Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(18)

Potato salad. Potato salad. Don’t take your eyes off the damn potato salad.

Lara must have been disappointed at my non-reaction, because she pushed harder. “Did Will ever mention Jess to you, Ollie? She’s his ex. They used to be joined at the hip, didn’t they, Niamh?”

I cracked and resurfaced to join the conversation. Even Niamh seemed to have caught on to what Lara was doing. At least, she looked pretty unimpressed. “I guess,” she said. “Until she cheated on him. That was a while ago. I’m surprised he still talks to her.”

“Oh, all the time,” Lara said. She crossed her legs underneath her to prop herself higher.

“Well, I’ve never seen her,” Juliette said airily, standing up. “Anyway, come on, Ollie. We’ve really got to go if we’re gonna do this.”

I scrambled to follow her. As I did, I checked Will’s table one last time.

Will ripped his gaze away, pretending to be all absorbed in whatever Darnell was saying. He burst out laughing, and a couple of the guys slapped him on his back and arms. Whatever they were laughing about, it seemed to be with Will, not at Will. Probably a super-hetero joke about his super-hetero past relationship with this Jess girl. A vicious part of me wanted to ask the girls to point her out in the crowd so I could find flaws with her. Maybe she was duller than vanilla ice cream. Or, even better, one of those people with an obnoxious laugh that makes you want to fill your ear canals with gasoline and light it. Or she might be an earnest flat-earther. As long as I could cheerfully hate her, I’d take any of the above.

As the guys stopped laughing, Will’s eyes were aimed toward me again. We looked away from each other at the same time. Him to turn back to his group. Me to the back wall. Half because I didn’t have anywhere else to look, half because I could still check Will out in my peripheral at this angle.

Suddenly, I desperately didn’t want to go off with Juliette. Why did he have to pick today to remember I existed? Why couldn’t I sit in that seat for the next twelve hours, counting how many times we locked eyes?

“I really don’t know what’s up with Lara,” Juliette said as we dumped our trays. “She’s doing that on purpose. Don’t think me and Niamh haven’t noticed.”

“I don’t think she likes me very much,” I admitted.

Juliette made a show of shaking her head, all wide-eyed horror. “No, of course she does! It’s not that at all.”

She didn’t offer any alternative explanations. I didn’t push it, though. Even two weeks in, these girls were my best options for friends. Actually, that wasn’t fair. I really, genuinely liked Juliette and Niamh. It was just Lara. I got along with the others in Absolution of the Chained okay, but they didn’t hang out together, so I didn’t have an easy in. Basically, if I wanted to keep the peace with the two people I could call proper friends in this school, I had to put up with Miss Malice Personified. Small sacrifices, right?

In the music room, Juliette set herself up on a chair, with about three novels’ worth of music stacked on the sheet stand. “All right, so, these are the four pieces I have to choose from. I think I have it down to two final ones, but I’d really, really appreciate your feedback. See, I have to balance it between the ones I perform better and the ones that are technically harder. I think it’s better to be awesome at an easier song than less awesome at a tricky song, but … what do you think?”

I sat on the piano bench and played a couple of notes. “Can you just, like, get really awesome at a complex song?”

I got a scrunched-up piece of sheet music lobbed at me for that one. Apparently not.

One by one, Juliette played the pieces. I was no expert judge of the clarinet, but she was obviously good. Really good. She tripped up once or twice during the first song, but after that she was pretty much flawless. Either that one was the “tricky” piece, or she’d had nerves. I wasn’t sure how much help I’d be, because they all sounded the same to me.

I was starting to imagine how the clarinet would sound covering Nightwish or something—epic, probably—when she started on her last song. And, finally, something sounded different. From the expression on her face, it was obvious this was her favorite. Something about the piece made me think of crying, and emptiness, and death. Frankly, it was awful. I spent half the song staring at the wall, thinking about Aunt Linda, and how sunken her cheeks were looking, and what would happen if she didn’t make it. Then I thought about my friends back home, and how they probably barely missed me, and they’d have all these memories together that I wouldn’t be a part of. All I wanted to do suddenly was go home, climb into bed, and sleep until everything was all better.

The second Juliette stopped, I said, “Play that one.” That might sound weird, but even if that song made me feel horrible, it made me feel. And that was the point with music, wasn’t it?

“Really? Why that one?” But she looked pleased. Clearly I’d told her what she wanted to hear.

“I could tell you meant it.”

“I did. But it’s not as hard as the second one.”

“Doesn’t matter. Anyone can play a note. Talent’s what you do with the notes. Don’t you think?”

Juliette rested her clarinet between her knees and flushed. “You think I’m talented?”

“Nah. You suck. I was being nice.”