Mason would come and get me. He would probably answer on the first ring. I shoved the thought from my head. I wasn't calling Mason Bates ever again. That left me with only one option. I climbed out of my truck and began walking, my anger fueling my steps. I cut across the parking lot and rounded the school in the direction of home – opposite the direction I had come. A car I hadn't noticed when I'd arrived was parked in the teacher's lot, closer to the school and the entrance doors. It was the silver Subaru I had seen Mr. Wilson driving around town. If it was his, and he was in the school, he would give me a ride – or even better, jump start my truck. I had cables. Maybe he had left his keys in it, and I could just quickly “borrow” his car, drive it over to my truck, give it a jump, and bring his car back without him ever knowing it.
I tested the driver's side door hopefully. No luck. I tested all the doors, just to be sure. I could pound on the door to the school, the one closest to where he was parked. But his room was up the stairs and down the hall on the second floor. The likelihood of him hearing me knocking was pretty slim. But I knew a way into the school. My dremel had broken last summer and for about a month I hadn't had the money to replace it. But the wood-shop room in the school had a nice one that I'd made good use of many times. I'd taken a metal file to the lock on the shop exit door, filing it down just enough that any key would open the door. If no one had discovered it in the seven months since then, I would be able to get in. I might get in trouble, but I could just say the door was unlocked. I doubted Wilson would tattle anyway.
My streak of bad luck took a small vacation because my car keys easily turned the lock on the shop room door. I was in. I crept through the familiar passageways. The smell of the school – disinfectant, school lunch, and cheap cologne – was oddly comforting. I wondered how I would approach Wilson without scaring the crap out of him. As I neared the stairs leading to the second floor I heard something that made me stop abruptly. I listened, and my heart thudded like a drum, making it hard to determine what the sound was. I held my breath and strained to hear. Violins? Weird. Hitchcock's Psycho flashed through my mind. “REE! REE! REE! REE!” I shivered. Violins were creepy.
The sound had me sneaking up the stairs, following the thready notes. When I reached the second floor, the hallway was dark and the light from Wilson's classroom beckoned me forward. It was the only light on in the whole school, creating a spotlight on the man within. Wilson was outlined by the frame of his door, a bright rectangle at the end of the shadowy corridor. I walked toward him, keeping close to the wall in case he looked up. But the light that illuminated him would also blind him. I doubted he would see me even if he looked directly at me.
He was wrapped around an instrument. I didn't know the name of it. It was a lot bigger than a violin – so big it sat on the floor and he was seated behind it . And the music he was making wasn't frightening. It was achingly lovely. It was piercing, yet sweet. Powerful, yet simple. His eyes were closed and his head was bent, as if he prayed as he played. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and his body moved with his bow, like a weary swordsman. I thought of Manny then. How Manny had remarked on Wilson's forearms, and I watched the play of muscle under his smooth skin, pulling and pushing, coaxing the mellow music from the moody strings.
I wanted to reveal my presence, to startle him. I wanted to laugh, to mock him, to say something cutting and sarcastic like I usually did. I wanted to hate him because he was beautiful in a way I would never be.
But I didn't move. And I didn't speak. I just listened. For how long, I don't know. And as I continued to listen, my heart began to ache with a feeling I had no name for. My heart felt swollen in my chest. I lifted my hand to my chest as if I could make it stop.
But with each note Wilson played, the feeling grew. It wasn't grief and it wasn't pain. It wasn't despair or even remorse. It felt more like . . . gratitude. It felt like love. I immediately rejected the words that had sprung to my mind. Gratitude for what?! For a life that had never been kind? For happiness I had rarely known? For pleasure that had been fleeting and left a desperate aftertaste of guilt and loathing?
I closed my eyes, trying to resist the sensation, but my heart was hungry for it, insatiable. The feeling spread down my arms and legs, warm and liquid, healing. And the guilt and the loathing slipped away, pushed out by the overwhelming gratitude that I was alive, that I could feel, that I could hear the music. I was filled with an indescribable sweetness unlike anything I had ever felt before.
I slid down against the wall until I was sitting on the cool linoleum floor. I leaned my heavy head against my knees, letting the strings Wilson played untie the knots in my soul and release me, even for a moment, from the burdens I dragged along like clanking cans and filthy chains.
What if there was a way to let them go forever? What if I could be different? What if life could be different? What if I could be somebody? I had little hope. But there was something in the music that whispered of possibility and breathed life into a very private dream. Wilson played on, unaware of the spark that had been lit inside of me.