I try to brush off the settling doubt and focus on what Beas is saying. “Maybe a new pattern will emerge now. Something new that could help us solve it for good,” I say, trying to sound hopeful.
“Or maybe it’s just warped into something unpredictable, with no sense of rhyme or reason anymore.” Beas fixes her gaze on something beyond me, far in the distance. She whispers, “That would be the most terrifying thing of all.”
When I come out of Stars practice that afternoon, it’s the first time in three months that Will isn’t standing there waiting for me.
All over town, the same debate is happening in waves: whether the tournament should be held is argued in the halls of the school and in Council meetings. At home, the Clifftons scribble notes to each other between bites of breakfast, wondering whether they should cancel their tournament party.
Perhaps we should just announce the music discovery now.
Today?
People would like to hear it.
I suppose it would give some encouragement.
I leave for school before they reach a decision.
“The Clifftons might cancel their party,” I tell George and Beas.
“Hmm. Wonder if Eliza will cancel hers, too.” George opens his folder, and I glimpse an invitation addressed to him.
I pause. “Eliza’s having a party?”
George’s mouth falls open, and he hurriedly tries to close his folder, but I snatch the invite from the flap before he can.
It’s handwritten in script.
To George Mackelroy: You are invited to a Patton victory celebration after the closing ceremonies of the tournament.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything,” George says. “I just thought, if she invited me, she invited everyone.” He squints. “The entire human race.”
“A victory celebration?” I scoff, handing the invitation back to him. “That’s taking confidence to a new level. Even for her.”
“So just win,” Beas says wearily, resting her head on her outstretched arm. “She can’t turn a Sterling victor away from a victory party.” She nudges me. “You could do it, you know. You could beat everyone. Even Margeaux Templeton.”
“Margeaux Templeton?” I ask. So that’s who I’ll be up against. The name sounds familiar, and it isn’t until George groans that I remember why. The girl who glared at him on Disappearance Day, the heir to Charlton Templeton’s shipping fortune in “The Mackelroy Misfortune.”
“My vote is that nobody cancels anything,” Beas says, shoving her books into her bag. “That’s what we do. We go on. Life has to go on.” She looks at me meaningfully. “They’re not canceling tonight, at least,” she whispers. “See you later.”
“Much later,” George adds.
Another Tempest race, then. I nod, trying to forget the promise I made to Dr. Cliffton back in October. My heart sings at the thought of a moonlit night alone with Will.
At least Eliza can’t prevent me from coming to that.
But he isn’t there again when I come out of the gym doors. As I walk home without him, it seems longer and colder than it usually does. Maybe his practice let out early or ran late, I think. Maybe he went to the soda shop with Carter.
“Is Will here?” I ask Miles when I walk through the door, shaking free of my coat.
I can see half-chewed bites of sandwich in his mouth when he answers. “He left a while ago. With his toolbox.”
Hmm.
“Hey. Where were you today?” I ask Will casually when he walks in the front door an hour later. I’m lounging on the couch in his father’s library, doing my homework where we usually do it together. He’s without his toolbox, I notice.
“Oh. Nowhere in particular,” he says. “Just had some things to do.”
I raise my eyebrows and loudly flip the page of my textbook. Underline a note in my notebook. My stomach prickles when he sits down next to me, and I keep waiting for him to mention the race. Some sort of sign or look, a note slipped to me when no one is looking. But we study together alone in Dr. Cliffton’s library and still he stays silent. My excitement dims as we sit down for dinner. Maybe he simply isn’t going to race anymore, just as he told his father he wouldn’t.
Mrs. Cliffton makes the final decision on the tournament party over our dinner of pork chops ringed with golden pineapple.
“We’ve decided to have it,” she announces, setting down her fork. “And we’ll invite the people of Charlton, too. We need to gather together at times like this.” She looks to Dr. Cliffton, and he nods in agreement. In a matter of days they’ve already become better at reading each other’s lips.
“Everyone could use a bright spot at this bleak time,” Dr. Cliffton says, dishing salad onto his plate.
“These last six months have certainly been wretched, haven’t they?” Mrs. Cliffton asks. Then she flushes bright red. “Except for having you and Miles here, of course, Aila—?I—?I didn’t mean—” she says, but my stomach twists in a knot, and her words hang in the air over us for the rest of dinner. As if everyone’s attention has suddenly been drawn to the very same realization.
How exponentially worse things have become for Sterling in the short time that Miles and I have been here.
Chapter Forty-One
That night, I tell everyone to sleep well and close my bedroom door, but instead of my nightgown, I pull on a black sweater and trousers. I spend close to an hour examining a magazine photograph of Gene Tierney, trying to set my hair in a glamorous wave like hers by feel alone. Then I sit on my bed with a poetry book opened in my lap, trying not to think of what Mrs. Cliffton said, reading the same stanzas again and again.
At just past eleven thirty my ears prick with the sound of Will’s footsteps. He must think he’s being quiet, but I can hear the soft padding of his feet as they sink into the hallway rug. I close my book and stand, my heart ascending. His steps pause just outside my doorway, and I wait for his knock.
But then, after a long moment, the padding continues on down the hall, fading into a single creak on the stairs. It takes the slightest whisper of the front door closing before I can admit to myself that he has left. Without me.
I sit for a long moment, clutching my hands into fists in my lap.
What just happened?
Is it because he suddenly realized how much worse things became with Miles and me here? Or because he was tired of me tagging along? Has he been kind out of pity while secretly finding me a burden? With horror I think, Maybe he wants to be alone with Eliza and I would have been in the way.
The bump at the top of my right ear burns, as if Dixon Fairweather is whispering into it again. I strip off my dark clothes and hurl them into the back of my wardrobe. It doesn’t matter, I think fiercely, changing into my nightgown. Raking my fingers through the wave I set until it is limp and flat again.