and she moves back, staring into my face. The pain in her dark eyes brings tears to mine. I wince and shake my head and mutter one word: “No.” I have no idea what she’s about to say. But I know I don’t want to hear it.
“Oh, baby. God help us,” she says through her choking voice. “Your father…and sister…God give me the strength to tell you this. Baby, they were killed in a car accident.”
Five Days Later…
Sam arrives at our house exactly one hour after the funeral ends. We sit outside on the swing hanging from the oak tree that Jada’s boyfriend hung for the two of us. The crappy shit that started with the crooked nose sketch last week keeps getting worse.
“I’m moving back to London at the end of this month,” he says quickly. “My parents are getting a divorce. Mother wants me to return with her.” Once again, the air seeps out of my lungs, and I struggle to hold on to reality. I glance over to where he sits, his hands tucked under his ass.
An insane part of me thinks Sam looks funny with his nose that’s way too large for the rest of his handsome face. I start giggling, but nothing’s funny. It’s almost as though my sister still lives inside me, filling my body with her giggly side even when my chest threatens to explode at any moment.
“You could stay,” I say through gasps. “Your father isn’t moving away, is he?” His face crumples just before he says, “I’m sorry, Erin.” I know Sam better than he thinks. He’s lying just to make me feel better.
Weak, stupid girl. How did you let someone take control of your life this way? “We made a promise. Don’t you remember?” My voice cracks; and Sam’s Adam’s apple makes this bobbing movement thing. He was my first, and I’m pretty sure I was his. Our love making wasn’t anything to write home about, but I honestly believed he cared for me.
“My mother needs me. It’ll be hard enough for her to know that my father will be getting married to the person he’s been seeing behind her back. I’m sorry, Erin. I truly am.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s not helping,” I snap. He reaches out to touch me. Jerking out of his reach, I stand and hug my shoulders. Just like the gloom inside my mind, the clouds above decide to drizzle. Why does the rain always come after a funeral? My grandmother says it means that someone’s soul has gone to heaven. No matter. It’s still creepy and depressing, either way.
At this point, I know there’s nothing left to say. No words. No tears. I feel empty. My older sister has left me, and the boy I gave my virginity to is moving an ocean away. And for some silly reason, I want to sleep and listen to that funny opera music Jada loved so much. Anything to drown out the screams stuck in my throat, the silent ones, the most destructive of all.
I don’t truly blame Jada or Sam or even my dad. No. I blame one thing that started all of this in the first place. I turn around and shuffle like a zombie and walk away from Sam. But I’m not one of the walking dead. I only feel that way at the moment. At some point, the emotions of this day will hit my chest all at once and crush me.
I feel Sam staring as I drift toward the house. I know him better than he knows himself. The pain reflected in his eyes tells me his decision will be one that haunts him forever, the same way the ache of this moment already threatens to destroy me. I lift one numb foot after another and make my way up to the porch.
“Won’t you even let me say goodbye?” a cracked voice says behind me.
I want to turn around, to run to him and embrace him the way we did in what seemed like another lifetime. “No,” I say, instead.
But I can’t bring myself to give any more of my soul to another person that will leave me. I continue to stand on the porch, staring at the front door, wondering who will fix the holes that our dog Phoebe made in the bottom of the screen. I stand there until I hear Sam’s car crank. Tires crunch across our gravel driveway, the one Dad never finished updating for Mom.
The sob starts as an echo in my mind. Soon enough, it rages through my body, shaking me to the core. After a few more moments, I am nothing but one complete ball of tears and choking gasps.
From inside the house, my mom plays the song Jada was supposed to recite at the music hall on Saturday. At once, the tears ease up. The music calms me down. Jada says the prelude is the part of a song that pulls you in, hypnotizing you with beauty. The beginning of a song hooks people inside its spell and never lets the person go until the last note trickles through their mind. Today’s musicians don’t know how to appreciate the beauty of the first note.
She told me that was what made the masters from hundreds of years ago so special. The Bachs and Tchaikovskys got it right. I told her that was a stupid theory. Now I fully understand what she meant.
As I prepare to enter the front door, I make a silent vow. Love, I have this to say to you: “You tore open my heart. You made me feel pain when all I wanted to feel was joy. So now, I will remove your power over me. I’ll never kiss anyone or trust in any dream that you can take away from me.
I will never believe in you, ever again.