Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(13)
Matt beat Will to the desk by half a foot, and dove into the chair. Will grabbed his arm and yanked it playfully, offering bribes to convince him to give it up.
“Will, sit down,” the teacher said wearily from the front of the classroom.
Will straightened and whirled around. “Hey, Mr. Theo, what’s up? I didn’t know we were gonna have another year together. Sweet!”
Matt covered up a laugh with an obvious cough, and Will shoved him, smirking.
“I was hoping you might have been kept back a year. I prayed for escape,” Mr. Theo said. “But once again, the fates mock me. Take a seat.” He indicated a desk in the second row, a few chairs to my right. It was too tight an angle for me to stare at the back of Will’s head for long. How disappointing.
Will swung his backpack as he walked, the straps clacking against the metal desks and chair legs. “Anyone would think you weren’t happy to see me,” Will said in a fake hurt voice, pressing his free hand to his chest.
“I’ve never been much of a masochist, Will.”
The classroom hummed with soft laughter, but it didn’t seem to be at Will’s expense. There was clearly some sort of inside joke here that I was missing. Which, to be fair, effectively described 90 percent of my “new-kid” experience to date.
“It’s an acquired taste, but keep working at it and you might be surprised,” Will said, and the class broke up again. He shot a cheeky smile to Mr. Theo, and glanced around the room to bask in the spotlight. That’s when he noticed me. All at once, the grin slipped off his face like it’d been glued on with grease. He cut the bravado act short and slumped into the chair, angling himself away from me while Mr. Theo held up his hands for quiet.
Back in California, there was a guy in my class. Pierce, his name was. He was one of those guys. The ones who swagger instead of walking, and always have a smartass remark stored for ammo, and photosynthesize attention. Pierce was popular. Like, super popular. My crowd didn’t have anything to do with him and his friends. Just in case insufferable smugness was contagious, I guess. Besides, we figured Pierce wasn’t going to achieve much of anything with his life.
Somewhere up there, the Ethereal Being was smirking down at me from the sky with a handful of popcorn, because Will was Pierce. I’d spent all summer with a guy who was sweet, and thoughtful, and … and respectful. Only to find out he was the antithesis in real life. A guy who ignored my texts, and shunned me in front of his friends, and, apparently, had a bit of a superiority complex.
Because the lake wasn’t real life. It had felt like a movie, anyway. Everything was suspiciously perfect. How many times had I thought Will seemed too perfect to exist?
Well, joke was on me, in the end.
He was.
5
A week later, and I was still getting lost more often than the girl in the Labyrinth movie, except I didn’t even have David Bowie in tights as a reward for my efforts. I was on my way to third period—at least, I thought I was on my way, but it might very well turn out I was walking in the exact wrong direction—when I noticed a sign on a bulletin board. BASSIST WANTED.
The words were accompanied by a blurry picture of a bass guitar with a Getty Images watermark printed across the middle, the name Izzy, and a cell number. I forgot all about my class and gave into a thrill of excitement. I usually played guitar, but I had a solid handle on bass. To be quite frank, I’d learn to play the harp if it meant I could get involved in a band again. Riffing with my bedroom wall didn’t really cut it for inspiration, and my parents were as reluctant an audience as you could find.
I texted the number.
I play bass. In the right circumstances. What did you guys have in mind?
“You guys” ended up being a rainbow-haired girl called Izzy, a round-faced guy in a hoodie called Emerson, and a mostly-skinny dude with impeccable biceps named Sayid. When I finally found room 13b (which turned out to be a basement, something I felt Izzy could’ve mentioned in her text to save everyone’s time since I had to follow the distant hum of music to find it), they were already rehearsing a cover song I vaguely recognized. The room looked like it was probably a classroom for music students, with a grand piano in the corner, various instrument cases propped up against the wall, and several amps older than I was. It was too bad my Music Appreciation classes weren’t held in here. I kind of loved it.
They were playing against the far wall. Izzy was on drums, Sayid had the keyboard and clean vocals, and Emerson took lead guitar and the screamed vocals. They could definitely use more bass, but overall they did a solidly decent job at metalcore. I was instantly impressed. This was worth sacrificing my lunch break for after all.
I didn’t have my own bass with me, because I didn’t go to school carrying it every morning in case someone asked me to jump in on their impromptu musical number, but Sayid grabbed one of the school ones for me. It was kind of cheap and out of tune, but I was still able to knock out a few lines.
“Not bad,” Izzy said, twirling a drumstick. “Can you improv?” Without waiting for me to reply, she hopped onto the drums and jumped straight into a beat. I matched her as tightly as I could, making up the tune as I went along and ignoring the closely watching eyes of Emerson and Sayid. Before long, I stopped noticing them anyway. All I knew was the beat, and the bass under my fingers, and the perfect intermingling of the two instruments. It’d only been a couple of months since I’d played with others, but I’d forgotten how awesome it was. Like blending your soul with someone else’s for three and a half minutes. For the first time since I stepped foot in this school, I felt comfortable and calm. I could picture the tension pouring out of my pores like a noxious gas.